The distribution of “awards” to new graduates in British universities: a big celebration of pedagogical  society

 Why do universities in continental Europe not follow (or  very little and late) the great Anglo-Saxon educational  methods?

A hieratic and moving ceremony

12 September 2007 found us in Oxford at the Brookes University award ceremony. A series of pomp-filled ceremonies in which, naturally, hundreds of graduates participated (year of 2007), but that was also followed by many more members of their family and friends. The solemn air that hung over the day was announced, in great British tradition, by Handel’s “royal” music, played by a full brass section.

This was followed by cocktails and a string quartet. The gowns and mortar boards proudly donned by the young graduates set off the gold trims and tassels that decorated the “tudor bonnets” worn by the eminent rectors and professors. The latter marched hieratically on after addressing the assembly with their noble and polished speeches. In this day and age, emotional ceremonies are practically non-existent. However, in this large university hall in Oxford, emotions ran high and it was not rare to see the odd tear welling up.

The founding grandeur of Knowledge over demoralising relativism
Despite the fact that the “Bologna” process has been adopted everywhere (it has just come into practice), the universities and higher education institutes in non-Anglophone Europe are far from having taken on the

methods and educational centrality that their British counterparts have been enjoying for centuries. And yet the concept of “university” was created in the Middle Ages in Italy (Bologna) and France (Paris). But it is the English who brought the concept of “university” to a cultural and scientific ranking of major reference in social and economic circles.

Whilst the vast majority of higher education institutes in continental Europe are still laboring under the harmful impression that truth does not lie in militant relativism or by spreading a demoralizing and hopeless skepticism, Anglophone (not only British) universities celebrate, in apparently timeless ceremonies, the founding and incomparable grandeur of Knowledge.