1980s Chairing an Examination Board

The university offers a shortened Bachelor’s course to a cohort of students who arrive for two years from an African country. The country is not one of the more corrupt and the students appear to be selected as those who will return and catalyse improvements in the nation’s educational system. I’m not sure that our course tutors have been selected on any such optimistic basis. Whatever, this year it’s my turn to chair the Examination Board which will confirm degree classes. I have never met any of the students who await their fate. 

All students are assessed exclusively on written course-work; there are no final examinations. As anyone who has been in the trade will know, averaged marks cluster heavily in the middle. The results I am looking at are no exception. Unless I am missing something, twenty three students will get Lower Seconds and one a Third. I could say something to the effect that tutors on the course should be advised to make use of the full range of percentage marks available to them but it will be water off a duck’s back. I look again at the figures; they are averaged to two decimal points. I see a ray of hope for one student.

An administrator sits beside me, there to advise in case of doubt. This one is a very nervous person and has to be approached cautiously. I use the technique of looking over the top of my glasses, like a friendly GP, to ask Is it in the Regulations that we average to two decimal places? Panic stations, riffling through paperwork, a terrified response I don’t think so.

I look at the members of the Board and the External Examiner. Can we just go through, and reduce to one decimal point? At the head of the list the only candidate with some kind of 59 goes up from 59.46 to 59.5 without mathematical disagreement but like everyone else Ms X does not break through the threshold of 60 to qualify for an Upper Second.

I turn to the course leader and ask whether he can tell us anything about Ms X. She’s the best student we’ve ever had on the course comes the reply. I turn to the External Examiner who opines, I was given one of her essays in the sample of  work, and it was clearly better than many of the others. I remain calm.

I turn my gaze back to the administrator, Is there anything to stop us rounding percentages to eliminate decimal points? The administrator is alarmed because, alarmingly, there is nothing in the paperwork to prohibit this. Let’s start from the bottom of the list this time. We do so. The Third class degree is in no danger of turning into a Lower Second; none of the Lower Seconds risk promotion until we get to the top and are looking at 59.5. 

My last call to the Administrator can be imagined; I then put it to the board, Would the Board be happy if we rounded 59.5 up rather than down? There is no dissent and even the Administrator is on board now. Well, then, with your agreement that’s what I shall do. Is there any other business?

1976 or 1977 Love in the Mist at Broadmoor Hospital

 

I’m living in Reading with my partner and we’ve been invited to attend a performance in the theatre at Broadmoor by someone working there. Broadmoor is a high-security hospital whose inmates are those who have been deemed criminally insane after committing some very serious crime or crimes or those  whose psychotic mental health problems cannot be managed in regular mental hospitals, let alone everyday contexts.

But some inmates or patients will be rehabilitated, in stages. I don’t know how many. Broadmoor has separate wings for males and females - many of the males will have committed offences against women - but those who are moving towards release are allowed to mix under supervision. One of the places they mix is the theatre, apparently famous and certainly large, where inmates of the asylum at Broadmoor perform for invited audiences.

We are going to see Love in the Mist, a romantic comedy, which definitely allows for mixing of the sexes. In fact, as it turns out, rather too much: there are clearly moments where an on-stage theatrical  kiss on the sofa turns into a  very real kiss. The off-stage director (a member of staff not an inmate) has to call out from the wings for the actors to get on with the play.

And I suppose it does get on because there is an interval and trustee inmates from the theatre cast and production team are allowed, under close supervision, to mix in the foyer with guests. If I recall correctly, there are soft drinks but no alcohol. The Broadmoor patients do not wear name badges and so my partner and I leave the show not knowing whether we have been talking to arsonists, murderers, rapists, or whatever else it is that can earn you a place in Broadmoor. But it’s not easy to gain admittance, that we know

1997 Taking a Photograph in Kyiv's Besarabsky Market

 

I was in Kyiv for a week in 1997, hosted by a local family living in the suburbs. I had come as a stamp dealer, hoping to buy material at the weekly meeting of the collectors' club.To get to the local Metro station by the shortest route, you walked along the tracks of the main overground railway line and simply stepped to one side when you saw a train approaching or heard one behind you. I always carried a Pentax SLR back then and took many black and white photographs in the city streets but also inside the central covered market in Kyiv, the Besarabsky.

 An old man who could have been a war veteran or just someone with a hard life came up and pointed to himself to indicate that he wanted his photograph taken.  I moved close and raised my camera but he gestured with a line across his waist - he wanted a half-portrait. I moved back and knelt on the ground. He crossed his hands in front, shopping bag dangling. My student interpreter asked for his address so that he could be sent a print but he waved the request aside and walked off. He hangs now in the hallway of my flat, the first photograph on the walls as you enter.

1976 Discos at South Reading Youth Club

 

In January 1976 I began work as a Grade something-or-other (Four?) Youth and Community Worker attached to the South Reading Youth and Community Centre. The Centre was a 1930s affair built at the same time as the Whitley council estate and now reserved for adults; I was in charge of the adjacent Youth Club housed in a war-time, breeze-block former British Restaurant over-ripe for demolition. I lasted nine months in what was the last job-but-one which I sought from a sense of social commitment or obligation. (A little over a decade later I put up my hand to direct the University of Sussex’s secondary PGCE course, a post to which negative academic kudos attached. South Reading successfully killed off perverse choices in the interim).

At first interview I got the support of the paid council officer in charge of Reading’s youth work but was objected to by the local Labour councillor on the panel. But somehow she was persuaded to interview again and this time I was accepted. Throughout my nine months I was well-supported both by that officer and by my immediate boss who ran the Community centre, both mid-career male professionals. The Centre employed two caretakers, older local men who did things, including their time-sheets, as they liked to do them and I was later told had taken bets on how long it would be before I got beaten up. It’s plausible. The Whitley Estate was almost-all white and  old-style working class; it provided the local newspaper with most of its copy for the Your Neighbour in Court page.

My chief responsibility was to “run” the Youth Club in the evenings, a task more simply described as opening the doors to all comers. For some unknown-to-me reason the upper age limit for admission was set at 21 which meant that those who came through the door included those who had been banned from local pubs which admitted at 18 or, in practice, whatever you self-identified as.

Equipment was in short supply, sometimes vandalised or stolen. There were no organised activities. It seemed to me that girls were completely marginalised and I persuaded the neighbouring secondary school to offer girls’ gymnastics one evening per week. It worked. Gymnastics was popular, a popularity enhanced by Nadia Comaneci’s “Perfect 10” at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Over time, I organised other activities: visits to the town-centre swimming pool, coach trips to pop concerts.

There were repeated request for discos. Why can’t we have them? So I asked my boss,Why can’t they have them? Well, he said, they evade paying admission, they bring in alcohol, fights break out, and equipment gets stolen. And, he might have added, they won’t take a blind bit of notice of you. Do you think you could  pick any of them up by the scruff of the neck?

That gave me an idea. Clearly, all I needed was a Bouncer. Someone who was large, strong, and able to command respect. There was someone who fitted the bill. I was picking up local knowledge and had heard his name mentioned by boys in the club; they were clearly in awe  of him because he had once led a local gang (named after a road on the estate so I don’t give it in case I cause reputational damage). But when I met him - I think he looked into the Club one evening to appraise me - I found him likeable and thoughtful. I also discovered that he was retired from his previous role terrorising the neighbourhood. He was going steady with a girl and was very keen that it should work out. I guess he was in his early or mid-twenties.

I approached him to ask if he was interested, He was. And he proved an excellent choice. As a result of his Presence (and he really was very tall and very broad) admission money was paid, everyone behaved and if, occasionally, they didn’t he was firm but completely unflustered in dealing with it. I paid him cash in hand out of the door money and it’s possible that I did not explain this arrangement to my boss. But he was pleased that I was satisfying local demand.

I googled but couldn’t find the Bouncer, though I may have found his son in Your Neighbour in Court.

1971-72 The Seminar of Dr Lacan

 

An “O” level in French dated 1962 and no subsequent study of the language would hardly equip me for graduate studies in Paris ten years’ later and so, after being awarded a Leverhulme studentship for study there, I spent the summer of 1971 attending full-time at the Alliance Française on the Boulevard Raspail. The teaching methods were traditional and effective but I was hardly fluent by the end, either as speaker or writer..

Nonetheless, I composed a letter to Jacques Lacan. It was handwritten and I don’t have a copy, though I recall writing about my interest in Althussser, oblivious of Lacan’s own connections.

I had bought a collection of Lacan’s writings and had heard of his seminar. But I understood “seminar” in the English sense as something which at most twenty people might attend, so I wrote seeking permission to be one of them. In reply, I got a hand-written letter ( in front of me now and dated 14 XI 71) giving me the details of the seminar which would re-commence on the 8^th December in Amphitheatre II of the old Law faculty in the Place du Panthéon. In addition, he was to give a one-off lecture in the chapel of Saint Anne on 4^th December at 21 heures 15 - arrive early, he added, because it will be crowded. Finally, should I wish to meet, he had alerted his secretary - the letter gave a telephone number.

I made my way to Saint Anne for the crowded lecture and a few days later to the first, equally crowded “seminar”. There were hundreds of us. A little late, Lacan entered stage left in full-length fur coat, behind him a young woman who assisted with the coat, draped it over her arm, and left. I was sitting next to an American student and I think it was she who pointed to the front row of the lecture theatre which was populated by stylishly and indeed flamboyantly dressed young women. It’s rumoured that they are paid to sit there.

I duly noted that fact and on my way to the second “seminar” the following week paused to buy two buttonhole flowers. I sat next to the American once again and presented her with an orchid to match my own. We should join in the spirit of the thing.

Early 1970s GCHQ Old Style Recruitment Methods

 

In retrospect, it looks like desperation. Living near Exeter with no affiliation to the university, I have somehow got myself an interview with its Careers Adviser - the exact job-title escapes me. I’m a bit at a loss. I’m taking jobs out of a sense of social obligation and/or political commitment and I’m quitting them at an alarming rate: between autumn 1972 and year-end 1975 I go through three jobs with illness (hepatitis), casual employment as a waiter, and signing on for benefits in between. I need to get my act together though it’s true that in summer 1975 I do self-publish a book (Language, Truth ad Politics) which is widely reviewed and sells well. Still…

I present the Careers Adviser with my rather alarming CV and answer questions. He pauses. Have you got time to sit a little examination? Basically, it’s an IQ test and you will have thirty minutes to complete. You can do it in that room over there - he points to the corner of the room. Well, I suppose it has to be In for a Penny, In for a Pound so I oblige, emerging from the room before the thirty minutes are up to hand in my work. The Adviser scores it in front of me and it seems I pass  - and for the first time since the 11+  though I have never been told my IQ or sought to find out. I’m sure it’s lower than I like to think.

Then he reaches down to one of his drawers and pulls out a little pamphlet and hands it to me, Might this interest you? I read the words GCHQ Cheltenham - Government Communications Headquarters and browse through to give myself time to find an answer. There is a very small temptation to say O, yes, golly! and a larger sense of embarrassment. I don’t want to make this man who has been generous with his time look foolish. As far as I can imagine (based on the one friend I have who did try to join the Intelligence services) I would be weeded out at a very early stage.It's not on my CV that I'm some kind of student or ex-student radical or anarchist who has been present at demonstrations etc etc and not only that (which might be forgiven) but also omitted is the fact that my friendship or comradeship circle includes or has in the very recent past included people who have been or soon will be on the front page of newspapers, starting I suppose with Dr Rose Dugdale. I acted as her MacKenzie Friend ( her lay legal adviser) during her 1973 trial at Exeter Crown Court of which maybe more some other time. 

So I make an excuse and leave. From reading in later years, I learnt that Careers Advisers in provincial universities with a conservative and rather public school ethos (Bristol, Durham, Exeter) were often sought out by the Intelligence services as potential recruiters. Perhaps even more so after some of those recruited by the old methods from Oxford and Cambridge had let down their country so spectacularly. Nowadays, the Services advertise openly which seems a much more sensible approach. 

In the end, after one more disastrous attempt at socially engaged work as a Youth Worker on an old-style white working class council estate in Reading, I make the decision to get myself  a graduate degree and squeeze my way back into university life. 

1975 Free Speech in a Cornish Comprehensive School

 

The school leaving age has been raised to sixteen and across England there are some rather aggrieved pupils who started secondary school in expectation of leaving at fifteen. I’ve accepted a job to teach them, starting January 1975, but at least the school is in deepest Cornwall where everyone is supposedly more genial than in the big cities. I teach some History up to GCSE level but my main task is to engage the reluctant fifteen to sixteen year olds to whom I offer recently-invented Social Studies. Unfortunately, the raising of the  leaving age has obliged schools to erect portable and supposedly temporary cabins for use as overflow classrooms and I spend a lot of time in one.

It’s a wet cold day and the windows of the temporary classroom are steamed up. Today’s topic is Free Speech and Toleration - the latter a word which I soon discover is unknown to my pupils to whom I am trying to explain the basic ideas of John Stuart Mill,  that you should be free to say what you like so long as it does not harm others.

Roy has outgrown being a boy and school takes him away from the job he wants to be doing. Large and genial but occasionally disruptive, he is sitting by the window, seemingly interested in what is happening on the other of the condensation. But then I realise he is writing something and the words are clear enough

ALL TEACHERS ARE WANKERS

Other pupils have now followed the line of my gaze and await my response. I see a perfect opportunity: this is a test case for John Stuart Mill’s ideas. It’s an expression of an opinion but it doesn’t harm anyone and so there is no good case for banning it or punishing Roy. What do you think?

Roy shifts in his seat, rubs out the word ALL and above it writes into the condensation SOME.