by the ‘system’ before they came to us. (Better not to ask if we, aged just
18, could have marked Alexandria on a map ... but that’s another story.)
For centuries, dons have combined a loving over-commitment to their students with a rhetoric that deplores the ignorance of
those they are teaching. The ‘Can-you-believe that-they-have-never-heard-of-Pericles?’ line is one of the most primitive and
powerful of all donnish bonding rituals.
This struck me very strongly this week when I rushed from that first year lecture to steal an hour of work in the University
Library. I was there to look up some of the pamphlets of the 1860s written at the height of Victorian debates about what should
or should not be taught in schools and universities. If anyone now thinks that education is over-politicised, they should
try the nineteenth century. Those Victorian gurus debated even more furiously than our own the rights and wrongs of the curriculum.
And they were just as ready to blame the ‘government’.
I found myself reading a tract by Robert Lowe (Chancellor of the Exchequer immediately before Gladstone), denouncing the tyranny
of Latin and Greek over the school syllabus. He lingered, like me, to think of what the crème de la crème did not know – because, in his view, they had been kept to a narrow classical path.
‘I will now give you a catalogue of things which a highly educated man may be in total ignorance of,’ he wrote. ‘He probably
will know nothing of the anatomy of his own body. He will have not the slightest idea of the difference between the arteries
and the veins, and he may not know whether the spleen is placed on the right or the left side of his spine. He may have no
knowledge of the simplest truths of physics and would not be able to explain the barometer or thermometer.’
Sounds familiar? My first thought was to get a new questionnaire up for next week to see how my students did on these central
issues of basic science. Until I realised that I would be hard pressed myself to say on which side of my spine my spleen lay.
In fact it was probably the likes of me (though you would have to change the gender) that Lowe had in mind.
As these Victorians saw, there is an issue here not just about what facts people should know, but about what education is
for, and who is responsible for it. Our generation tends to think that we are the first to have wondered about this. Far from
it.
A captive audience
23 October 2006
Classics offers more interesting speaking opportunities than you might imagine. In addition to the talks at schools, colleges,
breakfast clubs, museums and the like, I occasionally get a more surprising gig. Some recent favourites have been pre-performance
talks at the Coliseum (engaging the audience with the myth of, say, Semele before they see what Handel did with it) and a
guest appearance at the wonderful ‘Treasury Women’s Group’ (though that was more in the guise of female academic than strictly
classicist).
But most memorable of all have been the couple of occasions I have gone to lecture to the inmates at a high-security prison.
It’s an extraordinarily electric kind of teaching. Partly because it’s one of the few (relatively) free opportunities that
they have for face to face interchange with the outside world, they give it far more attention than your average audience
– half of whom are worrying if they’ll make the bus/ have time to get to the supermarket/meet their girlfriend when you’ve
finished speaking. No chance of that for these guys.
A captive audience, as colleagues couldn’t resist – a bit predictably – joking.
On one of these occasions I talked to them about Roman gladiators and the blood and guts of the Roman arena. It wasn’t long
before some bright spark observed that the horrors I was describing would have been their own fate, as convicted criminals,
had they lived in the ancient world. True. But
18, could have marked Alexandria on a map ... but that’s another story.)
For centuries, dons have combined a loving over-commitment to their students with a rhetoric that deplores the ignorance of
those they are teaching. The ‘Can-you-believe that-they-have-never-heard-of-Pericles?’ line is one of the most primitive and
powerful of all donnish bonding rituals.
This struck me very strongly this week when I rushed from that first year lecture to steal an hour of work in the University
Library. I was there to look up some of the pamphlets of the 1860s written at the height of Victorian debates about what should
or should not be taught in schools and universities. If anyone now thinks that education is over-politicised, they should
try the nineteenth century. Those Victorian gurus debated even more furiously than our own the rights and wrongs of the curriculum.
And they were just as ready to blame the ‘government’.
I found myself reading a tract by Robert Lowe (Chancellor of the Exchequer immediately before Gladstone), denouncing the tyranny
of Latin and Greek over the school syllabus. He lingered, like me, to think of what the crème de la crème did not know – because, in his view, they had been kept to a narrow classical path.
‘I will now give you a catalogue of things which a highly educated man may be in total ignorance of,’ he wrote. ‘He probably
will know nothing of the anatomy of his own body. He will have not the slightest idea of the difference between the arteries
and the veins, and he may not know whether the spleen is placed on the right or the left side of his spine. He may have no
knowledge of the simplest truths of physics and would not be able to explain the barometer or thermometer.’
Sounds familiar? My first thought was to get a new questionnaire up for next week to see how my students did on these central
issues of basic science. Until I realised that I would be hard pressed myself to say on which side of my spine my spleen lay.
In fact it was probably the likes of me (though you would have to change the gender) that Lowe had in mind.
As these Victorians saw, there is an issue here not just about what facts people should know, but about what education is
for, and who is responsible for it. Our generation tends to think that we are the first to have wondered about this. Far from
it.
A captive audience
23 October 2006
Classics offers more interesting speaking opportunities than you might imagine. In addition to the talks at schools, colleges,
breakfast clubs, museums and the like, I occasionally get a more surprising gig. Some recent favourites have been pre-performance
talks at the Coliseum (engaging the audience with the myth of, say, Semele before they see what Handel did with it) and a
guest appearance at the wonderful ‘Treasury Women’s Group’ (though that was more in the guise of female academic than strictly
classicist).
But most memorable of all have been the couple of occasions I have gone to lecture to the inmates at a high-security prison.
It’s an extraordinarily electric kind of teaching. Partly because it’s one of the few (relatively) free opportunities that
they have for face to face interchange with the outside world, they give it far more attention than your average audience
– half of whom are worrying if they’ll make the bus/ have time to get to the supermarket/meet their girlfriend when you’ve
finished speaking. No chance of that for these guys.
A captive audience, as colleagues couldn’t resist – a bit predictably – joking.
On one of these occasions I talked to them about Roman gladiators and the blood and guts of the Roman arena. It wasn’t long
before some bright spark observed that the horrors I was describing would have been their own fate, as convicted criminals,
had they lived in the ancient world. True. But
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