This year is the 40th anniversary of the OU. The Open University – you know, the one that “promotes educational opportunity and social justice by providing high-quality university education to all who wish to realise their ambitions and fulfil their potential.”
The one that, “through academic research, pedagogic innovation and collaborative partnership, seeks to be a world leader in the design, content and delivery of supported open and distance learning.” Yes, that University. The very idea dismissed as ‘blithering nonsense’ back in the day has now, some 2,000,000 graduates later, been accepted not simply as a ‘proper’ university but as one of the top five on the UK. And all the other universities like to use their course materials. So there.
Anyway, it’s my year for commissions – I was commissioned to write a 40th anniversary poem, below. Performed at the OU anniversary bash at the Museum of London, yesterday.
Open University 40th Anniversary Poem
OU, we owe you
everybody wants to know you
even those who used to doubt you
can’t speak well enough about you
they say: your founders were fearless
your students are tireless
your tutors are peerless
your media wireless
you’re the College of the Air
your reception’s everywhere
a twinkle in J C Stobart’s eye
that Michael Young could not let lie
that Jennie Lee tenaciously
made manifest reality
they’d an inkling lower income
doesn’t lead to slower thinking
so now some of us are inching
by degrees towards degrees
OU, we owe you:
the never-quite-made-it or told-they-were stupid
the started-but-faded or sidetracked-by-cupid
the just-need-encouragement, gluttons-for-nourishment
the people whose talent was far too well-hidden
the told-that-we-couldn’t-or-shouldn’t-so-didn’t
the course-interrupted, the quite-frankly-corrupted
deep knowledge questers, bereft empty-nesters,
bright-eyed early-risers, complete self-surprisers
…who now all have fuller foreheads
a more complex frontal cortex
for nourishing our neurons
OU, we owe you
in time that’s borrowed, bought and stolen
schedules staggered, bent and swollen
time that’s snatched & time that’s smuggled
every minute of it juggled
we give up bingo, daytime telly
computer games and social drinking
to read Bronte Proust and Shelley
stay at home and do binge-thinking
every sacrifice worth making
now we’re swapping sleep for waking
waking up to our potential
to explore worlds once forbidden us
– it’s why on the residential
things can get a bit libidinous –
for being so inspiring
that you get our neurons firing
and spontaneously re-wiring
OU, we owe you
the wide-eyed wonder-graduate
the famished hunger-graduate…
jotting reading and absorbing
finding empty hours and tables
sending subtle signs to strangers
‘don’t disturb me I am dangerous
I have got a little learning…’
…and it’s not just about earning
though yes, we’re more employable
but when we go out on the pull
we talk a better class of bull
and if we’re not successful
we are much more philosophical
for nourishing our neurons
buffing up our self-assurance
and for being so inspiring
that you get our neurons firing
and spontaneously re-wiring
OU, we owe you
and OU here’s hoping
you always stay Open
for your enterprise is noble
and expanded frontal lobal
may your outreach programme snowball
from Chernobyl down to Yeovil
from Shanghai to Sampford Peverell
may your future now be global
and may some of your post-graduates
win prizes that are Nobel
if a university could get an honorary degree
you wouldn’t get one
– you’d get several
OU, BSc, BA Hons, Phd
we raise a half-full glass to you
from every social class to you
say ‘may the gods look after you’
and
OU, we owe you
Happy Anniversary*
(*now can I have a bursary?)