The Daily Telegraph reports today that some graduates are paying up to £8,000 for unpaid work experience to give themselves a better chance of landing a decent job. This is partly due to the severity of the recession, and partly the result of Labour’s mad determination to flood the country with semi-educated “graduates” who’ve wasted their time and our money on crap degree courses at pseudo-universities.
Now, you might expect the general view to be that the government should reverse the mindless expansion of “higher” education places, and good luck to any graduate (or their parents) willing to stump up yet more dosh in order to allow them to apply the expensive education they’ve had – especially the ones who made an effort to get decent grades in serious subjects.
But, no. The Great Levellers who now run this country, having done their damnedest to ruin the education system (as well as just about everything else on which they’ve turned the full beam of their malevolent compassion), are outraged that middle class parents should yet again seek to gain an advantage on behalf of their offspring.
According to the Telegraph, Heather Collier, the director for something called the National Council for Work Experience – a quango one assumes, paid for by the taxpayer – is appalled, not by the sheer stupidity of the government’s education policies, but because this new phenomenon gives the middle classes an unfair advantage. “It is elitist in that only the rich can afford them and the industry doesn’t get able, eager candidates, just those that can pay.”
So, anyone whose parents make the sacrifice of paying for a work placement is, by implication, not able or competent. Every graduate whose parents paid for a private education – at the same time paying for someone else’s free education through their taxes, by the way – is somehow less “eager” than state school products. And all parents who pay for a private education are “rich”. Of course, it isn’t possible that many of them have made deliberate and deep financial sacrifices in order to send their children to private school because they recognize the supreme importance of a decent education, and don’t think there’s much chance of their local “bog-standard” comprehensive providing one. No, they’re all rich bastards and their kids are all thick and useless.
How bloody insulting! Not to mention idiotic.
Don’t blame the hard-pressed middle classes for trying to provide the best opportunities for their children under a system that seems determined to stop them. Anyone who thinks we should sacrifice our children’s chances for the offspring of people with less money, or who are unwilling to make the same sacrifices, is not only flying in the face of human nature, but also in the face of what’s decent in human nature. (A lot of Labour MPs would agree, judging by the number who pay for private education).
But then, the Great Levellers not only want to fly in the face of what’s admirable in human beings – they want to change human nature once and for all. They want us all to start adult life with the same chances. And, when that doesn’t work, they’ll want to us to hand over our children at birth to state apparatchiks who will decide what level of education they will receive. And where they live. And what they do. And if they’re naturally exceptional in any way, the state will soon make sure that doesn’t turn into an advantage. How dare Nature bestow unfair advantages on any child! Obviously, a rich bastard.
If anyone has any sympathy for the aims of The Levellers, I’d recommend reading Kurt Vonnegut’s brilliant 1961 short story, “Harrison Bergeron”. You never know: it might even convince Heather Collier to stop insulting self-sufficient middle-income parents whose only crime would appear to be a willingness to make genuine sacrifices for their children’s future.
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