Take a look at this leaflet, distributed by the University and College Union (UCU) recently as part of its ongoing phoney war with universities over, well, having the moon on a stick.
I’ve circled the relevant part in red. Yes, you’ve read it correctly – it’s not an optical illusion or trick of the light. The sign really does say what it appears to say.
Think about this for a moment. It’s bad enough, of course, that somebody purporting to be a lecturer at a university or college wouldn’t know how to spell ‘tragedy’ or would make an innocent slip of the pen when writing the word and not think to correct it. But that in itself wouldn’t be worth commenting on. What’s notable about the leaflet, rather, is the two quite startling things that had to happen in order for its cover photo to have made its way into the public domain. The first is that nobody involved in the demo said to the person holding up the banner, “You appear to have made a mistake: that’s not how you spell ‘tragedy’. So maybe you therefore shouldn’t hold that thing up in public, as it will make us look like clowns given that we are purporting to be academics who should be given a pay rise at a rate of 3% above the CPI for educating the best and brightest of the country.” And the second is that nobody at the UCU had any qualms about putting the photo on presumably hundreds of thousands of printed leaflets for public distribution. The first thing looks like shoddiness. But the second looks more like contempt: why should scholars display any basic adherence to the values of excellence or intellectual rigour? And why indeed should they care what other people think of them?
Sadly, though, this is entirely in keeping with modern academia’s attitude in the round. Readers will be probably be familiar with the University of Hull’s policy of not marking students down for bad spelling or grammar on the grounds that insisting on good English is “elitist” and (yawn) “homogenous, North European, white [and] male”. This is just one of the more egregious examples in a wider pattern, however, of practices that are designed deliberately to dumb-down university education and lower standards in the name of ‘inclusivity’, and which now permeate U.K. academia at every level – even Oxford is at it. The mood music in the profession is essentially that students go to university in order that they be treated fairly, which in itself means tailoring everything in such a way that the educational experience is moulded to every nuance of every single student’s character, abilities and background. And since aptitude, ability and education are themselves simply facets of a student’s character, then they should be treated in exactly the same way – as reasons why the individual tailoring process needs to take place. Johnny can’t help being lazy, and therefore we need to make sure that we treat him inclusively in spite of his laziness. Sarah can’t help being a bit thick and not able to spell, and therefore… and so on and so on.
The dismal truth underlying all of this – and it is a truth which is illustrated quite nicely by the UCU leaflet depicted above – is that while academics trump all of this as being “good educational practice [which] benefits all students“, the main group of people it benefits are academics themselves. When standards get lowered, you don’t have to really work very hard, teaching becomes a lot less challenging, one can present oneself as being lovely and nice and matey all the time, and one can breezily give all students wonderful marks and see them off at graduation with a warm glow and first class degrees that aren’t worth the paper they are written on. Putting into effect exacting standards is hard work – and academics, being very intelligent people, are really good at thinking up justifications, dressed in the floweriest prose, as to why hard work is a bust and comfort all round is the way to go. Why should we expect students to achieve high standards when it’s ‘good educational practice’ for them not to have to? And why should we spell words on banners correctly given that the rules of spelling are themselves simply a manifestation of the patriarchy?
The wider question, of course, is what to do about this problem, which is becoming acute. Modern academia is almost monolithically globalist and dominated by the interests of a particular Brahmin caste of upper middle class remoaners. They don’t see the education of the next generation of our country’s leaders as a priority – indeed, they would think this idea to be laughable (and, in fairness, vast swathes of them are from overseas anyway). What they are chiefly interested in is feathering their own nests, pursuing their niche research interests and convincing themselves that they are contributing to a broader mission of making the world more just, fair and so on. In this sense, it’s entirely natural for them to pooh-pooh the pursuit of excellence and scholarly rigour, and to celebrate ‘inclusivity’. How do we turn the tanker around? Christ knows; the Tories have been in power for 13 years and haven’t yet indicated they even think it’s an issue, but maybe a long period out in the cold will focus their minds a little. Fingers crossed.
Busqueros is a pseudonym.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Oh that really is Trajik!
I’m a long in the tooth university lecturer and this piece is, I’m afraid, right on the money. Just one anecdote from the coalface: recently a more ‘senior’ colleague – a much younger guy who’s been rapidly promoted to a full professorship (no issue with that – his career’s none of my business but with that elevated role surely comes an expectation of competence) questioned the wording on some coursework I set. The word he queried was ‘manifest’ as in ‘to make manifest’. I replied, ‘it means to reveal outwardly or make apparent. I use this term often and somehow most students have managed to cope with it’. He replied, ‘well that’s ok as long as the students are comfortable with it”. Once I’d retrieved my lower jaw from the floor, I responded, ‘I introduce them to concepts, theoretical positions and empirical contexts that they may be unfamiliar with in my lectures too but I guess that’s the whole point of providing and receiving an education’.
I am not participating in the strikes and left the UCU a few years ago since it diverted from its core purpose of protecting members’ pay and conditions and veered into ever more exotic social justice obsessions.
Another academic here. I concur, academia is now run by people who, a few years ago, would not have passed A Levels.
I have also left the UCU. I was driven away by their cheerleading for lockdowns and their support for the genderwang insanity.
Me too. The final straw was their disgraceful lack of support for Kathleen Stock.
Great piece Busqueros. The UCU’s wokehunting of Kathleen Stock and other heterodox thinkers tells you all you need to know. As does their economically illiterate pursuit of gold plated pensions in a funding black hole. Their embrace of lockdown was a lazy academics dream and their totalitarian approach on climate change. Their opportunistic alliance with the lumpen identitarian NUS means they eschew every aspect of professionalism.
You’ve neatly summed up the reasons for my decision to leave the UCU.
TRADEGY! When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on, it’s TRADEGY. When the morning cries and you don’t know why, it’s hard to bear, with no one to love you, you’re goin’ nowhere’ ~ the Brothers Gibb
Remember the times…
An excellent riposte
Curious how times have changed: I did another Masters degree a few years back and, because papers were ‘rinsed’ through a marking system, could be marked down for any spelling and grammatical errors, plus incorrect citing of sources in the bibliography however minor (missing bracket, etc). That said, the rot was setting in even then: not only was I told I couldn’t ‘prove’ certain historical truths which could be evidenced (!), but also that my final dissertation wasn’t supposed to ‘create new knowledge’ – in diametric opposition to previous post grad work. Another jaw on floor moment. (The paper caused much consternation amongst the external examiners on exactly this point but eventually won through due to a robust defence by my supervisor.) If this is the way edgukashun is going, I really do fear for the future of humanity.
That’s the postmodern historian at work: We don’t know for certain that what we used to call historical sources are trustworthy because we didn’t experience anything ourself and hence, free speculation about anything is called for! Much less work, anyway. Reading is tedious.
Quite so
(OMG – since the last computer update this emoji now comes in a range of colours. Are they going to do the same for all the faces too?)
I left my OU history degree course (something I’d wanted to do as a retirement project) because the tutor who marked a piece of work did not know the difference between “uninterested” and “disinterested”. As I said to him; “If you don’t know the difference, we are not going to get on.” I left soon afterwards.
I feel your disappointment! I wanted to do a retirement PhD – I did get an offer which was initially stymied by the plandemic but now I consider I had a lucky break, given how far down the woke drain academia seems to have gone. Perhaps our more erudite DS readers could set up an independent non-woke uni where free speech and critical thinking are still encouraged!
While the ‘West’ sinks into the mire of its own making..other countries, quite rightly eschew this nonsense….
Russia has nearly twice as many Engineering/construction and manufacturing graduates than America..Iran, meanwhile has just as many as the US…even though Iran has a tiny minority of population in respect to the USA…(plus a majority of them in Iraq are women…believe it or not!)
China tops the STEM graduates list..along with other ‘Global South’ countries plus India and Russia and Iran….as for Maths..again the Global South comes out on top.
Does anyone think for a moment that children don’t know how to spell the most basic words in these countries…?
A massive global change is coming, and sadly the West is in decline in every sphere….and people like these selfish idiots will be the first to blame anyone but themselves….
In many ways that’s actually quite comforting, if the nihilistic jabbawokery of the US, UK and other infected countries can be kept at bay!
One only has to look at the cognitive decline of Resident Biden to see our fall from grace. Lord help us
Who doesn’t love an illiterate nonce with a third in Feminist Underwater Basket-Weaving Theory awarded by the Polyversity of the Central Black Country (formerly Walsall Tech)?
I was at school in the ’70s and university in the ’80s. Teachers and lecturers were quite unsympathetic – which was the best way to toughen us up and prepare us for working life.
One lad in the year above received a mark of minus 2 in his end of year latin exam; he answered every question incorrectly and had 2 marks deducted for untidiness. Happy days!
That’s still my teaching philosophy: show ‘em no mercy, give ‘em no hope and let them prove themselves from that point. The university may enforce no standards but I bloody well do! I am routinely thwarted by the blob of administrators, passive external examiners and #bekind colleagues for the failures but at least I’ve expressed my view and it’s on the record. It’s about the only straw left for old boilers like me to cling to in the current climate.
You get my vote!
Strangely, when you talk to people about the teachers they had at school, it is often the authoritarian ones that they mention most fondly and whom they say had the most positive influences on them.
I got the top grade in o-level Latin. I failed with a grade F; the rest of the year were unclassified. I was always surprised the Latin master didn’t top himself.
The photograph was taken on 30th November 2021, according to Getty Images and Alamy, who now license it as a stock photograph. During those six months many people must have pointed out the spelling error and the leaflet creators can hardly have failed to spot it. So I tend to agree with the author that the underlying reason for its publication is that the UCU believe that insisting on good English is “elitist”.
Curiously, the London School of Economics crop the photo which avoids the mis-spelling! Perhaps they have standards?
It’s still on UCU’s website under resources
I left UCU for the same reasons as the other contributors to the discussion – trans ideology, lockdowns and general unthinking wokery. But not knowing how to spell…..
When comprehensive education was introduced in the late 1960s there was a march opposing it with students holding a banner which read’ Save our grammer schools’ Rather undermined the message as does the UCU leaflet.
Couldn’t find a leaflet, but the poster shown in the attached image demonstrates their lack of basic skills!
I find it particularly amusing that the ‘Tradegy’ banner is being held up just in front of one reading ‘Knowledge is Power’.
Get with the programme: correct spelling is White Supremacy, White Privilege, racist, patriarchal… and transphobic.
Yeah, it’s so gay.
The red placards are misspelled too. They should read “On shirk for fair pay”.
Every young person comes out of school now calling every single thing in life “perfect”. ———–In shops and stores they ask if you want a receipt and what ever you reply their answer is always “perfect”. ————-“Do you need a bag”? —“No thanks”—-“Perfect”. —————–Someone obviously never taught them what the word perfect actually means. It means flawless or faultless eg a perfect circle. ——————It does not me an “OK, or “Thankyou”. ————–This linguistic virus has spread like a speeding bullet all over the western world.
“This linguistic virus”
Indeed, and it damn well pisses me off too.
“Have a nice day.”
I bloody hope not.
“Perfect.”
Some of them barely speak.
I am glad you noticed this. In any restaurant or shop or infact anywhere where there is interaction with the public you will hear the waitress or shop assistant or whoever say “perfect” in every single communication. If ever there was an example of people allowing themselves to be turned into sheep this is it, and I really only started to notice this in the last 5-10 years. But it is now so widespread that they are all doing it. I never hear “thankyou”. I never hear “Ok then” . —–I only ever hear “perfect”
I usually observe that there has only ever been one “perfect” person.
And they nailed him to a cross.
Luckily, everyone knows how to spell “Down with this sort of thing” and “Careful now.”
All thanks to the sainted Tony Bliar, who sits on the right hand of whoever shovels the most money into his capacious pockets.
If you decide that, in order to reduce the youth unemployment figures, 50% of school leavers must go to ‘University’ then the obvious result is that you’ll get thickos ‘teaching’ thickos. And to afford it all the amoral, venal bar steward made the students take on a load of debt for the privilege of this crap education.
At last!
Someone correctly pointing out the foundational genius who destroyed academia!
Absolutely correct, DevonBB!