Here's a piece of it:
The increased calls for sensitivity-based censorship represent the dark side of what are otherwise several positive developments for human civilization. ... I believe that we are not passing through some temporary phase in which an out-of-touch and hypersensitive elite attempts — and often fails — to impose its speech-restrictive norms on society. It’s worse than that: people all over the globe are coming to expect emotional and intellectual comfort as though it were a right. This is precisely what you would expect when you train a generation to believe that they have a right not to be offended. Eventually, they stop demanding freedom of speech and start demanding freedom from speech.
Campus speech codes are unconstitutional. You don't give up your First Amendment rights once you step onto a campus, and you have no right to never be offended.
Oh, related link here. Apparently it's just as bad on the other side of the pond.
You don't say! This glorious "satire" hits too close to home:
We will establish a Workplace Agency for Success and Teaching Excellence (Waste) to oversee the large number of Committees on the Recording and Assessment of Professors (Crap) that must be established in order to make these assessment efforts possible. We estimate that this office will need a staff of 60 highly trained Waste managers and appropriate Crap support staff with an annual budget of £100 million. We believe that these funds can be readily obtained through efficiency savings garnered from the large amount of instructional waste present on campus. Further savings will be obtained through the use of more contingent staff and by increasing charges to staff for renting office space and for car parking.
In other words, the admin will eat the faculty in the name of education. It's already happening. Do you know that for the average price of one college VP you could hire an entire battalion of lecturers who actually - you know, this is a revolutionary thought indeed - teach students?
Selling out. I'm amused at how some critics are calling this not only "inappropriate" but "meretricious." Who says "meretricious" these days? Apparently unhappy Oxford dons, that's who.
Ugh, look at this facepalm-worthy story from the UK about the University of Birmingham’s School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion. Yeah, there are a bunch of factors involved, though as usual money's the prime mover. So much for standards and academic rigor. Look, edu-crats have succeeded in turning the bachelor's degree into a glorified high school diploma that means nearly nothing, so now let's diminish grad degrees too, why don't we? Dime a dozen in a bad job market. Pretty soon you'll need a PhD just to be a waiter. Then again, if you'll pardon my snark, what else are you going to do with a grad degree in philosophy, theology, or religion?
Here are two interesting reads from the UK: a thoughtful leftist argues that the welfare state is to blame, while an editorialist insists that the only solution is a bigger welfare state.
Amid all the broken glass, looting, arson, and violence, though, there's a sign of hope. The cleanup effort's begun, and the broom and brush are becoming signs of resistance to the riots. (Check out the charming photo.) A note: in contrast to the riotous young people, a large number of cleanup volunteers are also young people. So be careful when reading editorials saying that England is doomed and its future in the ditch. I think what we are seeing, though, is the brutally clear delineation of two divergent paths, between the productive and the destructive.
UPDATE 1: Thoughts on the rise of an antisocial subculture. I've heard folks use the term "feral youths." This can't be good. Recall also what Theodore Dalrymple said back during the March education riots.
UPDATE 2: Some German newspaper comments on the London riots.
UPDATE 3: Thanks to Dignified Rant for the link. Do see what he has to say too: "The barbarians are sacking the cities." It's like the 5th century AD all over again.
Check out this British spoof! Headline: "Rich parents could soon be offered the chance to waste up to £100,000 buying Oxbridge degrees for their cretinous children."
Thus saith a new British study, apparently. In the news report, though, there is one sentence that made me laugh out loud. Here, let me highlight the bit for you:
Researchers at St Andrews and Bristol universities studied the relationship between skin colour and attractiveness, and found people with a yellow skin hue were perceived as particularly healthy and attractive ...
This must explain the secret of my social success! If I were a grievance-monger, I'd probably accuse carrots and the study of being raaaaaaaaaaaacist, hahahaha!
Katharine Birbalsingh (I previously posted about her here when she was under fire for criticizing the UK's broken education system) takes aim at the Education Maintenance Allowance that she argues, bribes deadbeat kids to go to school and, even worse, ensures that they remain deadbeats:
Even if you ignore all the disruption to the good kids, all the teachers who have had breakdowns, all the wasted taxpayers’ money, can the do-gooders not see how EMA and the culture of prizes for all only ruins the lives of the poor? It rids them of the motivation and aspiration that is required for success in life.
... EMA and the culture it creates turns our poor children into goons who go to school because they’re being paid to. They haven’t ever had to think about what they want out of life and plan for it: because the system never lets them.
EMA should be scrapped, not to save money but to save our kids. Money doesn’t always fix social problems; sometimes it is the cause.
Here's a quotation from an elegantly written screed:
I wouldn’t have said so, judging by the photograph above, but the Cambridge undergraduate son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour does like to look his best, even when defiling the memory of the war dead. Insults to the fallen are so much more daring if the protester’s clothes hang just so when he’s dangling in mid-air. And, as all well-heeled anarchists know, that requires the assistance of an expert tailor!
Oh, my! The hotspot is London, natch. Check out reports by UK sources at the BBC News, the Guardian, and the Telegraph. The first violence has broken out, apparently, and I went to the news video feed just in time to see dozens of mounted London police gallop onto the scene. It was -- to my historian's imagination -- weirdly too-reminiscent of medieval mobs. Anyway, this isn't the first UK student protest against increased costs, and it certainly won't be the last.
