Rethinking Cambridge

Concluding my talk with Sarah Ormrod, I thanked her for her time, and was engaged shortly thereafter in my next discussion, with teacher Alex Lindsay. We sat at the outdoor picnic tables just outside Ormrod's office.

Though I'd been surprised and dismayed by his conduct of the class earlier that afternoon, I could not simply ask: "What the hell happened?!" To render this intelligible, I have to mention that the man was quite nervous. I had to be extremely subdued and mild. Undue bluntness might have shocked him to death.

This was not abnormal at Cambridge. Recall Dr. Fred Parker, so flabbergasted by my "Downside" criticisms that he would not subject himself to the unpredictable turbulence of even one meeting with me.

Hadn't it appeared, I put it to Alex, that he'd been tending, in that day's class, to frown upon my participation....

No no no no no, he averred, I was being absurd. How could I think so? Absolutely not.

I offered an example.

Alex's lecture on Jane Austen's Emma argued that Emma is attracted to her friend Harriet because of Harriet's inferiority -- because next to Harriet, Emma can shine. But from the text it clearly seems to be Harriet's beauty and sweetness of temperament that appeal to Emma. The witty Emma is superior to just about all the characters. She doesn't need to seek out inferiors.

When I'd offered this comment in class, Alex's response seemed to wave it away as superfluous:

"We're not in contradiction."

I think my view did in fact "contradict" his, as alternative literary interpretations typically do. But the strange choice of word also suggested Alex saw my comment as a challenge (which was neither my manner nor intent).

When I reminded Alex of that exchange, he maintained that his view and mine were indeed consistent or even equivalent. Harriet's "inferiority," he argued, referred to her docility -- which was essentially the same as the "sweetness of temper" that Emma found appealing.

He had had no thought of shunning me or in some way reproving me. He hoped I accepted that.

And standing as remote as possible from me in class?

He'd stood next to the window at the far wall -- the better to read his notes by.

The monologue format?

But this was his normal mode of classroom teaching, he insisted. A one-hour lecture followed by a 30-minute discussion. Questions interrupted his train of thought. He reminded me that he'd conducted some previous classes the same way. I acknowledged that had been the case for the first class in both his courses (on John Donne, in session #1; and Jane Austen, in session #2).

But what sense did the monologue format make? Why meet in a classroom, when students could just as well read a book instead?

He answered that most books on literary criticism were written for an academic readership, so would not be suitable for the summer students.

This certainly suggested a significant market failure in the book trade. But he headed off that thought with the additional observation that, anyway, some students wanted monologue, and he had no choice but to give them that.

No choice?

No choice, he confirmed.

Virtually any position can be advocated. Lawyers prove that every day. But somehow, while one can't read minds, it's difficult to be convinced that the various views propounded by Alex in that conversation sprang from deep conviction. It sounded like a lot of rationalization was going on.

I did relate to him Bianka's tantrum of that morning ... and mentioned her announcement that she would complain about me.

I was not about to grill Alex. I put the query gently: Had something along the lines of Bianka's declared intent reached him?

OK, yes, he acknowledged. Someone had spoken to him that morning -- very briefly, he stressed -- about a student complaint.

I didn't press further.

When Alex instructed the class that it was Harriet's inferiority that appealed to Emma, it was not merely because I thought it "contradicted" my view that I felt impelled to respond. Alex's prescription regarding Emma's character also paralleled the kind of funlessness that suffused Adrian Barlow's class. While Emma is immature and conceited, while she's occasionally startled by her own misjudgments as they come to light, she is nevertheless a happy and confident girl, and one who possesses a genuinely superior mind. Emma is not a story of dysfunction. The idea of Emma being attracted by someone because that person is inferior, because that person's defects can be used as a crutch for false self-esteem, is a degrading banality.

Alex didn't seem to like Emma or its sunny central character much. When a student asked him one day which of Austen's novels he liked best, he named the dour Mansfield Park; and his discussion of that novel decreed that Fanny (the dull and moralistic central character) is "a repository of the values of the author."

So perhaps Alex's disposition led him to an inimical stance towards young, brash, enthusiastic Emma. But the view he preached, that Emma would seek out inferiority, also happened to be one that is readily digestible to today's TV-steeped younger generation. Conceited character drawn to inferior? In the simplified TV desert, no search for motive is needed. It's the obvious one that springs out immediately -- vanity.

Reflecting on our TV culture brings plenary lecturer Jill Paton-Walsh to mind -- along with her discovery (via the OED) that 600 years ago there were only human types, not unique individuals. One may question Paton-Walsh's historical methodology, but her thesis is right on the money as a description of how today's young perceive the world. TV-land is populated by, what, perhaps a dozen? --distinct personalities. And since the young spend much more time watching and learning from TV's social reality than from real social reality, they tend to categorize anyone -- not just on TV but in literature and real life too -- as just another instance of one of the familiar types found within TV's mean range.

Alex's monologue explained Emma's dislike of the Jane Fairfax character in much the same way as Emma's attraction to Harriet: her antipathy arose from feelings of rivalry and jealousy -- because Jane was in certain ways more accomplished than Emma.

This ascribes to Emma a pettiness, a frailty of ego, and a positive desire for self-delusion which are foreign to her character. (Actually, such qualities seem more characteristic of the type of person who would tend to conjure false memories of their life rather than confront their own weaknesses honestly.)

While Alex's explanation for Emma's dislike has some support in the text -- the all-wise Mr. Knightley "had once told [Emma that she disliked Jane] because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman which she wanted to be thought herself" -- in this case Emma's own explanation is much more plausible than Knightley's:

[Jane] was, besides, which was the worst [offence] of all, so cold, so cautious! There was no getting at her real opinion. Wrapped up in a cloak of politeness, she seemed determined to hazard nothing. She was disgustingly, was suspiciously reserved.

It's sad that teachers preached correct doctrine; but it's sadder that students submitted so abjectly. Critical thinking. Are we unaware that that is the fundamental disposition that people should be developing in universities? Freedom from doctrine?

The deference to authority I saw would please Saddam Hussein -- and any future tyrant presently observing us as he progresses towards his own seizure of power.

During the course of the second summer session, Cambridge came to disgust me, just as Jane Fairfax had disgusted Emma. The propriety, the denial of life, the intellectual sterility, the shunning of communication, the conventionality, the spiritlessness, the ignorance, the fear.

I discovered also a side-effect, upon myself, of all the literary diktats I'd been hearing in the classroom. Literature had become distasteful to me. Literature, thanks to Cambridge, was now loathsome. I had a copy of Persuasion I'd meant to re-read for Alex's class (I'd read it once a few years before). But it was too irksome to look at, and certainly in class there was little advantage in having read the material being "discussed." On the contrary, the teachers admired docility and sweetness of nature far more than informed minds.

One night I went out and experienced something greatly more enjoyable and stimulating than my Cambridge classes.

As The Island opens, a strange community of people is depicted: white-suited workers employed in some kind of unexplained manufacturing job, and black-suited people who function as police or security personnel. A rather strict social order is maintained. Men and women may converse, but a "proximity alert" sounds if excessive contact occurs, for example, if a man touches the arm of a woman with whom he's talking. In case of such a breach, a policeman promptly appears to issue a warning.

The setting is a large underground facility -- a grim, controlled world to which they are all confined because the outside world has become highly contaminated and toxic.

One outside place, however -- the island of the title -- remains untainted. It is a paradise. Everyone knows it well, because its alluring beauty is displayed on large video panels. Everyone yearns to go there, and everyone has some hope of realizing the dream since, at regular intervals, the community congregates for a lottery ceremony in which the winner gains release from their sterile world ... and transportation to the island.

One insufficiently docile member of the community, however, undertakes some exploration ... and discovers truths that the authorities didn't want him to know: The outside world is not a toxic dump -- it is inhabited, like our familiar world of 2005. Each community member is a genetic clone of a wealthy client on the outside, created solely for the purpose of maintaining a repository of spare body parts for that client. When someone "wins a trip to the island," it means a medical event has arisen outside, and a client needs his insurance policy. The island is a lie. Lottery "winners" are harvested -- terminated, and their needed body parts surgically extracted for implantation into the corresponding clients.

Why, this was perfect. Here was what Cambridge's students needed! Great thinkers could quibble that the drama of a "proximity alert" lacked the depth and subtlety of some of the social contretemps that so animate Jane Austen's characters, but what of that? Effective pedagogy was the issue. Profundity is irrelevant if it's invisible.

What students were getting from the Cambridge classroom amounted to little more than the reinforcement of TV sitcom clichés (not to mention plenty of note-taking practice). The Island, on the other hand -- for students at all receptive to teaching -- might introduce the concept of an independent reality outside oneself. It might foster what was so conspicuously absent, a spirit of intellectual inquiry. It might inspire questions like Why? It might do what even Cambridge teachers have surely at one time or another heard should be done -- encourage critical thinking.

Eight hundred years! The absurd longevity of Cambridge's business model almost makes me laugh out loud. First, a prating teacher -- no special effects, no scene cuts, no editing, not a dead body in sight -- is simply nowhere in the same league as movies in terms of holding the attention. Witness Maureen (#1 above). Second, even granting the forgoing of gun clashes in the name of academic dignity, this whole operation Cambridge has been running is breathtakingly inefficient. Monologue is the name of their game -- a format whose outstanding virtue is amenability to celluloid capture and mass production -- yet, perversely, they simultaneously cling to a musty tradition mandating production runs of ... one unit?!

Most important is what is, or is not, ultimately implanted in students' minds. What's their takeaway? The answer, after three weeks at Cambridge.... Well, let me just say I was left in grave doubt as to this question. In case the customarily polite Fred Parker is reading this, it's best I not attempt a fuller answer.

So. As The Island makes clear, Cambridge is obsolete and must modernize. The real estate wastage alone is silly. (The town of Cambridge, incidentally, is badly in need of new road construction.) Cambridge has to axe the teachers, liquidate those ostentatious fixed assets, hire a few scriptwriters, and lease a production studio, probably in India.

Or instead of all that ... but this may be too bold ... they might think about teaching critical thinking.

(Continued....)