sexta-feira, maio 28, 2010

O Colégio de Todas as Almas




Há pouco tempo comecei a dar aula em uma universidade federal. Na verdade, sou professor há três anos no nível superior, mas é a primeira vez que trabalho em uma universidade pública, e ainda estou "reconhecendo o terreno". Até agora o que mais me tem excitado a curiosidade, já que lido diretamente com a graduação, é ver que tipo de mente se tem formado ali.

A curiosidade pode ser ingênua, especialmente considerando que já passei por uma universidade pública antes, com aluno. Mas não é tanto quanto parece. Quando me referi ao tipo de mente, estou na verdade pensando no tipo de aspiração intelectual que ali se desenvolve. Que ideais se alimentam, que níveis esperam alcançar? Têm uma identificação real com o que aprendem, usam isso para sua formação espiritual também, ou tudo é mais uma questão de gosto, como um passatempo, ou oportunidade profissional? Teriam eles gosto e talento para responder perguntas como esta:

"O governo era melhor informado por volta de 1700 do que tnha sido por volta de 1500?"

ou

"Os dados de Deus estão sempre viciados. [Emerson] Discuta."

ou ainda

"A legitimidade política requer justiça?"

e até

"Já houve alguma época que não tenha sido uma era da informação?"


Estas são apenas algumas das questões do exame do All Souls College, uma das várias subunidades de Oxford. Segundo esta matéria, para se tornar um fellow nessa venerável instituição, pessoas dotadas de um currículo do mais alto calibre intelectual devem passar no que seria o "exame mais difícil do mundo". Parte dele consistia em escrever um ensaio coerente sobre um tema que se resumia a um único substantivo: "água", "inocência", "harmonia" etc. Muita gente admirável não conseguiu, e agora a administração do ASC desistiu dessa forma de avaliação. Nenhum absurdo, dado que o resto da avaliação já é um desafio considerável. Naturalmente, cá fico eu pensando em como me sairia numa seleção dessas, e o quão divertido poderia ser. Olhando as perguntas acima -- metade das questões são da área de especialidade do candidato, e a outra metade de "conhecimentos gerais" --, tenho lá minhas dúvidas se o tipo de candidato que o ASC espera é o mesmo que frequenta nossos corredores universitários. Afinal, diante de questões assim, é impossível não pensar no aspecto lúdico do conhecimento -- não vejo um acadêmico convencional respondendo-as, e sim aqueles para quem o conhecimento que acumulam é acima de tudo uma forma de prazer, um deleite mental que por acaso costuma ser (às vezes?) remunerado. Se é assim, é o tipo de pessoa a que aspiro ser; e mais do que isso, o tipo de pessoa que espero um dia inspirar outros a ser.

Para mim, intelectualidade é isso. Não, não é ter opinião sobre tudo, nem querer bancar o guia iluminado da humanidade (embora essa seja uma tentação quase irresistível para o erudito suficientemente autoconfiante). Quantas pessoas assim eu conheci nos 14 anos em que tenho frequentado universidades? Poucas, e estou incluindo os professores. E isso me dá o que pensar.

Transcrevo a matéria que me apresentou o ASC. A lista das perguntas já feitas podem ser encontradas aqui.

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Oxford Essay Tradition Comes to This: ‘Death’ (Please Expound)

OXFORD, England — The exam was simple yet devilish, consisting of a single noun (“water,” for instance, or “bias”) that applicants had three hours somehow to spin into a coherent essay. An admissions requirement for All Souls College here, it was meant to test intellectual agility, but sometimes seemed to test only the ability to sound brilliant while saying not much of anything.

“An exercise in showmanship to avoid answering the question,” is the way the historian Robin Briggs describes his essay on “innocence” in 1964, a tour de force effort that began with the opening chords of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” and then brought in, among other things, the flawed heroes of Stendhal and the horrors of the prisoner-of-war camp in the William Golding novel “Free Fall.”

No longer will other allusion-deploying Oxford youths have the chance to demonstrate the acrobatic flexibility of their intellect in quite the same way. All Souls, part of Oxford University, recently decided, with some regret, to scrap the one-word exam.

It has been offered annually since 1932 (and sporadically before that) as part of a grueling, multiday affair that, in one form or another, has been administered since 1878 and has been called the hardest exam in the world. The unveiling of the word was once an event of such excitement that even non-applicants reportedly gathered outside the college each year, waiting for news to waft out. Applicants themselves discovered the word by flipping over a single sheet of paper and seeing it printed there, all alone, like a tiny incendiary device.

But that was then. “For a number of years, the one-word essay question had not proved to be a very valuable way of providing insight into the merits of the candidates,” said Sir John Vickers, the warden, or head, of the college.

In a university full of quirky individual colleges with their own singular traditions, All Souls still stands out for the intellectual riches it offers and the awe it inspires. Founded in 1438 and not open to undergraduates, it currently has 76 fellows drawn from the upper echelons of academia and public life, most admitted on the strength of their achievements and scholarly credentials.

Previous fellows include Sir Isaiah Berlin, Sir Christopher Wren, William Gladstone and T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia). Hilaire Belloc and John Buchan are said to have failed to get in. In recent years, fellows have included a Nobel Prize winner, several cabinet members, a retired senior law lord and a lord chancellor.

In addition, two young scholars are chosen each year from among Oxford students who graduated recently with the highest possible academic results. Called examination fellows, they get perks including room and board, 14,783 pounds (about $21,000) a year for a seven-year term and the chance to engage in erudite discussions over languorous meals with the other fellows.

But first they have to take the exam. It consists of 12 hours of essays over two days. Half are on the applicants’ academic specialties, the other half on general subjects, with questions like: “Do the innocent have nothing to fear?” “Isn’t global warming preferable to global cooling?” “How many people should there be?” and the surprisingly relevant, because this is Britain: “Does the moral character of an orgy change when the participants wear Nazi uniforms?”

Those are daunting enough. But it is the one-word-question essay (known simply as “Essay”) that candidates still remember decades later. Past words, chosen by the fellows, included “style,” “censorship,” “charity,” “reproduction,” “novelty,” “chaos” and “mercy.”

It was not a test for everyone.

“Many candidates, including some of the best, seemed at a loss when confronted with this exercise,” said Mr. Briggs, a longtime teacher of modern history at Oxford.

Others found it exhilarating. “Brilliant fun,” a past applicant named Matthew Edward Harris wrote in The Daily Telegraph recently, recalling his 2007 essay, on “harmony.”

He had resolved, he said, that “No matter what word I was given, I would structure my answer using Hegel’s dialectic.” And then, like a chef rummaging through the recesses of his refrigerator for unlikely soup ingredients, he added a discussion of Kant’s categorical imperative and an analysis of the creative tensions among the vocalists in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (he didn’t get in).

The writer Harry Mount, an Oxford graduate and the author of “Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin in Your Life,” didn’t get in, either. His essay, in 1994, was on “miracles.”

What was in it?

“Crying Madonnas in Ireland, that sort of thing,” Mr. Mount said. “And the battle between faith and cynicism. I was a cynic and didn’t believe in miracles, and perhaps that was bad. I had just read about Karl Popper and his theory of falsification, so I threw in a bit about that.”

Justin Walters, the founder and chief executive of Investis, an online corporate communication service company, said that writing his essay, on “corruption,” was not half as bad as the oral exam several weeks later, conducted by a long row of fellows peering across a table.

“ ‘Mr. Walters, you made some very interesting distinctions in your essay. Are you prepared to defend it?’ ” he remembered one of the fellows asking. Unfortunately, he had only a vague recollection of what he had written. “You’re the teacher — you figure it out,” he recalled thinking. (He must have done something right: he got in.)

Sir John, the current college warden, has worked as the Bank of England’s chief economist and been president of the Royal Economic Society, among other jobs. He draws a self-protective veil over the memory of his own essay, in 1979, on “conversion.”

“I do shudder at the thought of what I must have written,” he said.

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