| So how am I spending my time in Oxford ?
Reading in one of the many libraries; running or walking through the parks; talking with other students about what they are studying/researching, their lives now, their lives in the past, their ideas on philosophy, religion, literature, politics, government, ethics, you name it (at one memorable breakfast recently the conversation ranged across the book of Job, “Paradise Lost”, Isaiah, Revelation, medieval mystics esp Julien of Norwich, Genesis, primitive ideas of God, Shakespeare, Book of Revelation, and I was mostly just listening); frequenting concerts and plays of which there is a rich abundance on offer; worshipping at New College or in our own chapel; wandering through College grounds admiring their gardens and buildings; attending lectures; chatting with professors (the Professor of Science and Religion is a particularly delightful chap and we often seem to end up near him at meals and on other occasions); cycling by the Thames or Cherwell or out into the country, or just to a lecture or the shop; dressing up for formal dinners (including academic gown). It’s like distilled essence of studentship: stimulating and relaxing at the same time. My project is coming along slowly. I think it’s turned out to be “Ethics in Schools, an Australian perspective”, just that; at least that’s the title I gave for my first presentation which was on June 5th . I presented probably about half of my paper and it seemed to go over well. Everything I read on the subject leads to other interesting things but often they result in a day or two of interesting research which does not bear directly upon advancing my project. For example, I have spent substantial time researching: Islam and its moral teachings, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, the Global Ethic – and how it is enacted in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and with a glance at Jainism, the nature of ethics, church/state relations in Britain … all very interesting, but how to pull it all together is the challenging part. I’m starting to feel like a slightly better educated human being, but I want to do better than that. Our College library is a brilliant place to work. A traditional hammer-head (I think that’s what it’s called wooden roofed hall with carved wooden shelves crowded with generations of books and an assortment of old desks and large round or octagonal timetables, mostly with computer cable jacks under them so you can plug in your lap-top. I love the juxtaposition between the stained glass windows and statue of the founder, and the four computers that are clustered around his marble feet for catalogue searching etc. And I love the old repeater clock on the mantle piece that chimes away the passing quarter hours. And the way the sun moves across the windows. I could spend a lot of time here. (I mean a serious lot of time; not just one term !) By comparison, the main reading rooms in the Bodleian, Upper and Lower Reserve, are fairly soulless, functional, efficient, well lit places, which are much less inspiring. But the Duke Humphreys Room is something special. There you are entirely surrounded by weighty, leather bound tomes, mostly in Latin, which you are not allowed to remove from the shelves on pain of alarms sounding and attendants descending upon you. I like ordering materials for collection up there and working in an atmosphere that probably hasn’t changed much in the last few hundred years. I was amused to discover that you are not allowed to take in a pen, but you can take a lap-top. A small jump in technology from the pencil to the computer ! Upper and Lower Radcliffe Camera are also pleasant places to work. The Rad Cam, as the local students call it, is where I’ve done most of my research recently. As well as being a pleasant environment, it also houses the theological journals, including one called Moral Education which has many articles of interest to me. So I beaver away happily, making notes with my decidedly old technology biro, and wondering when all of the information might start to coalesce. My problem is that whilst I thought I knew what I wanted to say when I started and was confident that my reading would give me the evidence for my various contentions, it is no longer quite as simple as that so I’m further back than when I began. This past weekend we explored Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales with a delightful group from the Oxford University Walking Club. Drove down Friday night, stopping for a meal in a pub which started life as a mill in 1085 (!) Traversed magnificently green, pieced and folded countryside on both days, with very varied weather conditions: mostly wet on Saturday, mostly sunny on Sunday. On the latter we traversed the length of a lake, so obviously I had to have a swim (though it was pretty cold). |
| Bruce Fairfax's Report from the UK July 2006 |