She has now posted an article asking "Since when was giving people a choice a good idea?" For, it seems, "The coalition's obsession with self-determination, whether on schools or GPs, penalises the least able."
It seems people will make the wrong choices. Well then, Kate, why don't you give them some guidance, so they can make the right choices? Ah well, you see, Professor Harriet Bradley of Bristol University has produced a study titled State of Confusion, which shows people really do not want control over their lives.
After surveying 3,000 people on their attitudes to choice, Bradley says: "I believe most people want the state to make these big decisions for them." This is not only because, in many cases, consumers are well aware that the choice of, say, school or hospital is – unlike a commercial selection of jams or phones or holidays – an utter fiction. The process of choosing is itself oppressive when the issues are life-changing, relating to health, money or careers. In her London focus groups, she found parents "absolutely terrified of the whole process of selecting schools", because of the impenetrable, changing rules about eligibility. Even allowing for those professional oxymorons, choice advisers, this situation favours society's most able, while it penalises confused, passive, busy or ill-informed individuals, though they all want the same thing: a good local school.They walk among us - these pathetic women think the state should choose not only the schools your children go to and your doctor, but also how you make and spend your money. And who, if not the state apparat, created the "impenetrable, changing rules about eligibility"?
As to her sneer at "choice advisers", does she even know what an oxymoron is? We all - except of course the all-knowing Observer and Guardian journopukes - have very limited areas of expertise, and seek the advice of qualified others before making important decisions. In the case of schools and doctors, word of mouth in a community is usually an excellent guide. As the great Thomas Sowell says:
Intellectuals and their followers are overly impressed by the fact that the intellectuals tend, on average, to have more knowledge than other individuals in their society. What they have overlooked is that intellectuals have far less knowledge than the total knowledge possessed by the millions of other people whom they disdain and whose decisions they seek to override.But then of course someone who writes for the money-losing Observer and the Guardian is bound to be sniffy about choice, since their aging readership continues to decline sharply, demonstrating the execrable discernment of the reading public.
They should be subsidised, of course, else we risk being deprived of the sound logic and impeccable syntax of the outstandingly brilliant Catherine Bennett.
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Thank you for introducing me to Catherine Bennet's articles. She is an amazing young woman. I heartily recommend her writing to anyone who is badly in need of confidence about their own mental capabilities. After trying to make sense out of Ms.Bennet's confusions-in-print, they cannot but be encouraged about their own.
ReplyDeleteMs.Bennet refers to to the desirability of Britain's 'comprehensible' education system. Although I believe that she intended to speak of a 'comprehensive' system of education, it is only too true that the difficulties of the present state education system are entirely 'comprehensible', i.e., it doesn't work.
Catherine Bennet's evaluation of 'pig ignorant' as superior in educational value to 'faith schools' reveals an attitude towards religion which is sometimes masked a little more in Guardian columns but which still bears the slight tang of intellectual arrogance.
ReplyDeleteOne might venture the opinion that,judging from her writing,Catherine Bennet does not much merit the term 'intellectual' but perhaps 'arrogant'will serve in its place. No doubt, like many people to whom a little education has given a great deal of undeserved self-esteem, this will not limit her endless supply of vapid
and baseless observations in print.
"like many people to whom a little education has given a great deal of undeserved self-esteem" - indeed, that was the point I tried to make, clumsily, in my post about Tomasky. If you come from a home where books and discussion are valued, university is not such a big deal; but for those from a culturally barren background, university can imprint them for life - which is unfortunate, because academia is now dominated by a resentful mediocracy.
ReplyDeleteWVU presented for many kids from first-time at university families an open invitation into third-rate critical thinking. There were some good professors but a lot of the lecturers were themselves only recently 'liberated' thinkers. If indeed one can call them that.
ReplyDeleteMy sisters and the faculty kids in our church were prepared for that by my dad. But I well remember a dear older friend of mine telling me about how the Roman Catholic student population at WVU had once had an epiphany of moral understanding when the preacher at their
Sunday mass had mounted the pulpit in order to inform them that, although adultery and fornication were mortal sins, oral sex was not.
It appears that the altar rail was not the last communion to be celebrated on that festal occasion. Thanks for this to the Paulist Order, a former Anglican one which appears to have converted for the purpose of subverting RC morality. Sad? Not for my friend(or for me either).