Via Laban Tall, blog-chronicler extraordinaire of British decline, comes this gem: The Best Educated Generation in History:
"Alas, our well-educated young people are finding that their lives are being ruined by a despotic tyranny.
"'Students who failed to understand the words "despotic tyranny" have been complaining about their history A-level exam.
"'It is claimed the question "How far do you agree that Hitler's role 1933-45 was one of despotic tyranny?" was too confusing for some students to understand.
"'A protest group called Despotic Tyranny Ruined My Life has been set up on Facebook.
"'So far 1,151 people have joined the group, leaving comments such as "My life is DESTROYED because of this exam. Seriously" and "This exam made me sad.'
"What's at once impressive, pathetic and sad are the self-righteous complaints of the students. Look and despair. These are next year's university intake..."
Tall goes on to quote a number of these complaints, which will alternately make you laugh and make your hair stand on end. My very favorite:
"...in our wider reading which I assure you myself and other students at my sixth form complete, the focus was not on Hitler as a despot but on how the system of government impacted everyday life and how it operated. Perhaps if we had have been learning about tyrannical leaders whereby we drew comparisons as you describe then we would have read the necessary materials to enlighten us as to what the term despot meant in relation to Hitler. As it was we did not and it is elitist quite frankly to assume every history student is going to have come across such a term."
Poor kid. And I mean that: he's obviously bright, and he's just on the cusp of literacy. But how badly he's been served by the system - which seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to our own system here in the States.
(BTW and FWIW: yes, the question in question was barbarously written, and whatever committee came up with it ought to be summarily sent off en masse to the salt mines with nothing but vinegar to drink. But not because the question included the words "despotic" and "tyranny." I mean, have these kids never studied their own history? Just exactly what words do they use to describe, say, the Tudors?)
Meanwhile, as Peter Hitchens pointed out a couple of weeks ago, the British "educational" bureaucracy is anxious to extend its death-grip to those children who have so far escaped its grasp - i.e., home-schoolers:
"...the 'Department for Children' [is] demanding that prying officials be empowered to force their way into the homes of parents who prefer to educate their sons and daughters at home.
"This is our all-powerful State's angry response to a growing rebellion, by mothers and fathers who are sick of seeing their children bullied, neglected and miseducated in the state education system, and rightly think they can do a better job...
"The pretext for this invasion of privacy is a baseless suggestion that home education could be used as a cover for child abuse. Well, so it could, and so could piano lessons, dentistry or newspaper delivery rounds. But they are not subject to [Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed] Balls's new inquisition. Why not? Because they don't challenge his desire to march all children into egalitarian comprehensive sausage machines, notorious as they are for violence, ignorance and drugs."
Well, indeed. Whenever one finds a "public servant" droning on about the welfare of the children, one must not let oneself be lulled into sleep or stupefaction. One must always keep one's eye on the ball - i.e., on the overriding telos of all such "public servants" at all times: the maximization of the authority and the minimization of the public accountability of their own self-selecting class.
Anyway, I think that Tall's piece adds just one more bit of bite to Hitchens' excellent question: How can the commissars in charge of the Western world's worst schools be fit to judge how well a parent is teaching her own child?"
Comments (19)
I propose a new question for the exam: "How far do you agree that the British government of today is one of despotic tyranny?"
Posted by Beth Impson | June 26, 2009 2:28 PM
Beth Impson: badum-CHING!
Posted by steve burton | June 26, 2009 2:41 PM
Steve, I'm honored. Never hit a rim-shot in my life before! :)
Posted by Beth Impson | June 26, 2009 2:45 PM
The aphorism "a man's home is his castle" does not go over well in a country that has a collective crush on the inbred retards that live in the nation's only castle.
Posted by Francis Beckwith | June 26, 2009 3:26 PM
Every time I think I can't be surprised anymore, I'm stunned by some new idiocy. They don't know what "despotic" means, and they think they have a grievance because the word was on a test? Please, tell me I'm misunderstanding something.
Posted by Lydia | June 26, 2009 4:05 PM
MacIntyre was right: the barbarians are already within the gates (and have been for some time).
Posted by Michael S. | June 26, 2009 4:08 PM
It was common practice back in KY schools for someone who didn't know what a word meant to simply ask the teacher what it meant. Was that not an option here?
Posted by Matt Weber | June 26, 2009 4:09 PM
Ignorance is despotic too. If it has you in its grip, you don't know it. You labor under what Milton called your own "mind-forged manacles."
Posted by Michael Bauman | June 26, 2009 4:18 PM
I rather think it is Parliament, not the Crown, behind Britannia's descent into madness. But what do I know, I'm a bloody colonial.
Posted by Doc_Savage | June 26, 2009 4:22 PM
These are their college entrance exams, as I understand it, and would be like our SAT or ACT exams -- no questions can be asked or answered. But really, how do you get to be 18 and not know the word "despot," especially in the world we live in today?!
Posted by Beth Impson | June 26, 2009 4:41 PM
The test obviously has to be written in the English language, and the test writers should be able to assume some sort of decent high-school graduate vocabulary. What next? They have to use Dr. Seuss English--some sort of 250 most common words in the language--for all the questions or else they are using "specialist terms"? ("The third Reich. Could you get a bike? Was it nice? Did it have spice?") These kids are pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.
Posted by Lydia | June 26, 2009 4:57 PM
Lydia, in all fairness to the kids - they may be "pathetic, pathetic, pathetic," but its the people who were supposedly in charge of their so-called education who are culpable, culpable, culpable.
Posted by steve burton | June 26, 2009 5:26 PM
I guess what's striking me is not just the pathetic fact that they don't know the word but the all-encompassing sense of entitlement and the complete absence of any humility, any realization that perhaps _they_ are the ignorant ones. If my kids don't know what a word means, they just say, "Oh, I don't know what that word means." They don't assume that every word that happens to come up on a test must be something they already know or else they have a grievance. And some of the comments! It's "elitist" to expect them to know some word they don't happen to know. Well, heaven forfend our tests for university admission should be "elitist." One comment even said something to the effect that it was biased against less well-educated kids. That's insane! A test is _supposed_ to be biased against less well-educated kids! What do they think this is? A test for being an auto mechanic? Even that would ostensibly distinguish people who had learned to be mechanics from those who hadn't. And the narrowness: "I read such-and-such many books on the Third Reich, and the phrase 'despotic tyranny' never came up." The exact _phrase_ has to come up? What kind of crazy idea do these kids have of how a test is supposed to work?
Now, I realize that they've learned all these things from their teachers--the sense of entitlement, the absolute rigidity such that they can't answer a question if they haven't run across that exact phrase (like little computers), the notion that a test isn't actually supposed to, you know, _test_ for education, and so forth. And those who have taught them those attitudes are also horribly culpable. But it all just makes them pretty much irretrievable ignoramuses at this point. How can they ever become educated now? If you try to teach them a new vocabulary word, if you challenge them the lest bit, they'll snarl at you.
Posted by Lydia | June 26, 2009 7:14 PM
(I like the Beth Impson comment too.)
To answer the question, we have to first ask why the establishment has British students study Hitler? So they will know what the establishment means when they call Nick Griffin of the BNP a would be Hitler. Of course, the establishment is projecting. Hitler is the despotic tyrant they would like to be.
Posted by Old Atlantic | June 26, 2009 8:02 PM
The test obviously has to be written in the English language, and the test writers should be able to assume some sort of decent high-school graduate vocabulary. What next? They have to use Dr. Seuss English--some sort of 250 most common words in the language--for all the questions or else they are using "specialist terms"? ("The third Reich. Could you get a bike? Was it nice? Did it have spice?") These kids are pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.
I could recount similar stories of students in my introductory classes who are equally pathetic.
its the people who were supposedly in charge of their so-called education who are culpable, culpable, culpable.
Now, I realize that they've learned all these things from their teachers--the sense of entitlement, the absolute rigidity such that they can't answer a question if they haven't run across that exact phrase (like little computers), the notion that a test isn't actually supposed to, you know, _test_ for education, and so forth.
Unfortunately, the people who are culpable include all too many parents, not just the educrats.
if you challenge them the lest bit, they'll snarl at you.
College students get to do more than snarl: they get to fill out customer satisfaction surveys--err, course evaluations.
Posted by Perseus | June 27, 2009 5:03 AM
Michael Bauman:
Then how does anyone know whether one is in the manacles or not? How do you know you're not manacled?
Posted by George R. | June 27, 2009 11:05 AM
The state's response, wanting to intrude where parents have undertaken the education of their own children, is happening in the USA also. The all-powerful socialist state, whether it be the UK or the USA, simply cannot stand the idea that people will evade its primary indoctrination scheme, the public schools. The day is not far off when, if there is any hope at all for America, it will be to have leadership from those who were home schooled.
The public school educated people have less and less understanding of what it takes to make the country function properly. We can see this all around us already, and it is only going to get worse. This is most especially true in terms of an understanding of the true history of America, of ethics, and of correct reasoning.
The state urgently wants to bring all education under its control so that it is nothing more than indoctrination.
Posted by Dr.D | June 27, 2009 3:55 PM
George R,
Perhaps by awareness of the limits of one's knowledge and understanding?
Boy, that was easy.
Posted by Franklin Jennings | June 28, 2009 10:02 AM
Funny, I just read a Robert Heinlein story with this exact premise: that kids in high school were spoon fed a pablum of "self-esteem" for merely for showing up. In his scenario, the kids did not even need to learn to read, they had "readers" that would read the material to them. And (quite correctly) Heinlein anticipated that these kids would have an immense sense of entitlement which cast any mention of material not explicitly given as to be something "on the test" not only as unfair, but even illegal. In addition, he recognized that they not only would rebel against demands that they learn more, they would stubbornly refuse to believe that they really had not yet learned anything at all worth considering as knowledge, and what little they had a grasp of was only in the form of opinion also spoon-fed by a bureaucracy intent on self-preservation rather than on education.
Whatever the source of these kids (a) stupidity, and (b) lack of humility, they
really are ignorant and have become almost unteachable. For to be teachable requires first to recognize that one is ignorant, and to choose to open oneself up to receiving from those who have mastery of a discipline. The reaction of these kids is clearly not of openness.
But we should not be surprised. As Christ said, the student is like the master. And the master is a state-run mass-production system whose purpose is to turn out little duplicate mass-production "graduates", who will continue to consume more of the mass-produced bread and circuses (i.e. mass-produced entertainment like "reality" shows that are anything but real). Until we take away the education monopoly from the inhuman state-run bureaucracy, we cannot expect anything but inhuman state-defined duplicates as an end product.
Posted by Tony | June 30, 2009 10:26 AM