Urban v's the Commentariat

[equationgirl]

No one should be at oxford. Fuck every last one of them - white black or fucking volcanic dust.

Do you think that Oxford - and the other universities of that ilk - should be shut?

 

[butchersapron]

Do you think that Oxford - and the other universities of that ilk - should be shut?

Into the ground.

 

[equationgirl]

Into the ground.

And the other universities, the redbricks, the concretes, the post-95s, them too?

 

[butchersapron]

And the other universities, the redbricks, the concretes, the post-95s, them too?

I'd like the oxbridge boycott that i mentioned above to extend to all universities.

 

[Delroy Booth]

I'd like the oxbridge boycott that i mentioned above to extend to all universities.

besides, wikipedia has made university education all but pointless anyway

 

[equationgirl]

I'd like the oxbridge boycott that i mentioned above to extend to all universities.

Are you against university education altogether then?

 

[butchersapron]

Are you against university education altogether then?

No. I think all w/c kids should boycott it. Refuse to go. Refuse to apply.

 

[equationgirl]

I think all w/c kids should boycott it. Refuse to go. Refuse to apply.

And what exactly is that supposed to achieve?

 

[butchersapron]

And what exactly is that supposed to achieve?

Fuck all. Except fucking up how the entire system works.

In getting a few w/c kids more into oxbridge - not much more than normal.

 

[butchersapron]

And what exactly is that supposed to achieve?

Seriously - a total collective refusal to engage with a system of education because you hate it and it reflects motivations that you reject, vs oh well.

 

[rekil]

The PD magician section should threaten to make Oxford "disappear".

 

[rekil]

Alan De Zanzibar

 

[Balbi]

Rococo Ornamentation surely?

 

[rekil]

Colin The Fez

 

[Balbi]

Johann Hari Potter

 

[rekil]

Penny And Troller

Not a very rich seam this tbh

 

[8ball]

No one should be at oxford. Fuck every last one of them - white black or fucking agglomerations of volcanic dust that have developed turing brains, then used as slow memory work drones for a billion years, until one hero remembers, through love...etc

What about the Poly?

 

[Balbi]

Penny And Troller

Not a very rich seam this tbh

Aye, I peaked at Beastie Boys

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Ali Bongo

 

[el-ahrairah]

Is she really that radical though? I think she likes to view herself as radical, and for her circle she probably is, but in reality? Not so much. I feel sorry for her too, sometimes I think she does the right think but then I read about her trying to build her personal brand and it undoes any good that she's done.

no, she's not that radical at all, which is what i meant. she might believe herself to be, she certainly positions herself that way, but she's not radical at all, she's a liberal. she might occasional suggest that a revolution would be nice, that she's a socialist or anarchist, but when she does put across opinions, for the most part, they are pure reformism. she engages with the state, seeking to moderate capitalism and patriarchy, rather than to abolish and rebuild.

some people seem a bit shocked by butchers' position on universities. i think i might have been a few years ago. but i can totally see his point. university education doesn't do much for working class kids these days except land them with shitloads of debt and confuse them about their class position. it sucks up the very best for the elite to co-opt, and saddles the rest with useless degrees and debt. if i had my time again with the knowledge i have know, i'd not bother. but i did literature and philosophy so it was a fairly pointless activity encouraged more by me not wanting to go out to work but not having a better idea of what i could have done. now i realise that there are hundreds of things i could have done that would have been more useful that being semi-permanently stoned for four years.

 

[rekil]

Let's be clear: Oxford may be trying hard. But like other old, historically colonialist institutions of privilege, it is a racist place.

Not racist enough for you to leave, or decline the Oxford Union invite.

Who are we? People who are ambitious. People who expect to be in the top 10 to 1% of global society, either now or in a few years. People who are members of the Oxford Union or are invited to speak at the Oxford Union, or lucky enough to have been invited to speak at the Oxford Union

 

[butchersapron]

We are the 1%.

 

[rekil]

So lucky to study and get invited to speak at racist institutions.

 

[DaveCinzano]

So lucky to study and get invited to speak at racist institutions.

Like the climax of V For Vendetta only with everyone in Frank rather than Guy masks

 

[weepiper]

some people seem a bit shocked by butchers' position on universities. i think i might have been a few years ago. but i can totally see his point. university education doesn't do much for working class kids these days except land them with shitloads of debt and confuse them about their class position. it sucks up the very best for the elite to co-opt, and saddles the rest with useless degrees and debt. if i had my time again with the knowledge i have know, i'd not bother.

This is exactly how I feel about it tbh. I have a first-class degree from one of the 'good' universities and it's been 20% of fuck all use to me; I have only ever worked in a shop since graduating and I've just about managed to pay the interest off my student loans so I'm back at the level they were when I took them out 17 years ago. I won't be encouraging my kids to go.

 

[equationgirl]

I must admit, I'm in two minds about this. I couldn't have done what I do without a degree in engineering, however I do think I'd have been better served by doing an apprenticeship first. I'd think carefully about encouraging anyone going to uni straight out of school these days.

Thanks tories for fucking the education system up so much.

 

[Delroy Booth]

no, she's not that radical at all, which is what i meant. she might believe herself to be, she certainly positions herself that way, but she's not radical at all, she's a liberal. she might occasional suggest that a revolution would be nice, that she's a socialist or anarchist, but when she does put across opinions, for the most part, they are pure reformism. she engages with the state, seeking to moderate capitalism and patriarchy, rather than to abolish and rebuild.

some people seem a bit shocked by butchers' position on universities. i think i might have been a few years ago. but i can totally see his point. university education doesn't do much for working class kids these days except land them with shitloads of debt and confuse them about their class position. it sucks up the very best for the elite to co-opt, and saddles the rest with useless degrees and debt. if i had my time again with the knowledge i have know, i'd not bother. but i did literature and philosophy so it was a fairly pointless activity encouraged more by me not wanting to go out to work but not having a better idea of what i could have done. now i realise that there are hundreds of things i could have done that would have been more useful that being semi-permanently stoned for four years.

tbh I can fully see where he's coming from. Higher education is just a racket. I've got a degree and it's been not been much help to me either. It's strange because for a lot of students having a degree will do nothing to help them in the labour market at all but they still persist in applying and going. A degree functions a lot like a big class dividing line. It's almost like people just paying a certain amount just to be in the middle classes or to call themselves "educated" or whatever.

I had a feeling this would be the case when I applied for uni but I but I convinced myself that education for educations sake is a principle worth defending, and it's worth going just so you can learn about politics and so on, which is valuable in itself. Looking back the sad thing about this is I implicitly assumed that going to uni was the only way to actually learn that stuff, and that the very idea that you can do something else more practical and enjoyable and still have opportunity to engage in politics hadn't occurred to me.

My parents definitely played a part in this because they came from very marginalised backgrounds and got into uni in the 1970's and managed to wangle stable public sector jobs and a decent standard of living out of it. To them going to uni was big thing economically but it was also a something they took a lot of pride in, social mobility and all that. I could never quite get them to understand that a university education in my lifetime is vastly different to how they experienced things back in the day.

As a kid I just wanted to play rugby or be in a rock band, to invoke a bit of Laurie Penny I wanted to do music and PE for GCSE and my teachers just said straight up no, because I was half-decent academically. I'd have been much happier in a lot of ways if I had done that than going to uni.

 

[el-ahrairah]

that's part of it. for a while i was proud of going to uni, even a shit one, because no-one in my family had gone to uni before. my dad reckoned that an education would mean i didn't have to work on the trains like him and his father. heh, if i'd had the fucking self- discipline to do the trains i'd be laughing right now.

To them going to uni was big thing economically but it was also a something they took a lot of pride in, social mobility and all that.

 

[seventh bullet]

I find it sad that people (without realising that a lot of them are going to end up like me, anyway) can attach a status value to formal education. And it being a part of this aspiration towards/delusion of actually being 'middle class,' as el-ahrairah talked about earlier.

 

[equationgirl]

My parents were very aspirational about the whole uni thing, mostly because they'd had no opportunities, were from rural working class families and had virtually nothing. From a young age, around 10 or so, I can remember my mum saying 'you will go to university' as if that was the only avenue open to any of us. And to be honest, nobody ever said that there were other avenues open - and by the time I actually had to decide uni became my way of escaping anyway.

But the university education that was denied to my parents wasn't the university education I ended up with. I was the first in my family to go the university and my parents were justifiably proud of that. I'm really not sure I'd go now.