Head of Department - Holly Eckhardt MA
MGS enjoys one of the largest Classics departments in the country, and we are delighted that in recent years The Good Schools Guide has singled us out as the best department in the UK for the teaching of both Latin and Classical Civilisation at A-level. Each year a steady trickle of pupils go off to study classical subjects at the leading universities in the country, including Oxford, Cambridge and London.
We teach subjects taught at few other schools, but ones enjoyed immensely by boys throughout the School.
There are seven staff based in a well-equipped departmental area that is supplied with the latest ICT facilities. Recently, members of the department have been involved in the development of the DVDs that accompany the Cambridge Latin Course as well as examining at both GCSE and A-level. They have also published books on Roman history and Greek literature.
In Year 7 pupils follow our very own highly successful course, Hellenica, to study the Trojan War, the tales of Odysseus, the Persian Wars and the Greek alphabet. Pupils study Latin in Year 8 using the Cambridge Latin Course, a leading modern course that was pioneered at MGS.
Year 9 offers all pupils the opportunity to take up Classical Greek, a subject offered in very few other schools. Latin is an option in Year 9, and pupils are visited by a Roman legionary soldier and have the chance to visit a classical site in Britain. Boys choose to study Latin and Greek either as separate subjects, or in a combined Gratin course. Each year approximately 50-60 boys take GCSE Latin, while between 6 and 12 boys study Greek. Classical Civilisation is also available as a GCSE option, where boys study the history and literature of the Greeks and Romans in translation. Latin is offered as an A Level and IB group 2 subject at standard and higher level, and Greek and Classical Civilisation can be studied to A-level.
The Classics Society, run by older boys, meets once a cycle as pupils, staff and outside speakers present talks on topics of interest from the classical world. There are further activities on offer beyond the classroom such as quizzes and competitions. One particular highlight is the annual Latin Reading Competition in which each of the Year 8 forms enter a team; togas, wigs and, on occasions, make-up are in evidence as the boys invariably throw themselves into their roles with gusto.
Regular trips are also organised to the theatre as well as classical sites in the UK such as Hadrian's Wall, Chester and York. In addition the department runs an overseas trip each year to Greek and Roman sites abroad. The destinations on our itinerary are Greece, Italy, France, Turkey, Sicily, Egypt and Tunisia.
The Times Stephen Spender Prize 2010
Upper Sixth Form student Paddy Heaton won the 2010 Stephen Spender U18 Prize, announced in The Times on Saturday 30 October. Paddy's parents commented: We consider that this reflects well not only on Paddy, but also on the excellent quality of teaching with both the encouragement and the support of the Classics department staff at MGS.
Comments from the judges
In the 15–18 category, it was the turn of an Ovidian woman in love, in the first of his ‘Letters from Heroines’, where Penelope addresses Ulysses. The intelligent commentary increased my admiration for this authoritative, elegant reading of an important poem (the earliest ever reading of the Odyssey in which Penelope is actually allowed to express anger with her wandering spouse). It is a sign of the times that I wrongly assumed that its advanced gender politics must mean that the translator was female! Edith Hall, Research Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London
In the 18-and-under category the judges wrestled with a more diverse longlist of contenders. As in the 14-and-under category many had outstanding qualities but failed to sustain the tone across the poem as a whole or lost grammatical confidence here and there. In Patrick Heaton’s ‘Penelope Ulixi’ from Ovid’s Heroides we found a worthy winner, which took inspiration from Carol Ann Duffy’s treatment of the figure of Penelope but found a voice of his own. This poem headed up a very impressive list of entries from Classical languages which demonstrated a metrical and lexical confidence often lacking in the entries from modern foreign languages. Karen Leeder, Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor in German at New College, Oxford
Read the full details here
Sitting two papers for unseen translation and classical history, Paddy also won the prestigious CICERO competition back in June to be recognised as one of the very best young translators worldwide. Paddy is reading Latin, Greek, Mathematics and Music and hopes to study Classics at Cambridge. Read more about this here.
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