Universidade

A science-based company like Boots that employs female pharmacists, opticians and chemists should know better

Last summer, driving our firstborn girl home from hospital, the world outside the car window seemed suddenly strange and new: the trees greener; the road grittier; the blossom in the hedges fluffier. From out of the shell-shocked fug of my brain, the opening lines from Sylvia Plath's poem Child emerged unbidden:

Your clear eye is the one beautiful thing
I want to fill it with colour and ducks
The zoo of the new

Over the past 10 months, I have watched our daughter's clear eyes open to the world, and seen how voraciously they devour each new object they encounter. The black blur of our cat flashing past the window; a purple-hatted rag doll; a plastic workman's hammer; the car keys held in my mouth as I struggle to buckle her into her seat: all these things are met with an equal squeal of delight. For the moment, she makes no distinction between household objects and toys, let alone toys designed to appeal to girls or boys. Everything exists solely to be explored by her sticky fingers and (if only I would let her) stuffed into her mouth.

And yet I know this will not last.

One day in the not too distant future, she will be standing in a shop and her clear eye will be filled not with "colour and ducks", but with a wall of pink. There will be pink tea sets; pink dolls' houses; pink princess outfits; pink pencil cases; pink jewellery-making sets; pink glittery stickers. All the other colours of the rainbow will be washed away in an unending saccharine sea.

The issue was brought home to me this week when I logged onto my Facebook page and saw a photo that my friend the children's writer and illustrator Helen Stephens has posted on her wall. The photo was taken by @SeanEGray in the Newcastle branch of Boots. It showed the display units in the shop's toy section. On the left was a shelf labelled "For boys", filled with Science Museum toys. On the right hand shelf, labelled "For girls" were tea sets and princess-themed gifts. Every single item was packaged in pink. The message to any little girl standing in front of this display was clear: experiments with magnets and rockets "are not for you".

The photo had been picked up by campaigning group @LetToysBeToys, who re-posted it on Facebook and suggested that, since Boots are largely inactive on Twitter, people should make their complaints known on their Facebook page instead. And, like many other dismayed Boots customers, that is exactly what I did.

What upset me most was that Boots is a science-based company that employs many female pharmacists, opticians and chemists and should know better than to discriminate in this way. Among the other people complaining were the parents of boys who pointed out that their sons might equally wish to play with tea sets and jewellery-making kits if left to make their own minds up.

Coincidentally, that same day, I stumbled across an article about the Everyday Sexism project which cited the example of a little girl who had asked her Mum: please can I turn into a boy so I can go into space. If ever proof were needed of why the issue of how we market to children is important, there it is.

As a children's author, I regularly spend time talking to children in schools and I see first-hand how their aspirations are shaped by the world around them. As a mum, my first wish is for my daughter to grow up happy and fulfilled. I do not care whether she becomes a scientist or a tea lady. All I ask is that this decision should be shaped entirely by her own imagination.

After initially defending its position, Boots has now agreed to remove the gender signage from the toy sections of their stores (though not from their website, which still divides toys into those for boys and those for girls). I hope that more high street retailers will follow suit. Any shop that can continue to fill my daughter's clear eyes with colours other than pink will have my loyalty.

Megan Peel is a children's author living in the Yorkshire Dales. Her first book The Fabulous Phartlehorn Affair is published by Walker Books. On Twitter she is @megpeel

• Psychology
• Gender
• The gender gap
• Toys

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GOP Governor Bobby Jindal defends anti-evolution education policy, but it costs his state millions in science-based business

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal endorsed teaching creationism in public schools, by way of the state's creationism law, a misnamed and misguided piece of legislation called the Louisiana Science Education Act. In a recent interview with NBC News, Jindal said:

"Let's teach them about intelligent design … What are we scared of?"

Governor Jindal, we are scared of the harm to Louisiana students and to our state. The Louisiana Science Education Act has already hurt our economy.

The chairman of Louisiana's senate education committee, Conrad Appel, has called for high schools and colleges to graduate more students in Stem fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), because "the amount of income [students] can earn in these related fields is best." Teaching students that creationism is science will confuse them about the scientific method and the nature of science, which, in turn, will hold them back from getting jobs in any cutting-edge scientific field.

We can't teach students misleading lessons that blur the lines between rigorous fact and religious belief.

If the law stays in place, we will not graduate more students into careers in science unless we teach them evolution, which is vital to fields like agriculture and medicine. We need our students to understand the concept to get jobs in places such as Baton Rouge's top-notch Pennington Biomedical Research Center or New Orleans' BioDistrict.

Claude Bouchard, a former executive director of the Pennington Research Center, told me that because of the Louisiana Science Education Act:

"[Students] will continue to believe that the laws of chemistry, physics and biology are optional when addressing the big issues of our time. Unfortunately, this is also not without economic consequences.

"If you are an employer in a high-tech industry, in the biotechnology sector or in a business that depends heavily on science, would you prefer to hire a graduate from a state where the legislature has in a sense declared that the laws of chemistry, physics or biology can be suspended at times or someone from a state with a rigorous science curriculum for its sons and daughters?"

Peter Kulakowsky, a biotech entrepreneur in Louisiana, recently published a letter in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, saying that:

"As the director of a biological laboratory in Louisiana, I need enlightened staff. Distracting the state's students in their formative training [through the Louisiana Science Education Act] only cripples them."

The Louisiana Science Education Act does more than harm the potential of Louisiana's students. It is already directly impacting the state's economy. Louisiana State University's former graduate dean of science, Kevin Carman, testified before the state legislature in 2012 that top scientists had left the university citing the Louisiana Science Education Act as a reason. Other scientists chose to accept jobs elsewhere, because they didn't want to come to a state with a creationism law. Carman said: "teaching pseudo-science drives scientists away."

Louisiana's third largest industry is tourism, and the state generates millions of dollars each year from conventions. After the Louisiana Science Education Act was passed, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology cancelled a scheduled convention in New Orleans in 2011, costing the city an estimated $2.9m. The society launched a boycott of Louisiana, and the state has become less competitive at attracting certain conventions because of its anti-science stance.

Thankfully, the boycott of New Orleans has ended, because the New Orleans city council has endorsed a repeal of the Louisiana Science Education Act and the Orleans Parish School Board banned the teaching of creationism in its schools. The boycott on the rest of the state still remains, however. Kristin Gisleson Palmer, a member of the city council, said the act needed to be repealed because of the economic harm it caused the city:

"With the New Orleans Medical Corridor poised for tremendous growth, this law also profoundly impacts our ability to fill jobs in the cutting-edge science fields with students educated in our state's public schools."

On 1 May, Louisiana's lawmakers will have a chance to stand up for students and help repair the damage done to our economy. A bill to repeal the act will be heard in the education committee of the state senate, and they can vote to repeal. We should all urge our elected officials to do the right thing.

The economic damage from the Louisiana Science Education Act should serve as a warning to other states. Tennessee passed a copycat bill and other states around the country introduce creationism bills every year. Any state that passes a creationism law will harm their students and drive scientists – and business – away.

• Creationism
• United States
• Louisiana
• US education
• Science and scepticism
• Biology
• Economics
• Schools
• Evolution
• Republicans
• Religion
• Science
• Research

Zack Kopplin
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The news some students get fewer than 100 teaching hours a year isn't all bad – the free time is a learning experience in itself

I'd wager that few recent graduates were shocked at the news of just how many UK students receive fewer than 100 hours of teaching per year. In fact, I'll bet you three dodgy draft beers and an ill-advised kebab that the first memory to emerge from the fog is not your hand fusing into a claw from the scrawling down of illegible notes, because the truth is that very few of your university years are spent at university. The only lecture that I can recall from my university days involved a geriatric thespian spending so long musing over the answer to a student's question that we worried he'd expired on the podium.

It's easy to measure the value for money of university courses based on contact time: why should a student of medicine, whose timetable is full from dawn till dusk with specialised teaching and a free cadaver thrown in, be charged the same as an English literature student who only spends 12% of their university year being taught face to face? The rest of the time, according to the government website Unistats, is spent in "independent study", which everyone knows is code for doodling in the margins of your lecture notes in the library as you wait for the instant coffee shakes to abate, or escaping into the real world and doing stuff that is entirely unrelated to your course, but life-enhancing nonetheless.

The average, non-vocational undergraduate degree is tailored to those who have no idea what they want to do in life, and therefore haven't chosen a study-intensive pathway that leads (in theory at least) to direct employment. It is a time to experiment. And by experiment, I don't mean with a vast array of hallucinogens or taking enthusiastically to Marxism, but taking the time to work out what the hell you're going to do afterwards.

By buying into an undergraduate degree, you're snaring yourself free time, in bulk. This leisure time, sponsored by the student loan that will take you years to pay off and the minimum wage job you get to tide you over between payouts, allows you to intern (AKA work for free) at the same time as gaining a degree. Because, as we are constantly reminded, who are you as a graduate without 10 internships under your belt, at least two years of voluntary work, and a reference from the Gandalf of your chosen sector? While it would have been a huge help to receive payment for my weeks of work experience (and, thanks to organisations such as Intern Aware, the disgraceful practice of free internships is slowly being addressed) my loan paid the bills and rent – just – when my income didn't.

That's not to say that the 92% of my time away from the lecture theatre was spent diligently fetching third-degree-burn-inducing trays of coffee, and photocopying; I had plenty of paid jobs, too. In my case this included but was not limited to: working in advertising (thanks to my Mad Men phase I ended up acting out the drumming gorilla Cadbury advert in an interview, complete with hummed backing track); doing nine-hour shifts in a restaurant kitchen each weekend (awful, but you did get to take home the uneaten pastries); and a brief stint in fashion retail, where I once almost got sacked for stalking Beyoncé over all three floors of the store. If I'd committed to any of these roles full-time I would have become embroiled in a career I didn't want, but for some extra cash they served their purpose.

If I had been blindly thwacking my alarm clock at 7am each morning before deploying myself to eight hours at the office, I would not have had the chance to try out various potential careers while studying and working for actual payment. I wouldn't have had the chance to hate work experience in several industries before I settled on the one that I will love till death do us part, or at least the next 10 years. And all of this while studying enough to get a second-class honours degree.

The luxury of a fairly hands-free degree is time to work things out: anyone trying to balance work experience and paid work without the help of a student loan would struggle dramatically without extra financial support. This indulgence of time, like cheap pints, lie-ins and days spent sitting in the sun with a book on your lap, will never trouble you again without coming under the guise of "annual leave". And, after all, you'll be paying through the nose for it well into middle age.

• Students
• Student work
• Student finance
• Higher education

Natalie Cox
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Department for Education's annual workforce survey shows 6% rise in teaching assistants and 0.1% teacher vacancy rate

State schools now employ more than one teaching assistant for every two full-time teachers, with lower paid, less-skilled teaching assistants bearing the brunt of the expansion of a school system straining to cope with the mini-baby boom filling classrooms in England.

The Department for Education's annual workforce survey of teacher and school staff showed a slight recovery in teacher numbers from their post-austerity low the previous year but the improvement was dwarfed by a 6% rise in teaching assistants employed in primary and secondary schools within the space of a year.

Including both academy and maintained schools, the number of teaching assistants employed in schools in England on a full-time basis rose to 232,000 in November last year, compared with 219,000 in November 2011. Meanwhile, the equivalent of 442,000 full-time teachers were employed in 2012, compared with 438,000 in 2011 – a rise of barely 1%.

Salaries for full-time teaching assistants range from £13,000 to £21,000 a year – roughly half the salary level paid to full-time teachers. There is no national pay scale for teaching assistants, with rates set by individual local authorities or academies.

The 1:2 ratio of teaching assistants to teachers in state schools is in stark contrast to the private sector.

According to a survey earlier this year by the Independent Schools Council, private schools employed 7,000 teaching assistants and 54,000 teachers, for a ratio of around 1:8.

The growth in teaching assistants is even more pronounced in comparison with 2010. The total number of teachers employed in the current academic year is still 6,000 below 2010's full-time total. But in the same period the number of teaching assistants employed on a full-time basis rose by 18,000.

The increase continues the trend of recent years, with a three-fold rise in the number of teaching assistants employed in state-funded schools since 2000, when just 79,000 were employed.

The figure calculated by the DfE includes higher-level teaching assistants, nursery assistants, literacy and numeracy support staff, as well as other non-teaching staff employed to support teachers in the classroom other than for special needs and minority ethnic pupils support staff.

Teaching assistants in publicly funded schools are overwhelmingly female, with the statistics showing that 92% of the 232,000 full-time equivalent posts are filled by women, compared with 73% of regular teaching positions.

Meanwhile, the shortage of teachers with degree-level qualifications in core subjects such as maths and English continues, although the proportion with relevant qualifications had risen compared with the previous year. The report found that nearly one in four secondary school maths teachers and one in five secondary school English teachers lacked degrees in those subjects.

The survey also show a substantial rise in the number of leading teachers being paid £100,000 or more. More than 800 school headteachers, deputies and assistant heads – including both grant-maintained and academy schools – took home £100,000 or more, a 7% increase from 2011.

In total, 808 teachers with managerial responsibilities earned at least £100,000 in 2012, of whom 230 took home £110,000 or more – twice the average salary for the position of £55,700.

Some 133 of the very top earners were at secondary academies, almost double the 71 in the same wage bracket at local authority-maintained schools, despite 50% more pupils attending maintained secondary schools than academies.

A further 101 leading teachers at primary and special schools were paid £100,000 or more, the DfE said.

The pay figures revealed some interesting discrepancies: the average teacher's salary at a grant-maintained secondary school was £36,100, some £900 a year higher than the salary earned by their peers at a secondary academy. Similarly, teachers at local authority-controlled primary schools earned £32,200 – £1,100 a year more than their academy counterparts.

The teacher vacancy rate remains tiny at just 0.1%, at its lowest level since 2005. There were just 440 unfilled vacancies for full-time teachers in England during the survey's snapshot, with the rate little different between academies and local authority-controlled schools, and between primary and secondary schools.

• Teachers' workload
• Teaching
• Teacher shortages
• Teacher training
• School funding
• Schools
• Secondary schools
• Primary schools
• Academies

Richard AdamsJohn Burn-Murdoch
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How do we go about the sensitive matter of reporting suicides? Journalists have often found it difficult to cope with, most obviously because it can usually be construed as intruding into private grief.

In every case that intrusion has to be carefully weighed against a justification of public interest.

I expect this recurring problem to be explored in detail at Strathclyde university tomorrow at a discussion about the media reporting of mental health and suicide.*

According to a press release announcing the event, the results of the university's new research study are to be used in the revision of journalism guidelines.

Its recommendations concern the appropriate level of journalistic contact with families bereaved by suicide and the use of social networking sites to obtain material in suicide stories. Among the sources consulted by researchers were the World Health Organisation and the Samaritans.

Strathclyde journalism lecturer Sallyanne Duncan, who led the research, said: "There's concern about the sensitivity of covering a suicide story and great concern about not doing more harm. This can be a more volatile situation than with other types of death."

The editors' code committee have previously tackled the problem of reporting on suicides, leading to an addition in 2006 to the clause on intrusion into grief: "When reporting suicide, care should be taken to avoid excessive detail about the method used."

The committee also issued a briefing note - which is on the Press Complaints Commission website - in which it stressed the need for sympathy, discretion and sensitivity in publication.

A search for the term "suicide" on the PCC site brings up 174 results (though not all are formal complaints; some mention suicide in passing), which tends to show it is a consistently controversial subject.

*The event takes place in rooms HW111/HW112 of the John Arbuthnott Building, Hamnett Wing, 1.30-4:30pm. Further details: http://www.strath.ac.uk/event/58

• University of Strathclyde
• Media events and conferences
• Press Complaints Commission
• World Health Organisation

Roy Greenslade
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Member of UN taskforce on population says for young people, sex is not as controversial as it is for governments

Ishita Chaudhry spent 36 hours listening to UN delegates discuss population growth and development. She noticed that on "controversial" topics, such as sexual and reproductive rights, young people's voices often get lost.

"For us as young people, it's really not as controversial as it is for governments," said Chaudhry, a member of the high-level taskforce for the international conference on population and development (ICPD), on Thursday.

"We know that we need to be empowered to claim our human rights … and we understand that access to sexual, reproductive health and birth services, and comprehensive sexuality education is a key aspect of that empowerment," she said.

Joaquim Alberto Chissano, a former president of Mozambique and co-chair of the taskforce, said: "Fulfilling sexual and [reproductive] health and rights is not only a human right … it also offers solutions to many of today's global problems."

Chissano – often credited for ending civil war and strengthening democracy in Mozambique – cited the links between sexual and reproductive health and national progress. He said that by promoting sexual and reproductive health, the international community can "fully unleash human potential, energies and talents … to nurture the human capital that countries need to reduce poverty and inequality". If sexual and reproductive rights are not addressed, "those who will feel the pinch more are the coming generations", he said.

The taskforce's work – entitled policy recommendations for the ICPD beyond 2014: sexual and reproductive health and rights for all – reaffirms values established almost 20 years ago in Cairo, where 179 governments adopted a programme of action that placed the human rights of women at the centre of development goals.

The taskforce calls on governments to address Cairo's "unfinished agenda" by: ensuring sexual and reproductive rights through law; working towards universal access to sexual and reproductive health services; providing sexuality education for young people; and eliminating violence against women and girls.

It argues that governments should expand access to safe abortion and to services for victims of gender-based violence, and that the international community should adopt a definition of "comprehensive sexuality education".

The taskforce's work will inform UN negotiations for a new development framework, to replace the expiring millennium development goals after 2015.

According to the taskforce, the sexual and reproductive health of young women and girls is particularly compromised. It says one in three girls in developing countries are married without their consent; 2,400 young people are infected with HIV every day; and up to half of all sexual assaults are committed against girls under the age of 16.

Asked if sexual and reproductive rights are often barred by social or cultural norms, Chaudhry – founder of the YP Foundation, a non-profit organisation in India – said: "I come from a country that has a broad representation, both in terms of religion [and] culture. It has a lot of sensitivities."

She emphasised the importance of providing information and sexuality education to approach such sensitivities. "You're not telling the young person that they should or shouldn't do something; you're giving them access to evidence-based information, which means that they are in the best place to decide [for themselves]."

She added: "Because there's such a broad lack of understanding … the fear and stigma and discrimination around issues of sex and sexuality therefore remains very high."

Chaudhry said some of the most effective cases in achieving sexual and reproductive rights are when governments invest at community levels in reducing levels of related stigma. She said: "One of the biggest misconceptions of sexuality education is that if you provide sexuality education to an adolescent, you're going to decrease the age of first sex.

"Once you start breaking the stigma and the silence around issues of sex and sexuality, you find that even parents and religious leaders themselves have questions … they [just] haven't had anybody else to ask."

Tarja Halonen, former president of Finland and co-chair of the taskforce, asked: would you want to perpetuate socially rooted injustices, "or would you like to be the founding father or mother with a new way of [doing things]"?

She said that although it is important to respect traditional values, it is also important to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She emphasised the need to work with experts from schools, health centres and religious communities.

Halonen said social stigmas on sexuality are prevalent even in Finland – ranked the second happiest country in the UN's world happiness report (pdf). These stigmas discourage victims of sexual abuse from seeking the help they need, while providing impunity for perpetrators.

Halonen told IPS, however, that there has been some progress. She shared her experience fighting for sexual and reproductive rights, which started over four decades ago when she was a young lawyer: "In the late 1960s, when I spoke on behalf of young Finnish students … I said [students] need more information for these issues. I remembered how they answered me in parliament. They said, '[Students] are in the university in order to study, not to have sex.'"

Despite social stigmas and parliament's neglect, Halonen was able to organise sexual and reproductive health services and information for the university's healthcare centres. Her national progress for sexual and reproductive rights continued from there.

"We changed the legislation in [the] 1970s concerning minorities [and] homosexuals. Then we changed the abortion law, little by little. Now when we look at statistics, we see afterwards that it has worked well. We have less abortions, we have better birth rates, we have fewer HIVs," she said. "So, what are we afraid of?"

• United Nations
• Young people
• Sexual health
• Health
• Human rights
• Sex education

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I. OTRAS (RE)CONSIDERACIONES. En los días desde que expusimos la primera parte de este trabajo, hemos recibido buena retroalimentación de parte de algunos amigos y colegas. Es importante ahora comentar algunas de esas participaciones (1) en tanto enriquecen nuestra visión de la CF y su sitio en nuestro contexto.

El filólogo Benedicto Víquez nos enriquece el concepto de contrato de verosimilitud, advirtiéndo que existe más de uno. Es decir, el contrato ser el que “pertenece a la obra y sólo es válido bajo el contrato de ella misma”. Pero también existe el que “estaría compuesto por el contexto real en que vivimos” y “un tercero que sería el verosímil del lector”. Este último es también de suma importancia porque de alguna manera define las diferentes lecturas que se dan sobre un mismo texto. Un ingeniero civil de Yokohama, por ejemplo, no va a valorar Stranger in a Strange Land de Heinlein de la misma manera que un estudiante de arte de Florianápolis. Sus diferentes contextos culturales, su inteligencia, sensibilidad, formación y visión de mundo darán, necesariamente, dos lecturas diferentes provenientes de dos verosímiles diferentes. Sin embargo, hay buenas posibilidades de consenso al haber también una realidad única (aunque esta solo fuere consensual). Entonces, es importante recordar que todo escritor juzga desde su verosímil particular pero también dentro de las convenciones comunes a la cultura mundial que, en el mejor de los casos, también serían pseudo objetivas. Y por todo esto, agregamos que dichosamente, es que la literatura queda fuera del ámbito de las ciencias exactas.

Posibles Futuros, EUNED 2009.

El escritor Germán Hernández, por su lado, cuestiona algunas de mis referencias y ejemplos tomados del cine y no de la literatura. Debo confesar que esto es una inclinación espontánea en mi ámbito y verosímil. He visto mucho cine de CF y he leído bastante CF desde la niñez, pero no cabe duda que el acceso a las cintas de CF es más abundante que el acceso a las novelas. Esto no solo por situación particular de discapacitado visual, sino además por la sobreoferta de cine de CF en nuestro medio.

En general, el cine y la literatura se han intercambiado gustos, autores y preferencias con notable regularidad. El primer cine se alimentó de autores como Verne y Wells mientras que más adelante se desentendió un poco más de la literatura para generar un cine de masas muy popular y muy poco serio. Este fenómeno también ha contribuido fuertemente a la trivialización de la CF literaria y a seguir estereotipándola como un género solo para público masculino joven y nada más.

El escritor Juan Murillo, por último, nos llama la atención sobre un texto de Ursula K. LeGuin (2) donde la autora identifica a la CF de “calidad principiante” como una commodified fantasy, es decir, “fantasía mercantilizada”. La escritora nos advierte que “se trata de un tipo de mercadería que no toma riesgos y que no inventa nada. Las decisiones morales profundamente perturbadoras son desinfectadas y transformadas en situaciones corrongas y seguras”. Por tanto, es evidente que la autora se refiere a la CF fácil, mercantil, de consumo masivo, que no despierta inquietudes, no produce incomodidad ni pretende cuestionar nada. Es el Marte de juguete de Edgar Rice Burroughs versus la Eurasia gris, siniestra y criminal de George Orwell. La primera divierte. La segunda divierte, asusta y pone a pensar.

En resumen, tomamos estos y otros consejos como aderezo a nuestro propio trabajo en beneficio de comprender mejor el tema que nos concierne. Gracias a todos los contribuyentes.

Alerta de aguafiestas: A partir de este momento asumimos que quienes leen estas líneas ya leyeron los cuentos aquí comentados.

 

I Sing the Body Electric de Ray Bradbury. Portada de la edición original (Bantam Books 1971.)

 

II. LA TROPA. Lo “experimental” de esta obra de David Díaz-Arias podría ser la mezcla de dos tipos de literatura tradicionalmente concebidos como antípodas. Por un lado la literatura nacional costumbrista de Costa Rica (pienso en autores como Luis Dobles Segreda) y por otro lado un pequeño thriller de CF.

Sea como fuere, lo digno de notar aquí es que Díaz les saca el jugo a ambas tradiciones y logra un texto homogéneo y bien construido donde la magia consiste precisamente en eso: en darle a un género los ropajes de otro. Si el cuento no estuviese incluido en una antología de CF, el final sería mucho más sorpresivo aun para el lector porque todo nos lleva a pensar que es una aventura de chiquillos tipo Caña Brava, hasta que que el elemento atípico hace su aparición y obliga a una relectura del texto da capo.

Así, desde que el cuento arranca, Arias se aboca a cumplir con los formalismos del realismo tradicional: mini biografía de los personajes, retrato psicológico de cada uno de ellos y uso vernáculo del lenguaje. He aquí unos ejemplos de esto último:

“andar midiendo calles”
“se le soltó la lengua”
“bolis” y “gatos”
“la vara es agarrar por ahi” (3)

Y las mini biografías mencionadas también cumplen con ese papel de “hacernos entrar en calor” con el personaje como lo haríamos con cualquier cuento de Calufa o de Fabián Dobles:

Quince años después, Mincho casi corre la misma suerte de su progenitor por efecto de una decepción amorosa. Y así, huyendo de ahogarse en el licor y convencido por una hermana que vivía ilegal en Boston, contrató un coyote de Pérez Zeledón que lo llevó a Ciudad Juárez a esperar por dos semanas su tiquete de ingreso a los Estados Unidos. Desde entonces, todo contacto con él se perdió. Nunca llegó a Boston ni se volvió a comunicar con nadie. Quizás el desierto de Sonora se encargó de ahogar de sed a aquel fiel aficionado que cuando niño corría descalzo diciendo que era el goleador de su equipo. (3)

Y es de esta manera en que Díaz-Arias nos prepara (o nos mal prepara) para su desenlace inédito.

Sobra decir aquí que lo que hace que el cuento funcione muy bien es precisamente ese travestismo a que es sometido. El contrato de verosimilitud, si bien muy a derecho, nos oculta la posibilidad de poder predecir el desenlace que nos espera, mientras que los recursos del lenguaje se concentran en el paisaje arcádico (pero con fuerte comentarios social) que Arias ha venido desarrollando.

Es posible que este cuento indigeste un poco al amante de CF dura o a aquellos puristas que creen que no debe haber matrimonio entre géneros. Sin embargo, si está bien escrito, pues vale. Allá los puristas y sus restricciones autoimpuestas.

El auténtico y genuino “pulp fiction”, es decir, las revistillas y folletines vendidos hace poco menos de cien años para públicos masivos. El término “pulp” se refiere a la pulpa barata de papel que se utilizaba para imprimir estos textos.

 

III. SPUTNIK. Si entendí bien lo que me dijo el diccionario, “sputnik” significa “acompañante de la Tierra”, o simplemente “acompañante”. Excelente título para lo que se va a desarrollar entre Ernesto y Lucía (Jennifer) en los ya lejanos días de 1959.

Sin ir muy lejos podemos afirmar que esta, al igual que La tropa es una obra híbrida donde se conjuga realismo tradicional con CF. Y de nuevo el efecto es positivo. De hecho, la pieza se nos despliega como todo un mostrario de eventos y costumbres de la Costa Rica de hace 50 años. Para un amante de la historia –como es este servidor– el cuento ha sido un completo confite de sabores. Una vitrina de muchas cosas, y facetas de esa nación ya casi olvidada:

* Juego de pólvora en el Morazán
* Conferencia en el Ateneo de Costa Rica
* Modales sociales de la época
* Mañana de domingo en Ojo de agua
* Comité cívico embanderando las casas
* Reacción de la Iglesia ante el fenómeno científico
* Refrigerio en la Soda Palace, etc.

Todos estos elementos son de gran importancia para cualquier costarricense que ha vivido a lo largo del siglo XX, precisamente porque los ha vivido o de alguna manera han influido en su propia vida. Y, si por el contrario, es un neófito en eso de ser costarricense, pues aquí tiene una vitrina al pasado de su país.

Pero hasta aquí lo del factor histórico porque hay que recordar una vieja realidad: el preciosismo factual y la absoluta verosimilitud histórica no hacen que un texto sea buena literatura. Una cosa es un texto de gran verismo histórico y otra cosa es un texto bien escrito como literatura. Entonces, ¿está Sputnik bien escrito de acuerdo a un contrato de verosimilitud coherente y un uso del lenguaje adecuado? En términos generales mi respuesta es sí. Lo pactado en el contrato no parece contradecir los eventos que se dan, salvo por un detalle: ¿Se habrá realmente eliminado el amor de la escena humana para el año 2107? Yo, personalmente, lo dudo mucho. Y no porque no sea factible desde el punto de vista científico, ya que sabemos que ese famoso sentimiento humano es ante todo una reacción química de nuestro organismo. Lo dudo más por razones sociales. ¿Querremos realmente desembarazarnos del amor? ¿Con todos los beneficicios que trae? Y que no se me llame romántico. También sé que el amor puede ser un infierno a largo plazo, pero en sí, como tal, no creo que lleguemos a querer prescindir de él. Al menos no del todo. Por eso cuando Jennifer (Lucía) está a punto de contarlo todo, a mí se me cae un poco lo verosímil:

Por un instante, estuve tentada a contarle todo y explicarle que, en el futuro al que pertenezco, el amor no existe, el sexo se considera una actividad deportiva más y el matrimonio es apenas un recuerdo de prácticas abominables. (3)

Pues, sí, el sexo ya se considera “una actividad deportiva” por parte de muchos. Y, sí, para algunos el matrimonio ya es “un recuerdo de prácticas abominables”, pero no creo que la erradicación del amor sea una de nuestras metas como especie ni a corto ni a largo plazo.

En síntesis, este es un buen cuento con una breve proposición un tanto difícil de creer. Y es difícil de creer precisamente por que el autor nos ha obsequiado con un texto de grandes realidades históricas. Entonces, es solo una manchita, pero se ve grande porqoe el entorno es cristalino.

¡Qué difícil hablar de una obra tan importante sin caer en clichés! No deja de impactarme la actualidad que conserva esta gran novela escrita ya hace 60 años.

 

IV. FLOR DEL CREPÚSCULO. Un crítico en Costa Rica dijo hace unos años algo parecido a esto: “Está mal escrita, pero el tema histórico la hace una buena novela”. (¿?) Eso es una falacia de tremendo calibre porque si está “mal escrita” no puede ser una “buena novela”. Una buena novela solo puede estar bien escrita. Recordemos un texto tan paradigmático como Lolita de Nabokov. Pocas personas están interesadas en escuchar las tristezas y amarguras de un hombre maduro enamorado de una preadolescente. Y definitivamente, si Lolita no fuese un artificio lingüístico de primer orden con temas, subtemas, símbolos y lenguaje narrativo altamente refinado, entonces habría triunfado tan solo como una curiosidad literaria con ínfulas de porno. Pero no es el caso. Lolita es una gran novela simplemente porque está escrita de manera magistral.

Entonces, ya habiendo aclarado ese punto, debo confesar que, además de estar bien escrito, Flor del crepúsculo es un cuento que seduce por su ternura; porque pone en primer plano lo que somos: el ser humano. Y es que a veces es muy fácil olvidar las palabras del sabio cuando dijo “La literatura es la forma más completa de estudiar la naturaleza humana” (4). Incluso la CF más “dura” sigue siendo una historia sobre seres humanos o sus sucedáneos. Ese ha sido el éxito de autores como Dick, Asimov, Orwell o Bradbury; escritores que han sabido desde siempre que hacer literatura (aun de CF) es básicamente hablar de la naturaleza humana.

Pues aquí está Flor del crepússculo para recordárnoslo. Un hermoso cuento con el que cierra estos Posibles Futuros hacia otros derroteros.

Sin embargo, no sería justo pasar por alto algunos problemas que se evidencian en el texto. Uno de ellos, quizás el más fuerte, es la sobreeplicación:

Cerca de la puerta se apilaban los periódicos viejos de los antiguos días, cuando aún el mundo rebosaba vida y los seres humanos convivían en civilizaciones prósperas. Al otro lado, cerca de los escasos montones de ropa que habían logrado conservar, descansaba el único aparato que aún funcionaba. (3) [El resaltado es nuestro].

La aclaración, además de cliché, es completamente innecesaria. Ya sabemos que estamos en un mundo al límite y que no es aquel que “rebosaba vida”. También se evidencia que el aquí y el ahora del cuento no corresponden al momneto en que “los seres humanos vivían en civilizaciones prósperas”. Y es prescindible, además, porque todo lo contenido en la explicación lo vemos desfilar ante nuestros ojos en un “flashback” que el protagonista tiene más adelante. ¿Entonces? Parece ser una antelación de información, un avance, que más bien daña la tensión del cuento porque devela innecesariamente parte de la intriga.

Otro problema del cuento, aunque no tan notable como en otros textos y otros autores, es el “cualismo”. Así llamo yo al hábito muy costarricense de maquillar el discurso escrito tratando de sustituir las palabras “que” y “quien” por “el cual”, “la cual”, “los cuales”, “las cuales”. Por ejemplo, en lugar de decir, “Hoy hablará Fulano de Tal, quien es uno de los miembros de…”, el inflonazo pseudoliterario dirá: “Hoy hablará Fulano de Tal, el cual es uno de los miembros de…” etc. En el cuento de marras solo aparece dos veces:
“…tormentas eléctricas, las cuales Pablo había aprendido a percibir con la sutileza de un animal de campo”.

“…posiblemente un perro, el cual habría merodeado la zona en las últimas ocho horas”.
Entonces, apareciendo apenas un par de veces en este cuento el “cualismo” no es realmente un problema, pero en Objeto no identificado, otro texto de la misma autora, el recurso aparece no menos de siete veces, transformándose, ahora sí, en un problema de estilo.

Parece que a estas alturas he caído en una especie de contradicción. ¿No era que si el cuento no está bien escrito entonces no es un “buen” cuento?… Y sin embargo, es un buen cuento.

“¿Me contradigo?”, espetó Walt Whitman, “Pues bien, ¡entonces me contradigo!”

Perdidos en el Espacio, la serie de CF más taquillera de los años 60. No la mejor, pero sí la más taquillera. Este fan no se perdía ni un solo capítulo, donde además de disfrutar el programa, suspiraba por su primer amor platónico. (Pista: no se trata ni del robot, ni del Dr. Smith.) V. LOS TÚNELES DE LA MEMORIA. Este cuento empieza con una oración breve pero contundente: “No es humano”. A partir de ahí el cuento gira en torno a contarnos por qué este no-humano no es humano y por qué desea serlo. Lamentablemente, ya se ha tendido la trampa del rechazo y a lo largo del texto no logramos “conectar” ni psíquica ni afectivamente con Tomás, el protagonista. Y no es solo por la afirmación inicial sino que el texto, a partir de esa premisa inicial, sigue ampliando el espacio psíquico entre el lector y el personaje. Tomás no solo es no-humano, también percibe a los de su porpia especie como grotescos:

AG lo había reclutado hacía bastante tiempo para que se uniera a uno de los equipos de elite de investigación. La repulsión que sintió Tomás esa vez sigue siendo la misma que siente ahora, al vislumbrar las patas torcidas de AG y sutonta manera babosa de hablar y de mojar todo a su paso. (3)

AG, evidentemente, es el jefe de Tomás, pero sólo este último tiene un nombre culturalemente identificable como nuestro, propio de nuestra humanidad. AG, en cambio, podría ser cualquier cosa (aunque sepamos por la descripción de Tomás que se trata de uno de su misma especie). Sin embargo, las siglas no hacen más que ayudar a hacerlo sentir alienígena. Así, los tres personajes del cuento quedan escalofonados de la siguiente manera: AG es alienígena; Tomás es alienígena que quiere ser humano y el cerebro de Pilar, la mujer muerta, es lo humano que queda entre ellos.

Así, a lo largo del texto, las alusiones y comentarios de quien narra sirven constantemente para alejar al lector de cualquier posibilidad de empatía hacia Tomás, y por el contrario, evocar con cierta nostalgia el mundo de Pilar que ya no existe:

En las historias que había oído, se contaba el viaje de los hombres al centro de la tierra, y su conversión paulatina en roedores humanos que terminaron olvidando el mundo que había existido arriba. Mantuvieron la inteligencia, pero perdieron la memoria de lo que fueron.(3)

Como se evidencia, la historia de los “roedores” tampoco está narrada desde la perspectiva de los roedores de ese momento en la historia sino desde la perspectiva “humana” de muchos siglos atrás. O dicho de otra manera, la narradora no logra desligar a su personaje de la visión de mundo de la misma autora.

El texto cuenta además con otras o similares inconsistencias. Por ejemplo, la narración habla de pintura (ese era el oficio de Pilar) y menciona el oficio como tal, aunque Tomás careciera del vocabulario para describirlo (una muestra mas de cómo la narradora se posiciona del lado humano en detrimento de una posible empatía con su personaje).

También queda un misterio por resolver. ¿Por qué investigan cerebros de seres muertos miles de miles años antes? ¿Simple curiosidad científica? ¿Buscan algo en particular? Y si es así, ¿por qué Tomás le esconde a AG sus hallazgos siguiendo un registro doble? ¿Qué es lo que hay que esconder y qué es lo que hay que revelar? La tecnología que demuestran tener estos seres humanos del futuro es muy avanzada, así su propósito al escarbar viejas memorias del pasado debe ser de algún particular interés para el texto, sino es que lo describe de lleno. Estos cabos sueltos ayudan mucha a que el contrato de verosimilitud propuesto por la escritora no sea exitoso. Y ese es el tema de fondo: la propuesta de Los túneles de la memoria es el de un topo humano del futuro viendo y analizando el cerebro de una ancestra, pero lo que nos da a cambio es un ser humano femenino analizando un ornitorrinco. La autora nos invita a ver la casa-mundo en que vive Tomás, pero no nos deja entrar en él.

Además del incumplimiento de contrato de verosimilitud, hay otro aspecto en este cuento de Casasa que llama la atención. En algún momento Tomás asciende a la superficie para ver el mundo por sí mismo. Esta era una excelente oportunidad para describir la superficie usando metáforas, tropos, símiles y todo lo que se le pudiera occurrir a la autora para pintarnos un mundo desolado, triste, ajeno y hostil; algo que habría logrado un quiebre psicológico fuerte tanto en el lector como en Tomás… pero se desaprovechó. Los recursos formales del lenguaje se quedaron pues, en la medianía descriptiva.

Termino este comentario haciendo hincapíe en que no estamos hablando del conjunto de la obra de Laura Casasa sino tan solo uno de sus cuentos. Unoque, lamentablemente, no nos convenció, pero también es cierto que una golondrina no hace verano. Es importante conocer toda la obra de la autora si queremos emitir un juicio más objetivo. Y ella, dichosamente, está joven y en plena producción.

Lo leí recientemente en el 2010. Sin parecerme una genialidad, lo disfruté bastante, pero algo me llamó la atención: el tema central es la revaloración de la moral humana por medio de la liberación de todos los prejuicios sexuales, y sin embargo, apenas se mencionaba algo de la homosexualidad. Luego descubrí que el editor de Heinlein le expurgó once páginas al texto eliminando el tema de marras. Esto le da más fuerza a la opinión de LeGuin de que la literatura de CF es “desinfectada” para que solo aparezca en ella la “commodified fantasy” que ella denuncia.  

 

VI. LA ONCEAVA GENERACIÓN. Con este cuento, Antonio Chamu contribuye en algo a lo que Phillip K. Dick llamaba la desfiguración conceptual. Ciertamente no es un gran hallazgo y ciertamente tampoco es fundamentalmente original, pero sí lograr crear lo que el mismo Dick llamaba “una nueva variación sobre otra [idea original] anterior”.En efecto, el texto en cuestión logra atrapar nuestro interés hacia un viejo tema utilizando, primordialmente, astucia lingüístaica. Y eso ya es mucho decir.

Para ningún lector (avanzado) de CF resultaría nuevo ver una sociedad robótica buscando mejorarse por medio de ediciones y generaciones nuevas (HELLO, TERMINATOR!!). Eso está en nuestra literatura desde que Karel Capek caminaba sobre la faz de la Tierra. Pero lo que sí puede cambiar es el tratamiento. Y aquí es donde el autor de La onceava generación sale airoso. El primer párrafo del cuento es un banquete sensorial, especialmente para la vista y el oído literario: Repentinas nubes negras brotaron y corrompieron los cielos hacia el amanecer. Varios relámpagos activaron los sistemas de seguridad en diversas secciones urbanas a lo largo de la ciudad costera Galatea. Esta metrópoli se extendía más allá de lo que la simple vista era capaz de percibir en la superficie, y hasta veinte kilómetros por debajo del océano Atlántico. Su belleza se hallaba en los diseños de los edificios, carentes de líneas rectas, que dominaban los bosquejos inspirados en la naturaleza marina o en fractales matemáticos. La distribución en anillos concéntricos de la ciudad era visible desde el espacio. Una imponente construcción, observable desde cualquier puntode la urbe y parecida a un caracol, era el centro medular de Galatea. Era el museo más detallado jamás concebido. (3)

Aquí nos describe la ciudad Galatea casi como el paisaje de un surrealismo controlado, un oxímoron de belleza que incorpora la alta tecnología a la alta estético. Y luego, en el segundo párrafo, agrega elementos sonoros que nos hacen el paisaje aún más vívido y nuevas pinceleladas de color. Nótese como en medio de estas descrpiciones va entretejida la misma narración de los hechos:

La lluvia matutina continuó por una hora. Sin previo aviso, un estruendo más fuerte que un trueno estremeció el sector oeste de la ciudad. Destellos color púrpura se irradiaron en todas direcciones por un segundo. Los generadores iónicos aledaños y los precipitadores de plasma se apagaron en respuesta a un aumento inesperado de la actividad magnética en el área. En breve, varias manzanas de edificios perdieron la energía.(3)

A estas alturas, el lector ya está inmerso en el texto gracias a los detalles sensoriales que le hacen posible imaginarse este mundo. Acto seguido, el narrador nos lleva a conocer el primer personaje: Alrededor de las ocho de la mañana, un llamado de emergencia activó al modelo médico Doc 406, un androide de octava generación que se encontraba sentado en el interior de una empolvada oficina diseñada como consultorio. Los muebles y decorados a su alrededor eran de apariencia austera, pero clásica para un sanatorio: un par de sillas forradas en piel sintética y un escritorio de caoba labrado con motivos griegos; en un extremo, dos camas de estructura tubular y varios monitores de control. Sobre una de las paredes colgaba una fotografía amarillenta donde se apreciaba a Doc 406 estrechando la mano de un anciano hindú, y una leyenda escrita a mano que decía: “Con el mayor agradecimiento por salvar mi vida…” (3) El autor nos revela las funciones y naturaleza de este personaje no hablándonos de él o de su generación propiamente dicha, sino narrándonos su entorno. El consultorio y su decorado están hechos para minimizar la condición robotil del “Doc 406″; los muebles son human friendly, si se quiere, (“un escritorio de caoba con motivos griegos”) y todo queda finalmente resumido en la fotografía donde el robot recibe el agradecimiento de “un anciano hindú”. En síntesis, un mundo cibernético creado por los humanos y cuidado y mantenido por sus descendientes artificiales. Aquí, pues, queda descartada la rebelión robótica tan cara a la acción/violencia disfrazada de CF. No se trata de superar a los humanos sino de perpetuar su legado. Y esto, el autor nos lo ha relatado usando apenas los recursos de la descripción narrativa. Más adelante nos enteramos de que todo este escenario ha sido construido con el propósito previsto: servir de telón de fondo a la trama que evoluciona, efectivamente, en el sentido que habíamos supuesto: los seres cibernéticos desean perpetuarse por medio de sus propios amos. Es indispensable enfatizar que los recursos formales del lenguaje (en este caso, los descriptivos) están todos alineados en función de reforzar la idea detrás del cuento: la sociedad robótica y su visión de mundo, es decir, su propio verosímil. No hay aquí rupturas ni gazapos evidentes que atenten contra la unidad ideológica (semántica) del texto y su propuesta formal. En resumen, el tema de las razas robóticas perpetuándose tras la extinción de sus creadores no tiene nada de nuevo, pero Chamu nos lo cuenta de tal manera que lo queremos volver a escuchar. The Martian Chronicles (1950) de Ray Bradbury. Seguramente uno de mis libros de CF predilectos. Lo leí de niño (no recuerdo el año) y luego de nuevo en los 90. La segunda lectura influyó mucho sobre El más violento paraíso (2001), que estaba escribiendo por ese tiempo. VII. FRENTE FRÍO. ”Desembarcaron sobre madera congelada…” Con estas palabras arranca el cuarto párrafo de este cuento de Jessica Clark. Un cuento policultural que abarca ingleses, noruegos, peruanos y quizás hasta costarricenses. Este tipo de relato, fuera del contexto habitual de quien lo escribe, puede resultar exitoso o ruinoso dependiendo de cómo se trate el material por contar. Dicho de otra manera, si vamos a hablar de Noruega, más vale que sepamos algunos detalles culturales mínimos. Sin embargo, es importante destacar que si bien el autor tiene que saberlos, (y, por supuesto, usarlos) eso no significa que tenga que explicarlos. Eso último, averiguar que es un fjord, un iglu o unaparka es deber del lector, no del del narrador.

Vale la pena detenerse aquí para analizar aquí un poco de lo que yo llamo cultura vergonzante. La cultura vergonzante se refiere a un tipo de sociedad humana, por lo general una nacionalidad, que se siente culturalmente inferior ante otras más “exitosas”. Pienso, por ejemplo, en la cultura costarricense frente a la rusa. No hay duda de que la diferencia existe y que Rusia ha dado a las artes y las ciencias en particular grandes contribuciones mientras las nuestras han sido más que modestas. Pero eso no significa que el escritor costarricense deba comportarse como un temeroso alelado en presencia de lo ruso. Y sin embargo, lo hace: en nuestros primeros trabajos literarios en el siglo XX los autores locales insertaban en su narrativa glosas y explicaciones para “el amable lector extranjero” donde explicaban nuestras minucias lingüísticas. De igual manera, todavía en el año 1999, el escritor local Carlos Cortés afirmaba en La Nación que él deseaba convertir a San José en una ciudad tan literaria como París o Buenos Aires. Empero, en esa misma reseña Cortés cita a su esposa diciéndole, “Bueno, ya estás en París; ya no hay excusa para que no escribás tu novela” (cito las palabras de María Lourdes Cortés de memoria). Y más adelante, cuando ya tenemos Cruz de olvido en nuestras manos, ocurre otro acto propio de la cultura vergonzante. El autor habla de la Cruz de Alajuelita y se detiene a explicarnos qué es ese monumento como si el lector fuese, necesariamente, extranjero. Cierto que Cortés siempre ha ambicionado tener un público meta internacional, pero trata de logarlo falseando (¿internacionalizando?) su entorno costarricense. Evidentemente un escritor argentino no se detiene para hacer oratoria turística sobre la Avenida 9 de Mayo ni el ruso para explicar qué son el Almirantazgo o el Ermitage. Ellos simplemente actúan (o más bien, sus personajes actuan) en el contexto dado y punto. La explicaciones tipo GeoPlanet son tareas para el lector, no para el autor (5).Y así Jessica Clark nos inserta en un texto que bien podemos llamar un thriller ecológico que nos lleva de Noruega a Canadá y luego a Costa Rica y por último de nuevo a Noruega. La autora no solo maneja el léxico de las cosas habituales en dichas zonas (ya mencionadas arriba) sino además un conocimiento claro y preciso de la ecología mundial y su posible evolución en el futuro. Me apresuro, sin embargo, a aclarar que estos conocimientos no son suficientes para crear un buen cuento de CF, pero en definitiva ayudan a construir un versosímil sólido, creíble y disfrutable.

Otra particularidad de Clark es el anglicismo subyacente en muchas de sus frases y oraciones (6). Esto, claro, es común en las personas bilingües, pero es necesario controlarlo al punto de que no entorpezca la naturalidad de nuestro castellano. Aquí dos breves ejemplos:

Pero Cobb no sabía cuándo parar.

…un acontecimiento completamente casual.

Es cierto que hay mucho anglicismo en el español costarricense que se inserta con tanta rapidez que ya es difícil determinar cuándo sigue siendo anglicisimo y cuándo ya es español, pero bien vale la pena mantenerse alerta para que nuestra narrativa no sufra artificios como los que vemos frecuentemente en Facebook: “¡Has hecho mi día! ¡No puedo esperar por tí! ¡Esa es la actitud!”

Ciertamente hemos utilizado el texto de Jesscia Clark para hablar tanto de él como de otras cosas, pero es que en este cuento realmente no hay mucho que decir salvo que es una rica muestra de buena literatura de su género. La trama es impecable, el argumento invita a seguir leyendo, el vocabulario es preciso y oportuno y el texto está bien escrito. Y por bien escrito me refiero a cosas como esto:

Pero la mujer no fue indiferente al aventurero misterioso. Su mirada se endureció al verlo y por un momento se irguió en atención sobre su equipo, como una delicada bestia salvaje confirmando el peligro en el aire.

¡Enhorabuena, señora Clark!

Time of the Great Freeze de Robert Silverberg. Publicada originalmente en 1963, esta obra resultó ser la primera novela “adulta” que leí en mi vida, y también mi primera novela de CF. Yo la leí por ahí de los doce años, jamás imagnándome que me estaba leyendo a un maestro del género.

 

VIII. COLOFÓN CUASI PELUCHE. Desde que recuerdo he sido un amante de la CF. No sólo porque divierte como pocos géneros lo hacen, sino además porque las posibilidades imaginativas y creativas son casi infinitas. Por eso siempre me dolió ver que en mi país natal casi no se se practicaba del todo; y además, el solo hecho de mencionar la CF hacía que algún crítico y/o escritor torciera la nariz para arriba como si tuviera el olfato muy cerca de otras partes de su propio cuerpo.

Como bien dice el refrán, “la gente cree que uno es tonto (o que no tiene memoria)”. Esos mismos criticones que aseguraban que La ruta de su evasión, de Yolanda Oreamuno, era una novelucha de segunda (7), también decían que la CF NO ERA literatura. Pero “para justicias el tiempo”, si es que estamos en baratillo de refranes.Desde comienzos de este siglo se ha venido dando en Costa Rica un fuerte movimiento de CF que pronto alcanzará su madurez y quizás nos dé, incluso, algunas glorias literarias. Yo vivo con esa esperanza. Y es con eso en mente que me he dedicado estos días a comentar las dos antologías de CF costarricense de la EUNED. Ambas son un genuino esfuerzo en pro de que la CF no sea más tan solo un deporte ocasional dentro de las letras nacionales. Que adquiera firmeza y constancia. Y por sobre todo, que sea de calidad. Obviamente todavía hay mucho camino por andar, pero se llegará, estoy seguro, a buen puerto cuando el tiempo sea propicio.

Por todo esto he decidido no engrosar las filas de los escritores nacionales que callan ante este esfuerzo y más bien trato, con buen o mal resultado, de apoyar a mis colegas; ya sea con comentarios, con motivaciones o con palabras ácidas, pero aquí estoy, tratando de que el esfuerzo común dé eventualmente sus buenos retoños.

Sigue Objeto no identificado, la segunda antología. Un trabajo de recopilación quizás menos lograda que esta primera, pero que también contiene algunos trabajos muy valiosos.

Si algún amante de CF en Costa Rica quiere ayudarme en esta mini empresa, mucho hará comentando esta entrada. Dándonos su punto de vista, sus consejos y también sus comentarios sobre cosas en las que no están de acuerdo con mi perspectiva. Y sugiero que lo hagan aquí, en el blog, porque ya sabemos que todo lo que se hace en Facebook es flor de un día. Y eso es prescisamente lo que no quiero… no queremos que pase con la CF de Costa Rica.

——————

NOTAS:

(1) Participaciones que el lector puede encontrar en los comentarios a la primera parte de este trabajo.
(2) Ursula K. LeGuin, Tales from Earthsea, Harcourt, 2001. Prólogo de la autora.
(3) Todas las citas están tomadas de Posibles Futuros, EUNED. San José, Costa Rica, 2009.
(4) Invertí más de dos horas buscando el nombre del autor de la cita y no lo pude encontrar. Se los quedo debiendo.
(5) La excepción vendría a ser cuando estamos haciendo una evaluación de tipo histórico en el texto; es decir, cuando es adrede.
(6) En su momento, mis amigos me llamaron la atención sobre esta misma particularidad, especialmente en El más violento paraíso. Tuve que someter el texto a una fuerte dosis de españolización. Y aunque me queda algo de eso, creo que ya no es lo suficiente como para entorpecer mi castellano.
(7) Porque a como tuve a don Quincho Gutiérrez de profe en la UCR, también tuve a esos mediocres que se decían buenos profesores de literatura.

Be it climate change or immigration, we want to know if there's a subject or topic you dread covering in class

Last week, in our education research in brief column, I reported on a snippet from a report highlighting a growing global skills gap in education. Now as worrying as this is, there was another paragraph in the report that got me thinking; it said the research had revealed a disturbing drop in teacher confidence to tackle big questions such as immigration, climate change and global interdependence. In fact it said that in a 2009 poll 90% of teachers felt confident in using their skills to help children understand that we live in an interdependent world but today just over half of teachers felt the same.

Can this really be true? I am not trying to call the stats into question but am keen to find out if there are subject and topics that teachers just don't want to go near with a barge pole?

When I taught in primary schools, I know I was happy to discuss pretty much anything from climate change to poverty. I even had a couple of interesting sessions about North Korea and South Korea (as I had pupils from both countries in my class) but I know some of my colleagues would balk at having such discussions, especially if they were a deviation from that lesson's plan. I was however less happy about teaching music for instance and used to worry how to use the big plastic box brimming with percussion instruments with any level of skill. I could sing, played the cello at school but just felt like such a fool trying to produce music with my class - luckily I had a friend who was the subject lead in another school who came up with some fab suggestions as to how I could improve my confidence and make the sessions rooted in fun.

So do you have any big questions or topics which you don't feel confident in discussing or delivering? Or do you have ways in which you have overcome your concerns and now tackle questions or subject areas without batting an eyelid? We'd love to know more and see if there are any trends or patterns? Add your comments to the discussion below.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Looking for your next role? Take a look at Guardian jobs for schools for thousands of the latest teaching, leadership and support jobs.

• Professional development
• Teaching tips
• Schools
• Teaching

Emma Drury
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Education in rural areas has been in the headlines recently, with scandals over missing textbooks, overcrowded classrooms and inadequate facilities. A group of South African dignitaries visited the Eastern Cape province recently to witness conditions for themselves. This is what they saw:

    

The rightwing instinct is that all poverty is hardship – anyone can fight their way out. But some forms of poverty can't be dodged

The Duke of Wellington once made me cry. I was sitting in a prep school dining hall, where we also sometimes studied, and I read in our textbook a passage where he had reacted to the horrible distress among workers and peasants in Britain after the Napoleonic wars – starvation and repression that led to the Peterloo massacre. His advice was that the poor should put curry powder in their drinking water. His troops, he said, had found this a useful substitute for food when on their campaigns in India.

When I read this I was at once seized by the most choking, terrible sadness. First my throat and then the whole building smelled thick with snot in a most disgusting way. I had to rush to the lavatories and rub my face with cold water before I could breathe and stop weeping.

Life at boarding school is full of such moments, but what made this one remarkable was not just its quality of physical horror: the emotion I felt was overwhelmingly pity for the Duke because everyone would see him as heartless whereas in fact he was trying to be practical. Sometimes there is nothing to eat. Sometimes curry powder in water is the best you can do. Of course, this was also bound up in my mind with the fact that you couldn't, in those days, get curry powder in the English provinces. I hated England.

In those days, at the Dragon school, the food could be so awful that curry powder in water would have been better. We were given milk in bottles that held a third of a pint, and were stored, in crates, without refrigeration. This meant in summer that the good milk was tinged with sourness; the bad milk was practically acid, and the worst milk had entirely separated into curds and whey. It all got drunk.

Yet this kind of physical hardship had nothing much to do with poverty. Our parents were paying good money to have us educated there and the school was not particularly heartless. It just had an ethos that paid little account to physical pleasure. There was an expectation that we should learn to endure discomfort. It was absolutely not the same as a belief that discomfort was all life would hold.

The distinction between hardship and poverty makes sense of much discussion about austerity. Hardship is an exceptional state, but poverty is a life sentence from which you can only be released on license, and can never know when. It's very clearly illustrated by the life of Jocasta Innes, who died last week. Her Pauper's cookbook was a bestseller in the 70s. It wasn't in the least bit glamorous – this was before celebrity cooks – and much of the food in it was unpleasant. But it was larky, practical and full of encouragement.

She wrote it in conditions of considerable hardship: she had left one husband and two children to live with a penniless novelist and have two more children, whom she fed on a very small budget. But she had a degree from Cambridge, she had been privately educated. She knew things might get better, and they did.

The rightwing instinct is that all poverty can be reinterpreted as hardship: with sufficient energy and determination, anyone can fight their way out of it. This isn't entirely false. In fact it's obviously half true, and a great deal of the emotional energy of rightwing rhetoric is generated by outrage when people seem to be denying this obvious truth.

Looking back, a lot of my training in school could be understood as learning to see the world in terms of hardships that could be overcome, rather than deprivations that must be stoically endured. And this was good and useful.

None the less, there are some deprivations that simply have to be endured, some forms of poverty that can't be dodged. Talent and luck are unequally distributed among determined strivers. Few single mothers can write bestselling books, or start a decorating business on the back of them.

So a proper welfare system would need to distinguish between poverty and hardship and apply different remedies. Water and curry powder for some: real food for others. This is certainly how welfare is supposed to function in Sweden. I suspect it is what Iain Duncan Smith is trying to do right now, with such resounding inadequacy. And perhaps it can't be done in any really satisfying way. Perhaps the people who thought the Duke of Wellington a heartless bastard were quite right.

• Poverty
• Austerity
• Welfare
• Social exclusion
• Private schools

Andrew Brown
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Le rêve du style parfaitGilles PhilippeDATE DE PARUTION : 15/05/13 EDITEUR : PUF ISBN : 978-2-13-062093-8 EAN : 9782130620938La littérature, dit-on, a horreur de l’académisme. Les « auteurs à dictée » ne seraient pas des auteurs et l’étiquette de « style NRF » est une marque d’infamie. Ainsi est-il d’usage de récuser sans procès toute position valorisant le style et de donner privilège à celle qui ne connaît que les styles, dans leur irréductible pluralité, c’est-à-dire dans leur indépassable singularité. La modernité n’a pourtant cessé de rêver d’un « style parfait », d’un « bien écrire » régi par des règles valables pour tous, respectueux de principes qui semblent défier le temps et les plumes.De 1860 à 1960, le débat sur le lien entre norme et style s’est noué autour des mêmes thématiques. Faut-il avoir du style et non un style ? Le style parfait vaut-il style classique ou absence de style ? Est-il soumis à l’évolution et aux genres littéraires, ou bien faut-il le ramener au « génie de la langue » lui-même ? Qui seraient, enfin, les maîtres de ce style parfait ?Gilles Philippe est professeur à l’université de Lausanne. Il est notamment l’auteur de Le Français, dernière des langues. Histoire d’un procès littéraire , paru aux Presses universitaires de France en 2010. Il dirige par ailleurs l’édition des Oeuvres complètes de Marguerite Duras pour la « Bibliothèque de la Pléiade » (Gallimard).

Your love life is your own business, obviously, but I'd steer clear of these big no-nos of campus romance

Universities are hotbeds for all kinds of relationships, from everlasting true love through to awkward one-night stands.

Arriving at uni straight from an all-girls grammar school, I was completely delighted with the sheer number of acne-ridden, testosterone-overloaded boys on offer.

But I've learned a few things along the way. Relationships at uni are important; they make you grow up a lot quicker than any amount of separating whites from colours will do. However, there are some kinds of relationships that you should steer clear of, because they tend to make you forget why you ever went to uni in the first place.

So freshers, I offer you my list of things (and people) not to do; third-years, hold your heads (and aching hearts) in shame if you've ever made these mistakes.

1. Relationship with your lecturer

It's understandable that you'd be attracted to the person imparting wisdom and learning to you on a weekly basis. There are all too many occasions for attraction to blossom; seminars where everyone else is too hungover to turn up, or the aptly named "personal" tutorials.

Relationships between faculty members and students are pretty common, and rarely prohibited by universities; standard guidelines, such as these from Royal Holloway just require the relationship to be mentioned to the head of department.

But (and I write this as the daughter of a student-staff relationship) most relationships you have at uni aren't going to end happily ever after. Most likely, if you get into a relationship with your tutor or lecturer, it will implode at some point, and you'll have to endure the awkwardness and pain of forced contact with an ex who still holds the position of power over you that was so attractive in the first place.

Or, worse, you'll just hit on a lecturer when drunk on free departmental wine, be rejected, and have to spend the next three years studiously avoiding them, and never ever taking any of their modules.

2. Relationship with your flatmate

This, thankfully, isn't a mistake I've made, much as I've tried. However, Katie, a friend from home, started seeing a flatmate at the beginning of this year. "We first got together on a night out, and then discovered that we both liked each other." It's a common situation; the Student Room has threads dedicated to the subject.

But, as Katie testifies, things can get rough. "I ended things, which is when the problems began. He still liked me, and even a few months later, he'd get really angry if I got with any other guys. I'd go to the kitchen to get breakfast, and he'd be waiting to tell me off."

Having a relationship with someone you already live with escalates everything; you can get close really quickly, but that makes it harder if you then split up. Katie says: "Don't do it – or at least wait until the summer if you want anything to happen."

3. Relationship with a sabbatical officer

Sabbatical officers are students who take a year off between or directly after their studies to take on key positions in the student union. Relationships between students and sabbs might not immediately seem particularly ill-advised, and you do get a kind of second-hand power rush from dating someone vaguely important.

But when it ends, and there's a cardboard cutout of your ex that creepily guards the entrance to your uni, it becomes peculiarly painful. As are all the emails, the weird pictures of them dressed up in a novelty reindeer costume, and the realisation that it's very hard to get over someone when they're around all the time.

So those are my three. Do you have more to add to the list?

My experience also tells me that however spectacularly you get your heart broken, eventually it's okay. You listen to Taylor Swift a lot, write a semi-ironic newspaper article about it all, and finally reach the point where you can see your ex and be happy that you once had a good time together.

Even if they did have 15 middle names, and requested pheasant soup when they were ill.

Because uni is where you do stupid things that you think you'll regret forever (like studying philosophy in the middle of a recession, great idea), but actually, looking back, you realise that it was all properly, wonderfully brilliant.

• Students
• Higher education
• Dating

Ruth Hardy
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Iby Knill vowed she would tell the world what she had seen at Auschwitz. And now her story will forever be told at museums across Europe thanks to a young filmmaker from Teesside University

I shall always remember the first time I heard a Holocaust survivor tell their story. At secondary school I read textbooks and saw pictures, but nothing quite equates with somebody who has personally experienced the true horror of Nazi persecution standing in front of you, telling their story. You simply can't replicate that.

So when I picked up 89-year-old Iby Knill's book, The Woman without a Number, I was instantly fascinated by her remarkable journey. It was a story that had waited 60 years to be told. It was her story of survival. It was Iby's story that inspired my graduation film that concludes my Film and Television BA Hons at Teesside University.

One of Iby's most moving stories related to a promise she made to a twin girl while in Auschwitz. The girl was being used by the Nazis in experiments and she knew she would never leave Auschwitz alive. Iby was leaving to work in a slave labour camp and she promised the girl she would tell the world what she had seen. The promise is what is still motivating her today.

Iby was born in Czechoslovakia, where she was excluded from school for being Jewish. She was later smuggled over the border into Hungary, where she ended up working for the Hungarian resistance in Budapest. She was eventually captured and taken to Auschwitz–Birkenau.

When I met Iby for the first time in November last year, I had already read her book. I was really excited to meet her. I enlisted the help of two other students on the same course at the university, Mark and Ian, to help me make this film. After meeting Iby we discussed various points that we needed to get across in the film. Probably the most difficult thing for me to do as the director was to pick the most salient parts of Iby's complex story and create a simplified narrative.

We decided early that the only way we could truly bring Iby's story to life was to go to the places that she was telling us about, and capture it on film. This of course meant going to Auschwitz. We trawled through websites offering bargain basement flights and cheap accommodation and managed to stretch our meagre budget to travel to Krakow and Budapest. With careful planning and a no-frills approach we managed to make the trip happen.

We flew from London Stansted at the end of January 2013. As we were sat in the airport looking over the schedule with all our equipment, I couldn't help but wonder what on earth we were doing. Before flying out it was important to do as much research as possible into Auschwitz so we knew what we were going to film. It wasn't until this point that we started to realise what we had let ourselves in for!

Having never visited anything like Auschwitz before, I felt uncomfortable going, made worse with the thought of rocking up with a camera crew. I shall never forget walking the same path that was the last thing many thousands of prisoners saw, before entering the gas chamber at Auschwitz. I think that people need to visit Auschwitz to see for themselves just how horrific and harrowing it is. It's important for people to learn from it, in the hope that we can prevent it from happening again.

Making the film was very challenging, but working with Iby has helped my film-making immeasurably. I hope to continue travelling and finding people with stories that need to be told. I hope that people will learn something from the film that we made. And I hope that we did Iby's story the justice that it deserves.

The Auschwitz Museum and the Holocaust Centre in Budapest have both requested a copy of the film for their archives, once the film is compete. It's a huge honour knowing that I've played a part in helping Iby fulfil her promise of telling the world her story.

Watch the trailer for the documentary below

• Holocaust
• Second world war
• Teesside University
• Higher education
• Documentary

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Le 30 avril 2013, Clicanoo évoque « Un 1er mai au goût de manif anti-Ani », alors qu'un article du même jour d'AgoraVox porte le titre « L’ANI ou le pouvoir de nuisance du social-libéralisme ». Mais peut-on vraiment parler de libéralisme à l'époque de la mondialisation du capitalisme et du pouvoir sans partage des grands groupes financiers et industriels ? Une chose est en tout cas certaine : la tant vantée « flexisécurité » qu'instaure l'Accord National Interprofessionnel (ANI) constitue entre autres une véritable démolition de notre Code du Travail, comme déjà analysé dans notre article « Hollande, MEDEF, syndicats,…

Franz Hessel, Flâneries parisiennesTraduction et préface de Maël Renouard .Paris : Rivages Poche, coll. "Petite Bibliothèque", 2013.144 p.EAN 97827436254297,15 EURPrésentation de l'éditeur :Dans la lignée de Baudelaire, d'Aragon, de Léon-Paul Fargue, Franz Hessel (1880-1941) a incarné la figure du "flâneur" littéraire et inspiré les réflexions de son ami Walter Benjamin sur ce thème. Ce volume rassemble des textes, inédits en français, qu'il a consacrés à Paris où il a longtemps vécu.Leur charme tient à leur aspect d'instantanés pris sur le vif ; à leur poésie de la modernité ; à leur esprit européen, cosmopolite, qui est également celui du Paris de cette époque ; à leur attention aux petits faits incongrus ou drôles ; à leur mélange de rêverie et d'érudition , au regard à la fois familier et étranger qu'ils portent sur la ville ; et singulièrement pour nous, lecteurs d'aujourd'hui, aux différences et aux ressemblances qu'ils nous invitent à renconnaître dans le passé et le présent.

Noémie Villacèque, Spectateurs de paroles ! - Délibération démocratique et théâtre à Athènes à l’époque classiquePréface de Pascal Payen.Presses Universitaires de Rennes, coll. "Histoire", 2013.432 p.EAN 978275352214520,00 EURPrésentation de l'éditeur :Contre l’idée que les citoyens athéniens se comportent en simples spectateurs de leur vie politique, ce livre revient sur les pratiques délibératives à Athènes à l’époque classique. En effet, si aucun moment n’est explicitement dédié au dialogue pendant l’Assemblée et les séances des tribunaux, les échanges permanents entre les participants constituent une délibération informelle qui, avant même le vote à main levée, rend effective la souveraineté populaire.Sommaire :Athènes de 508 à 429 avant J.-C.: qui gouverne? Au théâtre, des assemblées politiquesDes échafaudages de l’agora aux marbres de Lycurgue: esquisse d’une histoire du théâtre de Dionysos Aristophane et les citoyens-spectateurs La tragédie, son public et la démocratie Des assemblées politiques dans le théâtre de Dionysos, à Athènes et dans les dèmes Au tribunal, les orateurs et leurs dramesLes scènes judiciaires Le théâtre du tribunal au théâtre de Dionysos Deux cas de procès pervertis À l’Assemblée, la démocratie en spectacleCléon, le paradigme du démagogue Les adversaires de la démocratie et le spectre du spectacle Le théâtre de la démocratie, de l’argument à l’injure Être acteur de la scène politique après 403 avant J.-C. Lire l'introduction : http://www.pur-editions.fr/couvertures/1366114674_doc.pdfNoémie Villacèque est docteur en histoire grecque (université Toulouse 2-Le Mirail, équipe PLH-ERASME). Elle enseigne actuellement l’histoire-géographie au lycée Henri-Matisse de Cugnaux. Outre les questions des pratiques délibératives des Anciens, ses recherches portent également sur le luxe et la pauvreté dans l’Athènes classique.

BY AISLING GALLGHER

A few years ago, a decision was made in Queen’s University Belfast Students’ Union (due to ‘efficiency savings’ required by the university) to outsource some of the security staff positions to G4S. Currently, the students’ union employs 18 security staff, half of whom are current students and half of whom are graduates.

Earlier this month, our security staff were told that their contracts will be terminated at the end of the month. They have two choices- take a job offered with G4S (on a zero-hour contract, without the support and protection that comes with being an employee of the university/union), or lose their job.

The ratified strategic plan (2012-2015) for QUBSU states that “the students’ union… places a key priority on ‘putting money in your pocket’” and that they “will do this by promoting and offering-part time job opportunities”. Our incoming president has placed student employment at the top of his agenda for the coming year.

In a single day, almost 1200 students signed a petition calling for a referendum on the issue, which will be held on 9th May.

We are calling for QUBSU Management Board to reverse this decision to outsource our students’ union jobs (which was decided behind closed doors, with no consultation whatsoever from the students’ union council, nor the wider study body), and reaffirm their support for protecting and enhancing job opportunities for students at the university.

Our students’ union is not a commercial union; it is and should be a union run by and for students. Protecting the few jobs that students have within the union/university is a top priority.

Stand in solidarity with students from Queen’s University Belfast Students’ Union over the next few weeks as they prepare to take on their union management in defence of student jobs and against the creeping commercialisation that is becoming so common within students’ unions throughout the UK and Ireland.

Tweet support (@QUBSU, #savestudentjobs) in the form of videos, posters and statements, and show that we will stand united in the face of attacks on our students’ unions.

Diversity figures in UK universities have been labelled 'not good enough'. Join our live chat on Friday 3 May from 12pm to discuss progress, policy and best practice on the ground

A recent study commissioned by the Higher Education Academy shows that fewer than 10 graduates from black Caribbean and Bangladeshi minority groups are making the transition to research degrees each year. HEA chief executive Craig Mahoney says the situation "plainly isn't good enough – the postgraduate population should reflect the full range of talent and diversity in the population as a whole".

But as universities juggle competing priorities of boosting recruitment, gaining research funding and enhancing student experience, has the push to increase access and diversity taken a step back?

Research shows in the Russell Group universities, black and Asian students are under-represented, partly because they are less likely to apply to these universities but also because they are less likely to be admitted when they do. Figures show 6.6% of students at these universities from 1996 to 2006 were black Caribbean or African. Tellingly, black and minority ethnic staff are also under–represented, making up only 6% of academic staff.

A recent piece by an anonymous history lecturer at a Russell Group university spoke out about the trend of filling senior posts without advertising them, and questioned whether this is a breach of university diversity laws, saying: "managers are increasingly more concerned with attaining an excellent performance in the REF exercise than they are in promoting equality and diversity".

Ethnic under-representation in universities is an education issue that regularly makes the press, not least since the rise of tuition fees and international student visa scandal. With squeezed time and resources, how can universities improve diversity in their staff and student recruitment? And does the responsibility extend beyond HR and admissions departments to politicians, policy makers and university leaders?

In a previous debate on this topic, Gary Loke, head of policy at the Equality Challenge Unit, suggested universities should be sharing more of their own diversity research and resources online. It may be an issue of communication and clarity, but we want to hear what your university is doing to increase diversity in higher education and how issues of race play out in the wider equality landscape of age, gender, disability, sexuality and religion.

So join our live chat Friday 3 May from 12-2pm BST in the comments section below to share best practice, advice, research and opinions on how this can be improved. We welcome your thoughts on the topic, so please do share below.

If this is your area of expertise and you would like to be on the panel, please email claire.shaw@guardian.co.uk.

You can also follow the live chat on Twitter using the hashtag #HElivechat

Panel to be confirmed

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• Live Q&A
• Admissions
• Recruitment and HR
• Student experience
• Policy
• Academics
• Higher education
• Race in education
• Equality

Claire Shaw
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The coalition plan to rescue public finances has one hand tied behind its back – the NHS must change alongside other services

Cabinet ministers, including the defence secretary, Philip Hammond, the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, and the local government secretary, Eric Pickles, have mounted a collective attack on the "ringfence" protecting the NHS from budget cuts.

In the 2010 comprehensive spending review, the coalition government set out plans to eliminate the structural deficit and then put public debt on a downward track. This has been hard going. Continuing challenges in the global economic environment have been one reason for this, particularly problems in the eurozone, which is the UK's largest market. But the coalition has scored some own goals too. One was to refuse to consider properly how savings could be made in the NHS. Along with areas such as pensioner benefits, schools and international aid, health has been protected from the cuts to budgets facing other areas.

This ringfencing has weakened the political case for reform. When all budgets are subject to the same principles of value for money it is, quite simply, harder for individual ministers to complain. But when some spending receives special treatment then consensus breaks down. Divisions are created in Cabinet and the government no longer presents a unified front on its mission of rescuing the public finances.

Protecting the ringfencing of the largest budgets also means, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the government will struggle to meet its fiscal targets. Reform estimates that 60% of the total increase in spending in between 2011-2012 and 2014-2015 is expected to be in the NHS, pensioner benefits and schools. Spending on the NHS alone accounts for close to a quarter of the total increase. The government is trying to rescue the public finances with one hand tied behind its back.

This means that more of the heavy lifting will fall on a smaller number of departments, capital budgets and working-age welfare. To illustrate, we at Reform compared the increases in the NHS, pensions and schools budgets from 2011-2012 to 2014-2015 under a scenario where they grew at their current ringfenced rates with another scenario where they were just fixed in cash terms. The extra increase in total spending over these years was some £20 billion as a result of the ringfencing. This is a lot of extra money to find from departments who have, in several cases, already faced very deep cuts in real terms.

Ringfencing also fails on the grounds of improving health outcomes. It means that the NHS fails to benefit from the pressure to innovate and change, in the way that other services such as policing are already showing. The irony is that health is probably the department with the most to gain from efforts to reduce waste or transform services. While there is a current efficiency drive in the NHS – the £20bn "Nicholson challenge" – it is nothing compared with the pressure going on budgets in other areas, such as local government.

And, of course, health services do not operate in isolation. When services like adult social care face cuts but services in hospitals do not, hospital services come under pressure to address other areas of need, although they may not be best placed to do this. Ringfencing reinforces problems of silos.

The overall result is that ringfencing is like putting the public finances on a crash diet that actually reduces the chances of long-term weight loss. There is a perception that services are being underfunded while the real drivers of spending have been left untouched. Without reform to health and pensions, spending will balloon again when growth returns.

In 2010, when the comprehensive spending review was launched, a Treasury spokesperson said: "Anyone who thinks the review is just about saving money is missing the point. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the way that government works." Yet by protecting the largest spending areas, the coalition has failed to achieve this vision. It is time for them to outline a new course that applies pressure on public spending across the board.

• Spending review 2010
• Tax and spending
• NHS
• State pensions

Patrick Nolan
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Few people leave their widow a bomb in the wardrobe, but for my father, Conway Brian Richards, that was typical. As a mathematician, physicist and researcher in the biological sciences, he loved to find out how things worked. The old bomb (non-explosive) was just one of many projects found scattered around the house after his death from cancer aged 86.

Conway loved work. Born in south Wales, he took a first degree at the University of Wales in maths and physics, specialising in telecommunications. He then did his national service in Sierra Leone, fighting off ants and snakes while manning a communications post. His particular genius was for turning theory into practical working applications. He completed an MSc by research into thermionic valves and vacuum seals at Electronic Tubes, in High Wycombe, where he met Betty, whom he married in 1957.

A career followed at Cambridge, where I was born, though my mother, finding herself married to someone who often ate and slept in his lab, soon returned to the shires. Meanwhile Conway was working at the university's Cavendish laboratory and the department of animal pathology. With a pioneering doctorate in antigen-antibody reactions, it was at the school of veterinary medicine that he completed his most important work, a simple immunological method for the diagnosis of pregnancy in mares. Patenting this work would have made him wealthy, but he was not interested in fame or fortune. He received requests from all over the world for reprints of his paper, which he saved and gave to me – for the stamps.

He went with the United Nations Development Programme to Fanar in Lebanon, where he met Barbara, who worked for the Foreign Office. They married in 1974. With Barbara, he travelled to Lusaka, Brussels, Nicosia, Geneva and Warsaw. His last job was at the Institute of Cellular Pathology in Brussels. In retirement he pined for the laboratory and for science, his "cruel mistress".

Conway was a prodigious and often sharply satirical letter writer who did not suffer fools gladly – or at all, as his students discovered. He was entirely uninterested in material possessions or social conventions. He kept up with developments in physics until his death.

He is survived by Barbara, myself and two grandsons, Jonathan and Philip.

• Veterinary science
• Physics
• Mathematics
• Wales

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