Philistinism: The English Disease
| There was a time when any suggestion that working people might profit from an education would have been treated as dangerous and revolutionary. Don't want them to get ideas above their station! Ignorance has always been the strongest chain for holding people down. The Liber Abaci of 1202 took the monopoly on calculating out of the hands of the church and the powerful, and the invention of moveable type did the same for reading. It was soon time for the monopolists to fight back. If you cannot forbid education, then promote philistinism. An intellectual? Must be a foreigner. Thus have generations of the English public, especially the working classes, been cheated of their birthright. How many schoolchildren have been bullied into denying themselves what might have enriched their lives, from fear of words like Swot, nerd, anorak, ... ? Even clever and brainy are disparagements now. As education advanced abroad in the twentieth century, the monopolists began to panic. Further weapons were brought out from the armoury: a state religion of football with official patronage, a state takeover of teaching - Education, education, education! Was that not warning enough? Redefine education as training, and intellect as knowing facts. Let the media patrol the perimeter fences armed with quiz shows. Questions on sport and the entertainment industry must predominate. Independent thought? But that is terrorism! Be warned. |
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