(Jan. 31, 2000) Carey Perloff, the director of the American Conservatory Theater, also directed their production of The Invention of Love, which seems particularly apt, since she herself was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. The pamphlet, Words on Plays, for sale in the lobby contains a bushel basket of fascinating information, from Tom Stoppard, the play’s author, from Perloff, the director, and from the program which accompanied the premier in London.

I was struck, while reading an interview with Perloff in this pamphlet, by her brief discussion of education:

“What is education for? It its goal to make you see Platonic human goodness and to understand humanity philosophically, or to equip you to actually do something in the world? An Oxford education equipped you to do nothing, and yet it was your entrée into everything. Proponents of Oxford and Cambridge despised practical education. They still do. They’re incredibly arrogant about anything that might have a tinge of practical application.

I think that’s why many people in England now avoid that approach, and are going to other universities, because the Oxford system just seems so out of touch. It was particularly disastrous in the sciences; Cambridge eventually realized that and is much better scientifically now. But smart British graduate students tend to go to the United States to study science, whereas those who want to study PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) or classics go to Oxford. Because I have always loved rarified education and knowledge for its own sake, I always thought the Oxford approach was wonderful, but I never did any education that was practically useful anyway.”

As most of you know, I attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which, along with Stanford, is designated a “near Ivy” for many purposes, including joint admission and financial aid decisions. But the fact is that many faculty and students at Ivy league schools look at MIT as a “trade school,” while many MIT people view Ivy League schools (esp. the one just up the river) as “a waste of time.” Certainly, MIT made every effort to give me a practical education.

If I knew then what I know now, I’d have embraced a liberal arts education, and I’m pleased Marlow’s getting one at Columbia University and Rae is likely to get one. Since we have no idea what the future will hold, it is probably best to educate our young people to educate themselves, to think critically, and to understand the past as a guide to future. I don’t really believe human nature has changed since ancient Greece, do you?

Bottom line: I think the Oxford model is a fine one. We could use more of it in this country.

For a second opinion, I called on my friend Brian Jefferies, an ex-pat Brit of 20 years duration, and a graduate of Saint Catharine’s college at Cambridge.

I can’t really speak for Oxford, except to say that we always regarded the quality of its thought to be that which one would expect from a university located next to a large car factory (the British Leyland plant – it may be gone now). Not very practical. It would typically require at least five Oxford graduates to screw in a light bulb – four to determine its essence, and one to call the janitor. Assuming, of course, that you could find an Oxford grad who grasped the principles of electric illumination in the first place.

But the comments about Cambridge are unfair. There were always many different cultures among the students. One was as she described. But there were also good faculties for science, engineering, architecture and other more practical pursuits, along with some very good work on mathematics, computer science and economics. Cambridge was, and to my knowledge, still is strong in such areas as theoretical physics and biology.

Graduate students tend to go to the United States because the U.S. faculties are generally much better at applied science, particularly the experimental side. I guess it has something to do with American know-how. Also, American universities have more money to do experiments with, and their technology and computer skills are far superior.

You may consider me biased. I, after all, graduated from a college whose main claims to fame were that it fielded no less than three rugby teams, and had the highest consumption of Newcastle Brown Ale of any institution outside Newcastle. There were other colleges and faculties that dealt with man’s higher nature. These included many fine and intelligent people, not all of whom were homosexuals.

Seriously, though, one of the greatest benefits of Cambridge was that you could live in either of these worlds. You could attend lectures, join discussions, whatever, in any discipline. In an average week you could learn about radio astronomy, great feats of bridge-building, 19th century rural demographics, post-existentialist theater, essential themes in pre-Socratic philosophy, and the basic principles of organizing a coup d’etat. (The radio astronomy course was particularly popular, not least because it always started with a lecture awesomely titled “The Universe in General”. Also, I am not joking about the coup d’etat course – the army cadets loved it, and would spend many long, happy hours discussing which trades union leaders to arrest first).

You had to do some work on your major from time to time, of course. But in retrospect, it was all of this overlap that made attending Cambridge a worthwhile experience. I don’t know if the atmosphere is quite the same in American universities, but somehow I doubt it.

I don’t wish to be unkind to Carey Perloff, but her comments about Oxford say a great deal more about the people she cared to associate with than they do about the English education system in general, or Oxford and Cambridge in particular. I am sorry she did not get to meet the other thousands of students and faculty who make up 99% of both.

(Feb. 2, 1999)

Speaking of the parallels between the turns of this century and the turn of the last, a consultant friend of mine, former Labor party worker and now expatriate Brian Jeffries, wrote about the Standard Oil case while he was a student at Cambridge. In the 1980s, he used to talk and write about the uncanny parallels between Standard Oil and IBM. At that time, he said, corporate structure had outrun the government’s ability to control or regulate it, but with the victory in the Standard Oil case, the government re-asserted its authority. In the case of IBM, after 13 years of a trial gone mad, the government caved in and settled. It looks like the outcome will be different this time.