[HN Gopher] Sad Little Men: Assessing the impact of an elite edu...
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       Sad Little Men: Assessing the impact of an elite education
        
       Author : jkuria
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2021-08-27 20:12 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
        
       | neonate wrote:
       | https://archive.is/XXQKO
        
       | tharne wrote:
       | The Economist used to be a very independent-minded publication.
       | It's sad to see them chasing the same clickbait trend-chasing
       | garbage that you see on most second-rate news sites.
        
         | jjulius wrote:
         | This is a book review, and the title of this post is the title
         | of the book. Did you stop there, not read the article and make
         | a gigantically incorrect assumption, or are you willing to
         | explain how this is clickbait?
        
           | nomy99 wrote:
           | Is the book review not behind the paywall?
        
             | jjulius wrote:
             | I did not have a paywall.
        
               | nomy99 wrote:
               | I did.
        
               | jjulius wrote:
               | Are you suggesting that that makes it clickbait?
               | 
               | Again, the headline that appears on HN is _not_ the title
               | of the article as it appears on The Economist 's site. On
               | the website, it is "Britain's private schools are
               | lambasted in Richard Beard's book". The user who
               | submitted this to HN chose to submit this with the book
               | title as the headline.
               | 
               | There's usually a layer of deception or over-
               | sensationalism of some kind involved in order for it to
               | be clickabit, and simply being behind a paywall doesn't
               | qualify as clickbait. My point is that The Economist is
               | not guilty of that in this instance, and OP is incorrect
               | to blame them for as much.
        
       | oenetan wrote:
       | https://ghostarchive.org/archive/cYwup
       | 
       | https://archive.is/XXQKO
        
         | casefields wrote:
         | Why are you spending so much time advertising your Ghost
         | Archive when you've disabled it?
         | 
         | >Archiving webpages are temporarily disabled.
        
           | oenetan wrote:
           | That's a question for the owner, which is not me.
           | 
           | It was enabled before and he let me keep using it for HN
           | purposes when he had to disable it.
        
       | 123pie123 wrote:
       | I've heard the author give a really interesting interview on
       | radio 4 about his book - I've not read it though
       | 
       | but i find it equally frustrating and fascinating as a person
       | with a northern accent from an extremely working class
       | background. watching, listening and interacting with various
       | people from many backgrounds. i don't hate or dislike people who
       | have been to public schools - in fact after many drunken nights
       | out talking people who have been in them, i often pity them
       | 
       | (based on my experience) the class system is not only alive in
       | the UK, it's still massively thriving. Including a massive amount
       | of stereotyping - not sure if this is higher or lower in the uk,
       | but it seems to rule some peoples lives here (often people who
       | percieve themselves as superior)
       | 
       | <I've deleted much ranting here - yes I've been drinking>
       | 
       | but tl;dr I think unless the uk (or any country for that matter)
       | wants to progress as a nation - public schools should be
       | outlawed. they're made/ designed (with the class system) to allow
       | rich people to give their offspring highly paid influential jobs
       | no matter what their ability is - at the expense of the nation as
       | a whole.
       | 
       | edit: I expect to get downvoted by varous people for saying this
       | - please give a reply instead of just down voting
        
       | johnNumen wrote:
       | Here is Orwell's essay about his time at a public school, "Such,
       | Such Were the Joys." I, an American, had had a romantic view of
       | these schools for years, after reading Harry Potter as a
       | youngster. Reading this essay disabused me of my enchanted castle
       | imaginings. It also speaks more generally of the cruelty of the
       | old ways of thinking about children and sexuality.
       | 
       | https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/e_joys
        
       | kazinator wrote:
       | > _This argument is far from original; lambasting public schools
       | for tormenting their inmates and ruining the country is one of
       | Britain's oldest traditions._
       | 
       | Pink Floyd's _The Wall_ , anyone?
       | 
       | > _The author also makes good use of his own [1970 's] memories
       | at Radley College. The school was trapped in the past, both the
       | 1940s and 1950s--playground games were an endless fight against
       | the Germans_
       | 
       | No different from 1970's Czechoslovakia playgrounds.
       | 
       | We're talking only 30 years after a big, devastating war; it held
       | a lot of cultural influence.
       | 
       | If we look at television and film related to WWII:
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_films_and_TV_speci...
       | 
       | still plenty of action into the 2000's.
        
       | anm89 wrote:
       | Good to see that the economist has gone full click bait. Is an ad
       | hominem really the best title they could muster?
        
         | jldugger wrote:
         | > This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the
         | print edition under the headline "Noblesse disoblige"
        
         | ryanmetz wrote:
         | It's a book review of a book by that title.
        
       | glaucon wrote:
       | >In England and Wales private schools are confusingly known as
       | "public schools"
       | 
       | This is is flat out wrong and I'm amazed to see it written in a
       | British publication.
       | 
       | There are plenty of definitions of what a "public school" is but
       | I've never previously heard of anyone suggesting that it's just a
       | private school.
       | 
       | I'm not going to get into how you define a public school but most
       | people would agree these are : Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Rugby,
       | Shrewsbury, Westminster and Winchester and that while there might
       | be one or two other contenders there certainly aren't many. Just
       | to be clear there are many hundreds of private schools in the UK
       | beside these few.
       | 
       | If you're interested to know more the wikipedia page for Public
       | Schools
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
       | gives the background, in particular the passage relating to the
       | Clarendon Commission.
        
       | luxpir wrote:
       | I'd honestly be more interested to hear about the issue proposed
       | at the end of the article.
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-27 23:02 UTC)