Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Where are those £10 billion deals with our Saudi Friends? Will there be any trickle down? Child poverty in England

England Investing in education is investing in future generations. It is passivity, compliance, acquiescence, and more that make the English students and their parents accept the tuition fees. It is the mentality, and the ideology, of business.  It is about packaging and selling debt, hedge funds, etc. It is about creating a teacher-customer relationship. It is the most aggressive neoliberal capitalist economy in Europe. It is the myth of "we cannot afford scrapping tuitions fees" and "it is too costly for the state". It is the objective of reproducing compliant workforce that will think less and be at the service of the same ideological dogma. A Danish at an elite London university has told me how discussions in class are controlled and how they are much more open in Denmark, and how there is much less hierarchy. A better comparison would be a Germany, a country with a bigger population and woth no tuition fees. English and Danish tuition fees compa...

"Under the new, ‘improved’ system, if a college can demonstrate that its internal assessment systems are effective, it will only have to undergo a ‘light’ inspection. But the downside of this ‘light’ inspection is obvious – surveillance and monitoring are outsourced from OFSTED to the college and ultimately to lecturers themselves, and become a permanent feature of the college structure (and of the psychology of individual lecturers). The difference between the old/heavy and new/light inspection system corresponds precisely to Kafka’s distinction between ostensible acquittal and indefinite postponement, outlined above. With ostensible acquittal, you petition the lower court judges until they grant you a non-binding reprieve. You are then free from the court, until the time when your case is re-opened. Indefinite postponement, meanwhile, keeps your case at the lowest level of the court, but at the cost of an anxiety that has never ends. (The changes in OFSTED inspections are mirro...