CENTREPIECE
Sir Keith tries to put scholarship in the supermarket
COLIN WELCH
Ido not have to persuade Spectator readers except, as I sadly suggested last week, Sir Keith Joseph, of the inherent value, for its own sake, of education in the arts and humanities. I hope, however, that it will not be thought impertinent of me to hint at some of the economic benefits which may flow from it. To regard religion as socially useful: Peguy regarded this as the very greatest insult you could pay to religion. Yet religion is or was socially useful, as the consequences of its decay reveal. Culture too is socially useful, eco- nomically useful as well — no insult in- tended.
Cardinal Newman classically defined the tasks of university education: 'raising the intellectual tone of society, cultivating the public mind, purifying national taste . . . giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, facilitating the exercise of Political power and refining the intercourse of private life'. A society in which all these noble tasks are faithfully performed will be, not by definition but as a consequence, a prosperous society, in which honest labour, trade and creativity all flourish in peace and security. The German universi- ties have been much praised for their technical excellence. Their neglect or even Perversion of their proper duties brought material as well as moral ruin to two generations of Germans and their victims. Jo Grimond, writing recently in the Daily Telegraph, was rightly horrified that we Should continually be urged to follow their example.
A far better example was set by Amer- ica's founding fathers who, while not de- void of scientific curiosity, were disting- uished not for that but for their excellent general and liberal education, their wide reading, their mastery of political philoso- phy and economy, as of jurisprudence (Sir Keith's own subject!), their understanding alike of liberty and its proper limits, their broad and humane foresight. What they wrought in the constitutional and legal fields has done more to make America Prosperous than millions of technologists. Defending, in the House of Commons, his proposed switch of resources to science, engineering and technology from the arts and humanities, Sir Keith paid the latter some oddly-worded compliments. `Taught rigorously to appropriate pupils, they are a Splendid training for responsibility in life. They sharpen minds' (sharp fellow, that Newman!) 'and contribute to scholarship and civilisation. But', he added mournful- ly, 'unless we trade we can't support scholarship or civilised values'. The found- ing fathers might have demurred that, without respect for scholarship and civil- ised values, we shan't trade either. Scho- larship and civilisation are not parasitic by-products of trade, but contributors in their own right.
Note if you please two words quoted above, `rigorously' and 'appropriate'. The former is a vogue Leavisite word, presum- ably used here to keep puritanically at bay any threat of 'education for pleasure' (Sir Keith's phrase), in the hope of making the arts and humanities as technical, boring and pseudo-scientific as possible. The word 'appropriate' is more menacing than it sounds. It conceals a major though little noticed Josephian assault on university standards of entry. Who will be thought appropriate? The test, according to Sir Keith, should be not 'paper qualifications but ability to benefit'. To benefit whom — the pupil or society? Since the taxpayer pays, Sir Keith continues, the benefit must justify the cost. This implies, if not very explicitly, that some benefit apparent to the taxpayer is sought. There must be, according to Sir Keith, more emphasis on 'intellectual competence and motivation', on 'maturity' too, less on 'formal qualifica- tions'. These criteria should be applied as 'rigorously' to those with qualifications as to those without. Vague and subjective as they are, how can they be applied 'rigor- ously' to anyone? Mrs Angela Rumbold to her credit smelt a rat here: if the taxpayer was entitled to benefit, how could Sir Keith explain the shift from formal qualifications to motiva- tion and maturity? Sir Keith burbled that character, record and 'other features' must be considered as well as A-levels ('our least bad indicator', he conceded in an un- guarded moment); and some with formal qualifications might give 'evidence', pre- sumably at an interview, of lack of motiva- tion. How? By drumming fingers on the desk, humming, staring out of the window? Has Sir Keith never learnt to mistrust the chap who looks him straight in the eye and cries 'Motivation, sir? One hundred per cent!'
Sir Keith is usually lambasted for curtail- ing the universities' freedom. Perhaps the reason why his barbarous entry proposals have not raised a bigger storm is because they would extend universities' freedom in ways they might well abuse. The universi- ties would still do the selecting. But they would be given the power or even duty to ignore or over-ride exam results at whim. This they might use to exclude the awkward, odd, inarticulate, unorthodox or unco' brilliant, or candidates of the wrong class, colour, sex or opinions. How would young Samuel Johnson, uncouth, provin- cial, diseased, have fared before one of these tribunals?
The springs of entry may thus be pol- luted. More subtly menaced by Sir Keith's barbarism is the quality of those who teach in universities. Dr Jeremy Bray asked why university staff should be prevented from research? Isn't research necessary for teaching? Sir Keith thought it 'arguable' whether research should accompany teaching: 'some say not'. Whoever those 'some' may be, they can surely have little idea of what a university is or should be.
A university is a place where knowledge, truth and wisdom are sought, guarded and passed. Research and scholarship are essential to the university's function; teaching is relatively subordinate. Indeed, the best teaching consists not in the impart- ing of knowledge but in involving the apprentice, so to speak, in the master's own research and scholarship. Hence springs the traditional view, now clearly in mortal danger, that, when university appointments are considered, the post should always go not to the best teacher but to the best scholar, whether he can teach or not. It has been assumed that the apprentice, if properly selected and moti- vated, will somehow find ways of tapping the store of wisdom in his master's head — in itself a highly educative process.
Research and teaching are apparently separated in Sir Keith's mind, as in the minds of his henchmen who, by bombard- ing universities with ridiculous question- naires, prevent distinguished academics from getting on with either. Professor Peter Fellgett of Reading was asked, inter alia, how much of his time was devoted to teaching, how much to research, a question as silly to him as asking how much of a marriage is devoted to loving one's wife, how much to loving one's children. It is barbarism which, howling for cost- effectivness, prodigally wastes the costly time of scholars. It is barbarism too which divorces teaching from research and deni- grates the latter, threatens to turn our universities into intellectual supermarkets, in which useful facts are freely available but nothing is produced. The benefits of research, I hope to discuss next week.
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