A classical education, once the preserve of Eton, Oxbridge and the likes of Boris Johnson, is being made available to inmates serving time in prisons.
In a break from the kind of curriculum usually on offer inside – lessons in literacy, numeracy, tiling and decorating – a small number of prisoners are being offered the opportunity to learn life skills from the ancient philosophers.
Aristotle and his work on ethics and rhetoric are the main focus. Communication, happiness, decision-making, friendship, life goals and recreation are among the topics, selected to provide a set of tools for prisoners seeking to make a new start.
Prisoners are also given the opportunity to study and perform in a Greek tragedy to learn how to discuss emotions: in this case, Sophocles’s Philoctetes (409BC), which – perhaps aptly – explores the corrosive effect of isolation.
“Our course is designed to help prison learners use ancient philosophical wisdom to inform contemporary life,” said Arlene Holmes-Henderson, a professor of classics education and public policy at Durham University.
“For example, Aristotle’s ethics encourage learners to consider what it means to be happy, whether there is any point in being a good person, what it means to cultivate friendships. Aristotle’s rhetoric gives learners knowledge of how to communicate effectively, including how to negotiate, disagree agreeably, listen actively and reason critically.
“These skills are of particular value to learners in prison because they offer something additional to and different from standard courses such as literacy, numeracy, tiling and decorating. They can help learners to behave and think differently about their crime and to change their behaviour in prison. We’re collecting data on whether it may also reduce reoffending.”
The teaching team, led by two classics professors from Durham University and supported by the prison education charity Novus, has so far completed courses in two men’s prisons: Swinfen Hall, a closed young offender institute and category C training prison in Staffordshire, and HMP Deerbolt, a prison and young offender institute near Barnard Castle, County Durham.
Inmates in these prisons are often serving long sentences – including life – for offences including serious violence and drugs, murder and extremism.
The Durham professors are moving into a women’s jail next. From small beginnings, the aim is to attract sufficient funding to roll out the programme much more widely. The teaching team say the appetite is there among inmates, who can be locked in their cells for 23 hours a day.
“They are bored out of their minds,” said Prof Edith Hall, one of Britain’s most respected classicists. “They are thirsting for stimulation. Almost anything we said would have been more interesting to them than daytime TV.”
More than that, the prisoners were thrilled to learn about Aristotle. “The repeated mantra was: ‘Why didn’t we get this at school?’,” said Hall.
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The feedback from those who took part showed how well they had learned their lessons and how effectively they were able to use them in their own lives.
“The rhetoric session helped me plan and structure statements for my legal case,” said one classics convert. “I used the resources back in my cell and am amazed at how many confrontations I’ve avoided on the wing as a result.”
The course provided optimism. “I felt reassured hearing that Aristotle didn’t attain his life goal until he was 49,” said one student. “Youth offenders are max 28, so there is plenty of time to turn things around.”
Others described a new reflectiveness in themselves. “I had never thought about the relationship between happiness and being a good person. After that session, I couldn’t stop thinking about my choices and lay awake all night in my cell thinking about philosophy,” said one participant in the programme.
Sarah Hartley, Novus’s national lead in creative strategies, said: “Novus’s primary focus is on preparing prisoners for life after release and enabling them to secure stable employment. Reoffending costs the economy £18bn every year, according to Ministry of Justice data, and engaging with education is proven to reduce reoffending by 7.5 percentage points.
“As well as teaching the professional skills required in the workplace, we are committed to supporting learners in developing the vital life skills they need to thrive after they leave prison. The prisoners involved in this project have found it engaging, and through the classics have reflected on how to improve their decision-making, persuasion and active listening.”