GRADUATING OUT AND GRADUATING IN
Wicker, Brian
EDUCATION IN BRITAIN GRaDUaTING OUT MrD GIIADU TING IN In the last year or two I have been invited, either as a complacent parent or benevolent uncle, to a n~mbet of university "commencemen.ts."...
...At the provincial universities, the graduation ceremony is essentially a passing-out parade and a prizegiwing...
...One not only hears of complaints by parents of very clever children that they are suffering for lack of stimulus in state schools...
...And this is not because of any intrinsic academic superiority...
...It has always been legally possible to do this: the law insists that every child shall be educated, but it says "af school or otherwise...
...They troop up one by one onto the platform, in order of academic merit...
...The point I am making about the difference between Oxford and Cambridge, and the other universities, can be made, too, about schools in Britain...
...The liturgical trappings, the soft private speech in a dead language (accompanied by a kind of blessing by Vice-Chancellor--not a "secular" handshake, but a "sacred" holding of the graduand's hands within his own), the intimate scale of the proceedings--aU are designed to show that the university is bestowing, not a certificate of competence in the world's sense, but the privilege of access into the community of the learned...
...And in a sense this is so...
...Thus at the time I write, my son--who has just left Cambridge--tells me that all of his friends have already got jobs, mostly in the sort of occupations they were seeking...
...A recent newspaper story spoke of the increasing degree to which the older universities are drawing their students from the private (i.e...
...Within the intensely competitive world of these 61ire institutions, a sort of equalRy among the chosen can be practiced...
...Des~.hooling" will, I think, become commoner in the years ahead in Britain, even if it remains the solution adopted only by a tiny minority...
...by people belonging to a group called "Education Otherwise," who recently advertised their work on TV, and got a huge mailbag as a result...
...Each shakes t~he Very Important Person's hand with one fist, while grasping the proffered certificate of achievement with 'the other...
...But the number has never been more than a tiny trickle: a token proportion which was useful for propaganda, but hardly significant in terms of the prevailing distribution of educational opportunity in the society as a whole...
...But at Cambridge (where I went some weeks back for another graduation) the ethos and the meaning are quite different...
...This applies to all ranges of ability and social class...
...The competitive element is (seemingly) absent: the class of a person's degree goes unmentioned at the cere29 September 1978:614 mony, so that the spectator has no idea which of those being "graduated" has a first-class degree and which a third...
...The graduands are then presented to the Vice-Chancellor (who is not a bigwig but simply the head of one of the colleges--they take it in turn...
...It is worth trying to distinguish two categories of these: on the one hand, the ceremonies of the provincial universities--say Birmingham, or Nottingham, or Sheffield--and on the other, those of Oxford and Cambridge...
...The difference _9 is startling and I think significant...
...But then at Oxbridge, such "democracy" can be afforded...
...He sits, episcopally enthroned, before them and speaks to each of them softly in Latin...
...The financing of the ancien.t universities in Britain is tending to make this tendency more marked, despite the general illusion that things are much more "meritocratic" than they used to be...
...The caveat of the last phrase has been taken up...
...There is a considei'able drifr away from schools into the more "adult" world of further education colleges for the later stages of secondary education (the A-levels which are the passports to further study...
...Then the graduands troop out in twos and threes, to be photographed on the lawns, with mothers who look as if they have just come over from Ascot, and fathers from their city banks...
...What is the meaning of this very different occasion...
...One has only to step outside the picture-frame, however, to know how different is the reality...
...After this comes the turn of the ordinary graduands...
...But there are doubtless some who take their children away, and make their own arrangements, (they are not just aristocrats who can afford governesses) because they think they can do the job better anyway...
...It would be easy to conclude, from this comparison between the prize-giving in the provinces and the initiation bestowed at "Oxbridge," that the latter exuded a kind of democratic spirit (a socioty in which all are equals) over against the graded competitive spirit of the former...
...But this is not the end...
...That is, those with first-class degrees go up first, those with thirds or pass degrees bring up a bedraggled rear...
...The main object of these weird ceremonies is fairly clear: it is to send each youngster out into the world with a ticket to a job (or a dole queue...
...The building where the ceremony takes place .is old and small (though it cannot compete w~th Oxford's tiny masterpiece by Wren, the Sheldonian Theatre...
...For the moment, at ans' rate, all are on a par...
...Then they troop off on the other side of the platform...
...Inside, the parents have to squeeze uncomfortably into hard seats in the inadequate galleries...
...A.t various moments, robed academics remove their doctoral headgear and replace it: the whole thing is quite plainly a liturgical oeca~ion...
...As parents, you sit in some huge hall, in massed ranks of chairs facing a platform...
...Finally, it is worth noting a small but growing movement for taking children out of school altogether...
...The parents have to queue (this year in the drizzle) because only a couple of colleges at a time can squeeze into the room...
...In the past week or two I have heard expressions of deep concern about prospects for schooling in the public sector from two parents with unimpeachably socialist and even Marxist convictions...
...The men bow, the women tend to curtsy...
...BRIAN WICKER (Brian Wicker is Commonwears regular correspondent in Great Britain...
...For it is a fact that the degree at Cambridge is a much better passport to a job, in a society of high unemployment even for the well-qualified, than the same degree at any other place...
...The graduands, dressed in all sorts of gear, but covered up with illfitting academic robes they don't quite know how to wear, sit at the front...
...Everyone goes home...
...Well first of all, it is not a prize-giving...
...The graduands are introduced, not en masse, but in batches led by the hand according to their colleges, and the latter are invited by a complex set of precedents according to age of foundation and royal connections...
...Behind a big table, smothered with little scrolls and mementos shortly to be given out, sit the bigwigs of the university, including the Chancellor, or Very Important Person, who has made enough money, or been rewarded for "political services" enough, to have caught the university's attention as a suitable person to be its figurehead...
...Cameras click, cars are filled with the accumulated bric-a-brac of three years, and that is it...
...And this fact is much harped-on by those on the political Right who want t,o see the grammar and independent schools given more help from the state...
...Afterwards there are sandwiches and tea in some commonroom, and chat with the professors...
...Competition, grading and jobcertification are the mea~ of the sandwich: the rest is mere packaging...
...This is not so much because of violence in the classroom or vandalism among the young: it is rather because of an increasing feeling that many youngsters are simply not being taught enough, not being challenged enough, by the present generation of teachers...
...But my niece, who has just graduated at Sheffield, tells me that she, along with many of her friends, will be leaving university for the dole queue, at .least for some time to come...
...Education Otherwise" is an interesting straw in the contemporary wind--or should one say in the stream of educational hot air...
...One hears it too from those whose children are just average...
...Families now go off to the colleges of their offspring, to be shown over the priceless art-collections, and given salmon teas in marquees, or champagne in book-4ined studies, or sherry in painted halls...
...Despite what I have just suggested--namely that much of the "egalitarianism" of Oxford and Cambridge is a sham--it is nevertheless true .that at present there is real worry about the state of the "equal opportunity" dream initiated by the Labor party in its comprehensive school policy of recent years...
...Commonweal: 615...
...Of course, it has always been the case that a workingclass youngster from a 6amily with ambition and some idea of how to work the system, could have some hope of getting to Oxford or Cambridge, and indeed to the grammar schools (now fast disappearing) which fed them...
...The degreegiving at Oxford or Cambridge is an initiation into the community of the university itself, of which hitherto the undergraduates were only probationary members...
...Many of those who want their children out of school are people whose children are simply unhappy in the school environment...
...Each is marked forever by a certain degree of merit...
...There may not be a crisis yet: but there is enough worry to be genuinely disturbing...
...It is obvious at once that they have no rights or privileges there: it is the unlver~ity's occasion, not theirs...
...But this is because the ceremony is not a passing-out parade, into the big world where competitive success is all: i.t is a welcome in...
...It is also an occasion for parents to peep into the world of the campus, often for the first time (since the majority have not had the benefit of a university education themselves), and congratulate themselves on their own vicarious achievement...
...the so-called "public" or "independent") schools...
...A few distinguished people are first of all g~ven their honorary degrees, after speeches in what I can only call "graduation prose," listing their extraordinary talents...
Vol. 105 • September 1978 • No. 19
