Letter about education to a professor of philosophy

One sees terrible things about education in the papers all the time now.  One has to accept that they have just about managed to destroy the educational and university system, and if one knew a young person growing up in this country nowadays, one could only recommend their parents to keep them away from state education, and the young person to leave school as soon as possible, because there is no point in taking a degree unless you need to have an academic career, and academic careers in universities are becoming less and less worth having. 

Anyone with a drive towards intellectual activity would do best to do what I did when I was thrown out, i.e. engage in any compatible business activity with a view to becoming rich enough to set up an institutional or college environment for oneself.  Exceedingly difficult, and entirely against the trends of modern society, but then the trends of modern society are aimed at destroying the lives of able individuals.  This deprives society of the contribution to human culture which they might make, but nobody minds about that, in fact the object of the exercise is to prevent any real contribution from being made.

In particular, one notes with horror that they are proposing to set up an academy for gifted and talented young people, probably in association with Warwick University.  One could only recommend any parent to regard this as even more to be shunned than any state school which is not explicitly signposted as a ghetto for the high IQs while they wait for the trains to the extermination camps. 

Another idea, suggested by the Labour Education Secretary Estelle Morris, is that grants should be made to all students, which will be repaid out of their future earnings.  It is quite bad enough to be provided with a ‘free’ education, which means being subjected to what other people like to think you should have, which may be of positive or negative value compared with being left to fend for yourself as best you can without interference.  It is pretty terrible to be left with the millstone of repayment for this supposed benefit out of whatever earnings it is possible for the alumnus to obtain in his, quite possibly, crippled subsequent life. 

This is the natural progression which results from removing the protection of market forces.  First, the product being supplied, be it ‘medicine’ or ‘education’ deteriorates and is denatured so that it becomes another product altogether, although it is still called ‘medicine’ and ‘education’.  When the product has changed beyond recognition, the recipients have to start paying for it, but without being given any control over what they are receiving.  It is now practically impossible to obtain either medical resources or access to a professional qualification without being forced into contact with the monopolistic and debased state system.

Even at the time of my own education, I might have done better to realise it was all hopeless after I had been prevented from taking the School Certificate exam, and all that might have followed after it.  Should I not have left school as soon as possible after that, and set about making money as best I could to finance my own institutional environment? 

Unfortunately, I did need to get to university in order to make contact with a different stratum of society, but I have every sympathy with public school people who leave school as soon as they can in order to become businessmen. 

No doubt there are many ways of misrepresenting the above; I will try to write disclaimers of some of them in due course. 

But, basically, as socialism is aimed at destroying civilisation, it has got off to a good start by destroying the educational and university system, and making it impossible to get access to any medical supplies or facilities on morally acceptable terms.