Your Views

Stars and philosophers

juxtaposed

I would like to thank your newspaper (and its various supplements) for its regular introductions to Cultural Studies/Popular Culture (most recently, "Cultural Revolution", Education +, Thursday 7 Nov, 1996).

But as Graham McCann is a lecturer in "social theory" with an expensive book to sell (on a popular culture icon), his vested interest is obvious, and, as such, he makes good use of the spectacular podium of the press to concoct (construct? simulate?) an "issue" so as to manufacture an advert. But behind the hilarity of juxtaposing the names of stars with philosophers there is an important issue at stake which exceeds the obvious quibble that no cultural studies course really "revolves around" any particular "star" - a star may be used as a case study, but the curriculum revolves around Nietzsche, Derrida, Lacan, Barthes, etc.

McCann is certainly aware of this, just as he is aware that any writing style or view he presents will have as many diverse effects as any other, and so the deliberately ambivalent opinion he adopts is to his credit (as it is derived directly from Baudrillard and Debord). His ambivalence is an academic joke, to be shared only by those who have studied Freud (-ian semiotics). But I feel that the earnings from such jokes or the books they may sell do not outweigh the political implications of negating the issues relating to the academic and social legitimation of the "object" of knowledge.

The joke is obscure, and the regularity of facetious descriptions of the objects, or field, of cultural studies bears more than a trace of the real essentials onslaught on interdisciplinary study, which threatens the academic ability to question what knowledge is, what we can know, and not unconsciously accepting the sanctioned limits of what knowledge "should be".

Therefore I congratulate The Independent and Graham McCann for "airing" the issue of the validation and legitimation of disciplinary knowledge, but suggest he remembers that no literary, cultural, or even innocuous "social" theory ever produced a new weapons technology, vehicle, micro- chip, or any other marketable commodity; so his own "rag-bag discipline"(?) is just as deleterious to the only incontrovertibly valid social practice as all other non-profit-making Mickey Mouse subjects. If we don't defend our own parasitic disciplines, certainly no one else will. McCann must realise the implications of that.

Paul Bowman

Forest Hall

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Don't rubbish the figures

While I can see why Media Studies and Design Studies departments should want to fight their corner, I cannot understand the attempts to rubbish the data ("The Trendy Travesty", 31 October). These are the official figures of the Universities Central Council on Admissions, the Polytechnics Central Admissions Service, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service and the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

They chart the redefinition of university education over a decade. As well as Physics at Bristol and French at Manchester, it now includes Media Studies at Farnborough College of Technology and design studies at Scarborough University College. A doubling of first degree enrolments to 860,500 is due to courses such as Media Production with Women's Studies and Heritage and Landscape with Theatre Arts.

New graduates of these courses do seem to find it more difficult to obtain employment. Whatever teething troubles HESA may be having, its "seeking employment" figures are not out of line with the first destinations statistics previously published by the Central Services Unit.

Professor Alan Smithers

Centre for Education and Employment Research Brunel University

Not all students want a career in media any more than students of English Literature wish to become playwrights and novelists. The media dominates our culture. The study of media encourages students to be less passive viewers, readers and listeners and be part of a more critical, lively and demanding audience - surely something The Independent would welcome?

Zoe Hardy

Retford, Nottinghamshire

Time to act on education

Now that we are in the run-up to the general election, isn't it high time those concerned with education got their act together? The Liberal Democrats have for years laudably espoused a policy of increasing income tax in order to fund education adequately, and a week or two ago Lord Healey was reported as saying that Gordon Brown should not be afraid to pledge himself to raise taxes in order to pay for health and education.

All the trades unions represented in the higher education sector have voted to take strike action on 19 November in protest at the offer of yet another cut in pay, in real terms. Instead of refusing to negotiate or to go to arbitration and rather than playing games with unfair and unpractical schemes for top-up fees, why doesn't the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals publicly challenge Labour to spell out what exactly Tony Blair meant when he declared at the recent Party conference that Labour is for "Education, Education, Education"?

Professor Henry Ettinghausen

School of Modern Languages

University of Southampton

Poor sight and dyslexia

The article on dyslexia (7 November) failed to mention that about 10 per cent of dyslexics have ocular problems that once treated can lead to great improvements in reading and writing skills.

I myself did not have three-dimensional vision until I was 15 and as a result I still have a very poor visual memory for spelling words, as it was caught late. After this was corrected, not only have my literacy skills improved, but I can now catch a ball with confidence and cope much better with other important tasks that require 3-D vision. My problem was not helped by being taught to read with "look and say" and other trendy teaching methods in the Seventies.

David Nowell

New Barnet, Hertfordshire

Please send your letters to EDUCATION+, `The Independent', 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5DL. Include a daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Fax letters to Education + on 0171 293 2451; e-mail:letters@independent.co.uk