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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – King’s College London has ceased to be a university We’re told that students perform better when exposed to “different formats”. This is fair enough in principle, though the guidelines decline to specify what these formats might be, beyond implying there will be an impressive number of them. One can already picture the future: a single course requiring essays, posters, podcasts, puppet shows and a short stop-motion film made from Play-Doh – each designed to develop the student’s confidence, creativity and capacity to perform self-expression in increasingly unhinged ways.
Next, the document warns that “Standard Academic English” (once known as “English”) is an oppressive tool that advantages “already privileged students”. The implication, apparently, is that requiring coherent writing is a form of violence.
This is the educational equivalent of a gym announcing that push-ups are discriminatory because they favour those with upper-body strength.
– Michael Rainsborough
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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King’s College London was created as a conservative alternative to the (Jeremy Bentham following) University College London – but now Kings’s appears to be even more radical than UCL.
I was not taught to read (or anything else) at school, so I can understand the idea that people who lack these skills are disadvantaged – but that does NOT mean that should be held to have passed examinations when they have not passed. They need to be taught (or teach themselves) these basic skills long before they get to university.
If the work of students is passed because “well they could not do any better” then the title of the article is correct – King’s College will have ceased to be a university, indeed a seat of learning of any kind – so one hopes this document does not stand, that it is rejected.
As for the Critical Theory Marxist language – about “already privileged students” and claiming that this is a “form of violence” – well if my half brother (Tony Marks) is still alive, he will be delighted that a once conservative institution has fallen for this “Cultural Marxism” which he, and a Legion of others, worked hard to spread many years ago.
Of course, not being brought up with Communists (or, in the case of my father, Harry Marks, ex Communists), the officials of the establishment (right up to the head of state – the Crown) may spout Marxist stuff without-knowing-it. This is very frustrating – as I see well meaning people undermining civilization (yes that extreme language is justified) without-even-knowing-they-are-doing-it.
As for Michael Rainsborough – he has the English habit of trying to hide pain with humour, it is clear that he is deeply upset about what has happened to King’s College London, specifically the War Studies department (once famous for its serious study of the armed forces of the world – and for the study of warfare), and he is right to be – although he covers the pain with a smile.
Sadly this is a general decline in academia – and not just in Britain. I am sure he has battles with the “Woke”, with the “Critical Theory” (“Frankfurt School”) Marxists in Australia as well.
As John O’Sullivan has often pointed out – any organization (including totally unpolitical organizations) that is not constantly on the watch for infiltration by the left, will be taken over by the left – and they will ruthlessly destroy anyone who is not of their world-view.
As the Norwegian “Arch” (on YouTube and so on) puts it “gate-keep, gate-keep, gate-keep”.
And to that, one must understand Marxism – but not “understand” it the way the Jesuits (the Society of Jesus) did (eat-up its lies and think them the truth) – no “understand” means understand why Marxism, in all its forms, is both wrong and evil.
It is no good studying Marxism without studying its refutation – without understanding that its economics if false, its history is false, its philosophy is false, and its sociology is false. False and evil.