I remember I remember learning to learn. In 1974 teaching in Ruskin College was mainly through tutorials. You had to write a weekly essay and read it out at a tutorial. But only subjects were taught, there was no study skills support. You had to learn how to write an essay through writing an essay and responding to your Tutor’s comments. In my first term I had social history with Raph for four weeks and then four weeks of political history with Victor Treadwell. I was used to writing but I found it was not easy to write an essay. I struggled into the early hours before my first tutorial, but Raph praised my essay highly. He was very sympathetic and supportive and I am grateful that, in that first term, he sent us to the Bodleian to look at primary sources – Mass Observation reports from the 1930s on working class holiday customs. By the third essay I thought his praise was a bit over the top, I couldn’t believe I had cracked it so early in my first term. Vic was scathing about my first essay for him. I was still writing from an ideological perspective – that’s what I was used to doing – but he wanted evidence and logical analysis. It was like a douche of cold water and I responded by trying to follow his advice. By the end of that term I had convinced him that I was not the narrow minded ideologue he had assumed and then he warmed to me. I far preferred Vic’s blunt criticism to Raph’s quiet nudges and I discovered that my enthusiasm was for political history, not social history. By the end of that first term I had grasped that writing an essay required adopting a proper structure and assessing evidence. I had to put aside what I wanted to be true and to write about what the evidence indicated. I was writing to learn, not to convince the entire world to rise in revolt. A number of students didn’t like Vic because he was distant and had scant patience for anyone who didn’t want to learn. They thought he was reactionary and that he was trying to undermine the purity of their class consciousness. I understood that he didn’t care what they believed, he only wanted evidence that they were learning. But they thought that education ought to confirm their beliefs, not challenge them. They were determined to resist his attempts to win them over to the ideas of the ruling class. All this was brought home to me after a student led seminar which brought together the first and second years. Someone read a paper about how the philosopher Jeremy Bentham had been responsible for the cruelties of the New Poor Law of 1843, with its Workhouses and its harrying of the unemployed. Vic tore it to pieces and his criticisms did not go down well. Afterwards one of the second year students furiously attacked me, I was a leading member of the International Marxist Group and I had stood aside and allowed reaction to be preached without saying anything. I was nonplussed, I couldn’t see how was supposed to refute Vic, I had never heard of Bentham or the Poor Law before in my life. My critic was very posh, she was a devout Maoist and she was the wife of David Selbourne, who had already alienated me with his propagandist lectures on political theory. In my second year I had to take a non-history subject, I chose the one that was most historical – history of political thought. My Tutor was Paul Brodetsky a thoroughly nice, gentle, man. He got me to read L. Susan Stebbings’ little book, Thinking to Some Purpose. It coursed through my mind like Harpic going round the bend, blasting away my bad mental habits and leaving my logical processes shining and clean. I then proceeded to read the works of the great political philosophers and here my experience of Marxism helped, I was already used to following through abstract arguments and I was fascinated by ideas. I was a bit uncomfortable, in my Scottish Presbyterian way, because I found it easy. I had become used to scouring through a pile of history books, to pull together a range of evidence about a problem. But with political theory I found that the commentaries were repeating each other and telling me little I hadn’t already gleaned from the original texts. I had a natural ability for the subject, but I preferred, and I still prefer, the hard evidential basis of history to the elegance of abstract ideas. I find that history is harder work and I am working class, and the son of a skilled craftsman. In my third term I did British Political History Since 1830 with Vic. It confirmed my preference for political over social history and laid down a solid basis of knowledge for my future studies. By this time Vic understood that I was a serious and self-critical student so he became an enthusiastic and endlessly supportive teacher to whom I owe a lot. And I now had a basis on which to judge my own abilities, I left Oxford for Kirkcaldy having made three decisions. I was going to university, I was going to get a PhD and I was going to get a job teaching in higher education. I was fully aware that it would take a lot of time and effort. But I was confident that, with persistence, I could do it.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 12:14:46 +0000
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