A Don’s Life

Educational tourism

There is something deeply frustrating about many of the bright new educational ideas headlined by all political parties. I mean the 'educational tourism' ones. They are easy to recognise. Some minister or shadow minister has been on a visit to Norway, the United States or wherever, and returns home with an 'idea' for schools or universities -- whether is is how to raise the basic skills of 11 year olds, or how to increase diversity among undergraduates -- which they proceed to wave around (often accusing the educational professionals here of blindness to exciting new developments overseas).

They sometimes haven't got wise to such problems of these schemes as could be discovered  by a quick trawl on google (the issues surrounding New York charter schools, for example).They sometimes don't appear to have thought about the key structural differences between one (superficially similar) system and another.

That is especially apparent in admissions to university, where the USA and the UK are really non-comparable -- for the simple reason that American kids normally aren't entering into subject specific degree programmes right away, but specialise later. So they can reasonably be selected by non-specialists (who might indeed be charged with particular targets for ethnicity, social background etc). We, on the other hand, are normally choosing students for specialised courses, to be completed in three years. You surely have to involve specialists, not general adminstrators for that.

"Shagging for chastity"?

I didnt try to go and hear David Willetts speak about the future of universities on Tuesday. A feeble excuse -- you have the Minister of State for Higher Education showing up in Cambridge for a 30 minute talk followed by an hour's discussion, and you say you are too busy, Beard? But I am now very glad that I didnt try to rearrange my life. -- because as many of you will already know --  a group of twenty or thirty students (and some senior members) disrupted his talk as he started to speak, first with a prepared chant, then occupying the stage. Willetts went home without saying a word.

If I HAD showed up I would have been furious (for pretty selfish reasons). Instead I think I feel more embarrassed, on the part of the institution. I think that Willetts' policies for universities are almost wholly misguided; and I think it is really encouraging to see students engaging with the politics of Higher Education (instead But stopping him explain his views and then discuss them, is folly.

For a start it is a terrific own goal. Willetts will go round for months saying that he had tried to talk at Cambridge but he had been forced off the stage (that's what I would say in his position anyway). But more important -- as most people I've talked to in Cambridge think -- to prevent someone (because you dont agree with them) voicing their views is to flout what the university is all about. Protest, yes; tough argument, yes. But the university (and indeed these students above many others) are committed to the principle of free speech... so what were they doing stopping it.  As Simon Goldhill, the organiser of the event, characteristically put it, "you cant shag for chastity". (Quoted here)

Online etiquette

 

One of the things that I really like about this blog, is that the commenters are (by and large!) courteous, on-topic and full of relevant learning (and languages). The comments engage with, and add to, the blog. Most people have read the original post very carefully .. too carefully sometimes, if you ask me (that's why they pick up all the errors of punctuation.... but thanks all). And they (I mean, you) make the blog more the sum of its parts.

I've only recently come to realise quite how different we are from the usual online postings. I've been doing a few BBC talks and the comments on these are nothing of our sort... there are some careful engagements, that's true, and I'm hugely grateful for those, whether pro or anti. But a frightening lot of the comments that appear on the Have Your Say BBC website seem to be driven by different versions of bile. Same is true for the Guardian Comment, Mumsnet .. or really any big commenting site.

There is an awful lot of 'this is rubbish'. 'you are a complete idiot to write this'... or "ho  ho old lady, do you have a beard?'

The Future of Classics at New York Public Library

I've really got down to pulling together the  big lecture I'm giving in New York on the 30th November (thereby -- all being well -- missing out on the strikes on this side of the Atlantic). It's at the New York Public Library, where I am ashamed to say I have never been -- but they have a wonderful website and loads of historic images online (really useful). And it's a lecture in honour of Bob Silvers, the editor of the New York Review of Books... who will be there. So I had better make it good!

Bob's idea (and mine) was for me to talk about 'the future of classics'... so it's called 'Do the Classics have a future?". The big issue is how to get a handle on the question, which amounts to more than an hour-long version of the one word "Yes".

Better a dictator than a technocrat

You can see the problem for Italy and Greece. But to go from the mad excesses of (what turned out to be) foolish democracy, to the de facto imposition of an entirely unelected leader (approved, no doubt, by the Eurocrats) seems a bit of a 'frying-pan-into-the-fire' situation.

Sure, sensible political systems have some fall-back position for how to cope in a crisis, when the usual democratic arrangements are in danger of simply not managing. The Republican Romans had the institution of 'dictatorship', which on balance seems a  better option than these technocrats (a term which is not far short of a euphemism for "banker")

The trouble about 'dictator' is that the institution got nastily tainted in the first century BC by Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Julius Caesar -- both of whom in their different ways, hijacked the office for long term, autocratic one man rule, and radical political reform (ultimately to the benefit of themselves and/or their faction). That's the sense that 'dictatorship' still has.

But before that, it really was a short term emergency office; certainly not sinister.

Mini-Miss Worldwide

By a nice (or very nasty) coincidence, I had just decided that the Miss World competition probably wasn't near the top of my list of enemies, when I found a "beauty contest" that was really truly dreadful: Mini-Miss Worldwide.

Last week (as you catch here) I had watched the 2011 Miss World competition -- and though it wasn't exactly my cup of team it didn't actually needle me into rage. It was all a bit staid, and a bit aggressively worthy; not to mention positively -- and slightly unconvincingly -- oozing with high-flying female ambition (all the contestants were wanting to be lawyers, diplomats and the like).

Besides, as I reflected, it was so much less ghastly than the appallingly voyeuristic Britain's Got Talent -- where the exploitation of children and frail adults is never far from the surface (think about the visible agonies of Susan Boyle, and the tears of eleven year old Hollie Steel that were broadcast to an eager nation). Simon Cowell, who must count as the Michael O'Leary of talent competition impresarios, doesn't give an inch. Talking of the Hollie Steel he merely pointed the finger at her Mum  -- "Kids aren’t dragged on the show – parents bring them. Kids are always going to be disappointed if they don’t win. Most of the kids I’ve seen during auditions had a blast. If I thought they weren’t enjoying themselves I’d do something about it.".

Well, it's true that parents have something to answer for. But who's putting the show on -- and not for charity after all? With this kind of stuff scooping up the viewers, it seemed hard to get very cross about a group of apparently stable adults parading in bikinis.

What I hadn't realised was that there was something much worse going on, a kind of combination of Miss World and the junior end of BGT: Little Man and Mini Miss Worldwide (according to the Sun, there were 51 finalists aged from 1 to 15).

What makes UK Borders safe?

We still don't know for sure exactly who (Theresa May? Brodie Clark?) authorised what discretionary relaxation in which of the immigration procedures at UK Borders, and with what effect, and applying to whom. But the tub thumping of the likes of Yvette Cooper -- with the scarcely veiled implication that every terrorist, or at least illegal work-seeker, in the world could have used the opportunity to walk into the country unchallenged -- is certainly premature, if not ludicrous. (If we didn't know about the changes, then presumably those undesirable foreigners didn't either.)

But the bigger question is how, in practice, do we make the country's borders as safe as we want them to be. That may not in all circumstances be by fulfilling to the letter the computer checks on each person -- as are usually required. Whatever the faulty procedures, it could have been a good judgement call (on the part of May, I find myself surprised to say, or Clark) to be a bit more selective, and to use some sensible discretion.

Let's remember, for a start, that in the Schengen Area of Europe largely doesn't require that people show passports to cross the borders of individual countries. The Schengen Area doesn't only include EU countries, but Iceland and Norway too among others. So relaxing some checks on some people from there, especially young  children travelling with their families, is hardly a remarkable step to take, especially when you have an arrivals hall heaving with cross travellers.

I haven't yet seen any clear explanation of "travellers from the EU" that May readily concedes she had had in mind for relaxation...does it mean the EU in the literal, narrow sense, or does it mean the EU AND the other group of countries from the EEA and Schengen, that now walk through the "Europe" line at our airports? I hope it means the latter -- and that we are not all getting our knickers in a twist about some three year olds from Iceland.

But let's suppose that what we are worried about are the "REAL" foreigners... the Americans, Australians, Egyptians and Somalians, etc etc. who might have been let in with inadequate checks.

Gaddafi, King Idris and a Point of View

I have started a four week stint on Radio 4's A Point of View (this is the programme that I always thought was the one that rescued the poor listeners from the rigours of the Church Service on a Sunday morning -- but discovered that it goes out first after Any Questions on a Friday evening).

It is (so far) fun, but quite a lot of work -- first think of  topical subject, a current beef to get off your chest, then cast it into an elegant 10 minutes worth of talk. Then go to London to record it.

My first choice was to look at tyrants ancient and modern, with an eye to arguing that the stereotypes of tyrannical behaviour prevent us looking more carefully at the different patterns of 'tyranny' .. and prevent us understanding why people might have supported these 'tyrants' in the first place. Maybe, even some of the worst monsters, are good in parts. You can read (and comment on) my text as broadcast here.

Anyway, it WAS a lot of prep; but even so I didn't do quite enough. When I went first to read it through to the mike, it was about 90 seconds too long. I know, I know: what would I have said to a graduate student who went to do a seminar and hadn't read the paper out to check the length it came out at...? Still, I hadn't. I'd relied on it being on roughly the right number of words.

Can't tell a shop by its front

A few weeks ago I spent some time in a modern Pompeian bakery, Esposito's,  learning about modern bread making techniques (the reasons for acquiring this skill will be revealed in due course).

It was, in all kinds of ways, fascinating -- from the different kinds of grain you would use for different sorts of bread, to the techniques of kneading  ... to the interior decor of the bakery (complete with its holy pictures etc ).

We all had a great time. I was a pretty slow pupil, but my teacher -- the excellent Carmine of the bakery -- gave me a heart shaped bread at the end of my lesson. So I felt flattered and rewarded (he must have been half my age.. ). And we had a great pizza and fizzy South Italian red wine at the end, to celebrate my (non-)learning of the bread-making techniques.

But the interesting point (for me) is that, if it hadn't been set up, I wouldn't have gone into this bakery  -- not even to buy a panino. The hoardings made it look quite awful... Big Mac on the Bay of Naples.

How wrong can you get?

The bread at the Esposito bakery was superb (go buy some if you are ever in new Pompeii).