Mind you, it does strike me that these events are another nail in the coffin for the traditional newspapers. You can either read some rumours and half truths cobbled together by someone who wasn't there, or read a blog like Inspector Gadget's which is full of comments from police and protesters who were.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
More Student Fees Protests
The thought of 'making physical contact with Camilla' would have kept me at home last week rather than throwing things at the Police because the taxpayer would rather not pay for half a million barely literate 18 year olds to spend 3 years sitting around talking rubbish before receiving a degree in Ice Cream Sculpture.
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I have spent the last two days moderating comments from so called student protesters who want my children to get cancer, to have sex with my wife and for bad things to happen to my parents.
Maybe I should have let the comments through? Who knows. One thing is now clear to me; the correct decision over university funding has been made.
Where the students are now coming unstuck, I think, is over their refusal to distance themselves from the gratuitous violence and to dump the rentamob element - whose gripe is not tuition fees or anything else either for that matter: they're just there for a good bust-up. An organized student protest vote, theoretically at least, has the power to unseat a few MPs come election time, but simply alienating the rest of us is not the way to go.
I shall be interested to see how many of the 14 featured in the current "Wanted" rogues gallery actually are students. Several look quite obviously too old for the part, and I'm certainly not going to use the mismomer "mature students" to describe them!
I think we should cut the degrees rather than the funding. Keep academic degrees (including those that are good for society as well as for the economy) and put the rest back where they belong: on the job training, work experience, internships (which is where the true inequality lies), apprenticeships, vocational training courses etc.
You take a lot of shit on the front line of public services - but I think we're in danger of tarring all 'the public' with the same brush.
Sometimes, on a tough day in my tough school, I forget that 90% - probably more, in fact - of the kids there are fine. I feel angry that the 10% (or probably less) of challenging kids are taking a disproportionate amount of my time and energy. I feel frustrated that the system allows that to happen. I feel guilty that I'm not able to focus on the quiet, 'deserving' majority. But when I take it out on them too, and blame them too - even if it's 'understandable' - well then I feel like a failure. And I am.
There are shit teachers and good teachers. There are shit policemen and good policemen. There are violent protesters and peaceful protesters.
I think the genuine students have been taken for a ride by all sorts of (mainly) left wingers and anarchists who got into the act. Certainly many shown in the photographs seemed rather old for students, and I doubt if that many students belong to the Socialist Workers Party who were there in some numbers.
Mind you, when the idiot who was caught desecrating the Cenotaph claimed that he didn't know what it represented, and then turned out to be a second year history student at Cambridge, one does wonder what he's learning there!
But why is it that 'students' can protest but the rest of the population has to silently put up with all sorts of unewanted impositions?
inspectorgadget said...
I have spent the last two days moderating comments from so called student protesters who want my children to get cancer, to have sex with my wife and for bad things to happen to my parents.
Maybe I should have let the comments through? Who knows. One thing is now clear to me; the correct decision over university funding has been made.
>>>>>>>>>>>
I suggest you post their comments in full on your blog - not in the mainstream comments section but as a "blog post". In addition run a poll as to whether the general population wishes to pay for the education of people with such distorted mentality.
A yes or no answer should suffice.
@Don: 'Where the students are now coming unstuck, I think, is over their refusal to distance themselves from the gratuitous violence and to dump the rentamob element'
No, where they are coming unstuck is in failing to understand basic economics.
The country is broke, Liam Byrne admitted it when he left the Treasury, so we can no longer afford to shell out for nonsense degrees.
Of course, the government is also coming unstuck in failing not to do the obvious.
Which would be to revert to a grant system for (say) medical degrees, proper sciences and anyone who wants to study anything prior to becoming a teacher (on the understanding that they get at least a 2:1 and teach for 10 years after graduating).
Everyone else pays market rate.
@Inspector gadget:
That's right. Now we can all be so uneducated, thick, and bigoted we'll be eligible to join the police force.
Not quite Kimpatsu.
There is one more ESSENTIAL criterion to becoming a police officer.
One must be an Alpha male (you know, have courage)
Uneducated thick & bigoted just aren't enough if one is a Beta male.
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