Sharwood Smith

The strong argument for literary education is that provinciality [sic] is counteracted by classical literature, whether it be Homer, Sophocles, and Virgil or Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats. Classical authors are of another age as well as transcending all ages. But if they are to counteract provincialism, they must be felt, not merely encountered; and deeply enough to be taken into the pupils' mythological miscellany in competition with the seductive offerings of the modern media of communication.

Dealing as he does with pupils who are subject to a bombardment of the perceptions, a classical schoolmaster must nowadays be patient, sensitive and resourceful if the reading of classical authors in class is to prove more than a series of casual encounters.