Brits Bribe Students
I’m thinking that the edumacation is free too. I will rely, as usual, on our Brit friends to correct me if I’m wrong.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see a new generation of professional students being encouraged with this.
The thought occurs to wonder what they’re doing to encourage trades and technical education. A degree in litra-chooor isn’t gonna be a lot of help when the loo overflows or when you need to build a house or get the Landrover running.
Why don’t they just call it vote-buying (True, some are too young to vote, but they get the message - vote Labor when you’re old enough).
It’s like the old joke: “Senator, that sex was so good - I wish I was old enough to vote for you!”
Posted by bardseyeview
12/29/2005 at 11:32 AM
This somewhat resembles bribing the inmates to stay in the institution....
Cat: wait till they get old enough to start collecting Social Security...a recent 9-0 ruling by SCOTUS will wake their asses up!
Stin the education system has changed quite a bit in recent years and is no longer free, though compared to the US it is heavily subsidised. Probably the worst aspect of the “Prizes for all” mentality is the worthlessness of many degrees now. Once upon a time if you got to University in Britain you had really achieved something. Now you can more or less get a degree out of a cornflake packet. I went to a “Technical High School” but these have long gone. Where once you did metalwork, woodwork, technical drawing and engineering. Now it’s some crapola called CDT Craft Design Technology or some such piffle.
Now many Universities no longer offer science degrees because there aren’t enough undergraduates with qualifications in Chemistry, Physics and Maths. However there are not enough places available for students of sociology, politics, media studies and such crap. Apologies to all you sociologists out there! The strange thing is every year the exam passes get better and better and yet employers and Universities complain because some of the students can barely string a sentence together. Cynic that I am I am convinced the exams are getting easier, but the government unsurprisingly deny this.
Bardseyeview also makes a good point regarding bribing the voters. Students together with all the deadbeats on the dole(they call it disability benefit now so they don’t feel stigmatised)and hordes of immigrants makes the potential Labour vote substantial. No wonder the leader of the opposition is adopting a “Blair Lite” tack.
Good point Lyndon. Students pursuing liberal arts degrees should be excluded from subsidies (though that would never, ever happen in anyone’s wildest dreams).
We’re having trouble attracting students to engineering and hard sciences degrees here in the U.S. too, Lyndon. The places in the schools that offer the courses are mostly filled with foreign students, particularly Chinese, I understand. Everybody here wants to be a lawyer these days or, as you say, sociology and such “social sciences”.
Political correctness has reared its head here as well. Most colleges and universities have to run remedial courses in mathematics and English to get many of the recent crop through to graduation. It’s a result of not letting anyone fail in elementary or secondary schools. Part of that “deferred success” crap. We certainly wouldn’t want to hurt some child’s feelings for failing to learn the curriculum. Wouldn’t want to scar them for life. They’d rather inflict them on the world undereducated and barely literate where they can fail spectacularly and for keeps.
At least the burger joints have pictures of their products on the register keys. Western Civ appears to be on the long slide and our education systems are “helping”.
Liberal “Arts”, as in mastering in piffle such as underwater basket weaving, Tuvan nose flute playing, Yemeni uluating, etc… As in pursuing totally useless interests, rather than preparing for the REAL world.
You piqued my interest with this, Cat, my old friend. Let us look at the list you provided.
Humanities? (Are you sure you didn’t mean inhumanities?)
English Literature (DWM’s are strictly verboten!
Modern Languages ("Ebonics" among others?)
History (down with the capitalists and imperialists of Western Civ!)
Philosophy (Marxism a la mode)Social sciences (a contradiction in terms)?
Anthropology (WM’s destroyed all dead cultures and threaten to destroy all living ones)
Economics (More Marxism)
Geography (through the PC looking glass)
Political science (Still more Marxism!)
Psychology (Saint B.F. Skinner uber alles)
Sociology (WM’s dead or alive are the source of all evil in the world)Creative arts (largely a contradiction in terms by present-day lights anyway):
Fine Art (Ah! The “Piss Christ” crowd and company)
Theatre (Socialist realism preferred, chaps)
Speech (Public Lying 101, 102, etc. at best)
Creative Writing (Journalism 101, 102 etc. at best)Then we come to the sciences, that is, when they are actually taught. Where do all the grant-pilfering, headline-hungry “junk scientists” come from? Not from a legitimate educational atmosphere, to be sure.
Pity you didn’t mention free electives. There we can find such things as nose flute playing, underwater basket weaving et seq.
Our diseducation system is now little more than a series of festering boils or nests of lice. The sooner it is scrapped and replaced, the better. And, as you have observed, the best place to start is tenure.
Happy New Year, you old porcupine, you.
12/29/2005 at 07:52 PM
