campusreview.com.au
Also causing concern among some academics is the privileging
of the “great books” in the Western canon at the expense of what
they say is a more rounded, less ethnocentric view of the world and
history. Such critics fear a “triumphalist” view of Western civilisation
will eschew the ‘isms’ named above.
Campus Review spoke to Haines about his centre’s Western
civilisation program and the many misconceptions he feels need
to be cleared up.
CR: Why do we need a Ramsay Centre Western civilisation degree?
SH: The first thing to say is that we believe that universities are doing
a great job, and none of what we are doing is intended as a criticism
of what other university programs are doing.
We’re conscious, of course, that particularly in the arts and
humanities area, funding is always tight, and some extra sources of
help would always be welcome.
What we’re offering is what we think of as an extra strand of
potential richness and diversity in the offerings that are possible from
arts and humanities faculties in Australian universities. We retain a
huge sense of enthusiasm and delight that we’re able to be offering
this help.
This is not intended to be, in any way, crowding out all
the rich things that universities already do. It’s intended to be
complementary.
I think some of the worries that we’ve been running into on
campus have as much to do with unfamiliarity at the model as
anything else. We have, in this country, a degree model, which is
basically Anglo-Scottish in its origins. If you’re doing a straight BA,
for example, you would have a double major, and then if you went
on to fourth year, you’d do honours in one of them. It’s essentially
a one or two-track discipline specialism.
In some cases, and this is very sensible and widely practised, you
have a combined degree where you’d do your arts degree along
with law or computer science, or whatever it was.
What we’re aiming to introduce here is a twist on this, which is
basically derived from an American model. It’s not exactly called the
liberal arts model, it’s more like a ‘great books’ model.
This has been hugely successful in a number of American
institutions for over a hundred years, starting late in the 19th century,
with some very ancient institutions introducing it. In some cases, this
kind of great books approach occupies the whole degree. In other
cases, as in Columbia or Chicago, it would occupy a part of the
degree, and then you build in other things around that.
What we’re proposing here is basically to introduce this great
books program as an optional potential path of either a straight arts
degree or a combined arts degree.
Obviously, it’s optional. No student has to do it if they don’t want
to. Neither do universities have to offer it if they don’t want to. It’s all
very much on the table. But, if they did, the idea is that this would
occupy a chunk of the student’s degree, thus leaving a lot of room
to fit in other things around the edges.
This is multidisciplinary. Essentially what we’re doing is offering
a huge range of fantastic texts, which in the case of the better
resourced, bigger, older universities, might well be available in other
disciplines or department silos. So a lot of these would be available
in the classics department, or history, or philosophy, but nowhere
would a course like this be available as an integrated, sequential
collection of the great texts in literature, philosophy, arts and music
of the West.
policy & reform
It’s an unusual model, intended to combine the best of both
worlds: the American great book style, and the Australian/Anglo-
Scottish discipline-focused style, and give the student a chance
to do both at once.
Critics of the Ramsay Centre program argue that at least parts of it
whitewash history. What’s your response to that?
That’s completely wrong. This is history. The texts that are offered
in a course like this are, for good reason, regarded as the most
important works of self-criticism by the West, of itself, in its whole
history. As such, they in fact constitute us.
These are the kinds of self-criticisms of our societies over the
millennia that have made the West what it is, which is a distinctively
self-critical civilisation.
This teaches you critical thinking like nothing else. If you go back
and look at Sophocles’ Antigone, or if you look at what Socrates
does in the Apology and the Crito in his early dialogues; if you look
at what the Sermon on the Mount says about Old Testament values
versus New Testament values; or if you look at what Nietzsche says
about transvaluation of values, or you look at Juvenal or Goya … the
examples just come so thick and fast – you could just go on and on
naming names.
All of the writers – Rousseau, Dickens, Thucydides – are deeply
thoughtful of and critical about their societies and the values of
their societies. And out of that glorious tradition of self-critical text
has arisen all the institutions and attitudes that we tend to rather
complacently take for granted. Far from whitewashing history, this is
our history; these are the things that we know, these are the things
that have made us what we are.
One of the unique parts of this program is its adoption of small
Oxbridge-like tutorial groups. How do you think this kind of
environment will benefit Australian students?
In a way it’s almost self-edited. What a lot of students experience is
that they enrol in course X at the beginning of first year, and they
find themselves in a lecture room with 300 students. Up the front is
a lecturer who probably knows an awful lot about what she’s talking
about – you know she’s an authority. She gives a lecture for an hour
– maybe a very good one – but you don’t get much of a chance
for interactivity.
Then you’re broken up into tutorial classes where you will discuss
the topic for the week, which was mentioned in the lecture, but
even those will vary.
Unless you’re very pushy, or unless you’ve been to one of those
nice schools were they teach you to push yourself forward, the
chances are that you’re going to sit up the back or sit silently in
your tutorial and just be a bit overwhelmed, and go through a
whole term.
The way to learn is to contribute. Far too often, in class after class,
nobody does. In Oxbridge, I think they have one or two students per
teacher, because it’s a collegiate system and its nothing like we can
offer here. We couldn’t even dream of aspiring to that. But, if you
think about Princeton, for example, I think typically a tutorial there
would be in that six, seven, eight kind of student mark. We’re hoping
on a small scale in some department in some university to start that
ball rolling – to offer some funding to make that possible.
What happens then is that it becomes so interactive. In a way,
you can’t hide. If there’s six or seven of you in the room, it’s
absolutely obvious that the teacher makes sure that everybody
11