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Description: | Concept: civilian morale, education, civilian personnel, professionals, architecture, empire / commonwealth Description: whole: the image occupies the majority, held within a narrow black border. The title is separate and positioned across the top edge, in white outlined black. The subtitle and text are separate and placed in the lower quarter, in black. All set against a white background. image: a depiction of students walking between buildings, and sitting in groups on the lawns, at Cambridge University. In the background is the chapel of King's College. text: [Persian text] Allinson [Persian text] O.P.D. 377/38/9/14. [Life in Britain today. A typical British university. Painted by Adrian Allinson, R.O.I. Out of more than twenty Universities and University Colleges in Britain, the two oldest, Oxford and Cambridge, are the most characteristically British. They were founded six to seven hundred years ago, when priests were the only scholars. Though to-day their teaching is the most up to date in the world the early monastic traditions still survive. The academical gown and tasselled cap shown in the picture are modifications of those worn by the monks of old. The students still walk in the cloisters, but they discuss many more subjects than theology, including sport, which is also one of their great traditions. Strictly speaking, a University is not a collection of buildings, but a group of teachers. These professors and lecturers legislate from their headquarters, the Senate House. Around them has grown a cluster of communities known as Colleges, where students and teaching staff live side by side, dine together in their own hall, hole their lectures in their own lecture rooms, read in the College Library, attend Divine Service in its Chapel. The students take degrees set by the University and accept its laws and discipline, but otherwise the Colleges are self-governing bodies. The Universities have grown by the addition of new Colleges, many of them endowed by wealthy people. The result is a mixture of styles covering hundreds of years of architectural change. But there is a recognisable pattern which harmonises them all. They are built around courtyards either paved or sown with vivid green lawns, where the atmosphere of learning is undisturbed by traffic and other distractions of town life. Originally, Universities were intended for men only, but now women have their own Colleges and attend the same classes and sit for the degrees as the men. The newer Universities have taken more kindly to women students than the old. They differ in other respects too, especially in having a less active social life. This is considered a defect and is being remedied by the provision of residential hostels, which are already developing some of the qualities of the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. Education at a British University bestows a social as well as an academical status. There are no class or race barriers at British universities. Money grants are available for poor students; the gates are open to the best brains of other nations. Indeed, the famous Empire-builder, Cecil Rhodes, founded the Rhodes Scholarships with the express object of spreading more widely the benefits of British University education. In quality of teaching, all the British Universities, new and old alike, stand high in the world's esteem. They would have been forbidden by law to call themselves Universities if they had failed to attain the necessary standard. They have the privilege of being represented separately in Parliament, to ensure that higher education is not forgotten in the mass of Government business. From within the Universities' historic walls and cloistered walks have sprung ideas and discoveries that have changed the world. It was in a typical British University that scientists first split the atom. It is in Universities that great statesmen have been nurtured, and historians, geologists, poets, mathematicians and artists fostered and launched into a world that needed them. With their blending of ancient tradition and modern knowledge, of old-world gentility and new-world drive, many sons of British Universities are enriching humankind and moulding the future of civilisation.] Object: bicycle, fountain, building, chapel | Subjects: | poster | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Allinson, Adrian Publisher/Sponsor: Central Office of Information | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=5173... | Go to resource |
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