It's a Don's Life Read Online Free PDF

himself, a leading member of the Roman
     élite, observing the consequences of Roman expansion and daring to put himself into the place of the conquered.
    As such, it makes an even more appropriate message for us. Whatever forms our ‘deserts’ take – whether it is the poppy fields
     of Afghanistan, or the ruins that will be left of Beirut, when Israel and Hezbollah (and our own culpable inactivity) have
     finished – we are still making them and calling them ‘peace’.

The knife and fork test?
    28 July 2006
    There has been disappointing news about university entrants. The number of kids from state schools going to university has
     fallen. So has the number from the poorest families going to what are called ‘leading universities’. So too (though no one
     seems quite so bothered about this one) has the number of boys.
    News like this tends to provoke another round in the favourite national sport of Oxbridge bashing. The general line is that
     we sit round after dinner, quaffing our claret and plotting to let in thick privately educated toffs, and keep out the brightest
     and best from ordinary schools. Just occasionally this is backed up by a cause célèbre : an unlucky applicant with 15 A stars at GCSE and a raft of perfect A levels who was rejected, in favour (so the implication
     is) of a less qualified bloke who knew how to hold his knife and fork.
    Everyone (apart from us) likes this kind of stuff. Tabloids push the hard luck story. The broadsheets play to the anxieties
     of a middle-class readership wondering if their children or grandchildren are going to make it. And for the Labour front bench,
     deploring the wickedness of élitist academics is a cheap way of reassuring the back bench rebels that they still have some
     kind of concern for social justice.
    Of course, it’s not like that at all. One problem with the causes célèbres is that rules of confidentiality stop us from telling our side of the story. The unsuccessful candidate’s head teacher or
     parents can leak all they like about the unfortunate line of questioning (‘You mean you’ve never been to the United States?’)
     or the general bad treatment (‘The interviewer was two hours late and then turned up in a dinner jacket’).
    We, by contrast, have to resort to general platitudes about the intensity of the competition and our 1000s of excellent applications
     with equally stellar paper qualifications. Sometimes that is the only explanation for rejection. But sometimes, I can assure
     you, there are other reasons why the apparently brilliant Miss X didn’t get a place. And on those we must keep quiet.
    But the more general point is that it is absolutely preposterous to imagine that people like me would choose to teach the
     stupid rich in preference to the bright poor. Of course, we make mistakes occasionally or we say things in interviews (usually
     quite inadvertently) that irritate or even upset a candidate. But for as long as I have been doing Cambridge interviews (over
     20 years now) we have been pursuing intellectual potential, not social and cultural advantage.
    The trouble is that the pursuit of potential is an inexact science. Let me give you an (entirely imaginary) example. On the
     one hand: Candidate A – a girl living with an unemployed grandmother in bed and breakfast accommodation, and attending a school
     from which only 5% of the pupils proceed to higher education, who has got 4 As at A level. On the other hand: Candidate B
     – a boy from an extremely expensive public school, whose Mum and Dad met at Cambridge before proceeding to lucrative legal
     careers, who also has 4 As. It is obvious that it has taken a lot more for Candidate A to get to this point than Candidate
     B and her potential may well be greater (and I’m as sure as I could be that she would get a place). But that does not mean
     that Candidate B does not deserve a place, too – and you couldn’t rule out the possibility that he was actually