About the Cambridge Schools Classics Project
CSCP is a research and development project established in 1966 with funding from the Nuffield Foundation and the Schools Council. Unlike many Classical organisations, we do not charge a membership fee and have no members in the traditional sense, although many Classics teachers have been involved in the creation of our materials and the majority of UK teachers and students of Classics benefit from our work on a regular basis. Over 90% of secondary schools which offer Latin use our Cambridge Latin Course and our website receives over 80,000 visitors every week.
See below for more information on our
Aims
The aim of the Cambridge School Classics Project
(CSCP) is to help make the classical world accessible to as many students
as possible - whatever their age or background - by
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forging strong links with
teachers and learners |
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advancing the pedagogy of
classics teaching through research and development |
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creating high quality, innovative
teaching materials based on research and development |
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exploiting new technologies
to reach out to new audiences and create cutting-edge materials. |
Background
CSCP was set up in 1966 under a joint initiative
by the University of Cambridge Faculty of Classics and Department of Education
in response to a growing crisis in classics teaching. CSCP was generously
funded by the Schools Council and the Nuffield Foundation.
Two events had caused the crisis: first, the removal of Latin as a
matriculation requirement in Oxford and Cambridge at the start of
the 1960s; second, the emergence of comprehensive schools - and the
consequent threat to grammar schools where Latin, Greek and Ancient
History had always flourished.
Initial aims
The first CSCP Bulletin ("Towards a New Latin Reading Course")
announced that the aim of CSCP was to:
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"develop materials and
techniques which will accelerate and improve pupils' ability
to read classical Latin literature and widen their knowledge
of classical civilisation" |
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"develop materials and
courses for the non-linguistic study of Classics, with particular
reference to widely varying levels of pupil ability." |
Starting from first principles and taking full account of teaching
methodology in modern languages, CSCP developed a Latin course radically
different from all previous courses. Instead of requiring pupils to
work their way through years of meaningless English to Latin sentences
before reading any Latin, the new Cambridge Latin Course (CLC)
focused on developing pupils' reading skills through a series
of stories set firmly in the culture of the first century AD. Forty
years later, the Cambridge University Press has sold over 4 million
units of the CLC materials.
At the same time as creating the Latin course the Project team worked
on the production of non-linguistic materials in the hope of extending
the range of pupils who had contact with and knowledge of the civilisations
of Greece and Rome. These CSCP Foundation courses from the early 1970s
played a significant part in the rise of Classical Civilisation (or
Classical Studies, as it also called) as a school subject.
The current situation
CSCP is the only Nuffield project from the 1960s still running under
its original constitution. The nature of its work, however, has changed
considerably over the intervening 40 years. With the CLC now firmly
established and in its fourth edition, much of the CSCP's work now
focuses on providing support for classics teachers and developing
links with independent learners and schools with no classics teachers.
There have been new publications: graded tests for the first 3 Books
of the CLC; independent learning manuals and answer books; worksheet masters to help
teachers cater for as wide an ability span as possible and cutting edge e-learning resource DVDs. Go to
The Shop
for a full list of CLC materials.
One major development has been the introduction of the CLC into many
American schools and the formation of a North American Cambridge Classics
Project which provides support and in-service training for colleagues
in Canada and the USA.
But in the last decade the most significant developments at CSCP
have been the Cambridge Online Latin Project (COLP) and the Iliad
Project, two initiatives enabling CSCP to reach a wide range of new
learners.
For a detailed history of CSCP see Modernising the Classics: a
Study in Curriculum Development by Martin Forrest (University
of Exeter Press, 1996).
Research
For information on CSCP's research activities, please see our new section on research in the Teachers' Area of this website.
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