For anybody who doesn’t already know, Toby Young has been appointed to university regulatory body the Office for Students. This being the ‘Office for Students’ that apparently lacks any representatives who are university staff or students.
The OfS is instead described as;
A group of business executives who are to help head the government’s drive to apply market forces to higher education in England.
Young’s appointment has been widely derided, especially on social media. To put it mildly, there are many who don’t view him as a safe pair of hands. There are a huge number of reasons why they might believe so.
Young’s Disgusting Views On Disabled Children
Young isn’t exactly fond of expanding the curriculum in schools or making adjustments to make education inclusive to the disabled.
At least he wasn’t when he wrote this article which described disabled children as ‘functionally illiterate troglodyte(s)’;
Inclusive. It’s one of those ghastly, politically correct words that have survived the demise of New Labour. Schools have got to be “inclusive” these days. That means wheelchair ramps, the complete works of Alice Walker in the school library (though no Mark Twain) and a Special Educational Needs Department that can cope with everything from Dyslexia to Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. If Gove is serious about wanting to bring back O-levels the government will have to repeal the Equality Act because any exam that isn’t “accessible” to a functionally illiterate troglodyte with a mental age of six will be judged to be “elitist” and therefore forbidden by Harman’s Law.
Charming, implying that an impaired body is likely to possess an impaired mind. Which is probably news to the likes of Stephen Hawking. Young doesn’t seem all that fond of the disabled generally, come to think of it.
The West London Free School
Young, a noted right-wing writer, broadcaster and media figure, isn’t widely seen as an educational genius. For someone appointed to a regulatory body he doesn’t seem particularly even-handed, either. His involvement in the West London Free School has also drawn strong criticism.
The West London Free School, from which Young later stepped down, recently appointed its fourth ‘permanent’ head-teacher, Sarah Wagner. Ms Wagner is in fact the FOURTH ‘permanent’ head-teacher in the six years the school has been open. Its OFSTED reports have, overall, been good, but this isn’t the whole story. Far from it.
Young the Eugenicist
Whether his personal and political leanings are entirely right to be regulating education is also open to debate. For instance, his fondness for ‘progressive eugenics.’
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, eugenics is;
The selection of desired heritable characteristics in order to improve future generations, typically in reference to humans.
Once a popular idea, eugenics is now widely regarded as pseudo-science. Trying to genetically improve humans like racehorses, cattle or plants by breeding out those deemed weakest has long been in disfavour. Especially after the Nazis adopted eugenicist ideas as part of their justification for breeding a master race.
Class Warrior
His views on class in the classroom aren’t exactly pleasant, either. His 1988 book The Oxford Myth referred to working-class students as ‘stains’ and included the following;
Small, vaguely deformed undergraduates would scuttle across the quad as if carrying mobile homes on their backs. Replete with acne and anoraks, they would peer up through thick pebble glasses, pausing only to blow their noses.
A (selective) champion of free speech.
While professing a fondness for free speech on campus, Young isn’t exactly fond of the wrong kind of free speech. Especially not left-wing or otherwise non-Young approved free speech. In 2011 he lambasted one school for celebrating LGBT History Month.
In the world according to Toby Young, those dreaded Reds under the bed are at it again, subverting our education system with their dark Communist ways for evil purposes. Momentum, a left-wing group with a strong following among students, were recently compared by Young to literal fascists Britain First.
Yes, despite all of this information being freely available, the Tories really have just appointed this provably despicable man to oversee the education of our kids.
A decision which tells you just about all you need to know about the state of our current government.
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