We discovered that Roman mathematics is addictive, with some alarmingly young future bankers getting hooked on calculating compound interest in Roman numerals (maybe it’s not simply avarice, but the lure of the dried beans used as counters?). And that the beginners’ Latin exercises used by imperial-period Greek speakers can introduce modern children to a new language with laughter, fun and teamwork while still offering a serious intellectual challenge. Ostraca (a.k.a. broken flowerpots) are more useful as a writing surface than we had expected, and children learn surprisingly fast how not to get ink everywhere (though the occasional spill does happen, of course). And the ancient schoolroom setting works for a wide range of ages: a sixteen-year-old needs to be given different tasks from an eight-year-old, of course, but since everyone is taught individually that is easy to achieve even when pupils of very different ages are in the room at the same time (as was often the case in antiquity). Once we had developed a suitable range of exercises, it turned out that even adults (and at the other end of the spectrum children as young as two) could learn from and enjoy the experience of being a pupil in an ancient school.
In fact we all learned so much, and had so much fun, that what had been intended as a one-off event was repeated yearly on campus and then started branching out to local schools who wanted to involve more children than could easily be accommodated in our department. Last summer we registered the Reading Ancient Schoolroom as a charity with the goal of spreading the opportunity of experiencing Roman education to as many pupils and teachers as possible. Our transition to charitable status has been funded by the AHRC, with enough extra money that this year (until 15th May 2024) we can even offer free or reduced-cost events to a few schools that cannot afford to pay what it costs to produce an ancient schoolroom. So if your school would like to turn a classroom into ancient Rome for a day, please get in touch with us! More information is available at www.readingancientschoolroom.com.
The Reading Ancient Schoolroom is run by Eleanor Dickey (Professor of Classics at the University of Reading and author of Learning Latin the Ancient Way and Stories of Daily Life from the Roman World) and Nadin Marsovszki (Classics Research Associate at the University of Reading), who can be contacted at E.Dickey@reading.ac.uk or nadinmarsovszki76@gmail.com.
