Utility

An entrepreneurial producer of suction, who is a Tory, publicly stated something along the lines of "Why are we funding English courses? Why does anyone need to study French lesbian vampire poetry?"

Let's play this guy's game for a while. Let's be childish. What is more important? Suction or language? Having your carpet cleaned by a new hoover? Or having people study the nuances of language, so as to improve political discourse? And any other kind of discourse?

This latest Tory government brand themselves as a useful government. Their perspective on education repels me, to put it mildly. Courses on the Humanities are looked at with an evil eye (or, at the very least, taken with a pinch of salt). University isn't there to provide a grounding in epistemology and knowledge. They're there for business courses and to churn out employable people, who will help our frail economy. How? By playing a vital role in the private sector.

The fact that, somehow, the population of the country is going to get the economy out of its slump in private business is laughable. But for these guys, the Keynesian model (which has been tried and tested - successfully!) is laughable. Somehow, we are going to get ourselves out of our misery with the help of those committed, responsible folks in the private sector! No, we cannot boost the economy ourselves by investing in growth (that will increase our deficit!). And how can we pave the way to all this? Get people graduated in business! Not only that, we have to privatise education to ensure that only those guys high, high, high up in the top help us out!

That is all education means to these people. A means to an end. They don't realise that their choices are not only useless but harmful. They're making a pig-sty of the economy and disparities in wealth are getting wider and wider and wider.

To get society in the right track, you have to open people's eyes. Whilst I am a sceptic of universities (I am, and always will be, an autodidact), I think that they enlighten the lives of millions. I think that academic rigour, intellectual curiosity, defiance and creativity are indispensable assets. Business is fine, but that is not going to change the world. (I say this without being snobbish or high-minded.) ICT (which is funded a lot) will lead nowhere. English people are hopeless at languages (yet the government believes that if we speak more languages that will help international relations!), yet those courses they are getting cut right-left-and-centre. Perhaps even more depressingly, science is not seen as an interesting subject that can enhance understanding, it just provides chemists, doctors and physiotherapists. The biggest irony about people who claim to be efficient and useful is that they turn out to be inefficient, useless and, in the larger scheme of things, pernicious.