A Don’s Life

Gobbets

Have you ever done a gobbet?

If the answer is "yes", the chances are that you once studied Classics or History. For a "gobbet" (a word that also means a little piece of raw flesh) is a small snatch of historical "source" set for students to comment on -- and to explain the historical significance.

It's a venerable, traditional pedagogic exercise. And when I was an undergraduate, our history exam papers always started with a compulsory "gobbet" question: that was, about 10 short passages in Greek and Latin, with the instruction to comment on three. We dreaded this exercise. There were two ghastly prospects. Either you would be able to translate the thing, but wouldn't have a clue about the historical significance. Or you would think you could spot the historical significance, from memory at least (isn't this Plutarch commenting on the motivations of Tiberius Gracchus?), but you didn't remember it well enough actually to know what it was saying.

Soon after I went back to Cambridge as a lecturer in 1984, under the influence of the then Professor of Ancient History, Keith Hopkins, we abolished the gobbet question.

How to lose an election -- the Roman (or Nicholas Winterton) way

Some time in the second century BC, a member of the aristocratic Scipio family lost an election. Standing for the office of aedile, he had been eagerly canvassing the people -- and happened to shake the hands of a peasant. Now the peasant's hands were horny, from all his tough agricultural labour and Scipio -- being an effete toff -- was not used to the feel. "Wot," he said (as a joke?), "do you walk on these?"

Now Rome might not have been a radical democracy, but the Roman people didn't put up with toffs insulting the honest labouring poor and they took their revenge. Scipio lost the election. That, at least is the story handed down by the early imperial writer Valerius Maximus in a section of his Memorable Deeds and Sayings devoted to people who lost elections (The Latin text is here: Book 7, 5, 2; and the picture above is a denarius of 63 BC showing Roman voting in action). 

It's not the kind of revenge that the British electorate will get to take on Nicholas Winterton for his aspersions on those of us who usually travel in Standard Class on the trains. He is standing down from parliament anyway. 

(Actually, in fairness to Winterton, at many hours of the day it is totally impossible to work in Standard Class between Cambridge and London -- you would be lucky to get a seat, opening a lap-top would be impossible. Your blogger has occasionally been known to shell out for First Class, when she has been desperate to get something done.)

All in all, it's hard not to feel a bit envious of Roman face to face politics -- when compared with what we shall get in May or whenever.

How many references do you write in a week?

This is a little moan about writing references. But let me make one thing clear right at the beginning: evaluating students, ex-students and colleagues is an important part of my job; I'm not complaining about being asked to do it (so no need to feel remotely guilty about asking me) -- I'm complaining about the cumbersome, inefficient and sometimes downright obstructive infrastructure.

Lets get the scale of the problem. Although the number goes down at other times of the year, between October and the end of February (the peak post-graduate, milk-round and research fellowship recruiting season), I write on average something like 10-12 references a week; in January this year it was more like 15-16. The time it takes to write and process each one varies...from say an hour and a half if you are writing something from scratch (and it would be longer for a complicated and unusual job) to fifteen minutes for something simple for a student whose reference you already have on you computer (whoops, is that or is it not against the data protection act?)

Overall then, it is an average of about 30 minutes a reference, or 8 hours a week at peak times.

Now in the old days when I did fewer (this is a task that naturally gets bigger as you get older and have more ex-students wanting jobs, chairs, research leave, promotion), the system was a lot more homogeneous. Before email, you would get a written request from the student, asking if you would mind them using your name -- and you would then get a letter from the employer or the college or department asking you to send it. You would pile these up on your desk and work through them one by one. For even the most untidy or scatty reference writer, it was hard to forget them or mislay one.

Normally when you had sent the reference off, you got a thank you letter from the potential employer. I remember that when Henry Chadwick was Master of Peterhouse he used to send beautifully hand written thank you cards (which made you feel good, and made you take care the next time).

It isn't like that now. In fact it's a nightmare.

Are you at risk of plagiarism?

On Friday evening I gave a Darwin lecture in Cambridge in a series on the theme of "Risk". These lectures -- which happen every Friday in Lent Term -- have been going for 25 years now and have become something of a Cambridge institution, with a new theme each year (Serendipity, Survival, Identity, Evidence . . . .), and a vast audience. I was in the Lady Mitchell Hall, which takes 500, and then there was a video link to an overflow hall.

My theme was "Risk and the Humanities", and most of the lecture was actually about how the ancients approached and faced danger -- and how and why the ancients didn't have a "risk agenda" anything like our own. But in the last five minutes I allowed myself a bit of a rant about how that risk agenda in the modern sense had distorted research and teaching in the humanities now. 

Grant awarding bodies like the AHRC are so risk averse, that when you apply for money they make you specify exactly what your outcomes are going to be, and exactly what your timetable of research is going to be. Not only is this a complete misrepresentation of how humanities research is carried out (you don't know how long it is going to take you to read a book.. it all depends how interesting you let it be), but it also encourages us all to dishonesty. For the only way sensibly to be able to conform to the AHRC guidelines is to apply for money for research you've already done....that's the dream ticket for risk aversion. There's no problem with the outcomes and you use the research time they pay for to get on with the next project....then in due course you apply for more money to fund that (even though you've already done it).

After the lecture people told me that was regular practice in lab based sciences.

But the other poisonous thing about the risk agenda in universities is that it has started to cast risk in the Chernobyl mode -- I mean as a nasty thing that you can be a victim of, rather than something over which you have responsibility and control yourself.

Take plagiarism: it's ceasing to be the crime of "cheating" and is becoming an appalling academic disaster that can happen to you unawares, without you even knowing you have done it..

If you don't believe me , check out the University of East Anglia, Anti-Plagiarism quiz: Are you at risk of plagiarism?

Roman Colchester, Canterbury and Malta: the good and bad news

This is a bit of a "catch up" post about Roman things that have been going on (or being squashed) in the UK and overseas.

First Colchester (or "Camolodunum" to you and me). This is where one of the very few chariot racing tracks have been found outside Italy (in the picture above) -- and the real race is now on to prevent it being covered by a housing estate. The local council has come up with a bit of cash, but the campaigners still need to raise £170,000.One of the fund-raising events takes place this Friday at 2.00 -- when my friend Caroline Lawrence (we were at Newnham together, but she has gone on to great things with her Roman Mysteries) is talking at the local Arts Centre. (Her talk will be referring to her book The Charioteer of Delphi...get it!!)

Not such good news from Roman Canterbury, however, where the Roman Museum is set to be closed.

From Ed Balls to Diane Abbott -- and Iris Murdoch: 'School Gate' to Newnham

 

Those of you who have engaged with our recent schools discussion may like to take a look at the "School Gate" blog debate on whether or not independent schools should be banned. The same blog is also hosting a live online Q and A with Ed Balls on Tuesday -- so why not tune in and hammer him on modern languages, Latin & Greek and Palaeography....(Lord Truth, Bulley, Foska, Alcock... and all you other excellent ladies and gents, I mean YOU).

You might also take a look at School Gate's links to some other great education blogs, including the excellent To Miss with Love. One of the latest posts on this blog is about a state school student who just fails to get into Oxford. The Laura Spence problem -- though without the (ignorant) intervention of Gordon Brown and without a head teacher keen to rush to the press.

The "Miss" of the blog is very 'feet on the ground" about this. But it reminded me how tricky it always is from the Oxbridge point of view. We do our best to admit the best kinds (by which I mean those with the greatest academic potential), but with so many well qualified candidates after each place there are bound to be difficult, disputed cases -- and even occasions where it might seem in retrospect that we made a 'mistake'. (Thank god, you might say -- if Oxbridge really did manage to cream off the best with total efficiency, that would actually be bad news for the university system as a whole.)

The trouble for us is that the rules of confidentiality means that we cannot fight back if the head does go public and say what prejudiced idiots we are. We cant, for example, say that what we discovered at the interview might have had a big impact on our decision to reject the kid... they really do sometimes get honest and say that they actually have very little interest in reading the subject they have applied for, but have just been pushed by Dad or the school (... and then the school complains..).

I thought "Miss" did very well on this one.

But meanwhile, the "is late-night Newnham a heaving mass of passion" teacup storm continues?

Are public schools a blight on British society? (and sex at Newnham)

Last night I did a gig in an 'Intelligence Squared' debate -- on the question of whether public schools are a blight on British society. A wonderfully British subject, as you can see from the fact that more than 1300 people turned up to listen in Central Hall Westminster.

My own view is very clearly that public schools promote social division, snobbery and (if you like) flogging and fagging. In some ways, they are an emblem of all that is worst about British society. And yet, unless we are going to hand the whole of the education system to Ed Balls -- then maybe we need them. Indeed, if we don't have them, where are any kids going to be learning German in a few years time, let alone Latin.

To put it another way, if you were inventing British education all over again, you wouldn't invent this two tier system - but the solution isn't quite so simple as just decrying and abolishing public schools.

So I was a slightly off-message speaker against the motion -- against, that is, the idea that 'the public schools are a blight on British society'. If you think that society needs Latin or German, then you need public schools for a few more years at least . Just remember that in 60% of state schools, fewer than half the pupils ate still studying a modern language at age fourteen. (There's good material here.)