On the 4th of February, a Croydon-based school, Old Palace of John Whitgift had the very exciting opportunity to learn about the origins of their society. A Classical Civilisation teacher, a Mrs. A Constantinides presented the school with information titled ‘A Rough Guide to Ancient Athens.’
Many students benefited with the otherwise under-rated information on the origins of; philosophy, democracy and theatre. It helped a wide variety of student studying an array of subjects. Holly Nicholls stated that ‘As an RS student, the talk was fascinating to understand the roots of where philosophy came from and how it has influenced scholars and modern philosophers.’’ Not only did it benefit Religious Studies and Classical Civilisation students but it also benefited Politics student. This is demonstrated with a quote from Alicia Marsh ‘As a politics student my learning was deepened with the awareness of the origins of democracy.’
Comparisons were drawn between the ancient ‘Boulle’ and the modern day parliament, and other interested links between the ancient world and modern world included the architecture of many old buildings and buildings we see today including theatres. The Allergy of the Cave was also explained and brought to life with special effects such as an imitation of a fire. This very interesting as we learned the spiritual idea leads a person to believe that a philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from a cave. He comes to learn that the projections of shadows he sees in front of him, do not make up reality. All in all we learned of the interesting ideas of seeing beyond what is obviously presented.
The talk was very interesting and opened up a lot of mines of the derivatives of many aspects of our society.
