nonsite

What really strikes me as interesting as a student from Canada, is how many assumptions there are at Camberwell about how the university does things and how things are done. These are not transparent proceedures. I can see if you have been educated in England and then you are teaching in England- it is what you know and what you’re used to. To some extent I can see how you might assume that this is how things are done elsewhere- everywhere. Obviously, that is not always the case.

Within this course, it seems like we spent a disproportionate amount of time going over what are probably obvious details to students who have grown up and been educated in the British educational system- and I’m not just talking about ‘A levels’ (I’m still trying to figure out that they are).

I have been reading Annette Kuhn’s Family Secrets and her later chapter Passing about her grammar school education in London, in the 1950s and the social class values that were so deeply ingrained in England at that time, including the many ways that she was reminded that ‘you can’t rise out of your class’. It immediately made me wonder how embedded these class values still are, within the various universities and art colleges in London.

I’m wondering how present class values are at Camberwell, how they relate to digital arts. I’m not sure who or how to ask? In Canada these questions have been far from my mind for many years.