"Oxford also taught me something else - it taught me scepticism"
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Oxford isn t being praised here as a finishing school for certainty, but as a factory for doubt. In Frank Scott s hands, scepticism isn t the fashionable pose of a clever student; it s the real takeaway of elite education, and maybe its only honest product. The line is built like an afterthought - "something else" - which quietly demotes the expected trophies (polish, networks, prestige) and elevates the less marketable habit: learning to distrust easy conclusions, including your own.
As a poet, Scott knows how institutions trade on authority. Oxford, symbolically, is the temple of received wisdom. Saying it taught him scepticism flips that authority inside out: the school that claims to transmit tradition ends up training people to interrogate tradition. The subtext is both affectionate and faintly accusatory. If Oxford taught him to doubt, what does that say about what he found there - the arguments, the hierarchies, the self confidence of inherited power? Scepticism becomes a survival skill in a place where brilliance can look like certainty and certainty can be mistaken for truth.
Context matters: Scott lived through the era when old empires shed legitimacy and modern ideologies demanded allegiance. In that world, scepticism isn t mere contrarianism; it s a refusal to be conscripted by grand narratives. The sentence is modest on the surface, but it carries an adult recognition: the most valuable education is often the one that makes you harder to recruit.
As a poet, Scott knows how institutions trade on authority. Oxford, symbolically, is the temple of received wisdom. Saying it taught him scepticism flips that authority inside out: the school that claims to transmit tradition ends up training people to interrogate tradition. The subtext is both affectionate and faintly accusatory. If Oxford taught him to doubt, what does that say about what he found there - the arguments, the hierarchies, the self confidence of inherited power? Scepticism becomes a survival skill in a place where brilliance can look like certainty and certainty can be mistaken for truth.
Context matters: Scott lived through the era when old empires shed legitimacy and modern ideologies demanded allegiance. In that world, scepticism isn t mere contrarianism; it s a refusal to be conscripted by grand narratives. The sentence is modest on the surface, but it carries an adult recognition: the most valuable education is often the one that makes you harder to recruit.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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