{"id":9704,"date":"2011-06-07T12:07:20","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T16:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=9704"},"modified":"2011-11-27T13:04:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-27T17:04:00","slug":"intolerance-of-educational-experimentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/06\/07\/intolerance-of-educational-experimentation\/","title":{"rendered":"Intolerance of educational experimentation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill<\/a> surveys the range of responses to the proposed establishment of a new private for-profit university in London:<\/p>\n

\n

It is \u2018odious\u2019, \u2018repugnant\u2019, \u2018parasitic\u2019, \u2018hypocritical\u2019, a \u2018travesty\u2019, a \u2018money-grubbing\u2019 scheme, and \u2018it would be better all-round if its doors never opened\u2019. Wow. What is it? A whorehouse? A Satanic church? A junk-food chain that specialises in feeding fat straight into children\u2019s veins via a drip? In fact it\u2019s a proposed new London-based university, called the New College of the Humanities, which says it will teach students the best of literature, culture and history for a fee of \u00a318,000 a year. And yet judging from the unhinged coverage, you could be forgiven for thinking that someone had proposed opening a Ratko Mladic fanclub in Islington.<\/p>\n

The response to Professor AC Grayling\u2019s educational experiment, for which he has recruited other \u2018star\u2019 professors such as Richard Dawkins and Niall Ferguson, has been extraordinarily intolerant. No sooner had the press release about the new university been emailed than Grayling and Co. were being accused of selling out working-class students and the ideal of \u2018education for all\u2019 by opening an institution that only the wealthy (and those lucky enough to secure a scholarship) will be able to afford. As one journalist summarised, the initiative has met with \u2018universal scorn from commentators in the national press\u2019. Journalists have described the university as a \u2018disgrace\u2019, \u2018nauseous\u2019 and \u2018disgustingly elitist\u2019. The Twittersphere, always keen to ape the pronouncements of its heroes on the op-ed pages, heaped 140-character fury upon Grayling\u2019s vain\/pathetic\/evil\/doomed initiative.<\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, members of the University of London Union and other radical student groups called an \u2018emergency meeting\u2019 last night. Not an emergency meeting to discuss the corrosion of liberty and free speech in the West or the future of the Arab uprisings — as radical students might have done in the past — but an emergency meeting to discuss how to crush this new uni. ULU\u2019s vice president called for it to be blacklisted, insisting that the University of London refuse to recognise or work with this \u2018repugnant\u2019 institution. There was a serious debate about how to shut it down before it had even opened. One left-wing group said we must \u2018stop Grayling\u2019s sham university\u2019 because it\u2019s the \u2018thin end of the wedge [of privatisation]\u2019. Without so much as a whiff of self-awareness or irony, it went on to describe New College as \u2018an attack on free education\u2019. Yes, that\u2019s right — this educational institution must be smashed in order to defend \u2018free education\u2019. Perhaps we should also burn its books in the name of defending book-reading.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course, if the quality of teaching at the New College of the Humanities is not up to an acceptable standard, it will fail and the university will close. That does not appear to be any part of the motivation for all the screaming and wailing. It rather implies that they’re actually afraid it will succeed<\/em>, which might start raising questions about the existing university system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill surveys the range of responses to the proposed establishment of a new private for-profit university in London: It is \u2018odious\u2019, \u2018repugnant\u2019, \u2018parasitic\u2019, \u2018hypocritical\u2019, a \u2018travesty\u2019, a \u2018money-grubbing\u2019 scheme, and \u2018it would be better all-round if its doors never opened\u2019. Wow. What is it? A whorehouse? A Satanic church? A junk-food chain that specialises […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,79,53],"tags":[350,394,764],"class_list":["post-9704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-education","category-politics","tag-london","tag-privatization","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2ww","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9704"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12265,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9704\/revisions\/12265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}