Wednesday 16th July 2025
Blog Page 266

Elitism and colonialism’s residue: Pakistan’s education system is in crisis

Haniya Basir
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Elitism and colonialism’s residue: Pakistan’s education system is in crisis

Pakistan’s education system has failed the nation’s youth as elitism and remnants of colonialism have intensified inequalities in the new generations. The widespread requirements of English proficiency have distorted the schooling system’s ability to a successfully educate its youth.

Pakistan was described as “among the world’s worst performing countries in education,” at the 2015 Oslo Summit on Education and Development. Whilst some steps have been taken since to improve young people’s prospects, the problem is innate, with the key issue being class divides. Despite having gained independence from Britain 73 years ago, the country’s convoluted relationship with its past continues to hinder progress for working class households. The nation’s affluent class is characterised by their preservation of British customs and the English language, resulting in it being adopted as an official language of Pakistan. This has brought about a society in which intellectualism is equated with English proficiency, whilst fluency in the language has become a prerequisite for many professional jobs.

According to the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey, conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics in 2019, 37% of all children attending school are studying at private institutions, where teaching is in English. This number seems mismatched considering the country’s high levels of poverty. However, it is reflective of the growing elitism in Pakistan as well as the desire of working-class parents to equip their children with the language requirements necessary to obtain professional jobs. This has been one of the key causes of the country’s failure to successfully educate its youth as those attending government schools are immediately excluded from skilled job opportunities due to their lack of English fluency. On the other hand, students attending low grade private schools, where many teachers themselves do not have an adequate grasp of the English language, resort to rote learning as they face the challenge of not only learning the curriculum, but also grappling with understanding a foreign language.

The inequalities will continue to worsen with the newest education reform: the introduction of the Single National Curriculum (SNC). On the surface, this appears to be a suitable solution to the disparities in the Pakistani education system. However, the SNC is anything but singular. The elite private schools are exempt and are free to follow their own curriculum, thereby only fortifying existing inequalities, rather than raising standards across the board.

Those that are studying in government schools are faced with separate challenges, most notably a lack of teaching resources and poor infrastructure, as well as high rates of teacher absenteeism. According to UN guidance, Pakistan should spend at least 15 to 20% of the total national budget and 4 to 6% of GDP in education. Yet, in 2017, the government spent just 2.8% of GDP on education, illustrating the state’s abdication of responsibility for the nation’s youth.

The issue of effective education is particularly crucial considering Pakistan has one of the world’s youngest populations. According to the 2019 Human Development Report, the median age in Pakistan is 22.8 and is only expected to increase a mere 8 years by 2050. With 35.1% of the population between the ages of 0 and 14, education standards must be improved or else the youth bulge threatens to hamper economic growth for several decades to come. 

If the young masses can be successfully educated, they have the potential to revitalise Pakistan’s struggling economy and create a prosperous future. However, in the current climate, with elitism continuing to thrive and inequalities intensifying, this seems to be a Herculean task.

Image: Sam Phelps/CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr

A recovery toolkit to anorexia

Anonymous
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A recovery toolkit to anorexia

CW – anorexia, mentions of hospitals 

Eating disorders are very deceptive. I used to read all those clichés about your eating disorder being your ‘best friend’, a ‘comfort blanket’ and struggle to see how anyone could ever think that. But those very same ‘clichés’ are the bitter truth – an eating disorder CAN be a diet gone wrong, a ‘diet’ which can evolve into the ultimate slippery slope to total self-destruction and misery. You struggle to make rational decisions. This is known as ‘starvation syndrome’ – something that reassured me, in that it was a medical condition with a concrete name. Remember, if you have an eating disorder, you are unwell, you do deserve treatment and you can get better. 

The fall 

My eating disorder started when I was 16, primarily fuelled by a lack of body satisfaction and major traits of perfectionism. I am not going into detail about how much weight I lost, or my lowest weight but I can tell you it was a terrifying period in my life. 

Over the next 3 years, I got more and more unwell and really resisted treatment. This is where I would like to point out the benefits of medication in (anorexia) treatment. Of course, SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors), also known as antidepressants, are not for everyone. Talk to your doctor and then give them a chance, is my advice. 

The media 

As much as recovery accounts on social media can provide a positive community, they can also make your struggles feel invalid. Unfortunately for me, the latter was the case. All eating disorders are valid – hold on to that. Why not steer clear of social media and instead focus on activities which make you feel more like you. For example, although I found bedrest very challenging, it was a great way for me to focus on recovery and learn to be at peace with myself. 

Social media, particularly TikTok, can also thoroughly glamourise eating disorders. Hospitals, contrary to the depiction of them on the app, are not places where you lip sync to songs or do cute dances with new friends. 

Hospitals are lonely. 

Hospitals are always noisy. 

Hospitals are mind-numbingly dull. 

The rise 

In early 2022, I had given up on recovery. I thought it was too hard, too confusing, too abstract. This was one of the worst decisions I have ever made. Recovery is hard, sure, but it only gets easier. 

Isn’t maintaining an eating disorder harder? 

Recovery is confusing – it is not black and white and there is no one who can do it for you. This is where specialist eating disorder services can guide and support you. Recovery is abstract – it is not the same for anyone but that is the beauty of it. ‘Abstract’ is not synonymous with ‘bad’; ‘hope’ is abstract, ‘peace’ is abstract, so too is ‘contentment’. 

My recovery is not complete. There are still storms but there are always rays of sunshine afterwards. Through talking, medication and proper nourishment, I am recovering every day.

Anorexia gets weaker, less powerful and more insignificant and I get stronger, happier and much more free.

Image: NIKHIL via unsplash

In Conversation with Katie Melua

Clementine Scott and Jimmy Brewer
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In Conversation with Katie Melua

Where do we come from? I mean, where does it all come from, all this? – the books that we read or skim; the computers that we frantically tap; the cultural values that press upon us in every decision we make? Some would posit the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans as the progenitors of our western society. Stories of names like Cleopatra, Socrates and Caesar abound in British accounts of ancient history, at least. However, Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, points to Persia – loosely corresponding today to Iran and the -stan countries – as the bubbling cauldron from which much of the modern world emerged.

Indeed, this book and its particular rewriting of history sits at the heart of a collaborative project here in Oxford with Georgian-born singer-songwriter Katie Melua. In the coming weeks, she will be leading a series of songwriting workshops for students that will culminate in a concert at the Sheldonian in April. We recently had the opportunity to speak to Katie about the project.

When asked about her hopes for the workshops, Melua says that she wants first and foremost to ‘put on a beautiful show in April, with some exquisite pieces and songs; original songs that are written by the students.’ Her longer-term – and more grandiose – aim is to ‘create real deep interest in the art of songwriting from a lyrical point of view, not just a musical point of view.’ How will she know when this lofty goal has been realised? When, ‘in 10 to 15 years’ time,’ she ‘walk[s] into a store, perhaps at Christmas time, and hear[s] really great, uplifting, meaningful pieces of music, that aren’t just repeating the same, you know, over and over.’

If you do not already know who she is, Katie Melua is a musician who has achieved vast commercial success – in 2006 she was the UK’s best-selling female artist. She saw precocious fame when, at just 19, her debut topped UK album charts. Today, she is 37 and has released eight albums. Her songs are characterised by her rich singing voice and easy-listening arrangements that tussle with the sentimental.

‘One of the things that I’d like to focus on is a lyrical duty of care,’ Melua tells Clementine. She cites artists who she believes have this ‘duty of care’ – that she looks to cultivate in her workshops – in their lyrics: Joni Mitchell, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey. Melua remarks that in song – a performed medium – effective lyricism is constituted not just by the choice of words, but by a myriad of other adjacent linguistic considerations: dialect, intonation, pitch, pacing and accent. She is concerned about the neglect of these aspects in songwriting. ‘In the circles I have worked in, there is a much greater emphasis on musical writing than there is on the lyrical writing.’ Melua seeks to balance these two aspects of composition in these workshops, moving towards a lyrical ‘fluidity’ that she believes can sometimes go missing in a song.

It is the book The Silk Roads that has been chosen to inspire lyrical ‘fluidity’ and focus in the sessions. According to TORCH’s website, the book will aid participants ‘to write songs that explore journeys through time, geographies, and cultures.’ It seems a somewhat arbitrary choice of text – a tribute to the ‘humanities’ that the project must, perhaps artificially, incorporate. I have no doubt, though, that its author Peter Frankopan, Worcester College historian, will be pleased.

‘I hadn’t actually heard of the book until I started these talks with TORCH,’ Melua says, though is flexible in adapting to its suggestion. ‘I started reading it, and I thought it was phenomenal,’ she recounts, with adequate emphasis. Melua’s natural flair for displaying enthusiasm shines through in her answer here. She makes links to Georgia, the country in which she lived until she was eight, which lies precisely on the Euro-Asian trading routes that give Frankopan’s book its title. Melua then drifts into childhood reminiscences: ‘music was everywhere in Georgia,’ which meant she was able to move to the UK ‘…with great excitement, because it was the country where The Beatles and Led Zeppelin were from.’ Her story gleams against the backdrop, provided by Silk Roads, of cross-cultural journeying and migration.

We finished by asking Katie what words of wisdom she has to impart to the young creatives on the programme. Melua wants to make them aware of their ‘voices of influence’, by which she means the plethora of accents and vocabularies and vocal pacings that we encounter every day. These could be singers – Melua credits Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell as having influenced her inner ear – or just the talk we overhear. ‘There can be positive voices of influence, and negative ones,’ she says, going on to give an anecdote about a manager of hers from whose mouth perennially comes the word ‘dude’. ‘Since working with him, I always use the word dude, too,’ she admits.

Katie Melua’s project is tangible, whilst maintaining grand vision. Its seeds are promising, and may flower into a thing of rare beauty. Whether in 10- or 15-years’ time we will walk into a store – perhaps around Christmas time – and hear really great, uplifting, meaningful pieces of music, remains to be seen. In the meantime, you can go and hear the songs written by the participants in their final concert on Thursday 28th April, at the Sheldonian Theatre.

The Hegelian Dialectic of James Gunn’s Peacemaker

Wang Sum Luk
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The Hegelian Dialectic of James Gunn’s Peacemaker

What links the superhero show Peacemaker with the work of 19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel?

The obvious answer is “nothing at all” or “huh?”. Hegel’s work is considered infamously complex and boring, even by other philosophers; in contrast, Peacemaker is a show brimming with bloody fights, ridiculous characters, huge doses of dark comedy, and 1980s hair metal. They’re opposites in nearly every way—but Hegel’s theories can in fact shed light on what makes Peacemaker work. To explain this, we’ll have to look at James Gunn’s filmmaking style, 19th-century philosophy, and the history of Batman, but it’ll all make sense in the end somehow.

The aspect of Hegel’s work that’s relevant here is his concept of the dialectic. To simplify it to a ridiculous degree, it’s the philosophy that no idea is perfect. Let’s say you come up with an idea to solve a problem. But closer examination shows that the basic assumptions of this idea are contradictory, inherently incapable of dealing with the issue at hand. The dialectic is the process of confronting the contradictions in ideas, seeking to refine them into a better form.

Philosopher Michael Inwood compares this to mixing two chemicals; they might initially have opposite properties, but they’ll combine to form something new. However, Hegel believed that the dialectical process doesn’t end here: this new idea will also have flaws and contradictions, so back to the drawing board we go, in a constant process of moving towards capital-T Truth.

An example from Peacemaker’s plot might illustrate this more clearly. At the start of the show, Peacemaker wants to believe that killing criminals and obeying his father (a thoroughly nasty white-supremacist militant) makes the world a better place. But as the show goes on, he begins to see the contradictions in this belief, realizing that his father’s a monstrous villain, while the enemies he fights might not be as unambiguously evil as he initially believed. And in the finale, he reconciles the contradictions in his worldview, finding a new way of fighting and sacrificing for peace.

Having briefly explained Hegel’s dialectic, let’s now turn and look at the history of Batman. As every review of The Batman will tell you, this latest movie might be the darkest adaptation of the Caped Crusader yet. Matt Reeves’ movie explores political corruption, online radicalization and Bruce Wayne’s tortured psyche—very unlike the 1966 Adam West Batman movie, with its bright colors and goofy Bat-gadgets. Adam West’s take on the character is very unlike the approach of most modern Batman stories, but it’s important to recognize that it’s a faithful adaptation of what the character was like in the period roughly between the 1950s and ‘60s, when Batman inhabited a simple, colorful world where the good guys always defeated the bad guys. That vision of Batman is as valid an interpretation of the character as the one seen in 21st-century adaptations.

I loved every second of The Batman, but (like every single comics adaptation) it has to pick and choose which aspects of the titular character to focus on, which in this movie’s case is to pull almost exclusively from the darker approach to comics storytelling that began to be popularized in the 1970s. The same, however, cannot be said for James Gunn’s Peacemaker.

The show embraces the goofiness of the titular character, kitting him out in a colorful costume that perfectly imitates his comics outfit, and having him take on an alien invasion and a talking gorilla, plots right out of the campy storylines of the mid-20th-century. But the show also deals with serious themes, most prominently the titular hero’s abusive upbringing and warped view of militant patriotism, and his attempts to grow beyond both. He’s a character who once saw the world in a simple black-and-white way, confronting the complexities of real life.

To put it in Hegelian terms, early superhero comics offered one solution to portraying these characters: as cheery, colorful figures aimed at an audience of children. The Batman, and many modern comics, can now aim at a more adult audience with bleaker, nuanced stories. But just as the former approach isn’t very thematically complex, the latter approach can sometimes miss the joyful humour that turned generations of kids into comics fans. Peacemaker represents the concluding phase of the dialectical process, mixing these two ingredients to form a new compound that reflects the best of both worlds.

Of course, Peacemaker isn’t the final phase in this dialectic, especially considering how decidedly adult and R-rated the show is. Nor is it the first or most influential superhero story to combine elements of different comics eras—it only happens to be a particularly recent and successful example. But each attempt to portray these characters is one step in the dialectical process of how superheroes develop. Each attempt contributes something to the overall answer—yes, even the much-reviled Batman and Robin (and for the record, I unironically love the way Gotham City looks in the movie, and some of the songs on the soundtrack are just awesome). In this broader picture, everything has its own value—the uniformity of Marvel’s shared universe and the DCEU’s range of directorial styles, the simple pleasure of early comics and the complexity of modern ones.

I don’t pretend to be able to solve the riddle of what style (or range of styles) would create the perfect superhero adaptation, not when Hollywood’s armies of market researchers and writers haven’t found that answer just yet. But my instinct is that the gonzo ridiculousness of Peacemaker is part of the solution—a demonstration that there’s no contradiction between contemporary complexity and classic charm.

Was this a pointlessly complicated way of saying that this show mixes different parts of comics history? Yes. But in the dialectical process of developing how we write about superhero fiction, imperfection’s to be expected.

Artwork by Wang Sum Luk. Image credit: andreas160578//Pixabay, Projekt_Kaffeebart//Pixabay

The Meaning Of Motherhood: Spencer and Parallel Mothers

Sebastián Sánchez-Schilling
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The Meaning Of Motherhood: Spencer and Parallel Mothers

A well-worn piece of wisdom is that death is the only guarantee in life. But this life presupposes another guarantee: you were born. Life, death, and birth are all present in Pablo Larraín’s Spencer and Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers. Both films address, in different ways, what the meaning of motherhood is.

Although at very different points in their career, Larraín and Almodóvar are united through being Hispanophone directors – the former is Chilean and the latter Spanish – whose work centres around women. Larraín’s breakout English-language film was Jackie, his 2016 biopic about Jackie Kennedy’s experience during and after her husband’s assassination, and despite the androcentric focus of his earlier work, his past four projects have all featured women as protagonists. Almodóvar has spent much of his fifty years in filmmaking making films about women, such as his Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) and Talk to Her (2002). Both directors, however, especially focus on mothers – a focus which has reached its best expression yet in their most recent work.

Parallel Mothers (or Madres Paralelas) features Penelope Cruz as Janis – a photographer in her late thirties. The film begins with Janis doing a photoshoot with a forensic archaeologist named Arturo. After the shoot, Janis asks Arturo if he and his foundation would excavate a mass grave in her village. She informs him that she believes that her great-grandfather, who was murdered by fascists during the Spanish Civil War, is buried there alongside several other men. Arturo agrees; they begin to sleep together, only for Janis to become pregnant. Arturo asks her to abort the child as he has a wife undergoing chemotherapy, a request that Janis rejects, citing her age and desire to have a child.  

The film proceeds as a gradual revelation of the unity of these two, seemingly disparate, subjects: of death and life, past and future, the personal and the political. This revelation is mediated through a flirtation with melodrama that is characteristic of Almodóvar’s films. Janis gives birth alongside a teenaged mother-to-be called Ana, Arturo avoids Janis and their child Anita as he cannot recognise himself in her, Janis discovers that she is not the mother of Anita, she then finds out that Ana’s child died of crib death. After inviting Ana to become a live-in nanny for Anita, Janis secretly makes Ana take a maternity test, only for the results to confirm her suspicions that Ana is the mother of Anita, and that their children were accidentally swapped at birth. Janis does not tell Ana the truth – later saying that she could not bear to lose her child twice – but her guilt becomes overwhelming as the two begin sleeping together. Nonetheless, it remains only a flirtation with melodrama, because despite the twists and turns of the plot, Almodóvar’s deftness as a story-teller and director ensures that the tone is never melodramatic. Tragedy is never dwelt on more than it needs to, and at times scenes of an emotional nature are cut short in what might seem is a jarring way. This makes sense in the context of the film: these events are tragic, but they also become part of the background of the character’s daily life. As they move on, so does the film. The film ends with Janis telling Ana the truth, their painful reconciliation, and the excavation of the mass grave by Arturo and his team.

Spencer features Kristen Stewart as Diana Spencer and is set during the royal family’s Christmas holidays at the Sandringham estate. The film covers three days – Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day – during which Diana decides to separate from Prince Charles. Like Jackie, Spencer presents an intimate portrait of an iconic woman whose interiority is lost (or perhaps neglected) as a result of her public persona and relation to tragedy. Both films are a reminder of the humanity of people who have been reduced to the status of celebrity or historical figure. Larraín and Stewart accomplish this through intimately representing Diana’s psyche: we see her struggles with depression and bulimia, but also the moments of joy she manages to have during her stay. Diana is almost driven to suicide – prevented by her hallucination of Anne Boleyn – and on Boxing Day decides to leave the estate with her two sons. The film ends on a bittersweet note: Diana looks over the Thames, confident in the knowledge that for the first time in over ten years, she has the opportunity to be happy as an independent woman and mother. The viewer knows, though, that this opportunity is eventually cut short.

That Spencer ends with Diana being accompanied by only her children is no coincidence. Throughout the film, Diana’s relationship with her children is presented as one of the only properly human interactions afforded to her. Diana’s interactions with the royal family range from stilted to actively hostile; her interactions with her children – which include silly midnight games and tender moments of comfort – are joyful and relaxed. Even when Diana is overwhelmed, she still turns to her children as people she can trust, despite their young age. Early on in the film, Diana asks her boys to let her know if she begins to act silly, as they’re the only ones she believes. There is an irony in Diana’s motherhood, what in more cynical terms could have put as her duty to bear children for the future king, offering her one of the only sources of reprieve against the suffocating royal family. When Diana leaves the royal family she takes her children, because being a mother on her own terms, rather than the royal family’s terms, is necessary for her to be herself – Diana Spencer, and not Princess Diana.

If Spencer is about a mother, then MP is about mothers and motherhood in general. The eponymous parallel mothers of the film – Janis and Ana – are mirrored in their own mothers. In an interview Almodóvar claimed that both women are orphans in their own way. We discover that Janis’ mother died of an overdose at 27; Ana’s mother, who is alive and features prominently, essentially abandoned her to her father so that she could pursue an acting career. The relationship of each woman to her own mother inevitably frames her own experience of motherhood, with both Janis and Ana attempting to be the mother their mothers either couldn’t or wouldn’t be. Their futures as mothers depends on their past as children.

The past asserts its presence in other ways too. Janis’ life has invariably been shaped by the trauma of her great-grandfather’s death. His murder marked an absence in her grandmother’s life which, like a black hole, came to refract and reflect on everything around it – a process which her own mother came to experience. That the grief was sustained across generations, was not a result of an unwillingness of the family to move on, but of an inability. This inability was caused by the brute fact that Janis’ great-grandfather remained buried in a ditch dug by his own hand. The absence of any proper burial or gravesite for Janis’ great-grandfather is what sustains his felt absence in the lives of his descendants.

What defines the difference in the treatment of motherhood in both films is the framework in which it takes place. In Spencer, motherhood is not a wider phenomena but rather a vital component in Diana’s life – one that sustains her during her time at Sandringham and one that gives her hope afterwards. Larraín treats motherhood as an intensely personal and individual experience. In Parallel Mothers, motherhood is inseparable from the wider structures of family and kinship, and these in turn are inseparable from the even wider historical and political context that shapes one’s life. We should not understand these as opposing perspectives, contrasting the personal with the political, but rather as two complementary perspectives that take different emphases on a single subject. It is only through taking these different perspectives, attending to variations in experiences and setting, that we can come to begin to appreciate through film what it means to be a mother. 

Artwork by Wang Sum Luk. Image credit: angel4leon//Pixabay

La Vie en Rose: The new teacher

Maddy Bellucci
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La Vie en Rose: The new teacher

She entered with big doughy eyes and a welcoming self-effacing buzz-cut – making her seem above the superficial and the hair-possessing. She looks a bit like my childhood piano teacher, Dailyn, (whom I adored, in fact so much so that I performed upon her my very exclusive electric pen trick – which in hindsight I’m not sure she appreciated as much as I thought, as she was soon summoned back to America for some very important concert – never to be seen again). She is a new teacher, about 26, and turned up a couple months ago, wearing relaxed forest-green flairs and unassuming but cool high-top converse. I thought “phew, someone young that I can talk to during my breaks”. She strides into the classroom, stands up, with an encouraging radiant beam, as she patiently waits a minute for the year 9 class to quiet down. Then, fuelled by a deep, warm breath, as though she were about to sing Carmen’s first aria, exclaims “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

You can imagine my surprise when the sugarglider-looking newbie emitted this first introductory cry. Not quite the operatic aria I was expecting. I think the class was slightly taken aback too, as their previously life-or-death, unpostponable consultations came to a sudden halt and their greasy post-PE heads spun round 360 faster than I can chug a G&T (and that’s fast). They looked at me as if to beckon an explanation but I was occupied having a very important consultation of my own with the radiator to my left. Once again, she smiled, and with a twinkle in her left eye, said “you guys are the special ones right?” Then theatrically slowly “Theee sliiiightly sloooow ones?” She then turned to me and asked me the same question. My response was something between a mumble and a distressed seal’s yelp . “The class that I was told need a bit of extra attention?” Once the French kids clocked what she was saying they began fanatically shaking their heads and the guy with the uncanny resemblance to the little boy in UP exclaimed “No?! We are ze normal! We normal!” She then turned to me with a sarcastic grin, and went “really?” but I could no longer justify creepily ogling the radiator and had to find some other object, so I opted for the boy at the front’s greasy bleached blonde front quiff.

I quickly realized that everything I previously found warm and welcoming about this woman was to be subverted. I was to attribute the opposite emotion to all of her facial expressions: a glare to her grin, a demonic red lens to her charming twinkle, and even maybe long auburn 2016 Tumblr locks to her buzzcut. The next two weeks I found myself doing the thing that I do best when I am uncomfortable around someone. Compliment Vomit. It went from her high-top converse to “I’ve never seen that kind of agenda. It’s the coolest agenda I’ve ever seen. Wow. Where did you get it?” And luckily, she took kindly to the sycophantic spew. Her initially deceptive encouraging side did come through at times when she pushed the silent class to speak. “Come on guys. The only way to learn is if you try!” So, the girl with the dip-died lob and the lazy eye stuttered an attempt at the sentence. Buzz-cut jolly chops turned first to me (she does this, which makes it seem like I agree with whatever is about to come out of her mouth next) and then to the terrorised girl and softly uttered “I wish someone would tell you how stupid you look when speaking.”  I don’t know whether the fact that they may not actually understand what she’s saying to them is better or worse.

 In the same way that after a dinner I ask if I can help tidy once there are two cups left on the table and the surface has been cleaned, at times I look at her with a faux-complicitous apologetic smile and swallow a piteous “canIhelp…”, as – even though it may seem like I am just a girl in a miniskirt and earphones who just enjoys floating about this French school’s blue corridors at 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon, sporadically floating in and out of classrooms and occupying a seat – I am, after all, the assistant teacher.

The moments when she seems to shine are when the kids are working peacefully. The perfectly quiet and most harmoniously peaceful hour is her battle cry. They were sitting, pacifically completing an exercise, when she turned to me, with a smile I earned through compliment puke, and with kind, cheery eyes (remember the subversion) went “I just hate them, you know?”  in the same way an old lady in a rocking chair might smile to herself and exhale an “ahhh, how I’ve relished life.” And as though reading my “why the hell are you a teacher then” thoughts, she added: “I just use them to take my anger out. You know?” then sat back and contemplatively looked out of the window and noted “I’m a very happy person.”

Also, the way in which she manspreads in the staffroom, compared to how I try to take up 1/4th of the right-hand sofa cushion, is remarkable.

I sometimes wonder, why teach if you hate children? But then again why do I run if I hate running. Or why do people drink coffee if they hate coffee. And I wonder if she’s like that in her personal life too. I’m picturing her with a group of people and turning to the guy next to her, and sweetly whispering “I wish you knew how putrid you look when sipping your beer.” But essentially, she did make me realise how unassertive I am in these kinds of authoritative environments. I mean my initial goal was to walk into the staff room full of soup-sipping 50year old French professional complainers without apologising for my existence and the oxygen I am taking, but perhaps I should change it to marching in, and with one swift movement removing all of their soups and salads from the table, laying my feet there and declaring “vous êtes tous des petits cons.”

Image Credit: Public Domain

Student safety is not a joke: Clubs need to do better

Emily Littlejohn
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Student safety is not a joke: Clubs need to do better

To begin with, it was your standard Thursday night in Oxford. After a chaotic sports social, my friends and I stumbled excitedly down to Bridge where we danced the evening away, giggling at the frenzied scene before us. Everything was just as it should be; that is, until I was suddenly apprehended by one of the bouncers. Out of nowhere, he began to shout at me and accuse me of taking drugs, informing me that I must leave. Given that I knew he was lying, I initially resisted and tired to plead my case; this only drove him to grab my arm and forcefully take me outside where he proceeded to empty the contents of my bag. Throughout, I constantly repeated the same thing: that I hadn’t done anything wrong and so could I please go back inside and join my friends. If any of the bouncers had a shred of concern for my safety they would have listened. Clearly they did not. Despite not finding any drugs, and having no concrete reason for doing so, they demanded that I leave immediately. Not only did they prevent me from going inside to get my coat, but they even denied my request to find a friend to leave with me, despite my rather lengthy explanation about the dangers of walking alone to my house in Cowley. I was simply turned away without a second thought. 

Thankfully, I managed to get back safely, but this was pure luck. My phone was out of charge, it was 2am and I was facing a 45 minute journey home alone. In the current climate, where discussions around women’s safety are finally getting the awareness they deserve, you would think the bouncers would have prioritised my wellbeing over their need for a power trip. You would think that they would have asked for my consent before physically manhandling me and searching through my personal belongings. 

Perhaps, if this were some random, isolated incident, one could argue it was all a simple misunderstanding. However, when explaining what happened to my friends, I was met with a chorus of voices relating to my experience. All around me were young people who had been placed in vulnerable positions that could have easily been avoided. Some had fallen victim to the ‘drugs’ accusation, and were kicked out after none were found, while others were forced to wait alone on the street for taxis, despite pleading with the bouncers to wait inside. These seemingly small decisions can have devastating impacts. Of course, when students are too drunk to enter, clubs have every right to deny them entry; but even in such cases, those in charge must still ensure they are not placing students in unreasonably dangerous situations.

A few weeks ago when my friend was turned away, they failed to check if she had someone to leave with. On the journey home, which she has no memory of, not only did she lose her phone, passport and shoes, but she then had to be escorted home by the police. The point is not that she shouldn’t have been kicked out; the point is that she shouldn’t have been kicked out alone. 

Clubs need to do better. As a student, you place your trust in these institutions to create a safe environment which you can enjoy. Last night, the bouncers violated my personal space and privacy; two male strangers used physical force to drag me outside, placing me in a highly vulnerable position. 4 out of 5 women feel unsafe walking home at night. Throwing people out onto the streets for no apparent reason is more than ridiculous. It’s dangerous. 

It is time for clubs to change their policies and attitudes. These examples are part of a much wider issue endemic within the nightlife industry. Club managers and bouncers simply do not care about the wellbeing of those who dance away inside their venues. They don’t care about spiking; plastic lids on cups are still nowhere to be found. They don’t care about groping; at the very best men are simply asked to leave, with no formal action ever taken. There exists an attitude of indifference, verging on hostility, lying beneath a shiny exterior. While they promise a night of fun and revelry, they do nothing to prevent it from turning sour. Nightclubs need to actively challenge that which corrupts the liberating and joyous experience they can provide. Because in a city like Oxford where the vast majority of those clubbing are students, and where so many of us still feel unsafe, the need for change is not just pressing; it is urgent.

Image: 453169 via Pixabay

Oli Hall’s Oxford United Updates – W8

Oliver Hall
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Oli Hall’s Oxford United Updates – W8

Weekly Round-Up

It was a case of more games and more goals across the board at Oxford United as the women scored seven and the men bounced back from a midweek defeat to impress in their win on Saturday.

The month kicked off with a tricky away trip to Portsmouth on Tuesday night.  Marcus Browne gave the Us the dream start when he opened the scoring inside three minutes and the visitors looked comfortable in their lead until the very end of the first half.  That was when things started to go wrong for Oxford as Sean Raggett equalised on the 42-minute mark and George Hirst sent Fratton Park into raptures in added time.  Hayden Carter put the game beyond a capable-looking Oxford side before the hour mark and a Luke McNally goal with nine minutes to go proved to only be a consolation.

The mood at the final whistle couldn’t have contrasted more with the women’s game the next evening if it had tried!  Fans at Court Place Farm bore witness to a simply sensational Oxford performance as they ran out 7-0 winners over Hounslow and went top of the league for the first time this season.  Both Beth Lumsden and Carly Johns scored hattricks and Wallace added to the tally to finally put United in pole position to win the title and keep their chase for promotion alive.

The men took inspiration from that performance on Saturday as they returned to the Kassam and brushed aside Burton Albion in a 4-1 win.  Sam Baldock scored a brace and Gavin Whyte and Matty Taylor both netted in a crazy first half.  Burton pulled one back in added time before the break to give them half a hope but the game petered out in the second half and it finished 4-1.

So, as the week comes to a close, the women sit top of the league and will welcome promotion rivals Southampton to Court Place on Wednesday.  The men stay fourth, four points clear of Wycombe below them, as they look to solidify their playoff push with a trip to struggling Shrewsbury on Saturday.

Match Report:  Oxford United 4-1 Burton Albion

Oxford United got back to winning ways at the Kassam with a sensational first-half performance that set up a 4-1 win over Burton Albion.

Jimmy Floyd Hasslebank’s side were on the back foot from the get-go and it only took seven minutes for Sam Baldock to prove Oxford’s class.  Herbie Kane found him in the box and he headed home with composure to open the scoring.

United were made to wait for their second goal as Baldock saw one ruled out for offside and the Yellows continued to plough forward, piling on the pressure.  That pressure told after 35 minutes as Gavin Whyte slammed home a 25-yard-screamer to double the lead.

The third came just five minutes later as Baldock tapped home from another cross, this time courtesy of the sensational Luke McNally.

Image: Darrell Fisher

Ahmad Nawaz wins Union Presidency, EMPOWER sweeps officerships

Cherwell News
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Ahmad Nawaz wins Union Presidency, EMPOWER sweeps officerships

Ahmad Nawaz of the EMPOWER slate has been elected President of the Oxford Union for MT 2022, winning 486 first preferences. Nawaz was the Treasurer of the Oxford Union in Hilary 2022. 

The three other officerships were won by the following candidates:

Librarian:  Daniel Dipper (EMPOWER) with 513 votes

Treasurer:  Josh Chima (EMPOWER) with 468 votes

Secretary: Anvee Bhutani (EMPOWER) with 443 votes

The results were a victory for the EMPOWER slate, which was running in a three-way race against the UPLIFT and SPARK slates.

Those elected to Standing Committee, in descending order, are: 

Victor Lamotte (SPARK) – 144 first preferences

Disha Hedge (EMPOWER) – 107 first preferences

Matthew Dick (SPARK) – 90 first preferences

Spencer Shia (EMPOWER) – 88 first preferences

Israr Khan (EMPOWER) – 107 first preferences

Those elected to Secretary’s Committee, in descending order, are:

Ruqayya Diwan (EMPOWER), Hannah Edwards (EMPOWER), Lucy Wang (SPARK), Tom Elliot (EMPOWER), Maiya James (EMPOWER), Ayuishi Agarwal (UPLIFT), Rosie Jacobs (SPARK), Dani Yates (EMPOWER), Joe Murray (EMPOWER), Kwabena Osei (CHANGE) and Adya Manoj (SPARK)

Image Credit: NATO via Flickr.com

Haute Kosher: The lady doth kvetch too much (or does she?)

Jessica DeMarco-Jacobson
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Haute Kosher: The lady doth kvetch too much (or does she?)

kvetch 

Etymology: Yiddish kvetshen to talk about something at great length and (often) in an annoying manner, semantic development (perhaps reflecting an extended use along the lines of ‘to squeeze the last drop out of (something)’) of kvetshen to pinch, to squeeze, to press 

North American colloquial (originally in Jewish usage).

verb:  intransitive. To criticize or complain a great deal. Frequently with about.

Or at least that’s the Oxford English Dictionary definition of “kvetch.” But that doesn’t quite capture what kvetching is and its purpose. Kvetching does indeed mean to complain, but kvetching accomplishes so much more than that; it’s an art form. So, why do we kvetch; why does kvetching heal the soul? Why should we continue to kvetch?

And just a note…This self-reflection totally did not come from the realisation that I kvetch entirely too much.

Corinne Engber from JewishBoston defined kvetching as the “time-honored tradition of the Jewish people. It presumably began with Eve stubbing her toe or something in the Garden of Eden and crafting a beautiful metaphor of pain, and ends with us, now, in a period rife with kvetch-worthy situations.”

Indeed, the Torah contains many instances of kvetching. While the Israelites wandered the desert for 40 years, they kvetched to Moses about the lack of provisions. But is kvetching the right word here? They were expressing their desire to fill their existential needs while walking in a barren wasteland. Meanwhile, I’m kvetching to my friend about how I had to bike all the way to the English Faculty Library in the cold rain just so that I could pick up a very niche book for my stressful undergraduate thesis. We are not the same.

G-d does eventually give in to the Israelites’ kvetching and provides them manna. However, the Israelites kvetch again about their lack of water at their camp in Rephidim. Moses then kvetches to G-d, worried that the Israelites will stone him to death for not providing them with water. G-d eventually gives in to this, too, telling Moses to hit a rock with his staff. The rock flows with water, providing the Israelites with drink. 

In the following verses, Moses decides to name the place where he hit the rock “Massah and Meribah,” after the fact the Israelites quarreled and “because they tried יהוה (G-d), saying, “Is יהוה present among us or not?’” This wasn’t the end of their complaints, however.

In Parshat Behaalotecha (the 36th weekly Torah portion in the annual cycle of Torah reading), the Israelites begin to kvetch about the lack of variety in the food G-d provides them (which at that time comprised only manna). The Torah portion reads:

“The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look to!”

Ahhh. Now I feel a little better about my own kvetching. Moses brings these complaints to G-d, In effect, he says, “G-d, how can you possibly expect me to be the Deliverer when these people keep kvetching about everything? It makes my job pretty hard.” What chutzpah! But what is the significance of this kvetching? Why is it important for us to do the same now (even though we are no longer wandering through the desolate desert landscapes outside Egypt, but through Oxford’s Cornmarket Street instead)? 

Kvetching is important because it is a form of building community. It strengthens relationships. When we kvetch to one another, especially about things that don’t have an immediate resolution, it connects us. Here, the Israelites rally together around a common cause. Perhaps in a less moving fashion than the Israelites in the Torah, my kvetching about how I was locked out of Microsoft Authenticator and couldn’t work on my essays, alongside my friend who is kvetching about his 20-page essay on the philosopher and mathematician Frege, or my other friend who is kvetching about how crowded city-centre Tesco is (its frustratingly oft-broken Tescalator is), brings us all closer together.

Being able to address the problems we face and to feel the solidarity of others gives us some sense of power. I’m wary of comparing myself or my friends to any of the situations in the Tanakh (the canonical collection of Hebrew scripture, including the Torah), but we should think about how kvetching gave those characters agency, just like in my wandering-the-desert example. In Midrash (rabbinic exegesis of Jewish scripture, Shmot Rabbah to be specific) the Israelites complain about having to dredge through the muddy ground while walking through the parted Red Sea. The Israelites are quite literally experiencing a divine miracle that brings them their deliverance, but they still find something to kvetch about. 

Two of the Israelites who complain, Reuven and Shimon, join together in their complaints: “In Egypt, we had mud, and now in the sea we have mud. In Egypt, we had clay for bricks, and here too, we have an abundance of clay to make bricks.” Seems a bit ungrateful, doesn’t it? But it’s not. How does this bring this together—or more importantly, why is it helpful?

As Rabbi Seth Goldstein points out, “we need to trudge through the mud to get to where we are going,” but that doesn’t make our arrival a miracle. Even if we realise that we are indeed going to get through something, kvetching about the process of going through it can help us unite. In other words, we can realise a situation could be better—and what we ourselves can do to bring about those improvements in the future.

Although sometimes our only option in getting  through these menial difficulties is just to schlepp through it, talking about it removes some of the stress. It helps us think about the problem in new ways and reorganise the mind. It manages our stress, anxiety, and depression. It prevents us from holding in our frustrations and exploding. It increases empathy. Kvetching is a form of catharsis, and that’s why we should continue to kvetch. The greatest value of kvetching, in my opinion, is that it can be one of the greatest sources of Jewish achievement and progress. After all, as the Jewish philosopher and theologian Heschel said in his book Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, “All that is creative stems from a seed of endless discontent.”

Image Credit: Public Domain, courtesy of The British Library. Golden Haggadah, c. 1320, Northern Spain (MS. 27210, fol. 1o verso)

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