Juxtabook

New College of the Humanities: First Thoughts

There's a lot wrong with a lot of undergraduate courses in English Literature and plenty of room for new standards to be set so I looked with interest at the New College of the Humanities just launched with much fanfare by Prof A. C. Grayling and Co. The New College of the Humanities is a new, private university designed to rival the education offered by Oxbridge and the Russell Group (and Durham which oddly is not in the Russell Group).

You can read the English prospectus here.

What I like: there appears at first glance to be a good overview on offer with courses from the year dot to the present day. I am not a great believer in sectioning off literature for an entire undergraduate course as some places do e.g. just doing twentieth century literature for three years. I think when you're an undergrad you need the breadth and depth of a good "middle ages to the present" syllabus. Literature is a conversation: you can't effectively participate when you join in near the end.

What I don't like:

1. There is no major language component. I know it is billed as an English Literature degree not Literature and Language but language is still pretty crucial. There's "Varieties of language in conversation and literature" but that appears to be it, and that is optional. There's no suggestion that they'll be studying Anglo-Saxon literature in the original; surely you'd need a separate Anglo-Saxon language module before you could do that. I am not so traditional as to think it vital that you do Anglo-Saxon texts in the original but to have no history of the development of the language course as an alternative seems remiss.

2. There is no overt literary theory. There's an Approaches to Text module which might be a language course or might be a theory course but seems rather more a simple critical techniques course seeing as the set books are called things like Literary Studies in Action and Ways of Reading rather than something like Literature in the Modern World: Critical Essays and Documents (I don't think I've ever seen a prospectus for undergraduates, and that's first year undergraduates, that doesn't make Walder or one of the alternative anthologies compulsory reading). Lots of people don't like literary theory but you cannot put genies back in their bottles very easily. Literary theory exists and can't be ignored. A good degree should have an overt introduction to the subject and the option to study one or more theories from a purely philosophical standpoint. This degree appears to have no overview of theory and two courses (women/postcolonial) that are optional. As there is no major theory course preceding them I can only assume that they will look at a few books by women or ethnic minorities and that this will largely be the reading of those texts not the study of feminist theory or postcolonial theory philosophically. In fact, I hope I am wrong, but it would appear that women and ethnic minorities have been added as a bolt-on. Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Woolf and Toni Morrison do not make for a balanced course otherwise very, very, heavy on the DWEMs.

3. The only novel post-1945 mentioned on the reading list for the compulsory courses is Toni Morrison's Beloved. Damn good book. But where is the rest of post-war fiction? There is a course called 'the novel' and other courses that might have a post-war novel or two in passing but it seems very light.

4. For this superficially traditional course they are going to charge £18,000 a year. I haven't forgotten the decimal point, that's 18 grand. To my mind what they're offering for that is just not good enough.

In case you're thinking I am asking too much in three years, my own degree, also just English Literature not lit and lang, had a first year of: history of English language, Middle English literature, Renaissance literature and Introduction to literary theory and a subsidiary (philosophy in my case, including formal logic, much vaunted by New College of the Humanities) and 9 courses across the next two years of which Milton to the Romantics, Victorian literature, Modernist literature and Contemporary literature were compulsory as was a course on Shakespeare, further literary theory, and a literary theory option (I did narrative theory, pure theory not applied, and there were about six to choose from). We were able to pick three optional courses from a large range covering everything from the Brownings to Bob Dylan to holocaust literature.

The thing about literary theory is that it is hard and potentially boring when you start. I hated it in my first two years. By the third year I was starting to get it (and quite enjoyed it once I was a post-grad). But in my first two years, broke as I was, I think I would have been tempted to pay 18k to NOT do literary theory. This course, theory-lite as it is, seems designed to appeal to the paying parents (who might not know much about it but like the traditional sounding nature of it) whilst avoiding students dropping out because of having the heebie-geebies over literary theory, and dropping out students take their 18 grand a year with them.

For further thoughts on the teaching and standards likely to be available David Allen Green has a good piece on his Jack of Kent blog.

I don't want to get in to a big argument about whether there should be tuition fees at or not as that seems a done deal for the future. But what do you think about the New College of the Humanities as proposed, and particularly what's on offer as the Literature course?

Edited to add: Harriet in the comments below points out how old fashioned the course seems and no wonder if an article in the Higher Times Ed is to be believed. Gabriel Egan finds he recognises one of the courses offered:

"The college’s website helpfully lists the courses to be taken, and I noticed that something called Renaissance Comedy: Shakespeare and Jonson is a required component. Coincidence? No: the 200-word course description, the prescribed reading, the “topics for special consideration” were all mine. Or rather not mine, as I’d sold them to the University of London (via Goldsmiths) nearly two decades ago.

Students at the New College of the Humanities will take the University of London External BA exams, so for English literature they’ll get the teaching materials written in the 1990s at Goldsmiths. Apparently my fresh-from-a-BA reflections on early modern drama strike the New College professoriate as suitable promotional material for their £18,000-a-year degree. I was just happy to get them past the gatekeepers at Goldsmiths."

Cringe.

Booktrust and Bookstart and the cut in government funding.

You might have heard that funding for Bookstart, a programme to give books to young children, is being axed. According to The Guardian:

Booktrust, the independent charity set up to encourage reading, is to lose all government funding for its children's gifting programmes Bookstart, Booktime and Booked Up, in England, it was announced today.

Whilst the aims of Bookstart are undoubtably laudable, having experienced the bookgifting side as a parent I would suggest that the books probably largely go to families who are already highly literate and are therefore a questionable use of resources. I'd rather the money was spent on smaller classes in early years provision in catchment areas with poor literacy track records, in the current economic crisis.

You can read here about how in my town the first book gift worked well, the second was an accident, and the third (aimed at three year olds and at a cruicial point in reading development) was entirely down to my child attending the right play group and my using the library. Reaching stay-at-home parents with poor literacy it was not.

Snow closed schools

After two days off in many cases (because of a bit of snow) there's a right old fuss about schools closing with people citing everything from childcare problems,to how writers remember the winter of '63  and following the snow plough to school, to comments on how we'll be bringing them up to life long weakness and failure if we let kids stay home because of snow, as reasons why schools should be open regardless. See the BBC here, and the Independent here for just a couple of examples.

Setting aside for a moment the idea that schools should be regarded as childcare (they should not), I am amazed by the number of online comments that say things like teachers should live near school, or councils should keep essential staff like teachers in hotels near schools (do teachers not have families that need them at home in the evenings then?) when bad weather is forecast. Amazing.

Ok, if you teach really well behaved 6 year olds you might risk living in the catchment area, but what teacher in their right mind wants to live near their teenage charges? The few that do tend to be either near retirement age and probably moved in before so many kids (not all I know) ran rings round their parents and every other adult, or they are very young, newly qualified and financially challenged.

When young, newly qualified and financially challenged, we lived in the catchment area of my husband's school for 9 months. Amongst other delights we had fireworks thrown at the house (very scary I can assure you) and kids knocking on the door on a Sunday demanding help with homework or the return of confiscated items. My husband had to repeatedly change the routes by which he walked the dogs to avoid malevolent gangs of disaffected history students, and, to this day, nine years after leaving that school, there are pubs in his old catchment area he wouldn't go in for fear of meeting certain ex-pupils. We lived in his catchment area rather than mine because his was the 'nicer' one. This is why most teachers do not live near their school! This is a news story from my catchment area around the time we started teaching. Would you live there?

I always knew that the kids thought we weren't human and that we lived on the premises and the caretaker went down to the cellar every morning to wake us from our coffins, but it amazes me that parents, adults, have so little empathy.

On a rather more praiseworthy note Scott Pack on twitter notes:

Look, it is pointless spending a fortune so that we are prepared for a snowstorm that comes once a decade or so. Just enjoy it.

AND

Nation of fat children? More snow is the answer. The fat buggers are running about all over the place out there.

Hear, hear!

And talking of twitter, you can now follow Juxtabook on twitter too.

Sneezing

Being laid low with the usual winter snuffle, or looking after others laid similarly low, has kept me away from the blogosphere in the last couple of weeks. I hope to resume normal service soon! In the meantime, here a couple of links to some literary news stories that might be of interest...

Firstly, it is getting close to picking the new poet laureate. Apparently the public have a say, which for one awful minute I thought would be some sort of vote and that we'd probably end up with John Sargeant, but it turns out to be just that the Department of Cuture, Media and Sport are happy if people write in to them. Much more civilised. (Simon Armitage! Simon Armitage!) You can read more here.

The other snippet is regarding Carole Ann Duffy's poem Education for Leisure. UK readers may be aware that the poem has been removed from the AQA exam board GCSE syallbus (exams taken by all school children at 16) because if involves a knife crime. Without even getting in to whether or not the exam board should have caved in to three complaints, or whether they made a smart move in the current climate, I would just like to register my bewilderment that AQA have apparently asked schools to destroy the existing in-school copies of the poem. AQA provide schools with free copies of a literature anthology for all students entered for the English or English lit exams. This book is quite a pleasant thing despite its rather academic A4 sized stapled binding, and it is good for kids to have their own copies to keep. Teachers don't have to teach all the poems in the anthology, there is a bit of leeway so staff who felt it was not appropriate could have omitted Duffy from their teaching.

I don't know if AQA mean that all previous editions should be destroyed, or if teachers should go ripping out the poem, but most teachers didn't join up to destroy books, even ones in stapled bindings! The decision to remove doesn't seem terribly wise. Especially as now, with all the publicity, kids can google for the poem and read it online with no adult guidance. In at least 5 years of both teaching the poem and marking the exam I never heard a student get the wrong end of the stick; they all knew the poem made the knife weilding protagonist look like a loser. There were plenty of poems the students did get wrong, and did misunderstand, but this one is quite clear and written in the language of teenage ego about which they are obviously experts. I would have removed the poem too were I in charge, but because I don't think it is particularly good poem, and the students read so few poems that I would have rather taught a better one, but I can't see that it really glamourizes knife crime. The kids think the narrator is an idiot. Better perhaps to have removed it as part of natural cycle of revising the set works when the time came. You can read the story here and also the text of the poem. By the way, one of the three complaints received was not apparently about the knife crime but about the cruelty to goldfish. Don't you just love our culture's priorities! I think that is a darn sight scarier than the poem!

It's that time a year again ... but spare a thought for the examiner

As always at this time of year I spare a thought for the teenagers sitting their exams. I also spare a thought for those families living with teenagers sitting their exams. Lastly, this year, I also spare a thought for those teachers who mark the darn things. I say "this year" as this time is the first time in about a decade that I am not among them. In fact I marked for twice as many years as I taught.

Normally sometime in the last week of May I answer the door to the parcelforce man and take receipt of a quantity of post that reaches from the floor to the middle of my thigh. GCSE English Literature is normally first on the GCSE calendar as it is so complicated to mark, so whilst the candidates are still concentrating on their other subjects English teachers across the country are just settling down to tackle one of the hardest subjects to nail to a specific grade. The candidates sitting the exam for my board answer just two questions, but these answers are essays of literary criticism with all the difficulty in standardisation that that entails.

The good news, if you or child have sat your GCSE English Literature this year, is that the marking system is very impressive. In the first week after receiving 400+ scripts your examiner will read the mark scheme which is a document at least 50 pages long, and which will help them attribute to the right grade to your efforts. They will also check the piles of scripts against the documents from the exam board to ensure that they have all the right essays from the right schools and from the right candidates. Usually one dodo school examiner has sent the wrong tier (GCSE being spilt into Foundation and Higher tiers which are loosely equivalent to the old CSE and O level respectively; I mark the higher tier), or otherwise done something odd with the entries, and now is the time we sort that out and every script ends up exactly where it should be. Then we mark about twenty scripts in pencil as preparation for thinking about the big training day that normally happens in half term.

So it often was, that on the first Tuesday of this half term I would tackle the journey from the Yorkshire Dales to Manchester. Scary traffic - I loath the M60! Meanwhile senior examiners have been discussing the questions and a large sample of the scripts, and then setting the standards. At the training day we are allocated a group where, with up to eight other teachers, we are taught the standard by a senior examiner. We read, mark and discuss, and by the end of the day have just about got it. For the next week we are closely monitored and exchange several selections of scripts with our senior examiner and if you are not getting it right you have to send more of your marked scripts for review. Eventually, about a week after the training day and nearly two weeks after the exam, if the senior staff think you are doing it right you are cleared for take off and get to mark with a red pen. Even then several samples of scripts are sent in the middle of the marking process and at the end. As a teacher marking for the first time you have to under go additional training too, but old hands generally are left to get on with it for a while now. Believe it or not the senior examiners' checking of examiners' work is also monitored from on high, by even more senior examiners endearingly known as "Apes" (assistant principle examiners), above them all sits the Principle Examiner, all cross checking the work like fury.

What amazed me the first time I went to an examiners' standardisation meeting was how convinced the senior examiners were, that despite the difficulties, a universal standard could be found and applied across this difficult, subjective exam. The senior staff were all impressive and convincing. As current or former English teachers, of course, they were highly literate and good communicators; they were also good teachers themselves, usually drawn from senior staff (heads of department or deputy heads). The training on the day left assistant examiners feeling both the weight of the responsibility but also confident that standardisation could be achieved. The sampling and checking of examiner's work, together with clear feedback to the examiner of where faults in the marking might lie, all ensured the standardisation was achieved. It is never 100% accurate of course in a subjective essay based subject, but the procedures are in place to make it as fair as is humanly possible.

So if you have just sat your GCSE English Literature rest assured that the script you handed in is in good hands, and the teacher marking it will be monitored closely.

If you are marking this year for the first time it is a bit daunting, especially if you are a fairly new teacher. Your senior examiner will probably ring you a lot to check you're ok. The first 100 scripts are the worst, followed by the last 100! The middle two hundred, when you've got your eye in, and you are flying along I always enjoyed. Honestly! The kids, even if they have been a pain in the proverbial for their own staff for their entire school career, tend to try hard in exams so you are seeing the best of them. Some of the A and B grade answers will delight you. Even at 10pm after a full day at work and two hours evening marking someone will give you an answer on To Kill a Mocking Bird or Lord of the Flies that will have you re-reading it just for the sheer pleasure of watching someone do something well. Once you get in that last hundred it is hard: end of term, you're tired and want to get it finished but you get there in the end. And from a parent or student point of view, because of this obvious tiredness towards the end of each examiner's work, senior examiners always call in the last 50 scripts from each marker for double checking.

In a few months time each examiner will receive a written report on their marking with a grade (yes, A-E!) on the standard of reliability and accuracy they reached in applying the agreed standards. If you're not good enough you have you won't be asked to mark again. Only examiners who consistently achieve A grades over several consecutive years will be asked to apply for senior examiner roles.

Not all bureaucratic systems work but this one, considering the odds is not bad at all. So as I look towards my first June in ages with no GCSE script marking to do I will think of those tackling the job with a little envy, but also with a little gloat as I relish the rare freedom.