Stuart Hall - Summing Up

7/29/2019 Stuart Hall - Summing Up

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SUMMING-UPby S T U A R T H A L L

So far, I have tried to give as objective an account as I could ofthe run of the discussion and the spectrum of opinions expressed. In-evitably, I have had to select and interpret. The Chairman did allowfor a brief summary of impressions at the end, and I have addedthem here for the sake of completeness.The first impression is of a change in climate. It is now taken forgranted that the new curricula will lead us out of the traditional dis-ciplines, and that we will be forced to move across boundaries. In-creasingly, certain parts of the curriculum will be problem- orthematicallycentred-problem or theme providing a fulcrumaround which parts of other traditional disciplines can be grouped-rather than defined by the disciplines themselves. One further as-pect, not touched on in these terms during the weekend, but clearlypart of the pattern: in the mix of subject-disciplines which willfollow this new method of arranging curricula, one or other of thesocial sciences is bound to figure (providing a kind of context), atleast where the arts subjects are concerned. Toput it crudely, agooddeal of the re-patterning has to do with the rise of sociology. Perhapssomething of the same kind may be taking place with regard tomathematics and the sciences, but the general pattern is much lessclear-cut here (this might be described as the discovery of core ratherthan context).The body of knowledge itself is now regarded as a dynamic pro-cess rather than a fixed entity, and curricula are treated far moreflexibly and relativistically in relation to knowledge. I t is as if therapid process of change, which affects advanced industrial societieslike ours, has invaded the disciplinesof study. Universities no longertry to sum up the body of knowledge within the curriculum: ratherthey make maps, which are relative in that they chart some portionsof the territory but not all of it, and temporary in that they are in-

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SUMMING-UP 157evitably to be superseded. Thus we have the increased attention tothe rise and fall of various disciplines, and the criterion of out-of-date. Curriculum-building is not simply a feature of the new uni-versities: it is becoming a built-in function of all institutions ofhigher learning.Then there is the increased awareness of educational context-orwhat Dr. Abercrombie called indexical factors. This takes a num-ber of forms: the concern for staff-student relations, the interest ineducational methods, in qualities of teaching (as contrasted withqualities of scholarship), the self-consciousness about the needs andexpectations of students. Naturally, universities will differ as to therelative weight they attach to each of these factors, as against thegiven intellectual demands. But they exert their own force and havetheir effect. Anyone listening to the discussion between ProfessorHoggart, Dr. Halsey and Professor Ford about the uses whichlstudents make of the social sciences is bound to see the teaching ofsociology, especially to non-sociology students, in a quite differentlight.The complaint was often made that students are too eager tosociologize their disciplines. But the trend I have been describingcan best be describedin just those terms: the increasing sociologizingof the curriculum by academics and educational administrators. Thusrigidity of teaching patterns is no longer seen simply as due to theinertia of academic life: it is related to institutional factors, such asthe career patterns and interests of specialist teachers as a socialgroup, and to the administrative or bureaucratic functions of insti-tutions, or to the growth of professional elitism. Anyone familiar withthe analysis of advanced mass societies will recognize the origin ofthese interpretations. The kind of analysis applied to developmentswithin the university world remind one more and moreof those madeof any large-scale institution in our society. This approach has cer-tain disadvantages, in that it assimilates the university as an insti-tution to the general social pattern, without properly questioning itsspecial relation to the society-to authority, to power, to change, totradition, to knowledge. But it has the compensating advantage ofhelping us to see more clearly how open an institution a universitynow is, especially in a period of rapid educational expansion andrapid social change.Thus our notion of the phenomenon of intellectual rigidity hasbeen sociologically sophisticated: and sohas our notion of the pres-


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158 UNIVERSITIES QUARTERLYsures for change. The impetus to cross boundaries and to break thebarriers between disciplines was sometimes attributed in the discus-sion to the logic of the discipline itself, sometimes to social pres-sures. Thiscontradiction was never in fact quite resolved, but agooddeal of light was thrown on it; first in the exchange between Mr.Carter and Mr. Vaizey about K eynes and economics, and later, inProfessor Davies session, about Scrutiny, Cambridge and literature.Clearly, there is a very complex interaction or dialectic going on here,which we only partly understand, between what seems to arise as agreat leap forward within ones specialism, and what is thrown up asa problem by social or cultural events. The impact of Keynes on theteaching of economics (and hence the development of the subject)or of Leavis on the teaching of literature is both an intellectual anda social phenomenon. T he very definition of what constitutes aproblem is a social and cultural fact of the most complex kind. Ofcourse, particularly dominating intellectual figures, or particularlyrancorous intellectual dog-fights can serve to highlight a troublesomearea, and throw certain problems of an intellectual kind into highrelief. But they are not isolated or haphazard developments. Therelationship is even more difficult-because it is more indirect?-inthe sciences, and yet I feel sure that the connections can be made. Weneed tounderstand them better than we do.Given, then, that the need to break the old moulds is acutely felt atthe present time, how is the problem approached when we begin toshape new and more relevant patterns? T he early way of formulatingthis problem was in terms of the contrasted themes of general versusspecialized education. This debate was swelled from a number ofquarters, most notably by the reaction against over-specialization inthe schools, and in Sixth Form teaching especially. A t a later stage,much the same problem was re-interpreted in the form of the two-cultures debate. I t is interesting to note that the Crowther Reportlinked thesetwo themes as aspects of the same problem. One answerseemed to lay in the provision of broader courses at the university,but this never caught on-largely, I suspect, because the GeneralDegree had long stood as a rough means of streaming the universityintake, and was, for that reason, intellectually suspect. But in manyof the earlier discussions, the general degree approach was seen asplayingacrucial part, with a spread of subjects providing a broaderbase or foundation, even i f courses narrowed towards the old


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SUMMING-UP 159specialisms at a later stage: and with some element of literacy forthe scientist, and numeracy for the arts student, built in to the base.My impression is that the new patterns can no longer be under-stood in this way. Subjects are no longer to be allowed to stand,side by side, distinct: this is a much more self-conscious attempt tobreak the subjects themselves, and to bring the parts into a moremeaningful-and organic-relationship. I n that the new patternsare composed from other disciplines, they provide broadercourses: but in another sense, they are new specialisms in their ownright. This is an extreme way of pin-pointing the turn, but it illu-strates a general truth. It seems to be no longer the view that thehistorian should have his whack of history, but should, for the pur-poses of general education, also be made to know a little science,something about art, and perhaps a language. The prevailing viewnow seems to be, rather, that there are several kinds of historians,and that, according to kind, adifferent emphasis or bias needs to begiven to the history course: one may be the historian who seeshistorical problems against its social background, and for him, theproper course is history in the context of, or history taken com-paratively with, sociology or social anthropology; another kind mightbe the history of culture or of the history of ideas, and for him,the relevant disciplines would be literature or philosophy. But thetemptation would certainly be to bring the disciplines within theone school, rather than to treat it as a sub-sid, and to make or-ganic links or bridges between the parts so that a new course of akind emerges. Certain disciplines-philosophy or sociology-stillhave elements of the bridge type of course in them, and can begiven-but rather as a kind of intellectual discipline or method ofenquiry, than as a subject in their own right. Breadth-by-additionseems to be giving way to redefinition of the subject. Of course,not all these enforced collisions or hybrids are fruitful, and notevery course is of this pure type: someof the older universities stilldevelop along the joint-honours or honours-w th-a- subsi di arypath.But the principle seems to be the one I have tried to define here.The range of subjects offered in the new kind of course will, ofcourse, be wider than in the single subject approach. But foci arebeing sought which will make the parts of subjects hang together-connectively relate, rather than be simply adjacent on the timetable.Again, perhaps the scientists are farthest ahead here, in their effortsto break subjects back into fundamental courses which cut right


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160 UNIVERSITIES QUARTERLYacross disciplines in both the natural and phvsical sciences; but weheard too little in detail this weekend to judge. The closest we gotwas to the Sussex Modem European Mind course. Now this doesntbelong properly to any of the recognized subject disciolines; nor isit simply a bringing togetherof several old courses which are allowedto remain roughly as they were. I t is, itself, a new pattern, a redefi-nition of the subject-which is no longer history or philosophy orliterature, but thematicallydefined (in other places it might be com-paratively treated or contextually).The implications of this kind of course-construction is that theintellectual pattern itself has to be taught. The links are not hap-hazard. Some claims have to be made-and defended-for takingthe theme or subject thisway round, for reading modem intellectualmovements this way rather than that. The university or departmentor school becomes more responsible for the intellectual patterns whichit offers; and only a certain limited number of connections can beintellectually defended. I f the pattern is never made explicit, it can-not be criticized or changed: then pattern will become unstatedassumptions-and the new courses will prove as unmovable in theirtime as the old ones have proved in ours. But also, if too wide a rangeof choices ispermitted, the attempt at synthesis will be destroyed bya meaningless eclecticism.In the humanities and the social sciences, at least,-one mightspeculate-the point of departure for the new course, will be amoment of controversy of a sharp division which has grown up with-in the subject. The breaking point within the discipline, the problem in social or cultural terms, and the focus or centre for the newcourse, tend all to converge. And this for several reasons: partly be-cause, as we argued, this is where the society is itself re-interpretingthe discipline in some complex way, but also, partly, because it is inrelation to such points of controversy that academic neutrality-thatdisguise for inertia which academic teaching so often wears-ismost easily broken. This would provide another kind of distinctionbetween the first and second phase in this debate: that whereasbreadth was interpreted in the first phase as the provision of ratherelementary introduction or background courses in subjects otherthan the students main discipline, in the second phase, the tendencyhas been to go straight for the most controversial (which is oftenthe most advanced) point in the discipline. And this makes at least


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SUMMINGUP 161tactical sense since it is easy this way to stimulate student involve-ment with problems which, if only because of the urgency with whichthey are debated, seem more real than others: real in the sensethat we have an intellectual confrontation with what are, in fact,someof the central issuesof the time. A nd this presents science witha special problem because the interesting controversies tend to bemost sharply formulated at the research stage, and so much else ispurely a preliminary to it.This takes us beyond the brief provided by the weekends dis-cussions; but I hope it also points up the nexus of problems in theprocess of redrawing the boundaries of subjects: and, in this senseat least, provides meat for many another similar meeting.

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Stuart Hall - Summing Up