Not quite. But I am almost tempted to write, "not far off".
A C Grayling's Among The Dead Cities is a must-read. And he is absolutely right about the social, cultural and political damage done by the marginalisation of the humanities. There is also an economic case to be made, although I fully agree that it should not be central to the argument. It is very telling that he has signed up Richard Dawkins, even if it is just as telling that he will be teaching at a humanities-only college. See what I have been saying for some years about him and his scientific credentials.
However, this is not really the time for that. In principle, the New School of the Humanities is a good idea, even if its approach so militantly secular as to exclude any study of the Bible in fact subverts its own secularism, and even if it does seem a shame that it is admitting undergraduates straight onto Single Honours courses instead of offering something like an Ivy League a four-year AB. One trusts that the qualification awarded in addition to one's London BA will be election to Associateship of the College, in the best traditions of the University of London. But, alas, how long will its stellar faculty stick around to do intensive undergraduate teaching, however good the money is?
This institution is fundamentally a good idea in the way that the English Baccalaureate is fundamentally a good idea, although both are also sad signs of the times. Why are they necessary? Why are these things not already happening? Blame That Woman and her replacement of O-levels with GCSEs. Blame her, not least, for the backgrounds from which the NCH would have had to have admitted its earliest students even without the fees.
As William Oddie sets out at some length in the latest edition of Faith, Catholic RE, at least, does not currently deserve inclusion; the effect on things like Music is far more to be regretted. But Andy Burnham, with his English degree from Cambridge, cannot possibly agree with those who say that pupils ought to be filling up what is now the extremely short school day with Domestic Violence Studies or whatever instead of "dead languages". He should say so.
Saying so could only come from the Left, and especially from the non-metropolitan Labour Movement, in the way that the foundation of the New College of the Humanities could only have come from the Left, at least broadly conceived.
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The NCH will a college staffed by the leading lights of new atheism with a neo conservative as the head of history, that will select students from the narrow pool of the wealthy. And David Lindsay is for it. The mind boggles.
ReplyDeleteI am sorry that they thought of it first. But they did. It is, if nothing else, an invitation to other people to see it and raise it.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to hear that some of the law faculty aren't exactly experts in any of the seven core aspects of the the LLB. The same applies to Dawkins - he's a fine populariser of science and did some useful work in the 70s. But he's not been a scientist for decades now and is pretty much as far from the cutting edge of research in evolutionary biology as I am. If they wanted world leading researchers to contribute, they'd go for a Michael Lynch or a Richard Lenski or a Joe Thornton. Instead, they've gone for a celebrity. For £18,000 a year I'd expect much much better.
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