If only our indoctrination was this inventive...
Here are my observations. Since September, we have been taught a reasonable quantity of facts; not, perhaps, as many as might have been possible, but probably enough to pass the exams. We have been taught also what these facts mean - and this is where I must begin to take issue. Because if there was one thing I didn't expect to encounter upon coming to university, indoctrination would be it. Yet in every lecture - and to a lesser extent seminars - we have been told what to know and what to think about it. Nobody has taught us how to think. Honestly, we've barely touched upon how other people do it, let alone considered the venture for ourselves.
The opinions of established historians are 'better,' apparently; or, to quote one of my tutors (who also happens to be a module organiser), "more good". I wish I was joking. I understand the premise here, of course; that those who have dedicated their lives to the study of a select topic ought to constitute a more reliable reference point on the matter than an undergraduate who happens to have taken into their head the same interpretation. That's fine where facts are concerned, but what about once we've read the books? Once we know all we need to in order to write the essay, might we not be allowed to think then? I'm not saying we're experts, of course not. But I think we're informed enough to at least think for ourselves a little.
Alas, no. Once all the materials have been devoured and the fingers are poised at the keyboard, ready to regurgitate them back at the tutors who recommended them in the first place, there is apparently nothing left to be done but write. No further consideration is required, beyond deciding which side to take in the argument between 'proper' historians. What if you don't agree with any side? Make an arbitrary choice, and argue it as well as you can. Nobody cares what you really think, they care only that you know what you ought to. It feels like school all over again, when, in the midst of protestations that such a thing was surely impossible, we were taught that the electron has no mass. In fact, I can personally attest that trying to include some element of independent thought, for example in an essay, can actually result in lower marks. It seems absurd that even at this stage in our education we are being discouraged from using the very organ that got us there, but unfortunately, that is how things stand. As a history student, I can honestly say that I have learned more about my subject outside of teaching hours than during them. Such a state of affairs is beyond regrettable; it is unacceptable.
'Rage, Rage, Against the dying of the light' was not written about intellectualism in higher education, but it might have been. That which Shelley feared in An Exhortation has come to pass: "Yet dare not stain with wealth or power / A ... free and heavenly mind" he wrote, but apparently his plea to "refuse the boon" fell on selectively deaf ears. It is as Professor Trefusis mocked in The Liar: "A university education should be broad and general. But these students are being trained, not educated. They are being stuffed like Strasbourg geese. Pappy mush is forced into them, just so one part of their brains can be fattened. ... It's regrettable and there's little we can do about it."
It present, it does seem that Trefusis is correct: there is little we can do about it, save fill our spare hours with self-education and resist the determined pigeon-holing we are forced into as we progress through the education system. It is not nearly a good enough solution, but it is, perhaps, the start of one.
