09 March 2017
Oxford – An Education For The Feeble Minded?
Safe spaces scores should sort the sheep from the goats.
By Chin Chin
We all like reading about witchcraft and that is one of the main reasons why, when I saw that Michael Gove’s article Silencing dissent will blight our universities in Friday’s The Times dealt with the exotically named Heterodox Academy, I poured myself a glass of wine and locked the door before sitting down to enjoy it. What a disappointment. No human sacrifices, not even chaps in fancy dress standing with drawn swords, just a US based group concerned that political correctness is stifling academic progress. Obviously they are right about that and we hardly needed Mr Gove’s revelation that some Oxford colleges have a diversity officer, a Ko-Ko like don with a little list on which he inscribes the names of all those who “show disrespect towards minorities or create a climate in which an individual might feel their dignity infringed”, to persuade us of the point. Less obvious of course is whether it is a good thing.
The practice of stifling new ideas to preserve an established orthodoxy has a long and honourable history. Galileo was forced to recant by the Church, and Darwin postponed the publication of The Origin of Species so long out of deference to established religion that someone else nearly got in first. None of it made any difference in the end. As well try to hold back the tides as to suppress advances in scientific thought, but at least it gave those who were really at the cutting edge the opportunity to suffer a bit which makes the story of scientific advance a little more entertaining.
It is always reassuring to see the way in which academia moves about 20 years behind the times so that at the very moment when the public is rebelling against the discipline imposed by political orthodoxy the universities move in exactly the opposite direction. If we have a political clampdown, the universities will, no doubt, wonder why it happened and begin to campaign for the right of minorities to speak out. More important, however, is the interaction between the diversity officer culture and university fees.
The imposition of tuition fees has changed the relationship between universities and their undergraduates. In the good old days it was all free and you got the form of tuition which the university thought best. Of course this sometimes went too far and students rebelled against the quality of courses, standards of accommodation and on behalf of all the other causes dear to the post-teenage heart. Nonetheless the general pattern was of the university on one side dispensing discipline and structure and the students on the other, generally resisting it.
The fees have changed all that. Students are now in the position of any other consumer and the fact that they are buying a service gives them the right to see that the service is of the quality which they expect. They are thus entitled to protest if courses are not good enough or if they are not given the opportunity to enjoy them in the manner which they reasonably expected. Now here we come to a problem. Suppose that a university stifles debate by excluding those with contentious views. Students who paid their money to learn at the cutting edge of new thought will clearly have been swindled. Suppose, on the other hand, that the institution goes back to the old system of providing a platform to speakers of all views provided that they keep within the law. Then the theory of natural selection of ideas dictates that academic standards will be higher but that is hard on those who paid their fees in the expectation of a diet of reality TV fed to them in well-heated safe spaces. What to do? You cannot please both lots.
There is only one answer to this. We need to divide our universities between those offering a free debate and those offering political correctness, perhaps with a graduated scale giving a safe spaces score (“SSS”). Then you could choose the right sort of university for a child in much the same way as you might try to find the right sort of the school.
“Tommy is a bit of a free spirit. He’s always causing trouble and is clearly very bright. I think he needs to go to university with a low SSS. The general banter and throwing about of ideas will suit him well.
Now Freddie is quite different. He always takes things seriously. I think it’s his way of trying to keep up with his brother. Yes, perhaps somewhere with a high SSS for him, somewhere where he can sit in a safe space complaining about the misbehaviour of other people. That should play to his strengths.”
Of course, it doesn’t stop there. It isn’t just students who need to have an appreciation of a university. Employers need to know how to assess the degrees. Let us suppose that it is the Army and they are looking for officers to serve in the SAS. What do they want? Well: realism, mental toughness, openness to the unconventional. There’s no point them looking for these in universities with a high SSS score. Those are exactly the qualities which will be discouraged. Then suppose it is a rail union and they want someone who won’t shift an inch on the question of who closes the doors. How do you fight that sort of campaign? You need to have a lot of respect for precedent and the ability to traduce your opponents, if necessary, on the basis of irrelevancies. There we go. A high SSS score man to a T. You should find him at Oxford or Sussex.
Diversity is about celebrating differences. You cannot do that unless you encourage those differences and see them clearly. We also need those differences to be properly recognised so perhaps the SSS of the institution conferring a degree should be added into the degree title. It is only then that we will all know who we are dealing with. Away with one nation, let us celebrate the differences between individuals and hone them through our tertiary education system.
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