The Sunday Times carried an alarming story this week by journalist, Marc Horne, alleging that there is ‘a deeply ingrained culture of snobbery at Edinburgh University ‘, where working-class students with regional accents, particularly from Scotland, are targeted and demeaned. A clue to this behaviour is in the statistical configuration of the student body; 70% are English – 40% of whom attended fee-paying schools. These figures are all the more dramatic when viewed in the context that less than 4% of UK pupils are educated privately and all indications are that numbers will decrease further with the introduction of VAT on school fees. It is not evident from the ST piece whether this is a long-standing issue or a recent phenomenon. Most thinking people will shake their heads in disbelief, given the problems facing Higher Education and reports that one Scottish university is facing bankruptcy.
What I found most disturbing , was that lecturers and university staff were active participants in this appalling behaviour; the article claimed that teachers regularly mimic and mock Scottish students whose speech reflects a working class upbringing. As a head teacher of nearly twenty years , I think that I would be summoning any member of staff , guilty of such conduct , to a disciplinary hearing on professional behaviour.
Ultimately, the responsibility for this unacceptable situation rests with the Senior Leadership team under the Principal, Sir Peter Mathieson. Their efforts to date are unimpressive; students from privileged backgrounds are, apparently, issued with guidance on how to ‘ counteract socioeconomic micro aggressions’ – that’s Edinburgh speak for how to relate to the groundlings.
Seamus Heaney held, among others, positions at Queens, Oxford (Professor of Poetry) , Harvard (Professor of Rhetoric). Throughout his life , his accent was coloured by the vowel sounds of his upbringing in Bellaghy.
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