{Academic Relevance}[19th May 1968]

[Redbook1:49][19680519:2100]{Academic Relevance}[19th May 1968][Age 16]

Sunday 19th May

9.00 p.m.

            I spent all of today working, but I shan’t finish in time for the 4 essays tomorrow. I haven't a hope – another ‘E' or ‘F’ (nil) grade, I expect. My study-companion's radio has just been playing Elgar's P. and C. March No.1 -- Land of Hope and Glory. We ridicule them now, but there's no doubt that those Victorians had the right ideas. The fantastic optimism that shines through -- it's marvellous. Oh, why wasn't I born 100 years ago? One didn't have to work nearly so hard for these awful exams, either: I would do all those creative things that I want to do, instead of swotting away like this. It was intelligence, not memory, that they were after then -- intelligence to rule the colonies, etc. Today, 'A' levels want intelligence, but they also want a superb memory -- and I simply haven't got the right sort of memory for e.g. figures of price rises and dates. I can remember photographically (e.g. geography), and I can remember theories, but I cannot remember easily dates and so on. Then it didn't matter -- now it does. All I would ask is this: What use is memory of the date of Charlemagne’s second conquest of the Saxons going to be to the head of an industrial combine? Won't the sort of mentality that, given all the facts and figures before his eyes, can decide why Charlemagne conquered the Saxons when he did, be more use in this sort of business? But firms like good 'A' levels before they take you in.

            Luckily, I have all the qualifications for law school -- where I intend to go eventually -- to get in already; but university, particularly Oxbridge, is a prestige symbol that I feel I must get.

            My chief worry is that the most creative period of my life is being wasted. As I work my head brims with ideas; I feel that if I squash them too often, they will stop coming.

            Should we follow the French students’ example and secure -- perhaps not so violently -- abolition of the exam system?

[PostedBlogger29092012]