 | | | THE LATEST PROGRAMME | | | |
| | Jonathan Freedland looks for the past behind the present. Each week, The Long View, recorded on location throughout the British Isles, takes an issue from the current affairs agenda and finds a parallel in our past.
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Image of Oxford University from the 19th century and a photo of Balliol College, Oxford. | Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure is a novel about a poor young farmboy, Jude Fawley, who dreams of studying for a university degree at Christminster ( Oxford ). In the novel, he is rejected by Biblioll college ( Balliol), mainly because he hasn't had access to a good secondary school education and so lacks both the education and the means to go to university. The Long View contrasts the scenes in the novel with the memoirs of a 'real-life Jude' - Ernerst Barker, a Lancashire farm boy, son of a miner and farmer's daughter, who managed to win a place to Balliol College Oxford, and was an undergraduate there when the novel came out.
By looking at the reality behind the novel we find that Hardy's depiction of Jude's plight failed to recognise the reforms taking place at the university in the late nineteenth century, many of which sought to give poor boys - and girls - the opportunity to study at Oxford. Balliol was at the centre of this reform movement, its former Master, Benjamin Jowett, and fellows - particularly the liberal philosopher TH Green, initiated and encourgaged various schemes such as the Non-Collegiate system for poorer students and a programme of Oxford University Extension Lectures which sent lecturers out into working class communities across the country. | | | Fight Over Fees | |   | | Left-hand picture:Students demonstrating over reforms of collge fees..
Right-hand picture: Will Straw, son of Jack Straw MP, leading a demonstration. |
The programme then moved to London to meet up with student leader Will Straw at the Houses of Parliament, where he was involved in an all-day lobby of MPs by the members of the NUS(National Union of Students). Barker himself was involved in the formation of key educational legislation in the 1920's. In the final scene Jonathan and guests speaks to another advisor on educational policy, Professor Nicholas Barr, architect of the present Goverment's White Paper, The Future of Higher Education, to debate the latest propsals on university funding.
Contributors
Derek Riddell - actor.
Dr Lawrence Goldman - St Peter's College, Oxford. Historian and author of 'Dons and Workers', a history of the Workers Educational Association.
Jane Minto - Head of Undergraduate Admissions, University of Oxford.
Professor Richard Pring - Professor of Education, University of Oxford
Will Straw - President of the Oxford University Students' Union (NB - the one affiliated to the NUS)
Professor Nicholas Barr - London School of Economics, architect of the Government's White Paper on The Future of Higher Education.
FURTHER READING
Dons and Workers, a history of the Workers Educational Association.
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RELATED LINKS
Background to the issue of top-up fees
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Listen - Analysis of admissions policies.
