AN AMERICAN PROFESSOR'S REFLECTIONS ON OXFORD
BY S. E. MORISON.
Harms-worth Professor of American History at Oxford, 1922-25.
I.—THE LIBERTY OF OXFORD.
" They are not long, the days of wino and roses."
"flOWSON'S verse keeps running through my head, beating time with the engine that drives me every moment farther from Oxford and nearer to America. I must hasten to jot down impressions, before the rush and stress of American academic life blurs them into a dream of grey walls and green fields, vivid youths on motor-cycles, and modest maidens on push-bicycles, dinners in hall and evenings. in common-room, the Friday luncheons that fell on Mondays, and the history luncheons where everything but history was discussed. Unfortunately,. even impressions have to be generalized on paper ; and Oxford is the most complex, the most unsystematic, the most paradoxical, and the most difficult of institutions to generalize.
No other university is at once so hospitable and so indifferent to new individuals, disciplines, and subjects. The undergraduate body is the most varied in the world as to nationality, race and colour ; yet no one manages to resist some trace of the " Oxford manner." The faculties include specialists on almost every branch of knowledge; but if the specialists want pupils, they must conform to regulation and tradition. A newcomer either remains isolated, within a little wall which he alone does not see, or he is absorbed into the tepid current of donnish life, and the world knows him no more, unless through his books. A reforming Commission is lost if it comes to Oxford and accepts the gracious hospitality of the colleges. For no sensible man who knows Oxford would wish greatly to change it. Rather must he be chiefly concerned to preserve the many things of worth and beauty that time has tested, and spared.
To an American sojourner, the note of freedom is dominant at Oxford ; not merely the corporate freedom that the University enjoys within the State, and the colleges within the University, but freedom of the individual within either. All three are closely interrelated. Almost all university "and college business, of the sort that in American universities is settled by presidential or decanal fiat, in Oxford is referred to a number of boards and committees. The time consumed is well worth the loss in efficiency, for the system gives everyone an official finger in many pies, and an opportunity to air his views. The universal craving to mind other people's business is thereby satisfied ; and Oxford harm- lessly employs in administrative activity the "nosey" and talebearink sort of individuals that are the pest of American faculties. Collegiate autonomy seems at times almost anarchical to one who is used to the modern centralized university ; but the history of Oxford, as of the United States, shows that federalism permits a more varied and wholesome life than centralization. Nowhere in America or on the Continent would it be possible for organizations so diverse as Ruskin College, the women's colleges, Ripon Hall, Campion Hall, Manchester College, and the Catholic Workers' College, to share the benefits of a great University without losing their individuality. Oxford and Cambridge, alone of modern universities, are really universal.
The keystone in . this arch of liberty, and the most enviable and precious thing in all Oxford's rich inheritance, is the self-government of the University ; its almost complete control by the resident and teaching M.A.s. The University is poor, but gifts or endowments purchased at the price of the thinnest wedge of outside control would be too dearly purchased. Yet there is no reason why gifts should be so purchased ; and in view of the many wealthy men among Oxford graduates, it seems to an American scandalous that the British taxpayer should be called upon to help support the University, or that institutions like St. Edmund Hall should want funds.
Oxford and, apparently, all the British universities are happily free from the unreasoning and malicious criticism • that every American university has to bear from Press and public. They are not expected to be all things to all men ; nor is admission to their colleges demanded as a right. It matters not whether this sound attitude of the British public be due to appreciation or indifference ; the universities are left free to serve the nation as their own members think best. University extension work in America too often takes the form of advertisement, or of a sweet sop to a nagging public ; in England, it is performed by those who are interested, for the benefit of the few who want it. Within the University there is not only complete freedom of speech, but complete privacy. A professor need never fear, as in America, lest one day's classroom witticism appear the following day in a screaming headline. Nobody outside Oxford knows, and nobody within Oxford cares, if a certain professor be Communist or Fascist.
In only one respect do I venture to suggest that collegiate autonomy is abused : in the admission, by certain colleges, of a considerable number of idle and brainless youths on the ground. of athletic ability or social position. One often hears that these men are " useful " in the sense of helping their college to better its place on the river. Many of them, however, are more decorative than useful, and others, positively unwholesome. They would be less numerous if the undergraduates enjoyed some measure of self-government and internal police, instead of leaving such matters to governing bodies and proctors. An undergraduate council, as at Edinburgh, might also be a means of bringing the undergraduate point of view to bear on contemplated changes.
In curricular matters, the pass schools might well be abolished, and " never would be missed," save by under- graduates of whom the same might be said. But the honour schools, although capable of some improvement in detail, are collectively the best system of undergraduate instruction in the English-speaking world. The examining system of first-year " Mods " and last-year " Finals," administered by boards whose decisions can seldom be unjust, and never be questioned, seems to me perfect as it stands. A division of the three-year schools into two parts, as at Cambridge, would be a step backwards toward spoon-feeding.
About the tutorial method of preparing candidata.; for the honour schools, I leave Oxford less enthusiastic than when I viewed it from afar. Tutoring is admirably. fitted for teaching literati humaniores, for which it was devised ; but more modern subjects, such as the proinising new school . of philosophy, politics and economics, are somewhat refractory to one-man teaching. Tutoring tends to become mere cramming, both with facts and. With clever answers to" spotted " questions ; the college tutors, in supplanting the paid coach, have not-eliminated' his defects. In some of the honour schools, the System. neither ,affords a good general education, nor produces scholars.
The Oxford " first " has an admirable command of language, 'arid a brilliant style that comes of writing to impress clever peOple. He can make less knowledgel gco further, and write what he has to say far better, than the sum ma cum laude men of AMerican universities, But he has seldom gone to the bottom of .anything, or. approached it so near as an American B.A. who has done an honours thesis. Full of self-confidence, he is ready to bring up any subject in the world for you in two weeks ; inordinately proud of the things he does not know, the humbling process takes at best a long time, and, 'if he becomes a felloW at-Oxford; sometimes never takes place. There is, something to be said for catching your tutor young, .but there are too many college fellows who took a first, won a prize essay, and have done nothing since. Interested only in winning good classes for their pupils, or writing cramming books to help the process, they thwart the efforts of more scholarly or ambitious col- leagues to provide something more than academic liOnours for the better sore of student. Travelling. fellowships are wanted so that colleges can afford to send their candidates for tutorships abroad -for two or three years, and to require evidence of ability to do research, before they appoint.
S.S. Winifredian. At Sea.
(To be concluded.)
Previous page
