Clive Davis

PS

I went to Oxford, which is why I agreed with a lot of Ellis's polemic when it appeared in '94. At almost exactly the same time, Barbara Ehrenreich's daughter, Rosa, published an even more readable account of her spell amidst the dreaming spires. I went up to New Haven to interview her when it came out - she was studying at Yale law school by then - but couldn't find a UK editor willing to run the piece. In the end I think I did a review in the New Statesman or New Society. As far as I recall, the book made next to no impression in Britain. Pity.

DREAM DEFERRED - 2

Rod Dreher, one of the best journo-bloggers around, links to a column by one of his Dallas colleagues, Joshua Benton, on the scandalous privileges that elite US colleges confer on the offspring of well-heeled alumni. Benton summarizes the findings of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden:

Mr. Golden, himself a Harvard alum, details the ways colleges chase after the children of the rich and powerful, like paparazzi pursuing Paris Hilton. He shows how Al Gore's son earned a questionable admission to Harvard, and how presidential niece Lauren Bush got into Princeton despite below-average SAT scores, mediocre grades at her Houston prep school and not bothering to apply until a month after the deadline.

...I enjoyed my time at Yale, and I wouldn't mind if my kid went there someday. But Yale, with its endowment of $15 billion, doesn't need my money. It's depressing how many of my classmates preach the need to donate cash – not out of affection for their alma mater, but solely so they can be labeled a "productive alum" and someday get their own kids into Yale.

Yes, depressing... Back to Dreher for the latest fashion in caste and class:

A colleague today told me of a gated community in a prosperous local suburb that contains within it another gated community, so the people who live in the $700,000 houses can be protected from the people who live in the $300,000 houses on the outer rim. This is going to be an interesting century.

CHUMPS AT HARVARD?

Amir Taheri admires ex-president Khatami's mastery of the art of doublespeak:

He used a vocabulary carefully designed to hoodwink the Americans without angering his fellow Khomeinists back home. The trick was reinforced by the fact that he often said one thing in Persian, while the interpreter said something else in English for the benefit of the Harvard audience.

For example, Khatami would speak of "khoshunat", which means "roughness," but the interpreter would translate it into "violence" or even "terror." Thus, the Harvard audience would think that Khatami admits that there may be terrorism in the realm of Islam - while back in Tehran, he would appear talking only about "roughness" and "coercion."...

He spoke a great deal about the need for dialogue, tolerance and understanding. But he made no mention of the fact that he had closed down 150 Iranian newspapers, imprisoned scores of journalists and unleashed his Hezbollah hounds to crush the student revolts against his regime. His "dialogue of civilizations" had not been extended to thousands of Iranian workers bullied, beaten, murdered or forced out of their jobs simply because they had gone on strike

[Via RealClearPolitics]

PUPIL POWER

The most depressing sight of the week, by a long way, was those schoolchildren mounting a "Blair Must Go" outside the gates during his visit this week. Another sign of how classrooms are out of control? Iain Dale has an update on the headmistress's reaction. Good to hear that she was as embarrassed as the rest of us.

NOTEBOOK

Most who pass through its college portals emerge with a 2:1 or a 2:2 in their chosen discipline; thousands more achieve starred Firsts in nostalgia.

Walter Ellis, The Oxbridge Conspiracy.

EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION

Among the questions that stumped trainee nurses in Kent:

If a night shift starts at 8pm, is it the same as 18.00, 19.00, 20.00 or 21.00 hours?

How many minutes are there in half an hour?

TEXTUAL

John Sutherland, no slouch when it comes to literature, tries to decipher some characteristically tortured post-modern jargon:

The first example is from an award-winning young academic, Nick Dames, recently tenured at Columbia University in New York. Getting tenure at Columbia is notoriously tough. Most fail. Dames earned it largely on the basis of his monograph, "Amnesiac Selves: Nostalgia, Forgetting and British Fiction, 1810-1870", published in 2003 by Oxford University Press.

This is the book's first sentence: "Replacing Barthes's hypostatised 'Novel' with a historically defined set of 'novels', we might say that transforming memories into useful acts - enabling, in fact the death of memory within it - is preeminently the work of the Victorian novel."

I've read a lot of Victorian fiction. More, I'll immodestly wager, than Dr Dames. But if you locked me in a cell until I came up with his explanation of what is "pre-eminently the work" of that voluminous, and diverse literary genre I would languish in solitary confinement until the heat death of the universe.   [Via Bookslut]

Read on, and you'll encounter another campus classic, a study of vampire fiction called Dracula's Band of the Hand: Suppressed Male Onanism. I kid you not. Maybe Tintin got off lightly after all.

SAUDI HEARTS & MINDS

"It is forbidden for a Muslim to be a loyal friend to someone who does not believe in God and His Prophet, or someone who fights the religion of Islam..."

"True belief means . . . that you hate the polytheists and infidels but do not treat them unjustly..."

"As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus..."

Extracts from new, improved Saudi school textbooks, now guaranteed free of intolerance, fanaticism and hatred. Well, almost. Nina Shea, of Freedom House, has more details in the Washington Post. This isn't just a local problem either, of course:

Saudi Arabia also distributes its religion texts worldwide to numerous Islamic schools and madrassas that it does not directly operate. Undeterred by Wahhabism's historically fringe status, Saudi Arabia is trying to assert itself as the world's authoritative voice on Islam -- a sort of "Vatican" for Islam, as several Saudi officials have stated-- and these textbooks are integral to this effort. As the report of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks observed, "Even in affluent countries, Saudi-funded Wahhabi schools are often the only Islamic schools" available.

[Hat-tip: TG]

SKOOL

I passed the 11-plus and spent the first two years of my secondary education at a selective school. Then we went comprehensive. No wonder Robert Crampton's angry op-ed struck a chord with me:

The people I was at school with have done OK. That’s what they always say about bright kids in comps, isn’t it? Oh, they’ll be OK. But we haven’t done as well as we could have done if we hadn’t been — there’s no polite way of putting this — shafted by Labour ideology for the past 40 years. The people I was at Oxford with, meanwhile, they’re running the country, some deservedly so, others not. How do you want to choose your elite? By family connections? By what your dad earned? Or by ability?

[Via Laban Tall]

RAPPED

My least favourite music is singled out for criticism by an educational expert:

THE leader of the taskforce set up by the Government to improve pupils’ behaviour has said that some rap music is undermining classroom discipline and urged the BBC not to broadcast it.

Talking of boring, attention-seekng adolescents, I see that Madonna is desperate to cause outrage again. That nasty George Bush, ooh...

ENCORE: Roger Simon fails to stifle a yawn:

Was this supposed freethinker around for the Danish cartoons protest? Of course not. Why should she clutter her head with things that have nothing to do with money?