Your views: Xenophobia: give the media a break

If Derrik Ferney's and Reinhard Tenberg's analysis of the downward trend in applications to read German at university were correct ("Xenophobia: A barrier to educating the Euro generation", 30 Oct, 1997), then one would expect a comparable drop in the number of students taking German at A- level, especially since younger students are probably more susceptible to negative stereotypes than sixth-formers. But judging by figures that I saw recently, the number of people taking German A-level has remained fairly constant (at around 10,500) for some years now.

I would suggest we need to scrutinise the content of A-level courses and discover how this affects subsequent university choice. Have German A-levels become so linguistically demanding that they deter students from taking the language further? Is the image of Germany which the A-level courses project so bland that students drop German in favour of more exciting options at university? Although I do not know the answers to these questions, I am fairly sure that the media image of Germany has only a marginal effect on the downward trend described by your authors.

But like them, I regret the decline in the number of people wishing to study German since, in my experience, good graduates with a command of foreign languages are valued by employers. So much so that two of my recent graduates began their professional lives on salaries higher than my own, and they were not, I hasten to add, from privileged backgrounds.

Professor Richard Sheppard

Fellow and Tutor in German

Magdalen College, Oxford

In putting forward the theory that xenophobic, and particularly Germanophobic, media coverage is responsible for a downward trend in applications to university language courses, Derrick Ferney and Reinhard Tenberg rely on fairly narrowly based evidence and do not take into account public responses to it. The most recent example they cite is the tabloid coverage of Euro 96, most notably The Mirror's notorious "Achtung! Surrender" issue. Sadly, they miss the most important point about this silly attempt at increasing sales: it misread the public mood and backfired. The Press Complaints Commission received five times the normal level of complaints about not just The Mirror's coverage, but also that of The Sun and the Daily Star. Another tabloid, the Daily Mail, carried a headline which read "England deserves better than this jingoism", and other national newspapers also turned on the offenders, most prominently The Independent, which made the theme "Don't be beastly to the Germans" the leitmotif of one of its issues. DJ Simon Mayo, Lord Healey, Bobby Charlton all weighed in against examples of media Germanophobia in the few tabloids concerned. All this does not strike me as being symptomatic of a nation hooked on xenophobia. In fact, it was a reminder of the extent to which Britain has Europeanised, or internationalised, itself in the 1990s.

While I do not deny that there have been many examples of xenophobic media coverage in Britain, especially during the Thatcher era and the first part of the Major years, I am greatly encouraged by the way in which the British media have been waking up to the increasing cosmopolitanism of the public during the 1990s. Don't let's blame dips in UCAS applications on media xenophobia which is petering out before our eyes.

Professor David Head

Head of modern languages,

University of Northumbria

fight the sale of essays

Lucy Hodges' article, "Anyone got a spare essay for sale" (30 Oct, 1997), was shocking, but having only recently completed a BA (Hons) degree I have to agree that it probably does happen. I heard murmurings of such activities as early as my first year but dismissed them as pure baloney. By the end of my final year these were more than murmurings, and buying essays wasn't the only route for some. On a number of occasions I was approached by fellow students and asked whether I would swop essays. I was soon isolated when it became obvious that I would not co-operate - by then I was convinced that such activities had become the norm.

Tutors are overstretched, but at the same time they are often unprepared to guide students, especially those younger ones just out of school who, unless they are pushy, get lost in the system. I was a mature student who had returned to education after 30 years and found one or two of the tutors rather offhand and dismissive. One of my first essays after nights of blood and sweat was given a basic mark because the tutor "couldn't be bothered to read my handwriting" (ironically, another tutor complemented me on my handwriting). I bid a hasty retreat but recovered and invested in a word processor.

One of the departments in the university I attended must be aware of the dishonest and unfair "buying and swopping" that goes on, but choose to ignore the practice. I suppose those of us who do know should report these facts but are reluctant to do so because there is no independent body.

Unless universities tackle this alarming trend, degrees will inevitably be debased.

Name withheld,

Hornchurch, Essex.

not guilty as charged

As the Institute of Education academic, I suspect, alleged by our vice- chancellor to have advocated winding up London University (Word of Mouth, 30 Oct, 1997), I hope I may be allowed a brief response, since Professor Zellick's assertion is diametrically opposed to what I have actually said and written. If the vice-chancellor had had the courtesy to ask me for the transcript of my speech at a conference earlier this year on the future of higher education in London, he would have seen that during the course of a half-hour talk, extolling the virtues of London as one of the world's outstanding cities of learning, I made the following remark: "It is a tragedy for higher education in the capital that London University itself, one of the world's great universities, has fragmented itself into more than a dozen competing institutions. Services, such as the library and the careers service, once the envy of most other universities, are being sacrificed to the ambitions of individual college leaders." I hope that Professor Zellick manages to study his legal briefs with more care.

I hope also that he takes seriously his own pledges to protect what remains of the University. Perhaps he can release figures of the percentage of staff and students of the university, who now have free access to the Library compared with 10 years ago: perhaps he can reveal the use of the University Careers Service over the same period. Perhaps he can explain in what sense, apart from the narrowly legalistic, a London University degree now has any meaning.

I suspect that my real sin in the eyes of some members of the University establishment was to have speculated about possible ways of associating other higher education institutions in the London area with a London-wide consortium, along the lines of those in many other large conurbations. Lampooning vice-chancellors is always fun, but the tag that unless we hang together we shall hang separately has never been more true than it is today, as we wait for the government's post Dearing White Paper

Gareth Williams

Professor of Educational Administration

University of London Institute of Education

standing up to bullies

As someone who was bullied at school and contrary to what many people would expect, I find myself in agreement with Tiffany Jenkins, and also with your correspondent, Sheila Johnson ("Children squabble: it's a fact of life, not always a case for the help line" (16 Oct, 1997), and Your View (Oct 30, 1997).

As soon as I was labelled by teachers as a victim of bullying, the situation deteriorated. The intervention of teachers removed any possibility of my resolving the situation and increased my dependency on adults. The possibility that I could be encouraged to face up to my tormentors wasn't even discussed. As a consequence, my self-esteem diminished as I became more dependent on others to offer protection, making me even more of a tempting target. This led to a vicious circle which was only broken when I faced up to the leading tormentor myself. That action earned me respect from my classmates as I demonstrated the will to take a risk and resolve the situation.The moral is to teach children to be self-reliant and, as far as possible, allow them to resolve their own problems.

David Amis

Stanford le Hope, Essex

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