Irwin Flashcards
Competitive nature of the modern education system; indulges Headmaster’s selfish ambitions with this approach
‘Boys and girls against whom you are to compete have been groomed like thoroughbreds for this one particular race…none of you have got a hope’
Irwin accepts the bleak, unfulfilling reality of Oxbridge; the exams are a game and he knows these exams won’t make the boys happy because Oxbridge only appeases your school and your parents.
‘So why are we bothering?’ - Crowther
‘I don’t know…you want it. Or your parents want it. The headmaster certainly wants it. But I wouldn’t waste the money…Go to Newcastle and be happy’
Hypocritical approach: Irwin promotes ‘edge’ and standing out with independent, unorthodox opinions……
……but only for the sake of tactically impressing/entertaining the examiners, and competing against privately educated students, in order to conform to the demands of Oxford.
‘The wrong end of the stick is the right one…flee the crowd…be perverse’
‘I didn’t say it was wrong. I said it was dull.’
‘History is not a matter of conviction…it’s entertainment, and if it isn’t make it so’
Boys are being unorthodox to succeed by Oxford’s standards, not for their own personal gratification
History and truth has lost value in our society; we are more fixated with success no matter how we achieve it.
Dismisses the truth and facts as unimportant to achieving success; shows the corruption of our education system and our success-driven society that is cares less about happiness, genuineness or truth.
This characteristic of Irwin is later demonstrated by his job as a government spin doctor, and a history tv presenter who uses shock factor.
‘But it’s all true’ ‘What has the truth got to do with anything?’
‘You can’t explain away the poetry, sir’ ‘Art wins in the end’ - Scripps/Lockwood
‘Truth is no more at issue in an examination than thirst at a wine tasting or fashion at a strip tease’
‘Find a proposition, reverse it, then look around for proofs’ - Scripps
‘Don’t mention the theatre…most dons think it’s a waste of time’
‘No, no, everybody likes Mozart.Somebody more off the beaten track’
Hector: ‘May I make a suggestion?Why can they not all just tell the truth?’
The holocaust lesson shows the danger of Irwin’s pragmatism, as it promotes desensitised grandiloquent attitude and finding an angle over sensitivity to true history.
The ‘well-rounded human beings’ Hector had built through literature have been eroded by their compulsion to find an angle and have edge.
He himself is desensitised to the emotional and truthful elements of history that cannot be dismissed as an ‘angle;
‘…and we go on to say…the death camps have to be seen in the context of this policy’
‘What has the truth got to do with it?…truth is…so relative as just to amount to another point of view’
Hector: ‘Why can you not just simply condemn the camps as an an unprecedented horror?’ There is slight embarrassment
‘No point, sir. Everyone will do that’
‘Not good point, sir. True. To you the Holocaust is just another topic on which we might get a question’
Antithesis to Hector’s educational values and views on exams
‘I sympathise with your feelings about examinations, but they are a fact of life’
‘Education isn’t something for when they’re old and grey and sitting by the fire. It’s for now. The exam is next month’
Irwin encourages boys to use their literary knowledge to surpass a mediocre level of work and impress Oxbridge; this is a direct antithesis to Hector’s view that literature is for the heart, and for your deathbed.
‘Poetry is good up to a point. Adds flavour.’
‘The gobbets you have taught them might just tip the balance’
Irwin’s education vs. Hector’s education:
Irwin is aware of his given success; he knows that his approach to education is what thrives in our competitive, academic-success driven society. Whereas Hector’s truly free thinking, individualistic values or not respected as genuine forms of education by Thatcherism
‘Hector was a good man but I do not think there is time for his kind of teaching anymore’
