Brideshead rejected

This week’s confession is that last week, to pass the time on the way to Durham, I bought a Tatler to read on the train. Such vice, it turned out, was rewarded in a way, because they had a feature on the Spires of Oxford – that is, on the new generation of undergraduates, “hot . . . clever and . . . on the cusp of greatness”.

Now, I spend a lot of time persuading perfectly normal and clever kids that coming to Oxbridge is not to enter the maw of Brideshead, that we want to encourage the brightest of whatever background, wealth or race to come here, to feel at home and do well. Reading this sort of rubbish, which was of course about a handful of the glossy privileged and their pranks, makes me want to weep – or scream.

For a start, this featured selection of the jeunesse dorée (and for dorée  I mean white -- not a coloured face in sight) were almost all introduced via their Mum and Dad: here was Wilfred, son of a media-knight and his aristocratic wife; then there was the “gorgeous glossy daughter” of a hotel-knight; plus the descendants of Greek shipping magnates and Iron Chancellors. If no obviously glitzy ancestry was in view, then they were hyped as “Oxford’s perkiest blonde” or “the best biceps on the river”.

The pictures backed this up. One of the “perky blondes” leant on a croquet mallet. Others showed a lot of leg on a bicycle or walked hand in hand with a fellow-Oxford cousin, in a plunging neckline. The men, by contrast, were sultrily posed, in various styles (dinner jackets to trench coat) of black and white – except that is for the “best biceps” who was in rowing kit plus (incongruously) a scarf, and a character in a Brideshead dressing-gown, plus teddy-bear (who turned out to be the son of a Beach Boy, and already to have spent 8 years at the University of Bangor -- pictured on the right getting his degree).

The student quotes themselves were as you might imagine. One young lady said that what she particularly liked about Oxford was the “short terms and long holidays” (which, given that – as other sources appeared to reveal -- she has gone on to graduate work, was probably one of those traditional denials of hard work by the hard workers). Another claimed to love her tutor who “wears cord trousers every day’. And indeed I did find a picture of this unfortunate bloke surrounded by three gleaming late adolescent girls.

I know I’m being unfair. These kids had been dressed up to the part by Tatler (“Jemima wears a silk printed dress, £2000, by Gucci’) and almost certainly had been encouraged to spout their silly lines. I am quite sure that underneath all this they are very clever – and the key thing about University access is that you discriminate neither against the clever rich nor against the clever poor. In fact one of my best memories of teaching in Cambridge in watching a burgeoning friendship between a couple of classicists: one a Scottish heiress, the other a London Trotskyite.

I also know that most of the kids who would be put off by this kind of article would never buy the Tatler. So in that sense it probably does little harm. But they might always see it in the proverbial dentists waiting room. . . and then a lot of good work would have been undone, quite wrongly. Needless to say, Oxbridge isn’t actually full of sultry blokes, silk dressing gowns, croquet mallets and the posh off-spring of peers.

Comments

[Liliana Worth]

Dear Mary,

Unfortunately, I feel inclined to disagree with you on your last point. Indeed, I have the unhappy fortune to meet people as described above on daily basis: sporting velvet jackets and luminous cord trousers, many lounge around Oxford networking frantically in order to get the much-coveted positions at investment banking and consultancy firms. Some of them admit to “hating academia” and somehow proudly relish the fact that they do to bare minimum to escape the very possible reality of rustication. However, these characteristics tend to be exhibited, paradoxically, by grammar school pupils rather than anyone else. Their anxious efforts to gain (pseudo-)toff status, are usually prompted by the desire to compensate for not being one of the gang of Old Etonians (the latter being, by the way, nowhere near as pretentious as the former). I have even known one ‘wannabee’ to alter his accents to up his social mobility. Strangely enough then, the negative Brideshead image of Oxford is projected by the very people that are supposedly intimidated by it when applying to the University.

I can only come to the conclusion then that the tensions in Oxford due to the Brideshead Syndrome not so much fuelled by the Old Public School boys we usually like to point the finger at, but those who are desperate to join the club. Casually ignoring the wonderful opportunities of scholarship at our fingertips, most are there to tick the right box on the CV in order to start earning 40K at the age of 21 so they can later send their kids to Eton. Plus ça change…

[Hannah]

Neo, your comments about Cypriate entries to Oxbridge are, I'm afriad, inaccurate.
Although there is much talk by media and government about quotas (both for international students and balance between state and privately educated UK students) the simple truth is that the dons who make the decisions on admissions are NOT governed by such strict rules.
They admit on the basis of specific skill, potential, and general aptitude.

I am sorry to hear that you did not get in, but I severely doubt it is to do with your background - it's just one of those things

Although I was educated at Oxford, my younger sister did not get a place, despite having IDENTICAL (and I do mean identical - same grades, same subjects) GCSE and A Level grades to me, the only difference being she applied for Law and I for English. (For reference, we are both Welsh comprehensive school/ tertiary college eductaed, so would tick certain access "boxes")
I'm sure Oxbridge tutors would love to accept every bright and able student whom they come across, but there are only a limited number of places available, and someone has to lose out.

[Neo]

Dear Prof. Beard,

Oxbridge professors still claim that background, class and fee-status do not matter when it comes to admission, however, as a Cypriote I have witnesses a steep declline in admittances, after Cyprus joined the EU and therefore our fee status became EU instead of overseas. Even other institutions, traditionally less competitive have become taugher for EU students.
People, including myself, who have applied to read classics at Cambridge were turned down despite having A leves in Greek, Latin and Classical Civilization, all passed with A, in favor of overseas students who had only one A level.

[Tony Francis]

There is an interesting commentary by Jamie Whyte in the London Times todays:
http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2267664.ece
His correlation of grade inflation to the credit mess is unconvincing: a case of two unrelated situations being correlated by an academic. Anyway, the issue of grade inflation is of interest. According to reports, half the students at Harvard get either an A or an A- on average. This seems to be the trend in Ivy League and prestigious schools.
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/perspectives/sub.asp?key=245&subkey=576
Another study shows that average grade point has remained the same throughout the 1970's to the present. Therefore, grade inflation may be a myth:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/gi.htm
When I was in college, I was a cram studier. In medical school, there was a long list of "required" reading. Like a fool, I took them at their word and read everything. Actually, I found out the tests were from the "teacher approved" class notes. So reading through a few hundred pages of these notes would net a much higher grade than reading thousands of pages from the required list. It was pass/fail anyway. Concerning XJY's comments:
It would appear that in the US, Harvard and Yale are our "Oxbridge". On the west coast, maybe it is Stanford and USC. Regionally, here, it is the University of Kansas. But the US is so big, we rarely see anyone from Harvard or Yale, or Stanford. It doesn't matter what degree one may have. If you can't make a buck for the company that hires you, you will be fired. So the US is still a sort of meritocracy. There has been a trend to "democratize" the univeristy system, so that everyone can go. A lot of people end up at a college or university who would be better going to a trade school. Some "universities" offer more technical training and shop classes than anything. In the US, a good plumber, mechanic or techinician can earn more than someone with a history or English degree.

[Xjy]

Well, if the elite thinks it needs education of a certain kind, it will see to it that it gets it, preferably at public expense as far as possible. The only cash of its own it will use will be to keep the wrong sort out, and it will gouge this back from the wrong sort in one way or another anyway. (Same as with government in other words.)

The few wronguns who worm their way in will probably be corrupted sooner or later ("even rough diamonds get smoother edges here" I think the phrase goes).

The golden youth rarely give a toss about whether they antagonize anyone with their antics, they are too busy displaying and mating and swarming. The caravan passes, the dogs bark in the night... or shit on the pavement.

The gold and silk ends up where intended, and the dog shit is swept into the gutter.

The literature of wronguns and apostates has about the same impact on trade routes as dog shit on the pavement. In the short term...

Long term - heh, not at Oxbridge in other words - the Orwells and Waughs and Zadies and Mary Bs do make a difference. The world sees the elite and its primitive "cultural" needs more clearly through their eyes.

The more out of tune the pig rich become with the world - the people around them they suck dry for their own pleasure - the more unbearable become the lies their henchhacks spew out about them. Their great failing is that they never bother to speak for themselves - they've always got slaves to do the boring crap for them. When the slaves stop defending them and feeding them, they shrivel and flutter off into oblivion.

There are so few of them, of course, that it will take a lot more striking house-elves for them to notice anything. Except perhaps that the walls around their pretty gardens are getting higher and more lethal, and that it's getting as hard to get out as to get in.

[Kathleen Bell]

DC, I'm ever so sorry not to reply to your point earlier and to have been so discourteous - you are quite right that I should have added a translation. The words mean "truth is strong" - individually they are: fortis = strong (as in the English "fortify" and related to the English "fort"), "est" = is (which is the same in Frenc) and "veritas" = strong (as in the English word and name "verity"). I grew up on a council estate but gained a scholarship to Christ's Hospital (not entirely a good thing but I did get the chance to learn Greek - which wasn't officially offered - and Latin). However, much of my wider knowledge was gained through independent reading in a range of libraries.

I now teach at a new university (the reason for my delay in responding to your post is work dealing with a student's difficulties there, which meant I have only just returned to read comments). Even at a new university there can be disturbing class conflicts which I didn't observe five years ago - so that may be part of an upsetting social change which is far wider than Oxbridge. I hope your daughter copes with the assumptions of knowledge. The other students may not know as much as she fears - I discovered that some students are good at appearing self-confident and knowledgeable when they really know very little.

Incidentally, I spent my first couple of terms trying to look as though I fitted in - but life got much better when I met people whose interests were similar to my own.

By the way, I don't think an Oxford degree has done much to increase my earning power - the people who did really well in terms of salary could count on family contacts and the old boy network. It may have been different in men's colleges.

Note to Mary Beard: This is ever such a late response to DC's post - I wonder if you could forward it if you have access to DC's e-mail. Many thanks - and thanks for starting an interesting correspondence.

[Tony Francis]

I think what some of you are describing is not an Oxford or Cambridge experience, but rather a more generalized first or second year college experience. It has been documented that many students undergo a depressive disorder while in college;
http://uhs.berkeley.edu/home/healthtopics/pdf/depresstudents.pdf

http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/clearinghouse/AdvisingIssues/First-Year.htm

http://www.hispanicoutlook.com/data/frontpagefile/2007/Jul-13/article1.pdf
The general population has about a 10% incidence of depression. This has been measured to be 15% in college students. It is probably higher than that. Looking back, I underwent a couple of depressive episodes during schooling. The first was when I went to college. I was 16, while most of my college classmates were Vietnam Veterans. I had a minor anxiety disorder, but had no I idea what was happening to me. It was untreated because I didn't tell anyone about it. I went to medical school when I was 19. I had been advised that a chemistry degree would prepare me for medical school. To be honest, a chemistry degree is worthless in medical school. Most of my classmates were 25 or older. They had all the classes before. It was a real struggle for me to maintain class average, which was a first for me. I underwent a depressive disorder. Once again, it was undiagnosed, because I didn't tell anyone about it. I only recognized what was happening to me in later years. I think many students experience this: crying, feeling unprepared, wanting to drop out, extreme anxiety, sleep disturbance, loss of interest, etc. Most will struggle through it. Some will drop out, only to return to college later on. Some will never come back. A few will commit suicide. I'm not even sure it needs to be treated in most cases. But it should be recognized. When I went to law school, I had none of these problems. Of course, I was over 30, and knew how to study and look things up by then. And I didn't let things like obnoxious teachers and students bother me, either.

[FM]

(P.S. "fortis est veritas" translates as "truth is strong" - apologies if this ends up as a doubl-post with someone having got there first).

[FM]

*DC*, your daughter's 1st yr experience is a great shame - and I venture to suggest not typical. I honestly don't know what kinds of schools my uni peers attended, and it has never seemed important - those to whom it is are in a distinct minority.

As for knowledge of classical history & texts in English lectures, we're all in the same (embarrassingly ignorant) boat! Hardly anyone knows what the lecturers & supervisors are talking about, and the puzzling over references to Homer, Virgil, et al. occupies those from all educational backgrounds. It seems a reflection of education generally, rather than the state sector particularly.

Your daughter is very probably vastly underestimating her own abilities, and overestimating those of her friends - it's easily done and feels horrible. Very best of luck for her 2nd year.

FM

[Mumoftwo]

My experience of Cambridge as an undergraduate was that many people seemed to be trying to live up to some 'Cambridge' stereotype, I was stunned to receive invitations to afternoon tea parties, see people wearing blazers and punting, and witness drinking clubs and societies which were, all, frankly, a bit dated then (late-eighties/early-ninties). I found the grammar school pupils the worst for this, they seemed to be trying harder to appear public school than anyone else. If it makes you feel any better D.C., after a difficult first year feeling out of my depth both socially and academically (I also went to a not even bog-standard comprehensive and was lacking Greek which was required in my first year), I found my feet, found some great friends and generally found my own niche. I ignored all the (very young seeming) public school boys and dated nice guys from the graduate colleges and elsewhere. It is a beautiful place, just visually if nothing else, and my first has done me no harm whatsoever in securing job interviews. Tell your daughter to take the best bits and leave the rest.

[D C]

Hmmm...what a lot of comments from people who went to Oxbridge 20/30/40 years ago. I particularly enjoyed the one from the "working class" applicant who "felt at home" as soon as he read the words "fortis est veritas" on the lamp posts! Perhaps someone would like to translate for me?

My daughter has just finished her first year at Oxford having come from an average outer London comprehensive. What a culture shock. I lost count of the number of times she's been in tears on the phone to me last year, trying to come to terms with seemingly being one of the only comprehensive students at the university. The % of "state school" students is largely made up of students from grammar schools, or schools that might as well be grammars. She did meet one or two students from comps who told her that they never mentioned that they were from these schools - they usually pretended to be from private or grammar school to fit in with their peers. My daughter had done no latin, classics or classical history. She had the bog standard comp education focussing almost exclusively on modern history, and had to cope with lecturers assuming a knowledge of these sorts of things (for English).

We are an ordinary family - with two incomes, we earn too much for her to get a bursary, but nowhere near enough to subsidise her to the extent of her friends. She can't work in the holidays or in term time because of the huge volume of work and catching up reading she has to do - consequently she is already substantially in debt.

In her view, Oxford is seen as a "finishing experience" by students from expensive public schools. Lots of them apply and if they don't get in the first time, they apply again and again (so,it's 4th time lucky for one public school girl coming to my daughter's college next year.)They can afford to wait, indulging in expensive gap years and travelling -children from ordinary families can't.

Oxford and Cambridge make a substantial effort to attract ordinary students, but the system is weighted against them. I believe that what is needed is a "pre-Oxbridge" year offered to Y13 students from comprehensives who get in. They could spend the year studying all of those things which it's assumed they've been taught at school and getting to grips with the system.

[T Nagrom]

Having come from a working class family background but a middle of the road public school due to having won a scholarship, I arrived at Oxford in the later eighties to find that I found myself being pigeon-holed in the 'posh' minority by my comprehensive educated friends.

I never saw anything resembling Brideshead, and am quite confident that everybody that I ever met there got a place on the merit of their academic capability and potential(aside from the odd rugby player or oarsmen...and most of these were internationals, so at least they were top notch at something!).

Tatler does Oxford a diservice, but who honestly takes any of their articles seriously anyway.

As for short-terms.......anybody that's been to Oxford knows that they're nominally eight weeks, but in practice tutors recognise Oth week, 9th week and 10th week routinely, and I've even heard of the odd instance of minus 1th week, 11th week and 12th week tutorials.

Of course government grants only recognised 8 weeks, so we were always far too broke trying to spread that across 14 weeks to sit around sipping champagne with the Brideshead mob.........wherever they were!

[Mary]

OK Paracelsus: a point well made and taken!

[Paracelsus]

Now,now, the examiners of Lit. Hum. saw fit to quote Brideshead in this year's Pindar paper (to this candidate's delight). While some earnest types use "Brideshead" as shorthand for everything the left hates about Oxford, those who take the trouble to read it will find something a little deeper than the obligatory (and essentially cosmetic) escapades : the prologue passage about Hooper , who "had not as a child ridden with Rupert's horse or sat among the campfires at Xanthus-side" is so true of a modern education in "humane legislation" and "recent industrial change" as to make the angels weep.

[Lauralei]

Kathleen, about student debt -- I was advised when my kids went to university 10 years ago that Oxbridge was actually cheapest, and our family's experience bore that out (not to mention the incredible boost to earning power of the subsequent degree).

I imagine this still holds as I guess it is the effect of the combination of short terms and institutions which actually have some money swilling around and don't charge for every little thing.

[Tony Francis]

There are several hundred images of illuminated manuscripts from the Bodleian Library dating to the 12-17th centuries available:
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/medieval/browse.htm
These appear to have been transferred from pre-existing film strips. Of interest is the 11th century manuscript MS. Bodl. 130, Frame 15, which is a drawing of Foxglove. It was also called Apollinaris, stating "Apollo hanc herba..." It grows in soil free of sand. Foxglove was used to treat "dropsy", meaning swelling. Actually, it contains digitalis, so it was useful in cases of congestive heart failure. But there was no mention of this in the Latin text. There is a medical text showing various cautery points, which roughly align with acupuncture axes. Also several surgical procedures. If a man is bitten by a rabid dog, place a chicken (hen) over the wound. If the hen has a good appetite afterward, it bodes well for the patient. (Oh well...) There is a 14th century 'Dante's Inferno". Also Thomas a' Kempis. The MS Lat. Bibl. e.7 from the 14th century shows Ecclesiasticus (frame 36) and I Maccabees (frame 53). The latter shows two great sets of armor from the era. These two books were thrown out of the Protestant Bible. The first, Ecclesiasticus is now called Sirach (although Aquinas and other writers called it Ecclesiasticus). Maccabees forms a basis for the teaching of purgatory. A really interesting copy of John Wyclif's bible and sermons is available. Written in "northern English", it is like reading a foreign language, but fascinating all the same.

[anthony alcock]

I went to the South Midlands Finishing School for Toffs in the mid-60s, thanks to the social consciousness generated by the Robbins Report. I was quite glad of all the toffs there, because I was in a pop group and we played at their functions, where the pay was good, the alcohol plentiful and the women nice to look at but not talk to. My previous experience of playing in Liverpool clubs gave me a certain cachet. It would be a pity if Oxford and Cambridge came to be beyond the means of low-income British families. Without the support of the State I and several of my friends would never have gone to Oxford, but I think we were still relatively a minority. I wonder how different the situation really is today. As for the Brideshead Revisited (the worst of Evelyn Waugh's books) element, I think that Borat's examination of Oxbridge should serve as a hermeneutical beacon in the understanding of the Oxbridge Factor.

[dr venables preller]

Quite possibly a little posing goes with the territory here, not only for gentle entertainment. but to help counter the stress which more work imposes. With mental well-being also threatened by temptation to emulate others in experimentation, the tatler stuff seems positively harmless.

Earlier generations took delight in practising their fiction skills if an opportunity to crystalise the moment in a glossy mag arose.Good jokes can be enjoyed on several levels.

[Malcolm McLean]

The cardinal rule in admissions is to accept the interesting people and reject the boring ones. There is nothing more deadly than the man who has, falsely, convinced himself that he has an interest in an academic subject when in fact all he wants is a middle-class career.
Even Oxford can easily take every applicant who wants to advance learning and not have enough students for a viable college. The rest of the places are better filled by aristocrats with teddy bears than by budding accountants.

[Tony Francis]

It would appear that Oxford has a distinguished tradition of producing "generations on the cusp of greatness." Actually, polemics and polemicists. The place never really liked Aquinas, or Dominicans in general. The Dominican website claims there were up to 99 of their number in Oxford in the 1200s. But their assertions are not persuasive. As they admit, by the time of Henry VIII, they were gone from Oxford.
http://www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk/about_dominicans.php
It was the Franciscans who were the top dogs there. John Dun Scotus was one Franciscan who didn't agree with much Aquinas said. Then there was John Wycliffe. He didn't like much about Duns Scotus. Early on, he preferred Aquinas. But in the end, he came not to like much about the Catholic Church and its hierarchy. He gave a road map that Henry VIII would follow. Anyway, they claim Wycliffe never said anything in public the aristocracy wasn't saying behind closed doors. The most colorful Oxford Franciscan was Roger Bacon. He played with gunpowder, dabbled in alchemy and insisted on empiricism over Scholasticism. But it was his mouth that made him famous: he called Richard of Cornwall "an absolute fool"; Alexander of Hales "ignorant of natural philosophy and metaphysics"; William of Moerbecke "an ignorant man undermining philosophy by false translations"; and best of all: Albert Magnus and Aquinas "teachers yet unschooled, full of puerile vanity and voluminous superfluity." The Domincans were the greatest corruptors of the bibilical texts. It was enough to get Father Roger on the list of heresies issued by the Bishop Etienne Tempier and a jail sentence. Anyway, the Black Friars are back at Oxford, and teaching Aquinas there:
http://www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk/hall_aquinas_institute.php
Social justice and evolution, too:
http://www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk/events.php
It has to mean the end of the world isn't far off.

[Kathleen Bell]

I remember that, as an Oxford student, back in the 1970s, I and my friends were moved to hilarity by a fellow student's appearance in the Tatler. He'd tried to keep it very quiet. We couldn't believe anyone took the Tatler seriously, especially since some of the Oxford students featured weren't all that bright. In the 1970s it seemed evident that class privilege was on the way out and I found no problem with being a working-class undergraduate. I hadn't heard of many universities and chose St Hilda's because I liked the picture of the river on the prospectus. (A friend chose St Hugh's because it sounded Scottish.) I had no clear idea what Oxford looked like and will never forget my delighted amazement when I walked down the High as I arrived for interview. Despite that, felt at home as soon as I read the words "fortis est veritas" on the lamp-posts.

I don't know what Oxford's like today but the country as a whole seems much more snobbish. If I were a student now, I doubt I'd have the confidence to apply for Oxford, even if I could face the level of student debt. My children and their friends at the local comprehensive know it's a theoretical possibility for the exceptional few but don't think it's for them. Only in fee-paying schools is Oxbridge entrance routinely seen as a possibility. It seems a shame.

[Oprah]

If Tatler or Vogue had any imagination at all then what they would be doing is a feature about those of us who teach at Oxbridge and who are actively breaking this kind of stereotyping on a daily basis - especially us women. Hell, I might even be persuaded to ditch the cord, if Mario Testino would do the pictures!

[Candadai Tirumalai]

Evelyn Waugh was at Hertford College, Oxford in the Twenties but even he seems to have done enough, over cups of black coffee, before his first-year examinations in History to secure a Beta minus. Having ascertained that his father was not intent on his getting a degree, he left Oxford, only to immortalize aspects of it in "Brideshead."
In more recent decades, a daughter of the Guinness family died from choking on her own reflux after a night of wild celebration, but this was after her final examinations, which she passed.
From what I saw in the Bodleian Library, many Oxford students consecrated the hours and even days before the tutorial to sustained work, however they spent the hours after that. The tutorial holds possible self-indulgence in check.

[xyz]

Mary Beard the recruit of highly intelligent terrorists and Hannibal Lecter types! Wow...self-gratifying shot