If you could wind back the clock ....

[teamsaint]

The dumbing down of Radio 3.

what about relegation from the league, ER?
Re election was much nicer and kinder.

Still, better days ahead !!

[MrGongGong]

The phrase "dumbing down"

[amateur51]

The weather forecaster as a personality

Bert Foord didn't have a personality - he had a dodgy old sports jacket. And he got his forecasts over & done with pronto

[EdgeleyRob]

what about relegation from the league, ER?
Re election was much nicer and kinder.

Still, better days ahead !!

[Budapest]

over the last 50 or so years, what would you like never to have been developed or allowed?

The response to Resurrection Man's original post seems to be a country called America.

[Petrushka]

The weather forecaster as a personality

Bert Foord didn't have a personality - he had a dodgy old sports jacket. And he got his forecasts over & done with pronto

More than that, the weather forecasters who speak to us as if we were mentally retarded 6 year olds.

I'm with those who mentioned 24 hour TV news. The endless repetition, the manufacture of 'non-news' stories, the insensitive, sensationalised, trivialised treatment of stories like the Welsh tragedy. I am old enough to remember the coverage of that other, greater Welsh tragedy of Aberfan in 1966 and know thst sometimes less can be more.

[Flay]

HIV - very nasty

[PhilipT]

Well this is a fine argument, as long as you think that
a). the intake cohort 50 years ago was perfect.
b). There is no problem at all with lots of people not achieving their full academic or personal potential.

The key word in my argument was 'over'. I am very much in favour of all people achieving their full potential, but the potential for genuine achievement has to be there in the first place. It's only a minority who have true academic potential. Setting up a goal of 50% of youngsters getting university degrees, and then reaching that goal by dumbing down the universities and dumbing down the degrees betrays them and betrays society (by wasting resources better spent on other things). Raising the school leaving age is another example. There's a massive difference between offering free education for all to the age of, say, 18, and making it compulsory. For some youngsters, locking them up in school against their will beyond the age of 15 is, again, a waste all round. In my view, there'd be much to be said for employers taking on younger school leavers, but part-time with a day-release arrangement and an understanding that they improve their skills or the job won't be permanent. For anyone, seeing their first pay-packet is a powerful motivator; an EMA isn't the same thing.

[Hornspieler]

The key word in my argument was 'over'. I am very much in favour of all people achieving their full potential, but the potential for genuine achievement has to be there in the first place. It's only a minority who have true academic potential. Setting up a goal of 50% of youngsters getting university degrees, and then reaching that goal by dumbing down the universities and dumbing down the degrees betrays them and betrays society (by wasting resources better spent on other things). Raising the school leaving age is another example. There's a massive difference between offering free education for all to the age of, say, 18, and making it compulsory. For some youngsters, locking them up in school against their will beyond the age of 15 is, again, a waste all round. In my view, there'd be much to be said for employers taking on younger school leavers, but part-time with a day-release arrangement and an understanding that they improve their skills or the job won't be permanent. For anyone, seeing their first pay-packet is a powerful motivator; an EMA isn't the same thing.

I think that this is a well-reasoned and excellent post.

I am in total agreement.

HS

[Flosshilde]

Me too. Degrees have simply become the base-level qualification that everybod needs to have, rather than an exceptional qualification, which means that those people without one have even more difficulty in getting a job. It has probably also contributed to the decline in apprenticeships, as more employers shunt the responsibility for training staff onto the taxpayer.

I'd like to see un-invented hedge-funds & asset-stripping & increasing globalisation of industry through take-overs and mergers.

[Resurrection Man]

Sweat-shops in the Indian and Chinese sub-continent (a byproduct being that we keep jobs inside the UK)

Professional footballers on mega-salaries

[salymap]

Gilbert & Sullivan come to mind more and more to me these days. Regarding degrees for all - 'When everyone is somebody, then no-one's anybody'

[John Shelton]

I think that this is a well-reasoned and excellent post.

I am in total agreement.

HS

You have knowledge of undergraduate teaching in universities in the UK, Hornspieler?

[doversoul1]

You have knowledge of undergraduate teaching in universities in the UK, Hornspieler?

I have reasonably good knowledge of university education (what is taught and why it is taught in the way it is taught) in the UK and I entirely agree with PhilipT.

[John Shelton]

I have reasonably good knowledge of university education (what is taught and why it is taught in the way it is taught) in the UK and I entirely agree with PhilipT.

I have knowledge of the incessant, ideological pressure for universities to train students for employment and to teach subjects which are useful to employers - the pressure lessening, of course, at those institutions where the kinds of people who think universities are dumbed down went themselves and send their own beautiful offspring. I also have knowledge of the destruction of one of the best philosophy departments in England at Middlesex University, for reasons not unconnected to those ideological pressures. The point being that the newest universities are capable of teaching students who want to be taught at a high level of academic excellence and intellectual rigour: but the ideology of the day, backed up by class interests, won't allow it.

The problem I have with arguments like PhilipT's is that in practice it means keeping university education for people like themselves and cheerfully consigning people not like themselves to useful training: so that they can fix their plumbing when it goes wrong, for example.