I am from a similar time as Prof. Colls. My father was a shop steward in a car factory and he didn’t want me to go to university because that would make me a ‘boss’. Luckily my mother won but my father never spoke to me again.
My first thought when I arrived was that everybody else was cleverer than me – but for cleverer, read ‘more confident’. Quite a lot of students had cars but I had never driven and neither had my father. Very slowly, the middle-class veneer of the other students disappeared and we all became the same.
Previously, at home, you had to be careful what you said. Everything was covered in a ‘let’s be nice to everybody else’ sugar. If friends on the council estate did something, you had to do it as well. If my father believed in something I had to pretend to believe it as well. But at univerversity you could say anything, you could give any opinion about anything. Truly, censorship had disappeared and free thought was allowed.
Strangely, things have reversed. At home you can say and think anything but at university there is strict censorship. So universities are no longer free to educate, to breed open minds. Today they have only political aims, and this is another name for brainwashing.
If you want to learn how NOT to be a free thinker, go to university. But is it useful?
Sadly I think you are right. I was the person in my family to stay on at school, and then go to University. It was a revelation and I learnt so much. My own adult children feel it was over rated. What a shame from expanded horizons to blinkers in a generation.
Indeed. When I was at university, dons asked searching questions of the undergraduates. Today it’s the other way around.
Dons who have not done the necessary reading and can’t justify their opinions are in bl00dy trouble.
Al M
2 years ago
I’m pleased to see an article that includes some practical suggestions rather than a cleverly worded analysis of the problem. Looking at re-naming De Monfort and considering something my own alma mater did after a protest, one might suggest that not caving in to a bunch of shouting teenagers might be worth exploring; they are transient, the university dos not belong to them alone and they need to learn this.
My own student years saw plenty of protests from Socialist Worker and the like. Pretend death throes in the queue for lunch during the First Gulf War a notable one. We simply stepped over them and got our pizzas and baked potatoes. They were free to protest and we were free to ignore them,
Cheryl Jones
2 years ago
Left wing ideology has gone unchallenged for decades and now all those graduates are running the world and dictating what we can do, think and say in the public arena. I’m a liberal at heart but these people are like aliens to me. Makes me want to go medieval on their asses.
Rod McLaughlin
2 years ago
I wish I could write like this. And I will.
Niobe Hunter
2 years ago
The title of this essay does not reflect the content, which appears just to be a rambling set of reminiscences of the author’s own university experience.
perhaps he is so fearful of the extreme and imposed orthodoxy of opinion prevailing in ‘universities ‘ that he didn’t dare to give us any examples ?
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
This article illustrates why Sussex had such an appalling reputation for producing informed graduates, but the author seems to take pride in this. I felt at the time the attitude of Sussex was an embarrassment to the working class who were trying to improve their lot and you had jackasses like these proving that the working class were a bunch of shallow dicks – and now he boasts wistfully of avoiding any academic insight, confirming my suspicions of the place.
Meanwhile his future wife attended a place that took education seriously.
I am from a similar time as Prof. Colls. My father was a shop steward in a car factory and he didn’t want me to go to university because that would make me a ‘boss’. Luckily my mother won but my father never spoke to me again.
My first thought when I arrived was that everybody else was cleverer than me – but for cleverer, read ‘more confident’. Quite a lot of students had cars but I had never driven and neither had my father. Very slowly, the middle-class veneer of the other students disappeared and we all became the same.
Previously, at home, you had to be careful what you said. Everything was covered in a ‘let’s be nice to everybody else’ sugar. If friends on the council estate did something, you had to do it as well. If my father believed in something I had to pretend to believe it as well. But at univerversity you could say anything, you could give any opinion about anything. Truly, censorship had disappeared and free thought was allowed.
Strangely, things have reversed. At home you can say and think anything but at university there is strict censorship. So universities are no longer free to educate, to breed open minds. Today they have only political aims, and this is another name for brainwashing.
If you want to learn how NOT to be a free thinker, go to university. But is it useful?
Really insightful. Thank you.
Sadly I think you are right. I was the person in my family to stay on at school, and then go to University. It was a revelation and I learnt so much. My own adult children feel it was over rated. What a shame from expanded horizons to blinkers in a generation.
Indeed. When I was at university, dons asked searching questions of the undergraduates. Today it’s the other way around.
Dons who have not done the necessary reading and can’t justify their opinions are in bl00dy trouble.
I’m pleased to see an article that includes some practical suggestions rather than a cleverly worded analysis of the problem. Looking at re-naming De Monfort and considering something my own alma mater did after a protest, one might suggest that not caving in to a bunch of shouting teenagers might be worth exploring; they are transient, the university dos not belong to them alone and they need to learn this.
My own student years saw plenty of protests from Socialist Worker and the like. Pretend death throes in the queue for lunch during the First Gulf War a notable one. We simply stepped over them and got our pizzas and baked potatoes. They were free to protest and we were free to ignore them,
Left wing ideology has gone unchallenged for decades and now all those graduates are running the world and dictating what we can do, think and say in the public arena. I’m a liberal at heart but these people are like aliens to me. Makes me want to go medieval on their asses.
I wish I could write like this. And I will.
The title of this essay does not reflect the content, which appears just to be a rambling set of reminiscences of the author’s own university experience.
perhaps he is so fearful of the extreme and imposed orthodoxy of opinion prevailing in ‘universities ‘ that he didn’t dare to give us any examples ?
This article illustrates why Sussex had such an appalling reputation for producing informed graduates, but the author seems to take pride in this. I felt at the time the attitude of Sussex was an embarrassment to the working class who were trying to improve their lot and you had jackasses like these proving that the working class were a bunch of shallow dicks – and now he boasts wistfully of avoiding any academic insight, confirming my suspicions of the place.
Meanwhile his future wife attended a place that took education seriously.