During the break, dear reader, I chanced across an astonishing car commercial. You might have seen it. The one where the Dodge Challenger defeats the Redcoats, heralding the dawn of a new nation that gets "two things right: cars and freedom." "Auto-industry bailout!" I spluttered. "PATRIOT Act!" Before I knew it, I was thrown headlong into a gentle transatlantic tiff with my American in-laws.
A while ago, the Yanks had a "revolution," if that's the right term for a group of middle-aged white men refusing to share their slavery earnings. A lot of perfectly good tea was ruined. The British took the hint, for the most part, and toddled off to conquer most of the rest of the world with gin and tonics and silly moustaches.
Eventually, we reunited when America popped in for the last five minutes of two World Wars, and things settled down into a tense but durable friendship, like that of two bandmates who remember that they wouldn't be where they are without one another, but still think the other's solo projects are crap.
In the past few years, however, things have changed ever so slightly. President Obama had Bush's bust of Winston Churchill removed from the Oval Office because it was intimidating his speechwriters. Global energy giants and irresponsibility enthusiasts BP became ‘British' again when something very, very bad happened, despite the fact that Halliburton was involved and therefore it was almost certainly Dick Cheney's fault.
We've even taken over the superhero arena, installing British actors as Superman, Batman and Spider-Man, prompting one Hollywood casting director to suggest that American men aren't manly enough for such roles. Probably should have thought twice before you changed the rules of rugby and starting playing in leggings, eh?
And now, it seems, we're coming for your universities. Or at least, a few more of us are applying to Brown, according to a recent article in The Herald ("Academic freedom a plus for Brits," Jan. 31). Lock up your teapots: Brits are bursting forth from the gulags and making for the nearest Urban Outfitters in unprecedented numbers.
It's true that the differences between the British and American education systems are surprisingly marked. As the earlier article notes, students in Britain start specializing much earlier. Your intrepid correspondent ditched geography, for example, at the age of 14, despite the inevitable homonymic hilarities that come with the adolescent study of such fascinating topics as coastal erosion. Groin! Every time.
Under the British system one can, if one is so inclined, blind oneself to enormous chunks of human thought and endeavor at a very early stage. At sixteen, I bid adieu giddily to maths and the sciences to focus on the humanities and social sciences, and rarely have I been as happy since. I am, of course, now innumerate. Around 17, one picks a subject to study at university and applies to universities to study it. Stick with it for another three years and before you know it, you're a notional expert. You can get most of the way toward qualifying as a doctor or lawyer in Britain before you can order a beer in the U.S.
Before you reel in horror, there is something to be said for this approach. Those who view the value of university education purely in terms of training the workforce appreciate the efficiency of being able to churn out engineers, for example, at 21. And even the majority of students who don't end up directly translating their degree expertise into an occupation benefit from the opportunity for immersion in a discipline. This is especially the case at Cambridge and Oxford, where students are taught primarily in one-on-one or very small group meetings.
There isn't much I would change about my undergrad experience. I wouldn't trade the time I spent reading in pubs and on riverbanks for all the language labs and coffee shops the Ivy League can throw. Of course, due to educational choices made during my adolescence, I'm not capable of adding up how many labs and workshops that would be. By my 21st birthday, I had forgotten more about Nietzsche than Nietzsche learned about me in his entire life, and I enjoyed forgetting it all tremendously. There is a reason why British universities are still turning out, for example, the better PhDs in subjects like European history — that relentless focus produces detailed, sometimes definitive, work.
Nonetheless, the liberal arts curriculum as practiced at universities like Brown leaves me feeling jealous. I very much like the idea of following one's intellectual nostrils without giving up on all other scents. One's interests change. Imagine having to listen to the same music from 16 to 22. By graduation, you might have soured a little on Weezer. It might have been nice to mix up all that European political philosophy with the occasional interpretive dance workshop and actually get academic credit for it.
So take your time, follow your nose and enjoy your academic freedom. Or your academic Dodge Challenger. Just keep Weezer off the stereo. It's still too soon.
Stephen Wicken GS is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in history. He can be reached at stephen_wicken(at)brown.edu.
