Diversity course at University of Kent

Excellent points, @Jaysmith71.

You couldn't get a degree in England without being a confirmed Anglican until 1826, when UCL, "The Godless Institution of Gower Street," as Matthew Arnold called it.

Would very much like to see the new Education Sec. indicate he will outlaw these quasi-religious tests that seek to threaten undergraduates with non-graduation if they do not swear fielty.

No wonder she looks so miserable, @EdmontinaDonsAutumnalHues!

[marks self irretrievably as a non-user of Style and Beauty]

The creators of the diversity course are, anyway, somewhat behind the times. It’s not second hand clothes but expensively distressed clothes that can be a marker of significant economic and social advantage.

This is from the latest Balenciaga catwalk.

I have a lot of sympathy with that point of view, @Igneococcus. I used to review personal statements for a postgraduate course as part of an old job. Some applicants took 'personal' very literally and told us quite inappropriate things. Almost all of them explained, not always convincingly, that they had had a passion for the subject since they were very young. It was noticeable that the more relevant professional and academic experience they had the less they wrote, as their CV spoke for itself.

Yes, it's on Student Room, and we did think some of them just didn't ring true. I suggested to submit a link to her Goodreads page (not in earnest0.
She's fine now (there were tears at some point), quite happy about her personal statement and is meeting with a teacher this week to talk it through and her teachers are on to the reference. She needs to submit by the 15th October and this is the last week of school before the October break.
When I applied to university I filled in a form and handed in my school certificate, same for dp in a different country again.

I don’t know about St Andrew’s but certainly in the universities I have worked at the admissions people won’t give a toss about your MP uncle, they want to make sure you have a genuine interest in the subject you are signing up to study for 3 years and have the basic literacy and logical reasoning skills to articulate your interest.

I don’t actually remember what I put in a personal statement. I remember having an interview and blarbing on and on about god knows what. Maybe they just offered me a place to stop me talking...

I didn't mean once they are at university Kittenkong I meant specifically in their personal statements.
I was a postdoc at St A for a few years but I think the staff and students in the natural sciences are fairly indistinguishable from those at science departments elsewhere. There was one undergraduate student who was dropped off for lectures in a car driven by a chauffeur, to the great amusement of everybody.

Well I grew up in AFN- Scotland and managed ok. I was so oblivious!

It wasn’t only until I was sitting in the union bar with classmates who went grouse shooting, to RAF balls, whose daddy had bought them (and each sibling) a flat, and whose mums had names like Arabella and Marianna, thought ‘hellooooooo...’

dd is in the process of applying to university (St A is on her list) and, to me as a non-British person who did all her education including tertiary elsewhere (dp as well), so much of the process feels designed to keep the plebs out. Those fecking personal statements, how is a kid growing up somewhere in rural Scotland like dd ever going to compete with the kid who mentions their MP uncle in line two of their statement (in one of the examples dd looked at) and their extensive travels or their gazillions of work experience placements. Lockdown for the last years of high school didn't help either. One is talking about their love of practicing with the English warbow . I absolutely hate all about it.

"Agreed. Think Dominic Cummings: a (white) man with power. He could afford to look scruffy and not follow the rules because he was already in a position of power."

This doesn't always scan though. Look at Boris: very privileged, very powerful, but there are constant disparaging remarks about his scruffy appearance. Same with Michael Foot and the mythic donkey jacket at the Cenotaph, also Corbyn got the same flack. Cherie Blair got a lot of stick for dressing badly.

It really depends on the audience.

And yes to packing.
Shame and guilt are not great motivators. It’s like someone’s trying to manufacture another health crisis to sell antidepressants.

And It’s again trying to put people in their place.

Would not be at all surprised to learn that the people behind this are well-off and privately edcuated types of various ethnicities doing what their class has always done to higher education, moulding it to the shape of their values to promote their social and economic hegemony just like Gramsci and Stuart Hall told it.

Such sanctimonious shit.

When I read the St Andrews material, the first thing I thought was that some of the ideas seemed dangerously close to infecting someone with distorted thinking, the very kind of distorted thinking that leads to significant mental health problems.

Take this, for example: "acknowledging your personal guilt is a useful start point in overcoming unconscious bias”.

We currently have an epidemic of mental health issues in this country. A decent proportion of that is down to people experiencing FOG (fear, obligation, guilt) over situations and relationships that they have no control over, where appropriate boundaries have dissolved.

Yet here we have a university telling students they should acknowledge "personal guilt". Over what? A crime they have committed? A person they have wronged?

No, over an unconscious bias they may hold, which is, by default, unconscious.

This shit is Kafkaesque/Stalinesque. Unconscious bias is portrayed as a social and moral thought crime, and they are asking students to denounce themselves to themselves and experience "personal guilt" over something that is not an actual crime nor may have affected anyone else.

It's like a new version of original sin, or Catholic guilt. The assumption here is that "you are a bad person, even if you didn't know it and treat people you meet well."

People spend thousands trying to rid themselves of these thoughts. They go to support groups, counselling, spend hours reading self-help books to try and eradicate these feeling of guilt and poor self worth.

And here is a university trying to fucking install it!

It's a travesty, this. It really is.

The Drag Queen's Tale
The Asylum Seeker's Tale
The Wife Of Mogadishu

What I also think, Highame, is that it is a form of etiquette to shut out the less privileged and allow them to be excluded. It’s no longer acceptable to sneer at the working class for using the wrong knife and fork but you can despise them for using the wrong language, which is even better. It’s no coincidence that the top private schools are embracing ‘social justice’ (the irony hurts).
That absurd thing about second hand clothes which assumes everyone taking the test is middle class could not be more blatant.

It's all a big fat con; a way for the wealthy to cash in on oppression and retain their cash; a way to divert attention from the selfishness and greed of those with and to imply that a white poor person has some sort of privilege and so the 'haves' can continue having.

Nicely done, I salute the privileged and educated for pulling the con trick of the century

Yes and cross, but need to defend our academics who are not responsible for this.

Thanks for the share token for today's Times article. She doesn't pull her punches, and nor should she.

Do you, nevertheless, feel a bit embarrassed, drwitch?