A.C. Grayling's new academy in London, set to charge twice the government-approved limit, of £18,000 a year tuition to students, has been accused of copying the syllabus of another university, down to very specific elements of modules written by lecturers in no way connected to the new cash cow...
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
Comments
If true, this just confirms that the whole enterprise is a complete waste of money. They aren't even offering an original syllabus. Grayling says that his new academy reflects the 'true cost' of a university education. Maybe it does but most people never want to know the 'true cost' of anything. They just want to obtain things as economically as possible.
Best wishes from Simon