Two kinds of don
From Joseph Palley
Sir: Boris Johnson laments the declining quality of British universities, with growth in student numbers outpacing funding (‘Farewell to the Young Ones’, 27 May). The problem is not just financial but cultural. It has always been assumed that university lecturers, as good teachers, will automatically be good researchers. This false assumption was less damaging 50 years ago, when only a small, self-confident number of school-leavers, better prepared for self-study, went on to university. As staff-student ratios worsen and universities concentrate on research to attract funding, the trend is towards more teaching by postgraduate students, assistant lecturers and part-timers.
Surely lecturers entering the profession for the first time should now have to pass a one-year postgraduate certificate of education teaching qualification? Beyond this, universities should follow Cardinal Newman’s recommendation of a separate career track for gifted lecturers who prefer teaching to research.
Joseph Palley
Richmond, Surrey
From Prof. Geoffrey Sampson
Sir: Boris Johnson’s figures considerably understate the fall in dons’ pay. He also misses the point that unilateral action by senior university managers has converted us from independent professionals into operatives required to work to the detailed instructions of people who, often, could not begin to do our jobs. And, to be blunt, we have become used to our employers lying to us; most recently in reporting what the Commons education select committee said to them when it asked to hear their side of the current dispute last week.
Nobody calls me a leftie beardo and lives to tell the tale — I happen to be a devout Thatcherite. I do not like what our exam boycott is doing to students. But while it is the only means we have of applying pressure to our employers (which it is), I intend to continue boycotting until the employers give serious ground.
Geoffrey Sampson
Uckfield, E. Sussex
Our party piece
From Alex Bannister
Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 27 May) should perhaps have checked with his fellow Telegraph columnists before launching into his latest diatribe against the Daily Mail. He attacks our report on the Beckhams’ World Cup party for being inaccurate before spitting out a whole series of inaccuracies himself. Chief among these was the bizarre claim that ‘there was no rain at all’. Our reporter was drenched for six and half hours out of the seven he spent there.
He goes on to pull us up for reporting that Gordon Ramsay was suffering from a ‘crippling injury’, saying that he was dancing ‘energetically without limping’. How strange. Ramsay had to withdraw from training for his charity football game because he was so badly injured. Besides, his Telegraph colleague Hilary Alexander certainly seems to side with us. She reported the following morning that Gordon Ramsay was ‘hobbling around with a knee the size of a watermelon’.
I could go on to defend the other claims in our piece, but the point is made. Even a novice journalist knows that if he wants to attack a fellow journalist on grounds of accuracy, he should take care to be accurate himself.
Alex Bannister
Daily Mail, London W8
Amnesty and abortion
From Kate Allen
Sir: The debate on abortion is a difficult one to have (‘If Amnesty declares the “right to kill”, it will kill itself’, 27 May), but, with proponents of differing views invoking human rights in their arguments, it’s not surprising that Amnesty International should debate how it should respond.
One of the many strengths of Amnesty is that this debate will involve members here in the UK and in more than 70 national sections and structures around the world, with decisions eventually being taken by representatives of our 1.8 million members in democratic structures such as Amnesty’s ‘parliament’ — the International Council Meeting.
Consultation within Amnesty International isn’t about to close. Indeed, the motion passed decisively at the UK section’s AGM in April also called for consultation to continue over the next year. For that reason, I’ll leave my response to Simon Caldwell’s very personal viewpoint there and instead encourage our members to continue the discussion.
Kate Allen
Director, Amnesty International UK,
London EC2
Ignorance was bliss
From John Bunyard
Sir: Rod Liddle’s attribution of unhappiness to a surfeit of choice (‘Profusion of choice makes us unhappy’, 27 May) is imaginative, if difficult to prove empirically: those who lived through the no-choice command economy of the Soviet Union can attest that it was no barrel of laughs. The truth is that there is no single explanation for today’s unhappiness. One underdiscussed but important contributor, however, is the psychological effect of the proliferation of broadcast media.
The world of 50 years ago — with which today’s comparisons are made — was one where the majority of Westerners could spend the greater part of their lives receiving only reinforcement of their beliefs, whether affirmatively (patriotism, family, church, monarchy) or negatively (communism, sexual deviancy, atheism). Such a situation was propitious for primate brains, in which reinforcement is a chemical matter. Exposure to conflicting beliefs on an hourly basis by courtesy of the satellite has changed all that. The unhappy reality of Mandelson, Mugabe, Rumsfeld, Ahmadinejad and Chirac all in one news broadcast is more than evolution could equip us for.
John Bunyard
Ashford, Kent
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