Ken Riley (2)

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2163539.html

In Loco Parentis: A light-hearted look at the role of a Cambridge Tutor is a memoir by Ken Riley, who was the Senior Tutor of Clare College, Cambridge, for 22 years from the 1970s to the 1990s, including my time there (1986-91). (If you want, you can download it from here.) It's actually rather interesting and a little peculiar to see college life from the other side of the fence. He retells many incidents of college life, of which I was relieved to only recognise two. Much of the rest is plausible enough in terms of managing the college community, particularly in terms of how the college has had to react to the whims of changing government funding while maintaining a balanced admissions policy (where "balanced" means going for the brightest students from both state and private schools, and it helps if they are musical).

Perhaps the most generally interesting chapter is the one on how the various bits of the University of Cambridge manage to screw up examinations - one of the pithiest anecdotes concerns "two modern languages students entered for a Swedish literature paper [who] were presented with a paper containing only questions on works by Danish authors, none of whom they had ever heard of." This chapter includes a lot of material from an internally circulated set of reports on the exams between 1973 and 1993, which I suspect must be horrifying reading for anyone involved with setting and marking exams. There is also a chapter including three Christmas puzzles of fiendishly cryptic clues.

I must say I came away appreciating not so much the role of the Tutors - I am afraid I never got much value out of mine, a laid-back academic in a completely different discipline who died a few years back - as the role of the college's non-academic staff, who put up with a hell of a lot from students in particular but sometimes from academics as well. I did reach the end thinking much more kindly of the author, who was a rather fearsome presence in my college years (in fairness, he would probably have been less fearsome if I had worked as hard at my course as I did at other activities). There was perhaps more support available for struggling students than I realised, and I rather wish I had known that at the time. I think other Oxbridge alumni will enjoy the book as a mildly amusing reminiscence; but I would actually recommend it to any young people I knew who were thinking of going to Oxford or Cambridge, as a useful perspective.… (plus d'informations)