“Sculpture,” I explain to my bewildered undergraduates, “is, er… three-dimensional. Sculptures come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and materials. They can be free-standing, or attached to a larger block of material. And, er…. Cubism, for instance, is influenced by African art, probably. Any questions?”
Armpits clammy with sweat, I look round the class, of whom a worryingly high proportion are just this once hanging onto my every word. Thankfully – probably to spare me further embarrassment – nobody puts up a hand.
“Next week,” I continue, pointing at the screen, “we’ll be looking at – um – classical music from Schubert to – Stravinsky.”
Looking crestfallen, the students pile out, eyes down. Feeling like a fraud, a phoney, I turn off the PC. Why am I here? Which demented HR manager deemed that a freelance hack like me, author of two poorly-selling novels, who visits galleries less frequently than Mecca, could bluff my way through a two-hour lecture about Picasso, Bach and Frank Lloyd Wright, gesticulating wildly like a baboon in a black roll-neck sweater as forty pairs of eyes study me intently like something out of “Children of the Damned”?
I applied for this vacancy on the back of my writing experience, a relevant MA and several dozen gigs at universities nationwide, where I would turn up, talk about my pitiful life then try (and usually fail) to find the union bar. Working to a curriculum, I discovered, is a different beast entirely; every weekend last Semester I was locked in my office frantically googling for information from which to create a Power Point presentation which would look fantastic – if I could get the computers in the lecture halls to work.
Did I say “halls”? This is, after all, a former poly; most of the buildings, strewn across this spectacularly ugly provincial town, separated by Scalextric-like roads without crossings, are modernist glass boxes with poky classrooms crammed with cheap tables and angst-ridden youths who seem to have even less idea than me as to why they are even here.
I might be naive, but I’d hoped that if the raising of student fees was to have any positive impact, it would be to weed out the chaff: to remove those dead-beats trying to get off the dole who filled up my alma mater in the Nineties (I include myself in this category) and ensure all remaining students would be eager, bright, and most important, reverential.
Instead, some of the students appear to have no real interest in journalism whatsoever. One week, I distribute copies of a piece about university libraries by Peter Jones which appeared in The Spectator. The students read the article and a surprising number agree with the sentiment of the piece, if not the tone.
Encouraged, I ask how many read The Spectator.
Nobody puts up their hand.
I ask who has heard of The Spectator.
One solitary girl sticks up an arm – then puts it down again. Out of thirty students, many of them interested in journalism, just one person – maybe – has heard of the world’s oldest magazine. Understanding that The Spectator isn’t necessarily aimed at hoodies with dangerous hair and metal-festooned faces, I ask who regularly buys a newspaper: nobody. Admittedly, a few do skim the headlines on their i-Things before being distracted by Jordan’s pop-ups but that won’t keep the papers going.
Naturally, when you’re a skint student, you have to get your priorities right. Who wants to fork out a quid on a broadsheet when you can read it online and spend the money you saved on cheap alcohol? A few weeks ago an email was sent round warning students about “damaging cars, urinating/defecating in the streets or being abusive to anyone who challenges this behaviour”; apparently the union bar some nights resembles a cross between a Millwall-Cardiff cup tie and the first twenty minutes of “Saving Private Ryan”.
This came as a bit of a surprise. Students are now paying so much for the privilege of listening to me blagging my way through the history of modern dance I’m amazed they have any money left for booze. Anyway all the kids in my classes seem well-spoken, polite, even timid; it’s hard to imagine any of them having an overdue library book, let alone defecating on cars.
Many of these students are bright, witty and can write brilliantly; I feel a bit of an imposter teaching the basics of writing reviews when I specialise in investigative features. Why am I being employed to teach on subjects about which I know very little and in some cases absolutely nothing? Don’t they deserve better?
Some, perhaps; but for every brilliant student who studies hard, has original ideas and knows where to stick an apostrophe, there’s another who misses lectures, never raises their arm and has virtually no understanding of grammar, punctuation or composition.
Or sentence structure.
Of the sixty or so submissions I marked over Christmas, around half achieved Firsts or Upper Seconds; the other half fell a long way short. If, rather than fees being raised, the number of students was cut in half, perhaps standards would rise even higher. Whose idea was it that fifty per cent of the population should attend university?
From my brief exposure to academic life, it does seem fairly certain that higher fees are resulting in fewer young people from deprived or ethnic backgrounds feeling confident enough to apply. Almost all of my students were white and from the south of England; many still lived at home, which seems rather sad when one considers that student life is all about striking out, making one’s way in the world.
Besides: if students (and their families) are now paying such vast amounts for their education, why are they so skint? Several of mine couldn’t even afford the books on the reading list, or to print out essays in the University library. If we’re going to make them pay for these all-too brief university years until their grandchildren’s dotage, couldn’t we at least ensure they have enough to live on while studying?
Still – sod them. If you think students have it hard, spare a thought for lecturers.
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