History Hub permalink
New humanities university...
This discussion has been closed.
-
Message 1.
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Sunday, 5th June 2011
A Good Thing or a Bad Thing for history (especially the 'scientific' modules)...?
-
Message 2
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Monday, 6th June 2011
Well, I think overall it's a Good Thing for British education, considering the shambolic state of the university system currently, which clearly needs a huge overall in terms of their finances.
However, the fees seeem ludicrously high (£18k pa I think?) considering all you need to teach a humanities subject in a physical university (ie, cf OU) is a library, some experts, a few (note FEW!!!!!) staff to do admin, a couple of lecture theatres and tutorial rooms, and some computers to access the Internet on. How that tots up to £18k per head I don't know - however lavishly the teaching/experts are paid!
I suppose the terms will be longer than current uni terms, which gives students five months off a year, so are highly time-inefficient. -
Message 3
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Monday, 6th June 2011
For 'huge overall' read 'huge overhaul' throughout. (With apols to Sellars and Yeatman's peasants and pheasants....)
-
Message 4
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Monday, 6th June 2011
Personally, Jenny, I think a fair number of UK academics would look better in Huge Overalls than in their usual clothes...
I suspect the massive fees are intended to respect the 'market value' of the Big Names that have signed up to teach there, though how the likes of Colley and Ferguson plan to teach London-based students from their abodes across the pond should be interesting to see...
As for a library, they needn't even bother with that - it would be easier to pay for their students to have access to Senate House Library than to start one from scratch.
-
Message 5
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Monday, 6th June 2011
Yes, snappy dressing isn't the forte of most British academics (I have fond memories of Alias Smith and Jones doing spoofs of OU late night programmes, in which corduroy featured very, very prominently....
)
I suspect the fees proposed - and, indeed, the entire proposal - is actually more to do with these soi-dissant top academics furthering their lucrative careers and becoming even more famous than they already are.
I bet most 'bog-standard' academics, even the very senior ones, utterly LOATHE the media-star types like Ferguson and Cox etc.
Your original question mentioned the science aspect, which I don't know much about, but which I think the publicity so far has indicated that some degree of 'philosophy/sociology of science' would be involved - again, I suspect this is merely another stalking horse by Dawkins to preach his militant atheism (yet again....sigh)
Good point re Senate House library. -
Message 6
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Monday, 6th June 2011
I bet most 'bog-standard' academics, even the very senior ones, utterly LOATHE the media-star types like Ferguson and Cox etc.
This is the nearest they have to a 'green-with-envy' smiley... -
Message 7
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Monday, 6th June 2011
Disapproval from the Grauniad and its readers...
-
Message 8
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Tuesday, 7th June 2011
Gosh, what a lark - the Grauniad and the Mail agreeing!!
However, I don't think it matters a jot that the new uni wants to offer exactly the same syllabus, as that is not the issue. The issue is what you get for your money - they say they are offering much more tutor time, and a much improved teacher/student ration (1:10 I think), and that is what they are charging twice the money for (plus their expertise of course).
I can't see that the issue of the 'copycat' syllabus is relevant in that if you study a subject there will, inevitably, be a common corpus of what that subject includes. I mean, if someone offered a medicine syllabus that was widely different from another medical school's it would be pretty damn dodgy, no?!!!! -
Message 9
Posted by Minette Minor (U14272111) on Friday, 10th June 2011
I can't think of anything more ridiculous! Possibly my oldest and dearest to say nothing of most intelligent friends works for the University of Buckingham and has done since it began. It is the only private university in the UK thus far. We differ sometimes as far as politics are concerned but never about the importance of education. She has a first in French before it was "compulsory". Yes, as you know Catigern I only have a 2.2 in History and Politics from Warwick 1978. Today I learned that my daughter at a London university acheived a 2.1 for her first year, friends got Firsts. "We" did her first essay on Jacobean Literature when I hadn't read one of the plays and she hadn't the other - a 2.1 emerged.
I don't know what to feel. I do know that I have dragged my children around Art Galleries etc., forcing them to look because I wanted them to understand my joy and have some wonderful pictures of their faces, not enjoying. Today my eldest rings me to say, "I'm bored! Not sure whether to do the Tate or V&A", and she means it! "I need to see, "the Lady of Shallot" today. Of course she knows it will make me envious!BUT the penny has dropped! She really means it. But she knows that I know that she knows she hasn't read half the books she has "annaylsed" to get a 2.1..I don't want her to have numbers after her name but to simply sumptuoulsy enjoy the Heavenly delights of Dickens, Hardy, Thackery, Elliott, Tennyson,etc., with nothing else in mind. This is true education, an expansion of the mind and soul.
Since the year "DOT" the only people others have truly admired have been the kind, benevolent and intelligent. Money meant little except comfort. All sociological experiments to down grade the intellengtsia have failed. Mao, Trostsky, Lenin and Stalin, even Hitler eventually learned to accept that a state needed "minds" to make it function. And education has been the only way to do this. In this counry endowments of rich merchants, from the early medieval period, set up grammar schools and even public schools to educate the children of the poor. It worked. Intellect has NEVER been based upon income groups. This is why, until the 1980s, universities were free for the intelligent poor. Now all this must change. Why?
For the last 30 years money appears to have replaced intellect as an asset. But what is the point of money of you don't have the intellect to use it properly? Gold plated taps do not make people happy. Millioaniare footballers die of boredom. George Bush Jnr actually got into Harvard and this is what we are being told is a good model to follow? The extremely rich will be able to give hand outs to the uber intelligent poor applicants. Yippee! This is not about education but sheer greed. This new London based "Oxbridge" will have all sorts of "names" touting different subjects but they will be on lecture tours and book signings when they should be giving lectures. Name dropping is all it ammounts to and it will cost the rich idiots £18,000 a term.
I became disillusioned with higher education in 1999 when I did my PGCE, FE and found out that people with M.A.s in Eng Lit had less knowledge of it than I did even though it was not my subject. Today I am scared for my daughters' university "experience" and ferociously angry that this coalition government is too stupid to understand the importance of education for ALL.
The university of Buckingham is a one off. IF the planned one for London ever reaches fruition it will be a joke and a disaster. Education is like health. One can attempt to syphon it off to the rich only but eventually the people as well as the state will realize it is too important to treat it like this. I'm an abolished Grammar School girl. But how I enjoyed my brother's Public School Prize Givings Days, only the "scholarship boys" won the prizes and walked back and forth beneath that leaky marquee to collect the prizes, over and over again. The others never got a look in! But then George Osbourne, Dave Cameron and Nick Clegg aren't really that bright. No really, they aren't!
Such a shame, doubt if they would pass the common entrance exam again. I give up! -
Message 10
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
I'd like to see the Harry Enfield "I Saw You Coming" character interviewing prospective undergraduates for this splendid new establishment. Enfield can do a pretty good imitation of that lovely Richard Dawkins "what an utterly pathetic little idiot you are" sneer.
Gwyneth Paltrow believes you can buy off -the-peg intelligence for your offspring. She is apparently already offering £60K a year for a private tutor for her Apple and Moses. Gwynnie is desperate that M&A should be introduced as soon as possible to the delights of Greek (Ancient), Latin, French and Mandarin Chinese, also chess, philosophy and sailing. Poor little sods.
But learning to sail - that does sound good.
I think there's far too much education about these days - middle class parents paying vast sums to drive their children crazy. Cui bono? And whatever happened to those sensible old ideas about age, aptitude and ability?
I actually found myself applauding Lord Sugar this week when he fired the lady with the three degrees (the one who looked like she actually should be with the Three Degrees). -
Message 11
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) ** on Sunday, 12th June 2011
I think there's far too much education about these days - middle class parents paying vast sums to drive their children crazy. Cui bono? And whatever happened to those sensible old ideas about age, aptitude and ability?
Mmm a problem in Greece too Temp. University expected of every child, despite his/her ability level and children made miserable by over ambitious and unrealistic parents. -
Message 12
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
I think there's far too much education about these days - middle class parents paying vast sums to drive their children crazy. Cui bono? And whatever happened to those sensible old ideas about age, aptitude and ability?
Mmm a problem in Greece too Temp. University expected of every child, despite his/her ability level and children made miserable by over ambitious and unrealistic parents.
Parental ambition. Reminds me of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman". Willy has always done his best to "help" his son succeed. Yet Biff has ended up a complete loser - he's messed up just about everything he's ever attempted. Willy's neighbour, Charley, also has a son (who went to school with Biff): he is now a top lawyer, about to plead a case before the Supreme Court. Willy can't understand what went wrong, and he bitterly observes that Charley never took any interest at all in the education of his son. Charley responds laconically:"My salvation is I never took an interest in anything."
Harry Enfield really does look like Richard Dawkins here:
-
Message 13
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
Hi SST
One of the advantages of a all that education is that we all understand 'cui bono'!
Carpe diem.
TP -
Message 14
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 13th June 2011
Hi SST
One of the advantages of a all that education is that we all understand 'cui bono'!
Carpe diem.
TP
Very true, TP.
Even more important - we are able to translate and discuss the significance of:
Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus.
(I think I've well and truly tickled Minette.) -
Message 15
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Monday, 13th June 2011
Yes, as you know Catigern I only have a 2.2 in History and Politics from Warwick 1978.
Really, Minette? I must confess I had forgotten...
Anyway, welcome back (and 'well done!' to your girl).
I realise that it's likely to be some time before you apologise to me, but I do hope you manage to patch things up with SST. I miss the days when we were all one big, happy family... -
Message 16
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 21st June 2011
Boris has written a rather mischievous article here:
Bit more Latin there too - I like Floreant Rejecti.
I wonder if some of the newly appointed teachers at the Graying Institute are heaving huge sighs of relief. The prospect of cosy tutorials with a small bunch of well-heeled and well-mannered rich young hopefuls ("people like us"?) must after all seem very pleasing - certainly it should all prove to be a damn sight easier, more civilised and more rewarding than having to face and teach the offspring of the great unwashed - those difficult products of the nation's unspeakable comprehensives. Always an unruly and troublesome lot, the Lord knows what they could soon be demanding - very possibly real value for all that borrowed money.
Nearly five hundred years ago John Knox (who wasn't all bad) was campaigning for free education - right up to university level - for any intelligent young person who really wanted it and who could benefit from it. Wonder what our dour Scot would make of these 21st century academic superstars and their fancy plans?
I'm feling pretty dour myself these days. -
Message 17
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Tuesday, 21st June 2011
Hi SST
Who coined the phrase 'the great unwashed'?
TP -
Message 18
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 21st June 2011
Bulwer-Lytton.
Is it my go? -
Message 19
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Tuesday, 21st June 2011
You are simply too clever for words.
Now back to the thread!
TP -
Message 20
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 21st June 2011
You are simply too clever for words.
I hope I don't detect the tiniest bit of sarcasm from you there, TP!
Odd how people fall out and then it's hard to remember what the row was all about. My Aunty Peggy didn't speak to my Aunty Dolly for over seventeen years. Nobody knew why. They only started communicating again (using the word communicating very loosely) when my Uncle Albert died and they wanted to argue about who got some old clock of his. Sad and dreadfully silly.
MInette - you can have the clock - it doesn't work anyway. -
Message 21
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Tuesday, 21st June 2011
Absolutely not. At the museum where I volunteer I have been given a fabulous Edwardian autograph album to study. It's full of treasures: Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, Arthur Sullivan, Charles Halle...and Bulwer-Lytton. I never thought that you would know.
But you did.
TP -
Message 22
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Tuesday, 21st June 2011
Isn't one of the problems about objecting to 'everybody' having a university-level education that one could use the same logic to object to 'everybody' being able to read and write.....
Whether or not graduates can or can't get paid jobs commensurate with their level of education (and a lot more can't now, I think, than in my day when there were actually job adverts for 'graduate secretaries'.....!), surely no one would disagree that it is better for someone to be well-educated than not? Even if they only get to use their university-educated brains in their free time.
Of course, whether they will decide it was worth the financial investment to get a university level education is a different matter.
Or, indeed, what constitutes a university-level education these days anyway (eg, students not actually reading their set texts any more, parents writing their essays, etc etc!) -
Message 23
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
Surely like any private venture service industry project much will depend upon the marketing, and the identification of a market willing to pay the price..
As I understand it fees for foreign students in the UCCAS universities are not much unlike this: and much will depend upon the global credibility of a university that really does provide an education that proves itself within this closely interdependent world.
So no doubt much of the initial recruitment will come from foreign students often from wealthy families or funded by state grants.
But the Oxbridge model of the age of the British establishment and the great development of the intellectual Middle Class through the rise of the Professions would suggest that in this new global reality, already catered for in part by international schools and the international Baccaleaureate, that some of the organs and institutions of the "global village" will see the value of funding the study of the most able on the principle of the old sandwich course or commercial sponsorship. In this way they may hope that their future staff will be able to reap the inestimable benefits of the "old school tie" syndrome.
A recent reading of Stephen Fry's latest fragment of autobiography made the advantages of being part of the Oxbridge clique within the world of British entertainment remains a very powerful aid to launching successful careers within the domestic scene: and even going on to conquer the USA still so impressed with "truly English values", accents, 'sang froid' etc."
Cass -
Message 24
Posted by Minette Minor (U14272111) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
Oh Dear! Thankyou for the clock SST. Very kind of you and I hope that we are still friends. That is if one can be in this cyber place...I hope that it works. We have a large/huge clock in our small hall always stuck at 5 o'clock and an ormalu - spelt that wrong! - a Gold medal winner of Paris 1851 which has lost its pendulum but the boy and goat are still beautiful. It worked once and will again! I love clocks especially when they tick. God the number of clocks I've seen "taken off my parent's hands" from the lovely grandfather clock to the "half" and "full" gold hunters" to the big carrriage clocks. What it is to be poor and meet "antique dealers". I have an angry axe to grind sorry.
To education! Where did it all go wrong? Under Tony Blair really.
One daughter due back from university on Saturday, the other downstairs celebrating with friends and off to to "club"? After finishing A'Levels today and university no doubt in the Autumn. The point is that we all feel that they must go! Why? I was a nerd. They are not. I always loved History and going to university to chase after it seemed the natural thing to do. I wanted to be a journalist but knew the degree I took wasn't really helpful. It's who you know not what. I didn;t want to write for "The Church Times" or "Tablet". Having a degree in the '80s was a real problem. "In House Style" mattered more. Young brains to mould.
Today, I look on and despair. So many lovely youngsters feel they MUST have degrees to "get on"! I know two people "doing" History who hate it. Yet want to teach it. They thought it would all be Tudors and Stuarts. But I wonder what their lecturers are like? How much do they know? It scares me. It must be an established fact by now that education has been "dumbed down" since the 1960s/70s. It's been experimated with, tweeked and twisted until it must be asked, does anyone know what they are doing anymore? Oh yes! let's have a Welsh Bacaluariate! Why not. I taught at a private school at one stage and to make the curriculum make sense I wrote on a white board, spoke quietley and wiped it thoroughly to make sure no one saw it! Mind you this private school charged £10,000 a term and had no library! The parents didn't care or understand. They name-dropped. Stupidly. I made sure and brazenly used Church contacts to get my girls into Church schools, survival of the fittest. Not totally Christian. But can you know the difference unless you are educated?
The Butler Education Act had it covered. Exams at different ages to suit aptitudes. I'd like to have been a gardener or painter and decorator, a seamstress or carpenter.Paintings murals would have been nice. But I loved history more and that was my training. I had no idea what job would really follow which is the point of education. Today we shovel children through the "education" system ( food technology? What's wrong with cookery?) and expect lots of little B.A.s, BScs, GNVQs or GPRADs blah, blahs at the other end like sausages. We have lost the plot. Now we panic people into getting degrees from universities that are not universities,never have been or will be and charge them through the nose for that panic! Today, people are going to universities who cannot read or write properly! I am begining to despair. I just wish that I didn't care. (Should probably withdraw this, what the Hell!) -
Message 25
Posted by Minette Minor (U14272111) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
Cass, I used to adore Stephen Fry but he's not a "national tresure" anymore; he's a Deity and everywhere! Will someone please tell him to fight his "work ethic"! NOW!
-
Message 26
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
Minette
I am not sure what points to pick up from that.. But thinking of what history might teach about setting up new universities I thought of the industrial sponsorship that set up the Machester College where John Dalton came up with Atomic Theory early in the Nineteenth Century.. And Beatrice Webb has the interesting link that her Nonconformist grandafather Potter (?) was one of the group that set up University College London in the 1830's to cater for Nonconformists that were no longer subject to the Test Acts etc, while her husband Sidney Webb is given a great deal of the credit for founding the London School of Economics.
As for the general state of education, I realised pretty quickly when I became a teacher, having not been discouraged from my idealism by the Welsh values of my PGCE year in Cardiff, that my common feeling with Neil Kinnock that I really wished to widen the "ladder of opportunity" that I had been fortunate enough to climb as the first in our extended family (as far as I knew) and make it accessible to all schoolchildren, that only a few people are "driven" by the urge to turn their thought-adventure into a real Odyssey.
Unfortunately the "In Place of Strife" initiative failed in this too because of the ingrained hostilities within a Britain divided regionally and horizontally with as much inverted snobbery as snobbery. Entering into the Sixth Form we were called into a conference of Oxford Sixth Forms and exposed to the ideal of the "Universal Man" of the Renaissance. But then Matthew Arnold had always acknowledged that the pursuit of intellectual excellence would probably only be taken up by a few: and one might add the pursuit of any kind of excellence.
So as Arnold also said of America everything ends up with the worship of the "average man" and in an Americanised society/economy/state the creation of systems that are best suited to the average, for they have also to accommodate the slowest parts of the convoy.
So just as the politics of the redistribution of wealth led to the taking away of the top end of the luxury and high-class market for British industry, and handing the money directly to those who would be content to be just "average common people", "keeping up with the Joneses", so the politics of the redistribution of knowledge also focussed on distributing it as widely as possible (best for getting votes) while dumbing down British thought much as the redistribution of wealth led to the dumbing down of British industry, so a country that was once the Workshop of the World (and was seen as the power-house of modernism in thought) ended up having nothing that the rest of the world would buy in large enough numbers to enable us to pay our way in the World.
Evan Davies' first programme in his "Made in Britain" series showed that Britain can sell to the world when we make the best things that are really worth people paying "British wages" to have produced. His next programme is going to be focussed on the knowledge revolution and perhaps he will have some good news there too. But for the present it is difficult to see the "lights on the horizon". Perhaps I am not looking in the right places- which brings us back to the idea of a new university- a new thought-adventure project.
Cass -
Message 27
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
Thank you for the clock SST... I hope that it works.
It doesn't. But it looks nice and if you give it a good thump every so often it'll tick loudly if erratically for half an hour or so before it exhausts itself and stops.
So many lovely youngsters feel they MUST have degrees to "get on".
And what exactly is "getting on", or is that a silly question - even sillier than asking, "What is the purpose of education" ? We seem to have become mere consumers of education now - I half expect next week's task on "The Apprentice" to be "You're going to set up and market a new university..."
An M.A. as a desirable fashion accessory?
The Latin root of consumer means to destroy.
When I was young I used to like those old ideas - were they from Plato(?) - I expect Grayling or Simon Blackburn would know - about educating a privileged elite so that the clever folk could be of service to the community. I suppose such thinking these days is really pretty laughable: it perhaps only belongs in books for kids - books like my "Heroes of Ancient Greece". I remember other stuff too - quaint notions about it not being a very good idea to gain the whole world and lose your own souI. I absorbed all that as a child and I actually believed it! What an idiot! I read far too many A.J. Cronin novels too - sentimental tosh like "The Citadel" and "The Stars Look Down".
Yet part of me still foolishly and naively yearns for some kind of fantasy world - a world of noble intellectual heroes
where the likes of Grayling, Dawkins, Blackburn and Ferguson would indeed be determined to open a brilliant academy - a university run by the best to offer the best to those who have the potential - but not the money - to become the best. And these heroes would do it all for free - now there's a revolutionary thought! - or at least would supplement their other sources of income with only a modest salary - whatever is usually deemed appropriate for a respected professor. And no shareholders - perish the thought!
After all isn't it actually a privilege - not a task - to get the chance to teach what you passionately love and believe in to intelligent, motivated youngsters? Certainly what I would call earning your living - and a good one at that.
I just wish I didn't care.
Me too, Minette. -
Message 28
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
Hi SST
Do you really think 'The Citadel is 'sentimental tosh'? What a pity, unless of course it's irony.
I certainly subscribe to the belief that 'for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' Surely SST you of all people don't believe in selling your soul and living comfortably on the proceeds?
TP -
Message 29
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
I was most definitely being ironic, TP! I really haven't changed much since I was a teenager - all the old beliefs stubbornly persist, despite much reading, agonising, argument and confusion! I read Cronin when I was about 16 and he remains one of my favourite writers: I've recently re-read "The Keys of the Kingdom" and "The Spanish Gardener". "The Citadel" is a superb novel.
Selling one's soul should be avoided at all times in my humble opinion. Do people really live comfortably "on the proceeds"? I doubt it.
In haste,
SST. -
Message 30
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
Further to the student world of the Sixties:
During a recent reading of the last volume of Han Suyin’s “China. Autobiography/History” I worked out that, when I met her in a train at Dover heading back towards university, it may have been January 1966. Then she was moving from Paris, where she had met and conversed with the great French ‘savant” Andre Malraux, and was soon to visit Bertrand Russell, a British equivalent.
For me the fascinating exchanges that we had during the hour and a half trip to Victoria were just typical of the “world is our oyster” attitude of those who were growing up as a global generation all forged in and brought up in the aftermath of the greatest single global catastrophe in History.
This came out very clearly in the international “language” of music and art in the Sixties, as I was reminded by a 鶹Լ Four documentary last Friday that looked at the whole question of the open air pop festivals- starting, for me, from where I switched on, which was the part covering the Isle of Wight Festival.
The whole “counter” and “alternative” culture theme was a reminder of the original “yes we can” generation, as Michelle Obama acknowledged in her speech yesterday: and the programme was given added relevance for me because our son is down at Glastonbury. There he is part of a team manning an on-site recording studio, as both a technician and a musician. And he too can anticipate interesting and fruitful encounters as some of the main acts have already agreed to come to record a track to be issued on a Glastonbury CD sold in support of Greenpeace.
But Han Suyin was the product of a much more pioneering stage of globalisation, and her life journey was shaped by the fact that her father came from quite a prosperous Chinese family.
As about third son, he was designated by the family as the one who would learn Western engineering, for Belgian railways had begun to transform China as they had Europe. Thus her Belgian mother met and fell in love with what seemed to her to be a glamorous Chinese prince studying in Belgium, got pregnant to force her family’s consent to their marriage, and went to live her life in a totally alien country. Han Suyin recalled hating her, but looking back admiring her as she lived a migrant life around the railway systems that her husband built and maintained, while bearing and looking after ten children.
I remember the vehemence with which Han Suyin told me that within Asian society generally the mixed-race person was/is always looked down upon as the ‘lowest of the low‘. And this has quite evidently impacted upon her life-long struggles to reconcile her European and Chinese identities. Not least because the status of her family has often helped her and them to survive the age of catastrophe. For she too was well-connected and received a good education.
She was training as a nurse in England when the Japanese invasion started in the mid-thirties and she rushed back to “do her bit”. Later on she was able to return to her medical studies, and her “day job” as an adult was as a doctor, starting with her stint in Hong Kong, which produced her most acclaimed novel “A Many Splendoured Thing”.
Quite interestingly in contrast with the “Cold War” portrayal of "Red China", with which we are more familiar, Suyin points out that the Government that took over with the Communist victory in 1949 was a coalition government not a purely Chinese one.
She notes that Mao Tse Tung insisted that China would not be a one party state. So though they only got 1% of the vote he made sure that other political parties were supported financially, realising that many of them included very intelligent, wise and informed people, who contributed to the overall level of debate on Chinese affairs, and all of these things were assets.
But by the time of “the cultural revolution” of the mid-late Sixties a Chinese population included a huge proportion who were under the age of 25 and had been taught to believe in the “Great Leap Forward“. In the universities especially the non-party educated elite, and the children of the same people, some of them now realising that it was wise to be party-members, were obvious targets for young people from poor backgrounds, who were very much aware of their intellectual and cultural inferiority, though in theory this was the peasant-workers’ state.
Han Suyin says that quite naturally those who had been brought up in families, which had had to work every hour of daylight in order to survive over centuries, were at a disadvantage compared to children brought up in families where they had been taught the wealth of Chinese Civilization all their lives through being surrounded by the wisdom and cultural wealth of their extended family and ancestors. This may have seemed unfair or unjust, but it merely reflected a reality in which “elite capability”- the very best of which human beings are capable- does most often demand the most favourable situations. As a medical person Han Suyin would feel that when your life or someone else’s special life is on the line you want a brilliant doctor, whatever their personal details.
But Han Suyin reminded me of a conversation early in my final year when one of the First Year girls of the previous year, who I had got to know before the summer break, asked me rather expectantly whether I was aiming for a First Class degree. I replied that I had never thought that such a thing was possible for me because I had really so much to do getting a general education once I was at university. And indeed had I prioritised my degree I would not have spent so much of the second term that year taking a lead role in a play, having never done any acted at all before. But that was all the more reason for taking the chance that was offered, and never came again.
Stephen Fry writes about having perhaps a higher ideal of Cambridge than most of his peers, and I think that growing up in Oxford I had a much higher ideal of what a university had to offer than many of my fellow Bristolians. And in his case he spent most of his time at Cambridge acting in productions and never attending any lectures. But his background, for all its dark overhang (most of his extended family died at Auschwitz) set him ‘on track’ for intellectual attainments and party tricks
For a child from “the working class” things were rather different. During the Second World War Dr. Julian Huxley wrote a piece on education as an Oxford Don, in which he noted that children from “working class” backgrounds that were already making it to Oxford up the much narrower ladder that had been set up early in the twentieth century usually arrived severely lacking in general education. They were over-specialised, having focussed almost exclusively on achieving qualifying standards in one field that would bring them into the University. And this was, I believe, very much the case for me. But at least I had lived amongst Oxford “dreaming spires” in an age when Oxford academia included the childlike imaginations of J.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, following perhaps in the footsteps of others like Lewis Carroll.
Matthew Arnold in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Poetry at Oxford took the theme of “sweetness and light” as highlighting the special qualities of that venerable old institution. He saw Oxford as an island of old and venerable ideas and ancient truths standing quiet and firm as a wild vortex of mid-nineteenth century change was going on all around it.
But in another of his famous pieces he elaborated the theme of Culture and Anarchy, and also wrote to J.H.Newman, in the latter’s old age, to thank him for his sermons back in Arnold’s time as a student. Then Newman was at the heart of “The Oxford Movement”, which challenged those given such privileged access to learning and education to reject the current tendency towards “National Apostasy”. The privilege of education, that was replacing or at least challenging the privilege of “noblesse”, also had its obligations to the wider commonweal.
But when Arnold spoke of Oxford in the 1850’s as a quiet eye in the centre of a storm of change, much the same could be said for China but on a much larger scale. China had withdrawn within itself centuries before and felt that it had nothing to gain or learn from “foreign devils” that would compensate for the turbulence and disharmony that would enter with foreign intrusion.
That foreign intrusion right into the heart of China was brought about by the Anglo-French expedition that invaded all the way up to Peking and captured the Emperor within the Heavenly City. The action was taken in order to force the Chinese government to enter into what the West called “the modern world”. And like biological insemination upon on egg, this probing unleashed an often violent and turbulent process of change, much of it, as Han Suyin describes, linked to the railway building that brought its private and communal tragedies as Chinese traditional ways were over-ridden and ignored all in the name of Western progress.
And yet as a medical doctor, and the Unesco representative on issues like global food supplies, birth control etc, Han Suyin, now more commonly using the name of her second husband as Doctor Comber, kept faith with the special values and virtues of a Chinese Civilization that has the longest and most enduring continuous history of almost any place on Earth, and probably the most successful.
Moreover, Han Suyin’s writings show a respect and understanding for other Asian histories that remind us that the desperate quest for a way to get to Asia during the Age of Exploration came from a very real appreciation that European countries had everything to gain from getting in touch with the “fabulous orient”.
This was very much the theme of her 1958 novel “The Mountain is Young” which was based upon a visit to Nepal, only just itself opening up to the outside world, especially as a new monarchy was just being established . Han Suyin was one of the foreign guests invited to attend the coronation.
For a hundred years before that the region had been run by a privileged military elite, the Ranas, who had embraced much that was British, Saville Row suits and all the furniture and interior décor of Victorian Britain and contemporary Europe. One of Han Suyin’s characters has a very full library of European books on all manner of subjects and is incredibly well read. He can place European history in the context of Nepalese ideas and traditions that go back to the Gods, in a land in which even the Himalayan mountains appear to be still young and not yet mature enough to have settled down properly for the long-haul. While she also has a great French ‘savant’ who brings out the sweep of European history over the previous millennia in one conversation.
From such perspectives as those that are still alive in Asia and eslewhere, “Western Civilization” has a long way to go, and does not seem to have the equipment that will make its journey possible. Lasting a thousand years now seems to be a wild ambition.
Short-termism, ‘attainable goals, crisis management, and need to know. Why should anyone dedicate themselves to a life-time thought-adventure and apply themselves to all round development as complete human beings?
Surely to many people around the world the obsession with getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq must say something about the "lack of stamina" or staying power in "Western Civilization". It make me think of a overheard conversation between two pupils in my early teaching career. One boy had been warned that he would be reported to the Headmaster. The other boy told him not to worry. The Headmaster was not in school that week. In fact he was as often away building up his own career as he was in school. And when he was in school his persoanl office was well-placed so that he could only see his private garden that was out-of bounds to the boys.
Cass
(Sorry if this is another of what Paul has called my "waterfalls". -
Message 31
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
TP,
I have answered your #27 above - I am rather concerned that my reply has been smothered by Cass's latest missive. I do not want you thinking I have turned into a cynical, sneery atheist. I haven't.
Cass,
Please, please, with the greatest possible respect will you try to make your posts shorter? Lord knows I ramble and regularly go off-topic, but I really would try to mend my ways if *several* very reasonable people made it obvious they were concerned at the length and/or content of my messages. It's not so much a waterfall as an attack of Japanese Knotweed - it's everywhere and it's choking the life out of us.
I feel awful typing this and I am honestly not trying to be unkind to you - I just feel so *desperate*.
Cass! Know your limits!
SST. -
Message 32
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 24th June 2011
Temperance
"Who will fetch limits for me
Horizons that will not flee"
The relevant limits here are those of the Webite community. It was probably no coincidence that my previous post was written yesterday when I could not get my normal access to the 鶹Լ and so was "free" to follow my line of thinking "in exile" as it were. When posting I realised that as often happens I am "inappropriate" to limitations of the specific place and time.. Often I believe the fate of the maverick wanderer.
Perhaps I am better off walling myself off in my own "Citadel". I note that Han Suyin finally settled in Switzerland that special place even more "set-aside" from the currents of history than our own "island fortress".
Regards
Cass -
Message 33
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 24th June 2011
Going back to the OP and the Sixties I note that the article says:
"Degrees cover five subject areas - law, economics, history, English literature and philosophy:
This seems very much like a half century later response to "Crisis in the Humanities", published in book form in 1964. Its contributors dealt with Classics, History, Philosophy, Divinity, Literature, Fine Arts, Sociology, Economics, and Humanities.
So those deemed capable of making a fight back exclude Classics, Divinity, Fine Arts, Sociology and Humanities..
Of these some of us might not regret too much the last two as mainstream specializations favouring as they do a generic approach that tends to flatten humanity into stereotypes.
Much the same used to be true of Economics that was based on a virtual reality populated by "Economic man". Perhaps it has learned as Physics has had to do since the demise of the Newtonian system that reality is largely flux and change with Human beings to some extent only limited by their aspirations, self-belief and "courage to be".
Cass
About this Board
The History message boards are now closed. They remain visible as a matter of record but the opportunity to add new comments or open new threads is no longer available. Thank you all for your valued contributions over many years.
or to take part in a discussion.
The message board is currently closed for posting.
The message board is closed for posting.
This messageboard is .
Find out more about this board's
Search this Board
鶹Լ iD
鶹Լ navigation
鶹Լ links
鶹Լ © 2014 The 鶹Լ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.