Well, perhaps he’s never left. There’s much to enjoy in – and something nostalgic about – this piece by Michael Chessum and Jonathan Moses in today’s Guardian. Apparently “politics as usual has failed” so, naturally, alternative methods must be sought. Now, as it happens, one can understand why students are disappointed by the Liberal Democrats’ flip-flop on university funding. But this is bunk:
Mobilise all you like, comrades. But while there’s an intrinsic value to knowledge and learning they are also, quite evidently commodities. That’s why they have value and, for that matter, why people who attend university tend to earn much more money over the course of their working life than those who don’t. Perhaps you don’t like thinking about education in those terms but that can’t prevent the existence of those terms.And mobilise we must. The coalition’s proposals represent a nigh irreversible transformation of higher education, and the commodification of knowledge and learning.
Then there’s this:
Dismissed as apathetic, our generation has suffered from unparalleled self-perceived impotence: its seminal moment, the Iraq war, saw the biggest wave of protest in recent British history – along with the clearest refusal of government to listen to it. What resulted was frustration among a growing and mobilised section of young people.
Or, you know, sometimes You Can’t Get Everything You Want Even When You Stamp Your Feet And Shout ‘Not In My Name!’ Never mind that this rewrites history (the country was divided on Iraq but at the time, whatever people say now, there was no overwhelming majority against the war) consider the implication that matters of major import should – nay, must! – be decided by the hysteria of the mob. That’s certainly a view but not one, I think, that’s likely to prove persuasive.
[Thanks to David Aaronovitch]
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