First they came for the A Level Art Historians...

[silverwhistle]

Now it's Classics and Archaeology. There is a sickening drive to remove any subjects that expand kids' cultural horizons, any that tap them into the cultural roots of civilisation: art, Classics, archaeology... A crassly utilitarian fixation with STEM aims to create technically proficient, culturally illiterate barbarians with no imaginative depth

Comments

[syntinen_laulu]

Not only is it barbarous: as a columnist in my paper pointed out, it is isn't even utilitarian. Sure, everyone should learn to do basic arithmetic competently; but beyond that, unless you have a mathematical bent it's absolutely pointless being flogged through maths GCSE just 'because'. I'm very grateful for having been made to rote-learn my times tables and to add, subtract, multiply and divide on paper in primary school: but I think in my entire post-school life I have only ever used any part of my maths O-level syllabus once, when I used pi to work out how much fabric I'd need to line a round laundry basket. And even then, I'd really have done just as well using a tape measure

[silverwhistle]

Exactly. Cultural capital costs very, very little to give people - but it is priceless in value.

There seem to be too many people in this cesspit of a country who have no inner lives at all - no imaginative worlds, no inner resources - so fill up the space with drink and drugs and wasting their lives. I find it hard to comprehend how they can live like that: even animals seem to have more going on in their minds. There are too many hollowed-out people already: the zombie apocalypse is already here, and with the blessings of the government, there will be even more of them... (But then, governments rarely want people who can think or have imaginations.)