All in a Don's Day (13 page)

The point is that I am now so busy with supervising, being a secondary supervisor interviewing applicants for graduate funding, doing first-, second- and third-year reviews that I am simply not available any more to meet a graduate student for coffee after half a morning in the library. So I go through the tick-box routines, but don't any longer have the time to chill out with a student, doing what I am best at (and what my own teachers were best at) – which is just talking about the ancient world.

And it isn't only a question of graduate students. Similar changes have happened in my relations with my colleagues and my undergraduates. When I started my lectureship at Cambridge (in 1984), we used often to go to each other's
lectures. It wasn't to rate them, but to learn – yet of course, if you were just starting out, it was really useful to talk to your older colleagues about what you (or they) had said. That useful practice has stopped, because we are all too busy going to the lectures of those we are officially ‘mentoring' (tiptoeing around all the awkward issues, not wanting to come to a lecture if the lecturer might not be entirely happy, and then having an embarrassing and almost worthless feedback session). And we hardly ever have time to read each other's work, which was always one of the best things, the intellectual advantages, of being in Cambridge.

As for the undergraduates, I remember that when I was a student, supervisions went on as long as there was something interesting to say. That was the case too when I started teaching at Cambridge. Now I only rarely have a supervision that lasts more than an hour and a quarter. Why? Because my time is taken up promoting ‘good practice' and transparency. So now our students have access to all kinds of (true but unhelpful) documents on what kind of transferable skills they may gain from a Classics degree, or what distinguishes a first-class degree from a 2.1. But they have less of my time, because I am writing this stuff, as well as being a supervisor, secondary supervisor, mentor, appraiser, whatever …

One day, I hope, someone will look back on the way we spend all our time on process and paper trails (rather than doing the job and changing people's minds), and they will wonder where, when or why we forgot what we were really about.

At least the human subjects in Classics normally have the good grace to be dead. Imagine having to jump through all the ethics committee good practice procedures too …

HELEN

But who is it who′s telling you to do this? How many academics are there in Cambridge who are grumbling as you are? Why don′t you do something about it?

You are all intelligent people and could presumably write down briefly how the system should work. You could address the problems you mention that were present before but still get that baby back in the bath. When people like you meekly go along with such nonsense, it makes everyone′s life harder because ′they′ continue to impose their petty rules and regulations. For goodness sake, get some backbone and stand up to them.

JULIAN GALL

Julian: When you sign off your soul to Mephistopheles, he wins. He′s got the enforcers on his side. He puts the food on your table. Nothing ′meek′ about this – Faust wasn′t meek. He just signed the wrong contract. And back in the ‘50s and ‘60s university life (in Britain) had academic freedom, tenure, optimism and excitement. Helen of Troy with a brain (girls – find your own equivalent:-)

XJY

I′ve said this before, but I can′t see what′s wrong with having to describe the content and purpose of your pedagogy. People who sell fried chicken can do this – tell you what it is they
are purveying and why you might want to buy it. Why is this apparently beneath the dignity of self-proclaimed ′intelligent′ people?

SW FOSKA

The one advantage of being Jewish in occupied France was that one did not have the option of collaboration.

HOGWEED

I suppose when comparing a system that is average for ten students, or brilliant for nine students and appalling and unfair for the tenth, the second system is going to seem better. Unless you were the tenth student …

KEIR FINLOW-BATES

15 April 2010

I spent a rather gloomy day yesterday reading the various party election manifestos. I admit that this was not in the cause of my own political development, but because I was due on the
Today
programme this morning to sound off about them, and about the ‘Great Debate' between the party leaders coming up on television.

Honestly, I thought that there was not much to choose between the three main parties in this respect, though Labour and Tory were worse than Lib Dems by a short head. It wasn't just the graphics – though quite where both of the big two had found their left-over Eastern bloc propagandists, heaven knows. The Tory ‘people power' illustration really did have the tractor factory feel to it – and the fact that it was indeed an advert for the
Tory
party is just one hint at the ideological emptiness that you will find if you read these documents.

As I blurted on the radio, the worst thing about these documents is their oozing platitudes. Whoever has written them has not grasped the point that political messages only count as interesting and engaging and worth bothering with if the opposite point of view could conceivably be held – if, that is, there is something to argue about. The mainstream parties give us almost nothing that most of the human race could possibly object to. ‘A future fair for all' (Labour)? Sure, but the country isn't actually teeming with people who are demanding
a less fair future. ‘Children should be allowed to grow up at their own pace' (Tories)? Is anyone seriously advocating the opposite? ‘As Conservatives, we trust people'? Unlike who … ?

Often different parties actually come out with almost exactly the same platitudes. ‘Get better politics for less' (Lib Dem) or ‘Good government costs less with the Conservatives' – in this case not only vacuous but untrue as well.

Partly, you get the impression that they are all so keen not to offend anyone that they resort to anything bland. Partly it's the simple absence of ideology again. (Another nice example, the Labour Manifesto includes enthusiastic words on ‘Creating a shareholding society' – admittedly on the John Lewis model.) Oh – and don't mention the war. There is plenty of stuff about military equipment and hospitals, and a couple of pics of soldiers fraternising with natives (in the Tory manifesto, with a football). But not a word about whether we should be in Afghanistan or not. As the husband remarked, ‘People Power' clearly doesn't extend to the ‘people' of Afghanistan.

It is perhaps predictable that those furthest from any possibility of being in government (or even winning a seat) had the freshest approaches. After the blandness of the big three, it was a positive relief to turn to the Communist Party. The policies are probably barking, but I loved the front cover, which blazons ‘Britain for the People not the Bankers. Make the Fat Cats Pay' (The ‘people' may smack of the Tories, but ‘Fat Cats' gives it away.) Some ideology at last.

So, which was the very worst? Well, in a very close race, between the big three, it has to be the Labour version. Two particular sins make it slightly worse than the others. I can't stand the ‘I love Britain' line from Gordon Brown in his introduction (as if everyone else didn't …?). But worse, just before a paean of praise to the DNA database, we read ‘We
are proud of our record on civil liberties'. Now either that is a whoppa – or it is self-delusion. Either way, it wins them the wooden spoon.

But anyway, I got my come-uppance for self-promotion and a few minutes of fame on the radio. One of my lines on the TV debate (about how the poor guys must have been up all night having their eyebrows plucked and learning their spontaneous jokes) was taken on to a BBC ‘quotes of the day'. But sadly I wasn't. It said Mary Beard is an ‘American historian and women's rights campaigner'. Shit – the wrong Mary Beard. The more famous one died in 1958, when I was three.

I am comforted by the lack of ideology. The idea that one party might impose its vision of society on all of us, including the many who disagree, or might even seek to do so, horrifies me. The real honesty challenge for politicians who lack ideology is to say so.

RICHARD BARON

One thing I like spotting in manifestos is the redundant guarantee, named for those manufacturers' guarantees that make a great fuss about granting you, as a favour, rights which are already enshrined in law. (′We will replace faulty parts free of charge for up to a year!′)

My sitting MP (Tory) has a line on his manifesto which boasts to me that this leaflet has been delivered by volunteers ′at no cost to the taxpayer! A claim which I sincerely trust is true, because if he has attempted to charge the taxpayer for his campaign expenses, he is in big trouble.

ANNA

If you want ideology, you could try the Labour Education spokesman′s doctrinaire asseveration that learning Latin is a Bad Thing.

OLIVER NICHOLSON

Wasn′t it Quintus Cicero who told his brother to never promise anything concrete and never commit to a strong idea when on electoral campaign?

Although I′m sure most politicians today won′t have read the
Commentariolum Petitionis
(none in my country), they seem to follow some of its advice quite closely.

Gl

29 April 2010

After a serious study of the main party manifestos, let me reveal some of the dottier ideas that have got by the party committees and into their official promises. How on earth, one wonders, do these things get the nod … ? Have you noticed them?

1. Establish a new prize for engineering
.

This is a Tory idea (to ‘make Britain the leading hi-tech exporter in Europe') … may not be so bad an idea, but
in the manifesto?
. (No prize for Classics, I note!)

2. Create a specialist Mandarin teacher training qualification, so that many more primary schools have access to a qualified primary teacher able to teach Mandarin
.

So offers the Labour party. A worthy aim … but when we can't teach French effectively? And where are these Mandarin teachers coming from?

3. Control bullying, including homophobic bullying
.

Another virtuous aim (this time from the Lib Dems), but is this an appropriate manifesto commitment? I mean, how are they going to do this?

4. Launch an annual Big Society Day
.

Another holiday, on which ‘to celebrate the work of neighbourhood groups' … and, presumably the work of the middle-class mums and dads who plan to set up their own schools. A Tory idea, needless to say.

5. The right to cancer test results within one week
.

A Labour PR move. Well, who could not want speedy cancer tests? But another target? And how easy is it for the pushy middle class to manipulate? Next time I think I need an X-ray for my stiff knee, I guess I persuade my GP to say ‘suspected carcinoma'.

6. Establish a free on-line database of exam papers and marking schemes – for GCSE and A/AS
.

A Tory bright idea, but so far as I know, you can get this information free already.

7. Make Network Rail refund a third of your ticket price if you have to take a rail replacement bus service
.

Nice idea. Whatever Lib Dem thought this up must have lived in Cambridge, where Network Rail regularly works on both lines to London simultaneously. But for a party trying to cut red tape etc. What do they think the cost of this will be?

8. Ensure that the 2013 Rugby League and 2015 Rugby Union World Cups are successful
.

Ensure that we win? Or what do the Tories actually mean on this one?

9. All relevant agencies – not just neighbourhood police teams – will hold monthly public meetings to hear people's concerns (on Anti Social Behaviour – or ASB, as the Labour party now calls it)
.

Well it could be useful. But as a Labour manifesto commitment??

10. Tackle the gender gap at all levels of scientific study and research to help increase the supply of scientists
.

Well I'm all for this one, Lib Dems … but many of us have been working on it for years. So exactly
how
are they going to tackle it?

There's plenty more where they came from.

I am curious as to why everyone has suddenly got obsessed with Mandarin, and how if only it was available we could turn out millions of happy Mandarin speakers. Have they any idea how hard Mandarin is to learn? (I tried when I was living in China, and I didn′t get very far.) And, of course, this will be all about learning to speak to Chinese businessmen, and there will be no conception of enabling people to read
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
in the original.

TONY KEEN

I find it hard to treat the phrase ′coming from′ seriously, because of its use in sentences like ′I know where you′re coming from′ There′s a great story that some young American actor in the same play as Sir John Gielgud, wanting to pick the great man′s brains, asked
him, ′Sir Gielgud, in this scene, where am I coming from exactly?′ Sir John replied, ′From the wings, dear boy, the wings.′

MICHAEL BULLEY

My partner learned Mandarin in primary school. The sole residue of that particular piece of education is that he can sing a rather sweet children′s song about numbers and suddenly spotting a friend. Somehow, I don′t see this ability as making a strong contribution to the UK′s economic output.

LIZ