Second of 8 weekly articles documenting bias in “The Cambridge Student”: Lent 2009 Issue 2.
This week it’s that old chestnut, anti-independent-school propaganda:
The front page was an article about a proposal at a Fabian Society Conference (not even an official policy of the Fabian Society) to cap the amount of privately educated students at University. The article was roughly balanced. But why was it newsworthy at all?
The editors editorialise: “It is outrageous that private schools are so disproportionately represented here; how is it fair that 7% of the nation’s school-children should comprise 44% of the students at Oxbridge?”
It’s fair because independent schools are currently produce better students, on average, than state schools. There is no evidence whatsoever that there is anything biased about Cambridge University’s admissions procedures.
To be fair, they appear to recognise this, rightly saying that “Imposing arbitrary limits on entrance to Oxbridge makes a mockery of the ideas of fairness, equality and meritocracy.” But then they proclaim that “the problem lies as much with the state school system as with Cambridge.” No it doesn’t. It doesn’t lie with Cambridge at all. It lies entirely with the state school system.
The article itself mostly quoted sensible commentators. One student said “Cambridge should be accepting the best students, period.” David Aaronvitch said, “I think it’s quite possible that there is an over-representation, let’s say, of Jewish people in higher education institutions. Could we have a situation where we have a cap for them?”
These quotations and others demolish the arguments for a cap. So why was it newsworthy at all? It wasn’t. But the long term strategy of the left is to keep the ideas of penalising or abolishing independent schools in the media. If they can make it look like there two sides to the argument, and keep the argument from naturally dying out, eventually those ideas will succeed.
Has anyone noticed bias in reports of rugby matches between Jesus and St John’s? Last year most of an article was devoted to praising Jesus, only to note with sadness that they lost significantly. Same this year. St John’s is described as a “motley crew of neanderthal forwards”.
Also: TCS is well-known for using the word “refute” when it means “repudiate”. This week, they used “whiskey” when they meant “whisky”.
[...] blogged TCS’ curious dislike of St John’s College before. The following quotations are unlike anything else in the article [...]