If this is even remotely true, then why the constant SHOCK and AWE at the fact that some people like to talk about things that they read?
Hasn't k-punk written like a trillion blog posts on this? ...the Oxbridge educated anti-intellectual status-quo warrior gym class hero?
If this is even remotely true, then why the constant SHOCK and AWE at the fact that some people like to talk about things that they read?
Hasn't k-punk written like a trillion blog posts on this? ...the Oxbridge educated anti-intellectual status-quo warrior gym class hero?
Aye, it's all true.
Who is 'k-punk' and what would k-punk know? Even if s/he did have some experience of either university, how can s/he generalise about the tens of thousands of people who pass through them? Has s/he not heard about colleges like Wadham (Oxford) or King's (Cambridge)? They're absolutely packed with name-dropping, left-leaning wannabe intellos (one of my friends is at King's).
Even if your thesis were true (that ppl at Oxbridge pretend to be anti-intellectual), it is still the case that most students there
actually are more intellectual than at any of the other universities in the UK, in that they have read more (see performances on University Challenge), are generally more intelligent (some greatly so), are competitive and goal-centred and are given more work to do than anywhere else (Oxf: 12 essays in 8 weeks to defend 1-1 or 2-1 vs world-leading experts).
Re debating styles, what might be believed by many Oxbridge students is that less intelligent people name-drop more in debate than the more intelligent as doing so gives their arguments a ready-made structure and weight - which is easier than fashioning persuasive points on the fly (which skills the Oxbridge tutorial system attempts to develop). I don't remember Union debates involving much name-dropping either.
Many Oxbridge students might well be averse to heavy name-dropping (as I obv am) as it betrays preparation and admits an intellectual debt to others, preferring the implied self-sufficiency of improvised argument (the narcissism of 'effortless superiority'). On a more prosaic note, name-dropping and other excesses of referencing disrupt the flow of an argument, as your interlocutor wastes time vainly trying to retrieve information about GodknowswhatobscureFrenchthinker from memory rather than following your logic.
So, to some extent, I agree with k-punk, but with important reservations: some Oxbridge students are closetly intellectual anti-'intello's (which stance is itself an attentuation of the wider British mistrust of 'intellectuals') while others would fit right in with the handful of Essex students who were set on assuming an 'intellectual' persona.
PS 'Gym class hero'? Is s/he thinking of the right side of the Atlantic?