GOOD BYE OLD FIEND, HELLO MEWING MAIDEN
(As tomorrow is Memorial Day in the USSA, I'm posting this blog early).
It's been a long time since I had one of my occasional rants about the declining state of edgykayshun in the Amairikuhn quackademy. But this time my rant concerns no quackademy in the USSA, but rather, my alma mater, the Old Fiend, which, if the following article is to be believed (and I do), then the Diversity Mongers have successfully targeted Oxford (this article thanks to many people who saw it and passed it along):
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-23/oxford-university-dumbs-down-admissions-process-disadvantaged-applicants
It's difficult for me to express what I am feeling and thinking about all of this. At one level, it makes me think that the nickname for Oxford - The Old Fiend - that I and my friend Dr. Scott De Hart have for the place should now be changed to The Simpering Spinster, or perhaps The Mewing Maiden, because the inevitable result of this Amairikuhnization of The Old Fiend will be the impositions of collectivist conformity, an increasingly stupid student body, and the final end of those unwritten, unspoken, but nevertheless very real traditions that made the place what it was. It seems there is no cultural tradition or institution that the Nihilists of Progressivism will not attack and spray paint with the graffiti of the blithering nonsense of Edubabble and Psychoblither and "Diversity". Am I over-reacting? Perhaps. But I doubt it. Consider this from the article:
With the goal of increasing Oxford University's undergraduate students intake from disadvantaged backgrounds from 15% to 25% over the next four years, the prestigious British university has unveiled a "sea change" in its admissions process.
Echoing the new SAT 'Adversity Score' in the US, which attempts - through various socioeconomic factors - to adjust applicants' 'clean' merit score for their relative disadvantage in life, The Telegraph reports that Oxford will offer places with lower grades to students from disadvantaged backgrounds for the first time in its 900-year history.
50 students in the new intake - which will include refugees and young carers - will be eligible to receive offers “made on the basis of lower contextual A-level grades, rather than the university’s standard offers”. (Italicized emphasis added, boldface emphasis in the original).
"Carers"? What the heck are "carers"? Granted, typos occur all the time (my books are full of them). But there's the disconcerting possibility that this isn't a typo, but an actual spelling error, and that means "the rot has already set in". The spell checker is only as good as the programmer programming it, and in this case, the spell-checker was not, apparently, consulting the Oxford English Dictionary (which, let us hasten to add, must now be made to follow suit, to include the speech patterns and words of "disadvantaged backgrounds.")
More important, however, is the whole inherently patronizing and condescending attitude which is now to be made a matter of policy. One former student has already raised the issue, and good for her:
Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, who read law at Oxford, writes that she was from a “disadvantaged background.” And she would not have wanted adversity points to help her get into Oxford:
If someone had told me that the college only admitted me because of “contextual data” – my family’s low income, the paucity of books in our house, the fact I was from a broken home, or because, in my touching ignorance, I thought a Reader’s Digest condensed version of Jonathan Livingston Seagull was a literary masterpiece (bless!), I would have been mortified.
I wouldn’t have wanted to be patronised in that way. If I wasn’t good enough to be admitted on my own merits to a university renowned for its excellence, then I’d rather not have gone to Oxbridge at all.
Pearson explains how the new policy came about:
The trouble starts when well-meaning, guilt-stricken liberals (that’s pretty much all university lecturers) start lowering the bar because too many comprehensives are bad at helping the brightest pupils to reach their full potential. (And too many teachers are Corbynists who detest Oxbridge anyway.)
Hear hear! The whole attraction of the Old Fiend for me was precisely the fact that it cared not a twopence about my "disadvantaged background" as a hack from South Dakota. Indeed, I turned down a full post-graduate ride at a major big name Amairkuhn quackademy when I learned that part of my required course work would have been to study "feminist theology" and "learn" to use "non-offensive gender inclusive language." Presumably, I was to keep all of my patriarchal prayer references to myself. Sorry, but "Our collective social God-concept that we attribute to hyper-numinal and perhaps multi-dimensional topologies" just didn't have the same "ring" as "Our Father, Who art in Heaven...". I told the dean of that particular quackademy to keep the scholarship, and to pound sand (I said it more politely, but that was the gist of it). It was, as far as I was concerned, a case of "Behold, I can give you all professorships if thou but bow down and embrace and worship The Agenda." The dean of that quackademy was perplexed and I suspect actually surprised. Apparently he'd never encountered a "not only no but hell no" response to the blandishments of scholarships-in-return-for-embracing-the-agenda before.
S0 I'm in exactly the same position, and have exactly the same reaction, as Ms. Pearson. And the predictable concerns have already surfaced:
Dr Anthony Wallersteiner, head of Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, said that the number of privately-educated children getting places at Oxbridge had been “driven down” as part of efforts to boost diversity.
He recently told The Times that private-school parents claimed that their children were being “edged out” by social engineering.
Sadly, I do not foresee any way of halting the process, not there, nor anywhere else. The nihilists will succeed in capturing this institution as well for the process was begun long ago. I saw it under way when I was there. You can now cross The Mewing Maiden off your list of places to send your kids to college.
See you on the flip side...
21 Comments
Help the Community Grow
Please understand a donation is a gift and does not confer membership or license to audiobooks. To become a paid member, visit member registration.
the concern here seems to be more that standards of performance at oxford will be diminished in order to avoid making a mockery of the reduced standards of admittance. considering that folk will be watching for results (and considering what we’ve seen stateside), it’s fairly obvious that performance will drop and that the fact will be hidden as much as possible. kinda like vaccine damage? and native american holocausts?
it’s the tobacco science this culture has suckled on for generations. apply it to whatever topic that needs a touch more fascism, rinse, repeat forever. vaccines. margarine. asbestos. vioxx. opioids. sugar. food additives. hormones. antibiotics. glyphosate. pre-emptive false flagged wars. 5g. cancer. diabetes. statins. politics?
speaking of which, here’s an idea that could grow legs. at least in the q qult world:
https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/why-theresa-may-really-resigned/
has anyone here any evidence that these fallen rothtillians (macron too) will be replaced by anyone who is not also a rothtillian?
I never had the opportunity to go to university, but chose a technical career.
Over the past thirty years I have read hundreds of books on different subjects, and there is no doubt in my mind that what I have learnt from reading books would be far more than I would have been taught in QUACKADEMIA.
I mean how many Phd’s have you heard of who walked away from quackademia
because they teach rubbish, think Dr. Heather Lynn here.
I never made it past week one of Junior College, but I am always interested in what Joseph has to say about education. I was stunned when I found out that at Oxford the student is essentially 100% responsible for mastering his/her area, self-discipline is key as well time-mastery ingesting the sheer volume of reading, with comprehension no less and, at the end of the day, the pass/fail came about as a result of vigorous interrogation by the acknowledged experts in the field.
I actually feel sorry for any student who is shoe-horned into Oxford under these lowering-the-bar circumstances for almost certainly they will fail. It would take a Magic Flautist, indeed, to survive that without preparation. It is not exactly multiple-choice tests with accommodations for their handicapped beginnings.
Doc and friends, you may enjoy this mans take on things.
( PS; lots of of good posts on title IX stupidity and other stuff too)
https://blog.simplejustice.us/2019/05/18/overcoming-adversity/
SQUARE POINT THEATER 53
Captain Jack Sparrow
is mesmerizing fish tails
sprinkling tears of joy.
In Dead Poets Society, bygone spirits are reinvoked, spoken into existence.
I spoke not, as word spoke me. I dreamt not, as dream came to me.
Feminism went out the door, when the lion came in, looking for breakfast.
https://archive.org/details/fivecenturiesofe02steb/page/n4
Not having gone to Oxford (your-Old-Fiend) one gets the sense from your rant that the university once demanded the best from the students as their entry abilities suggested and that they should apply, almost fiendishly with a fervor, to earn the student their final reward for hardest work and scholarship. That’s reasonable. Personally, one never needed pampering to exceed one’s birthright in academia and quietly considered it an insult if it were suggested.
It’s not surprising that with an increasing intellectual diet of political correctness through twisted narrative forms made easy at a tap that this current generation needs all the help they can get. It’s been subtle and insidious for decades, but one item of note that was not part of the calculus of this attempted dumbing down – Fast communications and turn-a-round by way of internet. It literally caught communist tacticians off guard at the speed by which a connected young mind can asymmetrically affect change and call a following of their own in nearly an instant. Those children, only a few years ago now, are not as stupid or dumb as many have made them out to be, if ever they were to be lied about, but it does seem those elder underestimated youth altogether. Not all the elders, but those in traditional niches of education and others with a more nefarious modus operandi to taint a free society in the name of edgymakashun.
The elders seem to have lost control in some western education systems believing they’re immutable, but by introducing the das jünger to what’s been held for only the privileged or those of a particular upbringing seems a means to re-educate a previously lost generation by giving those youthful fast synapses an opportunity and exposure to ancient knowledge. One has found it the wiser never to underestimate das jünger.
I understand your frustration Dr. F and I had similar thoughts myself when I first read about “Adversity” scores for college admissions. And then I realized that this was a limited hangout.
Here in the US over the last few months we’ve seen the scandal of celebrity and wealthy parents paying bribes, some as large as 1.2 million dollars, to get their kids into elite universities.
Now, think about that for a second: 1.2 million dollars to get a particular school name on a diploma.
Why would anyone pay millions of dollars to get a particular school name on a diploma unless having that particular school name on your diploma opens up a world of wealth and opportunity unavailable to those without that particular school name on their diploma.
While the media is avoiding this question, you can bet that someone somewhere wants to ask it. And those someone’s may just start filing lawsuits so they can ask those questions in court.
And that is why schools are rushing out “new” admissions policies that they hope will head off those questions.
“Carers” could be the plural of carer or “caregiver”, i.e. what used to be called au pairs, nannies etc. and nowadays usually persons paid to care for the elderly.
Remember how the Conservatives were always blasting the “Nanny State”?
Reading only a few paragraphs in, I surmised here’s another victim of the purposed group think paradigm.
Targeting other areas of interest in the near future?
A 900 year history means nothing to those new & improved algorithms[no doubt, this was also probably written by an algorithm].
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today.” Mr Ford strikes yet again …
Interesting that…
present?
By dividing our attention between our digital extensions, we sacrifice our connections to our true present in which we are living. There is a tension between the faux present of digital bombardments and that of our true now in a coherently living human now.
We are not building a new commons together where everything is shared; we are turning life into a set of monetizable experiences where the capitalist meter is always on.
As for those ever-present algorithms?
Even the plot twists for Hollywood screenplays are determined by algorithms.
Algorithmic present shock is instantaneous.
Its results impact us before it is even noticed.
“We shall unleash the Nihilists and the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil.
Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view.
This manifestation will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time.”
Albert Pike…or so the story goes. Whoever wrote this, knew something.
doc, don’t feel too bad. it’ll take time but it’ll sort.
remember the female prof at u of mizzou? melissa click if memory and google still serve. she called while on video for “muscle” to come and remove a journalist from the students’ not so free speech zone in their protest area. the thoroughly infringed on that journo’s rights 6 ways to any day of the week. and the kid who ran the protests over how beaten down females, gays, minorities and anyone else there suffering the abuses of white privilege turned out to be a long suffering student with parents who paid his full ride (aka no school debt) who were worth $23mil?
when these facts came out on youtube and other internet sites (much less censored back they) Mizzou enrollment slashed. parents stated openly they didn’t see the point of involving their progeny in such tripe.
same think happened at evergreen state out west. their enrollment was literally cut in half. these all seem part of the get woke go broke meme we hear lately. for traditions as long as your fiend ( i do wonder where that name came from) one might expect more of a reorganization at a later saner date. who knows. but what comes around goes around. eventually.
ironic and i wonder if there’s no connection, that bret weinstein brother of eric weinstein mgr for peter theil’s hedge fund went through similar as jordan peterson at u of toronto and now all these guys are close buds interviewing at length with joe rogan and banding together in their intellectual dark web? what sage dark webber can we expect to get verbally assaulted on oxbridge only to get interviewed by rogan then welcomed into multilmillion dollar book tours and invited into the dark web?
i do hope it’s not you doc. the chances that theil and friends are plutocratic of the lower orders seems to be increasing.
Dr Farrell,
In the UK they refer to caregivers as “Carers”. I have a friend in Scotland who is a full time caregiver for her autistic son. When I mentioned I also was a caregiver for my elderly father, she corrected me and told me the correct terminology there was “Carer”.
interesting. that was the first idea i inferred. curious: does that term only include those who care for members of society unable to care for themselves who are injured or sick or both? or does it include stay at home ma’s and/or pa’s?
It’s only if they are sick or injured or otherwise unable to care for themselves. So no, not just stay at home parents.
REALLY??? “Care-ers”…. then it’s worse over there than I thought.
I know. It’s horrible. I refuse to use that term when we correspond and continue using the word caregiver. I don’t have the heart to tell her how odd I find that word.
“feminist theology” and “learn” to use “non-offensive gender inclusive language”
I’m totally speechless! Well if the lecturer at Oxbirdge (LOL I love this nickname) would allow lower their standard, even grant disqualified individual to get their Master or even Ph.D degree (which will be funny to see spelling error on their paper published on peer review LOL), that means lecturers own abilities is totally questionable.
This process will not just dump down the whole civilization, the elites will suffer this consequence too, unless of course these elite’s new generation has much better home education (which I totally don’t see it, just look at a few big names and what type of woman they married with can tell ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
When each generation of the elites are getting more and more incompetent, they can only use incompetent people like Nancy Pelosi as their political representative.
Ohh well, I would say the cycle not always favorite them, when the cycle turn, too bad so said for their incompetent descendants.