A Letter About Lotsathings

The last few Salients have left various bits and pieces for me as typewriter-fodder, so I shall attempt to exclude the wind from the length. You first. I was appalled by your petty editorial backbiting of John Henderson two issues ago, especially as you had never originally intended to show him your sarcastic commentary. Please make up your mind: either JH writes the Exec. reports and they are taken as Salient reports, or you get someone else to do them and allow JH space for his own interpretation. But it is in the worst taste for a paper to append a public denunciation of a staff member, and in such trite fashion.

Secondly, I have tome comments to make on Swami Pride's letter on the English dept. and exams. I was struck by two things. Firstly, that he weems to agree with everything the Taborns have to offer. Secondly, that his reposte is pure argumentum ad hominem — i.e., What right have you to criticise, you Dirty Little Ratbags, when you Never Did Anything About It? Well, I don't really wish to justify the mute acceptance of the archaic waste of time which is our English degree; I will only say that some like to wage crusades while others find Big Brother just a little too daunting. When I told Stretton towards the end of last year that I intended handing some comments on the course to Mr. McKenzie, the chairman of the English dept., he was quite troubled for my sake. He was convinced that if he told the staff what he thought of the course, then hit non-acceptance would be reflected by harsh marking, by conscious policy or unconscious dislike. They simply did not wish to become matyrs and go home empty-handed for the take of the far-fetched hope of educational changes in the Antipodes.

As for commenting on the course during the year: that's hard, you know, because it hasn't finished, and you always hope that something will turn up. For instance, I had no way of knowing that half-year courses would be so detrimental to producing effective work until I'd been through both of them. I didn't know that some of our end-of-the-year exams were going to be on the third form see-if-I-can-catch-them-out-one with-this-one principle, or the standard English B.A. pure wafflepower paper, until I'd sat them. And sometimes it takes time to think.

All I can say — and JBP appears to be agreeing with me — is that the present English (and other) B.A./M.A. course is a Festering pit of useless knowledge badly taught (in some cases) and even more badly examined (in most cases). I can only, of course, justify the argument with my own case. What have I learnt in four years of ivorytowersville? Like I can cook, screw, talk — shit, I can talk a tutor's legs off, waffle A's in essays — but what have I learnt? I have learn to pass exams That is all. I have learnt to absorb the minimum amount of rubbish required to spew out. I have learnt to choose only the waffly questions because (as you can see), I'm mighty good at waffling. Soon they'll give me a piece of paper which pretends I'm good at something or other, O Christ, here I am a living proof of the failure of the whole damn limiting system I know nothing, fuck you! I've sponged off the Teachers' College for four year with the intention of going lecturing, and laughed my way through twenty-six exam papers because they've never asked me to do anything but waffle. So I look at the whole thing and I think, what right have I got to play this joke on someone else? How do I dare take up a tutorship, on the basis that I can yabber about nothing for longer periods than the average student? So I tell the TColl, that I don't want to go into the College and go lecturing right away; that I want to have a look around the world and get myself an education before I try to palm it off onto someone else. Payback your bond, leave us, we don't want renegades. Why, any fool knows that if you take time off in between your Education and and teaching then you'll forget everything you've learnt in the meantime!

Do I want ray piece of cartridge paper? Oh yes. When Big Brother says, 'you need cartridge paper to get ahead,' clever boy go get cartridge paper. When Big Brother say do it this way; clever boy do it this way. I want my piece of paper because I'm better off with it than without it. Some people would say that's hypocritical but I haven't heard much paper being ripped up lately. But the more people we have with the intellectual honesty to admit that their wall hanging is the ill-gotten gains of a sick society, the reward of a little hard work and a lot of hypocritical arse-licking, then perhaps the more the respective Departments will look for worthwhile substitutes. TColl. is bogged down with us own administrative pettiness; and the page 15 University's Academic Registrar couldn't even add the word 'Linguistics' to an English degree certificate in six Linguistic papers, on the grounds that the course precription didn't say it was Linguistics. And so on.

One final comment. It is wonderful to see a Professor of the English Dept. making the statement: 'There may be some way of publicising the contents of such courses ...' My God: John Pride, don't you have any say in what get publicised? Is it too much to ask each lecturer to write a brief critique of hit course, at Master's level particularly, to be placed in the departmental handbooks which now only give course name, number, and one or two books to read? And (horrors) offer space for interested students to do the same?

Thank you, Auckland and Victoria, for four lovely years at public expense. Shit.