Why do private schools still attract the most memorable teachers? | Martin Kettle

Dominic Cooper and Richard Griffiths as Hector in The Background Boys, a film of the play by Alan Bennett. Photograph: Allstar/BBC/Sportsphoto Ltd

There are obvious pitfalls in reading through also considerably into the news that Alan Bennett’s The Historical past Boys has just been voted the nation’s favourite perform. After all, Bennett’s 2004 perform had a extended run in London, toured extensively more than a lot of many years and has been created into a successful movie. So the straightforward fact is that a lot of individuals have witnessed and enjoyed it. This familiarity signifies The Background Boys was consequently in an ace position to win the contest organised by the English Touring Theatre.

Conversely, the limits of accessibility surely also describe why Bennett’s perform did not prime the poll in London and the south-east of England, in which the palm for favourite play went as an alternative to Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem. There’s no way that Jerusalem, with its life-improving celebration of anti-authoritarianism and the spirit of William Blake, would bomb outside London. On the contrary. It’s just that theatre-goers in the rest of Britain have had considerably much less possibility so far to see Butterworth’s great 2009 play than Londoners have.

Other geographical distinctions also counsel towards over-interpretation. It may possibly be tempting to suppose that Ulster’s latest background has anything to do with Hamlet, not the Bennett play, topping the poll in Northern Ireland. All people ghosts of the previous, those dead bodies, those unavenged murders, that instability at the heart of the state maybe it all adds up. But Hamlet is also the favourite in south-west England, the place ancestral internecine conflict and grievance is usually – however I may be incorrect – significantly less pronounced. So the straightforward explanation would seem to fall quick.

So what does describe the somewhat curious truth that a play about a group of northern state school sixth-kind boys getting ready for Oxbridge in the 1980s touches such a modern national chord? Availability of and access to performances is naturally critical. The sociology of theatregoers probably matters as well. The play’s wit, character and pace give it even more positive aspects – there’s no denying that we British like a laugh in our plays. Bennett’s much-loved status, as he approaches his 80th birthday following 12 months, undoubtedly assists as effectively.

But the deeper solution to the status of The History Boys also lies someplace in the synergy among two other issues. The 1st is hinted at by the truth that Bennett’s perform topped the poll in north-west England, north-east England, eastern England and the Midlands. Bennett writes about – and also for – the neglected half of Britain that is neither bathed in the glow of London’s pleasure and prosperity, nor culturally distinct enough to be governed by devolved institutions. In his quirky way Bennett is the playwright, rather as JB Priestley as soon as was, of the post-industrial England of which so many in the south are the two ignorant and disdainful.

The second issue, which overlaps the first in some ways, is that The Background Boys is not in the finish just a comedy about college and expanding up – even though of course it is the two these items also. It is also an angry lament for the passing of a state school training program of which Bennett himself is such a flowering.

In spite of what you might study in Personal Eye, there are a single or two of us Guardian columnists who are wholly state educated and proud to have sent our very own young children to state schools too. As somebody who not only went to a state grammar college in the north of England – like the one particular in The Background Boys – but also to the quite school in Leeds that Bennett (whose father was our nearby butcher when I was a boy) attended himself, there is absolutely nothing quaint or exotic to me about the world of his play. My school was like that.

In addition, like Bennett, I am a background boy. My generation falls halfway between Bennett’s very own and the a single he depicts in his play. Nevertheless, the college he describes in his introduction to The History Boys is in every way one particular that I recognise, with its excitements, its insecurities, its snobberies and its occasional quite real cruelties. I can by no means forget the extended-haired boy who was named into the headmaster’s examine and physically restrained whilst another instructor attempted to reduce off his hair. The boy broke free of charge, ran screaming from the college, and rightly never came back.

But I also recognise the pride and the civic benevolence. As Bennett says in that introduction, if you got into Oxbridge, as he did and I did, you got your photo in the regional paper and your schooling was paid for. Bennett’s wholly proper assertion that there was real civic pride in such achievements was brought house to me when, as an undergraduate, I applied for an further 12 months of grant from Leeds education department. Back came a letter, handwritten by the chief education officer, Mr Taylor, agreeing to the application on the grounds that he was assured I would proceed to deliver distinction upon Leeds in the years ahead. A letter like that seals a deal with a area for life, I can tell you.

We dwell in a different nation these days, of course. Excellent secondary and greater training and training for all – and not just for some, as in the 1960s – are high-priced. Great teachers never develop on trees and are not low-cost to train or retain. As Ofsted stated only this week, entry to the best educating is usually down to very good luck as considerably as to socioeconomic standing.

But this unfairness is not equally shared. Nearly 60 many years ago, the undergraduate Bennett was struck by the unfairness that memorable teachers – like the unforgettable Hector he placed in a state school in The Background Boys – appeared to be concentrated in the private colleges. That unfairness is nevertheless with us nowadays. The value Britain pays for the privileges bought by the few for their young children is nevertheless far too high – and we all know it.

The History Boys is “about” plenty of issues. A big component of it, though, is about the reality that the likelihood to thrill to, and benefit from, fantastic educating is neither a substantial sufficient public priority nor shared out relatively.

The essential line in the perform is the last one particular. Hector says basically: “Pass it on.” What is to be passed on is partly the enjoy of information, of suggestions, contemplating and speaking, of training. But there is also a far more indignant political message about passing on the unfinished organization of educational unfairness. You cannot search at Britain right now and not see how unfinished that function is. That is certainly part of the explanation of why Bennett’s perform connects so powerfully with so a lot of.

Why do private schools still attract the most memorable teachers? | Martin Kettle

Economix Blog: A’s Have Been Harvard’s Most Common Grade for 20 Years

In the final handful of days, reviews that Harvard’s most common grade is an “A” have  now gone viral. But regardless of the shocked-shocked! tone of some of the coverage, this is truly quite previous news.

The last time A-selection (that is, the combination of A and A-) grades or their equivalent had been not the most common grades awarded at Harvard was 20 many years in the past. That’s according to Stuart Rojstaczer, who tracks and aggregates grading information at colleges, such as some information going back to prewar occasions. (You could recall he previously answered your concerns on grade inflation here).

He utilised the phrase “equivalent” since Harvard converted from a 15-stage grading method to a traditional A-F program in the 2000s. Harvard defined its “15″ as an A and its “14″ as an A-, Dr. Rojstaczer explained in an email.

Dr. Rojstaczer wrote that as of the 1989-90 academic yr, A- was the grade most frequently awarded to undergraduates at Harvard. By 2000-01, A- was extremely near to currently being replaced by A (inside of 1.3 percent) as the modal grade (that is, the grade that appears with the most frequency). The A-selection blend of A/A- grew to become the modal grade (in comparison to B+/B/B-) in the 1994-95 academic 12 months.

Clutching your pearls but? Bear in thoughts that nationally, the A/A- combination has been the most typical grade awarded nationwide at colleges since 1997.

“So Harvard was only about three many years ahead of its time,” Dr. Rojstaczer wrote.

Dr. Rojstaczer stated the Harvard information “come from the dean’s office by way of request to Larry Summers,” the university’s president until 2006. “Since Larry Summers resigned, Harvard has refused all requests for data.”

For some other coverage of grades and grade inflation, see this publish on how personal schools have inflated marks the most this item on how Republican- versus Democratic-leaning professors grade their students an post about how law college grading curves have been currently being deliberately softened so graduates would be much more aggressive on the challenging work market and this post puzzling by means of why university has gotten significantly less rigorous, but the college degree earnings premium has risen all the same.

Economix Blog: A’s Have Been Harvard’s Most Common Grade for 20 Years

The Learning Network Blog: How Can People Make the Most of Long Holiday Weekends?

Concerns about problems in the information for students 13 and older.

As people head back to school and function in the United States following a vacation break that included Thanksgiving, a number of nights of Hanukkah, and the official begin to the holiday purchasing season, we pause to think about the previous numerous days.

Did you enjoy by yourself? What did you do with your time? Is there anything at all you wish you had done in a different way?

In “Exhausted Shoppers Head House, Replaced by the Subsequent Wave,” Elizabeth A. Harris writes the vacation shopping scene:

Even though some malls across the country were hectic during the traditional postholiday shopping on Friday, the crowds at other individuals appeared sparse to some typical customers, who compared them to a regular weekend’s atmosphere. Probably the earlier Thanksgiving hours and the boost in on the web purchasing — with so a lot of e-tailers providing aggressive bargains — had lessened the want to peruse racks of clothes in crowded retailers.

… Others braved the cold temperatures to try to snare a good discount. A mom-daughter team, with red hats adorned with jingling bells, arrived at the Leesburg Corner Premium Shops just before five a.m. on Friday. Ashley Hawkins, 25, acquired half-off a specialist bag at Kate Spade, a sale she took note of on Facebook. “Using the social networking, the merchants have certainly received out and reached out to consumers,” she mentioned.

On both Friday and Thursday, some buyers complained about their fellow buyers. Holly Schneider, another shopper at the Leesburg shops, said charges had been far greater than client behavior. “People are rude, just really rude,” Mrs. Schneider explained. “There’s no private space. It’s like you’re not even there. They are bumping into you, knocking you down. They don’t see you. They see in which they are going.”

… Marguerite Nobou raced via the Leesburg shops in Virginia, with her sister, Marie Louise Kouame, sometimes jogging along to hold pace.

“I misplaced her,” Ms. Kouame explained, having stopped to talk just for a minute as her sister kept moving. Ms. Nobou is a businesswoman and plans to promote the clothing when she returns house to the Ivory Coast early next week, stated her younger sister, who lives in Alexandria. “She needs to go buy some much more Levi’s jeans get advantage of the deals. I’m just helping her. We have been here given that midnight.”

Students: Read the complete post, then tell us …

• Was purchasing one of your holiday experiences this past weekend?


• If so, how did it assess to the scenes Ms. Harris describes in the write-up?


• What recollections of the holiday weekend do you believe will last? Why?


• Did you discover time to rest and relax? Why or why not?


• What tips do you have for producing the most of a prolonged weekend like the one that just ended?

---

College students 13 and older are invited to comment under. Please use only your initial title. For privacy policy motives, we will not publish pupil comments that consist of a final name.

The Learning Network Blog: How Can People Make the Most of Long Holiday Weekends?

Patenting Their Discoveries Does Not Pay Off for Most Universities, a Study Says

Universities try to cash in on discoveries — gene splicing, brain chemistry, computer-chip design — but the great majority of them fail to turn their research into a source of income, according to a new study from the Brookings Institution.

Research universities have “technology transfer” offices that make thousands of business deals annually for the use of their patents. But in any given year, at about seven of eight universities, the resulting revenue funneled into university budgets is not even enough to cover the cost of running that office, said the study’s author, Walter D. Valdivia.

Universities make money from patents primarily by licensing them to outside companies, which turn them into commercial products. Mr. Valdivia said the universities needed to become more aggressive about nurturing new businesses, encouraging professors to start new companies based on the patents and making licensing deals that would give them an ownership stake in corporations, not just a share of the royalties.

A 1980 federal law gave universities ownership of patents arising from federally funded research, and the results have generally been seen as a boon to universities. They make more than 4,000 patent licensing agreements annually and collect about $ 2 billion a year in licensing revenue, according to surveys by the Association of University Technology Managers.

But only a small number of universities consistently produce lucrative breakthroughs and collect the vast majority of the money. A blockbuster discovery can alter a university’s fortunes, like the patents on inserting foreign DNA into cells, which brought $ 790 million to Columbia University, or the patents leading to the drug Remicade, used to treat autoimmune diseases, from which New York University collected more than $ 1 billion.

The vast majority of licensing deals yield little or no money, and for most universities the royalty returns are low. And the odds of finding the elusive game changer are small.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with the current model, but it isn’t enough. There need to be more alternatives,” Mr. Valdivia said. “They have historically put all their efforts into hoping for a blockbuster patent and then aggressively negotiating licensing fees, which alienates industry instead of making it a partner.”

Universities are increasingly eager to find new sources of revenue, as they see projections of shrinking student populations, declining government support and growing resistance to tuition increases.

The report touches on a long-running debate within universities about the proper role of academia, and whether professors should be entrepreneurs and their labs business incubators. That approach has been embraced for years in some disciplines, notably computer sciences, and at some universities, like Stanford, which has converted work done within its walls into minority stakes in high-tech companies including Google.

Some schools have gone so far as to set aside space for budding business moguls to get started, a central feature of Cornell University’s planned applied-sciences graduate school on Roosevelt Island. The number of university licensing agreements grows each year, but the share that give the university an ownership stake in the company (about one in 10) or result in the creation of a start-up company (about one for every seven deals) has changed little in the last several years. Some schools, like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Utah, make dozens of such deals annually, but many more research universities go years without making any.

Those strategies can take years to earn a financial return, if they ever do, whereas collecting royalties from a major corporation can pay off quickly. And start-ups often need help with things like navigating government bureaucracy and finding work space.

“There’s a growing understanding, more in some places than in others, that it can’t just be about revenue,” Mr. Valdivia said. “It’s about creating an entrepreneurial environment, about taking advantage of the strengths in your university and your region’s economy, and if you do that the benefits will follow.”

In a typical licensing deal, the royalties are split three ways — by the researchers, their academic department and the university’s general fund — an arrangement that can seem very generous to the scientist but paltry to the school. In a typical year, Mr. Valdivia estimated, that last one-third covers the cost of operating technology-transfer offices at only 13 percent of research universities.

The Brookings report calls on Congress to make it easier for researchers to use patented technology, short of commercializing it, and to direct funding to university technology transfer.

Patenting Their Discoveries Does Not Pay Off for Most Universities, a Study Says

Shortfall in the languages the UK needs the most

Only six% of the Uk population can speak German to a conversational degree, a British Council report has found. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Three-quarters of the Uk public are unable to communicate one particular of the ten most critical languages for the country’s potential, a British Council report has identified.

The British Council has referred to as on government and enterprise to function collectively to build educational policy and priorities relating to languages. This follows a YouGov poll commissioned by the British Council, which found that of 4000 Uk grownups polled, 75% are unable to hold a conversation in any of the languages highlighted as essential to the UK’s financial standing.

The Languages for the Future report recognized those languages, in buy of relevance, as: Spanish, Arabic, French, Mandarin, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish and Japanese.

“The dilemma is not that we’re teaching the wrong languages, simply because the most extensively taught languages like French, Spanish and German all characteristic in our best ten,” John Worne, director of method at the British Council, explained. “But the Uk demands far more people to take up the opportunity to find out and, crucially, get employing these languages – along with new ones like Arabic, Chinese and Japanese.”

The report discovered French to be the only language spoken by a double-digit percentage (15%), followed by German (six%), Spanish (4%) and Italian (2%). Arabic, Mandarin, Russian or Japanese are every single only spoken by 1%, whilst Portuguese and Turkish are every spoken by much less than 1%.

The languages in the record have been selected in accordance to financial, political, educational and cultural indicators. They take into account variables this kind of as the present United kingdom export trade, the language wants of business, government’s long term trade priorities and emerging large-growth markets.

Teresa Tinsley, co-author of the report, stated the essential takeaway for the public is simply “to discover a language”. For policymakers the report is meant to inform their choice-generating and correct misconceptions.

Tinsley explained one of the most essential recommendations manufactured in the report is the require for schools, educators and parents to utilise the language expertise of the UK’s diaspora and minority communities.

“We’re wasting sources at the second,” Tinsley explained. “Youngsters require to retain their initial languages. It really is essential for the total nation but it is also crucial for their intellectual and cultural improvement.”

Other recommendations in the report include:

• Languages must be held in the identical regard as science, technologies, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects.

• Companies need to invest in the improvement of the linguistic capabilities from which organisations will straight benefit.

• The teaching and understanding of languages must be enriched by the inclusion of new languages in the curriculum, and an improved concentrate on the require to recognize other cultures.

• Schools should fully exploit the variety of free of charge or funded sources available to help language studying, which are obtainable locally, online or by way of global links. These consist of language assistants, exchanges and overseas journeys, and global cultural institutes in the United kingdom.

As well as the 10 languages identified in the report, a additional 4 also emerged as important for the Uk: Dutch, Polish, Indian languages and Korean.

Worne extra: “If we don’t act to tackle this shortfall, we’ll get rid of out the two economically and culturally. Colleges have their work to do, but it really is also a dilemma of complacency, self confidence and culture – which policy makers, businesses, mothers and fathers and every person else in the Uk can help to repair. Languages aren’t just an academic problem – they are a sensible route to chance for the Uk in business, culture and all our lives.”

Shortfall in the languages the UK needs the most

Blurred Lines: the most controversial song of the decade

This week, University College London student union (UCLU) took the unusual step of banning a single song, Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines. It joins around 20 other UK student unions to do so. This is the latest development in the story of how the biggest song of the year became the most controversial of the decade: an unprecedented achievement, though not one that fills Thicke with pride.

It seems impossible that anyone with the faintest interest in popular culture could have missed either the song or the controversy, but here is a recap. At the end of March, mid-table R&B singer Thicke, along with producer Pharrell Williams and rapper TI, released Blurred Lines, a libidinous R&B party jam about a woman in a nightclub who may or not be interested in him. In April, one blogger branded it a “rape song”, and two months later Tricia Romano of the Daily Beast described it as “rapey”, a word that caught fire in other media outlets. The song might have escaped censure if the video, in which the three male performers goof around with scantily clad (and, in one version, topless) models, had not generated its own separate yet overlapping controversy.

Throughout the summer, as the song eclipsed even Daft Punk’s Get Lucky as the biggest hit of 2013, debate about its sexual politics heated up. In September, contributors to Project Unbreakable, a photographic project dedicated to rape survivors, held up placards comparing words spoken by their attackers to lines from the song. Also in September, Edinburgh University Students’ Association (EUSA) became the first student body to ban Blurred Lines.

“It promotes a very worrying attitude towards sex and consent,” explained Kirsty Haigh, EUSA’s vice-president of services. “This is about ensuring that everyone is fully aware that you need enthusiastic consent before sex. The song says: ‘You know you want it.’ Well, you can’t know they want it unless they tell you they want it.”

By that point, Thicke’s hit was part of a bigger debate about the messages of pop lyrics and videos. Miley Cyrus’s performance at the Video Music Awards in August, during which Thicke popped up like some kind of sex-pest Zelig, ignited another firestorm of indignation on several fronts. Recently, Netmums published a survey claiming that 80% of parents had found their children copying explicit lyrics or dance movies from music videos, while Annie Lennox called for videos to be regulated in the same way as movies. “I’m all for freedom of expression,” she began ominously, “but this is clearly one step beyond, and it’s clearly into the realm of porn. How do you stop your kids being exposed to it?”

This week, a tipping point has been reached. Lily Allen launched the video to her comeback single, Hard Out Here, which takes aim at music industry sexism with specific reference to the Blurred Lines video. And three women’s organisations launched the Rewind&Reframe campaign, with a four-pronged strategy: to enable young women to air their grievances about music videos, to campaign for age ratings on videos, to encourage compulsory sex and relationship education in schools, and to pressure the music industry to get its house in order.

“In music videos across the board there’s widespread racism and sexism, specifically the sexualisation of black and ethnic minority women,” says Lia Latchford of Rewind&Reframe. “Young women have told us that it has a real impact on their day-to-day lives. They’re tired of messages that depict women as highly sexualised passive sex objects. Getting rid of one song won’t solve the problem. It’s a culture of racism and sexism that we need to change.”

Demonstrators on a Slutwalk march in Chicago in September are in no doubt about Blurred Lines. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

The last time pop music inspired such snowballing outrage was during the rise of the Parents’ Music Resource Centre (PMRC). Established in 1985 by Tipper Gore, wife of Al, after she found her daughter listening to Prince’s sexually graphic Darling Nikki, the PMRC successfully campaigned to slap stickers reading Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics on offending albums. The ensuing climate of censorship reached a peak in 1992, when rapper Ice-T’s rock band Body Count buckled to huge political pressure and deleted their song Cop Killer. They pointedly replaced it on the album with a new song called Freedom of Speech.

That moral panic was driven by older, more conservative campaigners, but much of the current opposition to pop’s excesses stems from young feminists. If the MTV generation was the first to be exposed to the power of music videos, then the YouTube generation is the first to understand those videos in the context of social media and online discourse. Cultural consumers have never been more attuned to the messages, both explicit and implicit, embedded in popular artforms. Arguments about racism, misogyny and cultural appropriation that used to thrive primarily in academia are now mainstream. Sometimes these concerns about “problematic” art go to comical extremes – the Tumblr Your Fave Is Problematic leaves you wondering if there is anything out there that isn’t problematic – but at least young consumers are asking the right questions, in the spirit of playwright August Wilson’s axiom: “All art is political in the sense that it serves someone’s politics.”

Even the most prominent model in the Blurred Lines video, Emily Ratajkowski, has said: “I’m glad that people are criticising pop lyrics, because I think that’s an important thing to do.” It has tangible effects, too. When popular MC Rick Ross rapped, on Rocko’s single UOENO, about spiking someone’s drink in order to have sex with her, public outcry forced him to apologise.

Many people who follow pop music closely, however, are surprised that Blurred Lines has become such a lightning rod. “It really did boggle my mind when people started freaking out about it,” says US music critic Maura Johnston. “This is just a cheesy pickup line song and everyone was like: ‘No, it’s about forcing a woman against her will.’ There are so many songs out there that are worse about demeaning women. Maybe it’s an easy target because Robin Thicke is kind of slimy. Right now there’s a lot of tension between women and men online so this was a way of women taking a piece of pop culture and saying: ‘No, we’re against this.’ But it’s weird to me because I didn’t see it and I still don’t.”

Blurred Lines is not about rape in the same way that Cop Killer is about the fantasy of killing cops, so it is a question of interpretation. If you don’t think the song’s narrator is willing to have sex without consent, then the song seems at worst sleazy, and the reaction overblown. If, however, you think that the concept of “blurred lines” sends a dangerous message to listeners, then it’s explosive.

Thicke himself has been a woeful defender of the song in interviews, recalling Spinal Tap’s response to being called sexist: “What’s wrong with being sexy?” That could be because, unlike Body Count or Eminem, he didn’t intend to be outrageous. In R&B, such lyrics are par for the course. But it is revealing that TI’s verse, which features the inflammatory line: “I’ll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two,” has been replaced in televised performances with milder verses from rappers such as Iggy Azalea and the Roots’ Black Thought.

The video is another matter. It was conceived and directed by Diane Martel, who told US website Grantland: “It forces the men to feel playful and not at all like predators. I directed the girls to look into the camera. This is very intentional and they do it most of the time; they are in the power position. I don’t think the video is sexist. The lyrics are ridiculous, the guys are silly as fuck.”

Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines video: ‘I don’t think it’s sexist,’ says Diane Martel, who conceived and directed it.

Martel’s thoughts have received little attention, but then one flaw in the current debate is an unwillingness to credit female artists with ideas of their own. When Miley Cyrus appeared naked in the Wrecking Ball video, critics assumed director Terry Richardson was calling the shots, yet in the case of Blurred Lines the blame for the video falls on Thicke. “People have been discounting almost everything Martel says, even though she was in charge,” says Johnston.

This is just one of the ways in which the battle lines are themselves blurred. Feminists were divided in their response to Sinéad O’Connor’s open letters to Miley Cyrus. Was O’Connor making a valid feminist critique of misogyny in the music industry, or was she indulging in priggish “slut-shaming”?

Even more (here’s that word again) problematic is the intersection of gender and race. While the members of the PMRC were affronted by heavy metal as well as hip-hop – their original “Filthy Fifteen” blacklist featured only three black artists – the current focus is overwhelmingly on urban music. Lily Allen’s new video exclusively parodies black music and reduces black women’s bodies to lurid props, however satirical her intent might be. One critic, who asked to be quoted anonymously, says: “The lyrics talk about the absurdity of the industry and the media but the main visual reference is black music. What about Katy Perry or Gaga or Miley? What about rock music?”

“Lily Allen’s using the sexualisation of black women to challenge the sexualisation of black women so it doesn’t really work,” says Latchford. “It’s a good concept but poorly executed. For us it’s not a problem with black music specifically, but the music industry as a whole.”

The complexity inherent in debating pop, where lyrics and videos are often elliptical, ambiguous and even contradictory, isn’t well served by the kind of direct condemnations that tend to generate attention. In the case of Blurred Lines, many listeners came to the song via the controversy and therefore had an opinion before they had a reaction. “Once you have an opinion that can be summed up by a single word – rapey, which I think is a terrible word – it’s something that people can run with in an intense and far-reaching way, even if they haven’t listened to the song,” says Johnston. “You have this culture of commentary online where people are pressured to constantly come up with controversial angles to stick out. They don’t have to do their homework to get the desired effect, which is traffic.”

Some of the rhetoric may be blunt, but nothing is blunter than a ban. Haigh defends EUSA’s decision on multiple grounds. “The executive made the decision that it wasn’t a song we should be promoting and endorsing in our venues. It’s also about protecting [rape] victims and making them feel safe so they don’t have to listen to a song that reminds them of horrific experiences. And it starts a public discussion. Nothing changes overnight, but it’s about slowly and surely changing the culture.” But she says that Blurred Lines was banned because it was unusually well known and widely discussed rather than because it was exceptionally offensive, which makes for a shaky precedent.

“You’re supposed to have as much freedom of expression in student unions as possible,” says Eve Barlow, deputy editor of NME. “How is that precedent going to be set going forward, not just for music but other forms of media and speech? I think they’re getting into muddy waters.”

“In principle, I’m against bans,” says Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship. “Blanket bans on certain songs are contrary to what universities and life as a student should be about, which is becoming an adult and finding out about the world, and making your own decisions. It’s worrying that young people seem to see censorship as a solution to complex societal issues.”

He also has doubts about the efficacy of age-rating music videos. “First, ratings make these things more attractive: I remember the cred bestowed on any hip-hop record with an explicit-lyrics sticker back in the 90s. Second, I’m not sure that ratings really address the core issues of racism and sexism.”

Yet however imperfect the debate triggered by Blurred Lines may be, many women are justifiably unsettled by pop’s inability to outgrow its crassest tropes. New US chart rules, which count YouTube views as well as sales, provide an enhanced incentive to produce attention-grabbing videos, creating a kind of outrage arms race. “I’m a feminist, so certain things about pop music I find pretty frustrating,” the New Zealand singer Lorde told Q recently. “I think pop is scarily powerful. What you do and say with it has a lot of weight. There are a lot of shock tactics these days: people trying to outdo each other, which will probably culminate in two people fucking on stage at the Grammys.”

The question is whether or not the music industry has any reason to change when controversy has done nothing to blunt the sales of Thicke or Cyrus, and has probably been beneficial. “What [the campaigners] are trying to do is make some music executive alert to the fact that people are upset,” says Barlow. “That’s music to their ears. It seems like a domino effect: response after response after response, and that’s helping the song do well and make even more people aware of it. I don’t think it will change anything. If anything, it will make the actions more outrageous so more people talk about them.”

Latchford is more optimistic. “Young women are tired of seeing this kind of video and they want to see a change. We hope that because it’s coming from young women who are supposed to be consumers of this stuff, that will drive change.”

It’s more likely, and more desirable, that tangible change will be driven organically by formidable artists rather than chastened executives. Black women such as Angel Haze and Janelle Monáe don’t so much resist hypersexualised imagery as behave as if it is not even a consideration. They have so much charisma and dynamism that they are riveting without having to strip down. Admittedly, they aren’t yet household names, but it is only a matter of time before a truly unorthodox star emerges. If pop music has created a problem, then only pop music can solve it.

Blurred Lines: the most controversial song of the decade