ABSTRACT
This is ‘Lao’s Time’,1 a scene from the Bruce Lee martial arts film Enter the Dragon (Clouse, 1973). It is also, in part, an extract from a conversation that I had with my son the week following his return home from his second year of university. We both admire the film and are very familiar with the scene and the dialogue, a dialogue that I used with him to express my concerns about university life and the pressures that students experience in an uncertain economic world. I want my son to enjoy his life at university. I want him to truly ‘read’ a subject for the intellectual benefits that accrue. I want him to become a considered and considerate man, reaching beyond the horizons of his home. In essence, as an academic and as a parent I am concerned that he does not ‘miss all the heavenly glory’ that a university education can offer by being distracted by ‘the finger’ of instrumentality. However, at the same time I know that he is aware that his time as an undergraduate is soon coming to an end, that he must make his degree count as the point of transition from university to the postgraduate world comes ever closer. As he said to me with feeling, ‘If you don’t keep your eye on the finger Dad, it will poke you in the eye.’
