Lawrence of Arabia

Extract from Advice to Clever Children, about the modern obsession with qualifications.

T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935)

In the University of Oxford there used to be more understanding than there is now of the fact that there were a lot of ways in which a person of very high ability could get disconnected from his education, but that this ability might still be too good to waste. T.E. Lawrence, as he approached his final examinations in history, regarded himself as unprepared for them; and it may be doubted whether he would have got a First if a tutor, sympathetic to his evident ability, had not drawn to his attention the possibility of offering a thesis on a subject of special interest to him to supplement the usual papers, and been instrumental in arranging finance for an expedition necessary for the proposed thesis.

There was always a certain tradition that colleges could, and sometimes did, if they knew a person had very high ability, disregard his examination results and make it possible for him to continue his academic career. When I was an undergraduate there was a story about a certain Professor who had got a Fourth, but had still gone on with his academic career and arrived at his present eminence.

Even while I was at college a case occurred of a girl who got a Third, but the dons liked her and thought she was suited to doing research, so she duly got a research scholarship. Of course, with the advance of socialism and the increased dependence of the colleges (or, strictly speaking, the university) on state finance, the tendency is for nothing to matter except exam results, regardless of how they have been brought about.