to say that England is anti-intellectual?

[ChickenLickn]

If you are bright enough to do a degree, you get treated worse than the unemployed - no income, but you dont get state support, you get DEBT.

And then you get taxed an extra 9% of your earnings for practically the rest of your life - even if you have below average earnings.

People then end up having to lie that they dont have qualifications in order to get jobs!

WTF?

and he was in a pop band, so its only cool to be clever if you were cool already. And even then its pretty geeky.

We do celebrate mediocrity, in fact we celebrate stupidity.

Brian Cox? The one who was in a band?

To be fair, I don't think the UK is a total intellectual desert - the BBC (esp radio) and channel4 do have some good stuff on them amid the crap. I certainly never heard anything like In Our Time on the radio when I lived in the US.

"and the one who's been trying to expand his mind (Joey Barton) is mercilessly teased and made fun of"

Yep it's his ridiculous 6th form philosophy attempts which make him the subject of ridicule. Not the juxtaposition of someone who has beaten up a team-mate, ( see also:put a cigar out on a youth team players eye, got in a fight with a 15 year old fan on a pre-season tour and spent time in prison for beating the crap out of someone while they were on the ground) trying to moralise and lecture others on what the ills of the world are.

Wales is quite good at making culture acccessible (though the wider arts are suffering certainly, DH's field is a technical aspect thereof)- on my school run I walk through an amphitheatre and past 2 museums, and only the private museum charges.

OTOH we come out really poorly in stats for access to life savoing drugs and treatments so it's not all positive.

(Have no idea who Joey Barton is btw- is that bad?)

Milsean D:Ream were a Onehitwonder 20 years ago, so I'm not sure whether that lends him any coolness.

Unless you mean that other astrophysicist, who was in Queen

Agree with the OP.
Also agree with Cereal who said
"You like trash culture and celeb gossip? You'll be reassuringly acceptable to many people. You like literature, art, classical music? You'll be thought of as "square" and a snob by many people"

It never used to be like this. So why has it changed?
I think it is political. I think it is the egalitarian, socialist mentality that is against elitism and is pro dumbing down. The egalitarians want to level everything down, dumb everything down so that all are equal. They don't want high-fliers. They don't want elite institutions because to them they are "unfair". They are anti competition, even anti competitive sports, because they are unfair to the losers. It is tall poppy syndrome where the egalitarians cut down people of high talent to stop them showing up the egalitarians.

It is a loser's mentality, based on a false egalitarian utopia. It will lead to decline, while the Asian countries reach for excellence, unencumbered by an egalitarian philosophy.

I didn't realise that Brian Cox was in D:Ream.
Weren't they the band responsible for 'Things Will Only Get Better', the song that the egalitarian Blairites played to us endlessly.

@claig: it's certainly been like that all of my life (35 years) - spent my childhood being bullied for being into books not tv and maths not sports.

Not read the entire thread but I have to say that the UK is not just anti-intellectual but anti-success.

If you've worked hard and become rich then people will claim you've only done it by exploiting others, dodging taxes or assume you were born into money and had it handed to you. You are then expected to keep handing over more and more of your money to the "poor".

If you've studied hard to get a degree then you are told that it's a waste of time/money because there are no jobs out there etc. Here's a big debt, enjoy paying it back.

Living in the Uk, it's sometimes feels like we're trying to race to the bottom. We're allowed to talk about how poor we all feel but to talk about how much money we have is considered poor form. Or to use MN terminology 'stealth boasting'.

In the US if someone is successful, others are happy for them and dream of one day being as lucky. In the Uk if you are successful people slag you off behind your back.

blonderedhead, you are right. It is pathetic and it is deliberate. It is done to hold ordinary people back, dampen their aspirations and stop them reaching for the stars.

If you watch TV programmes of young children at school in Africa, you see a thirst for knowledge and excellence. It is the same with the street children in India, who long to learn English on the temporary school buses set up by volunteers. But, here, things are different. It's cool to say "am I bovvered". It's done deliberately. We are bombarded by it on out TV screens. Shows like "Shameless" sell us the same limiting messages. It's drip drip and it works its way into the minds of the people, just as was always intended by the real elites and their egalitarian puppets.

Shows what I know about pop culture, I thought he was in Blur. On further research, I was picturing the one who makes cheese and hangs out with Cameron.

Here is an article about children being bullied for being clever and studious

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/bullied-boys-why-bright-lads-are-being-picked-on-1684266.html

"Tommy Stenton was a bright boy who lived through hell in his last year of primary school and his first year at secondary school. The reason was that he was quiet and studious, so the other children picked on him for showing them up."

It's tall poppy syndrome, trying to dumb down the brightest so that they don't show the jealous others up. But the kids doing the bullying have subconsciously picked up the message that it is OK to think like this from all the crap 'pop culture' and TV that they are subjected to. Instead of striving to do better, they pull others down. It is because of the negative messages that they have been fed.

They are only receiving the negative egalitarian dumbing down messages that society has fed them.

'Bullying the class "swot" has always been popular, but today's pupils say that the popularity of American high-school films, which often feature stereotypical boy geeks, has made it worse.'

The media is responsible for it, and in fact it is being done deliberately.

If you are bright enough to do a degree, you get treated worse than the unemployed

How do you define bright enough to do a degree? Bright enough to get D's and E's at A-Level and go to one of the worst uni's in the country? Bright often has nothing to do with it.

It would be rare to see a Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, etc student with a degree in law, medicine, accountancy, etc unemployed. So perhaps the difficulty is the govt encouraged far too many people to go to uni in the first place many of whom had less than average qualifications and did pointless degrees.

As for the learning for it's own sake argument: would you spend tens of thousands doing a degree for it's own sake where you would never get any financial reward or benefit from it. If it's learning for it's own sake, do it part time and fund it yourself without incurrring masses of debt.

claig - "It never used to be like this. So why has it changed?"

Yes it has. Always been like this. Difference being that there was a sort of deference to the 'posh' so the dislike of higher culture was more hidden. It's simply more acceptable to glory in your ignorance now.

i am 46 and can clearly remember being teased (very unpleasantly) for listening to classical music as a child. Even in my private girl's school.

one experience I had a very long time ago
I was working in a team and we were on a break having a coffee, during the course of normal conversation I said something '...and we were...) I was instantly mocked 'oooh the foreigner speaking posh'
just one example, not everyone like that but it gave me pause

And iirc there are letters from the Spanish ambassador to the court of HVIII saying how the English at court liked to eat and drink a great deal but weren't so keen on dancing or music. In other words we were uncultured swine even in the 15th century ....and amongst the top echelons of society

Nothing new.

We are a peasant mongrel lot by and large.

I loathe the argument that the problem is too many people going to university. Who do you think are those people coming out of Oxbridge into good jobs? They are the richer kids who benefitted from a good education. So your answer is to stop the poorer kids, the less than high achievers from going at all?

Seriously, the plan is to halt intellectual decline by having less and less people educated properly. Anyone spot a flaw here?

Intellectuals are BORING.

Don't get me wrong I like people with a good few braincells but too many = dull as shit.

I prefer people as they are thanks ;)

I don't get that knowledge is boring at all
I don't get that being interested in different subjects is boring
I don't get that being able to understand different concepts and wanting to discuss what you don't understand boring

You prefer people as they are...except clever people.

Perhaps its less that they are boring and more that you are bored (because you can't understand them)?

'claig - "It never used to be like this. So why has it changed?"

Yes it has. Always been like this. Difference being that there was a sort of deference to the 'posh' so the dislike of higher culture was more hidden. It's simply more acceptable to glory in your ignorance now.'

Yes, I agree with that. But the lack of deference has been encouraged and is all over our media. I bet it wasn't like that 100 years ago, and I bet it isn't like that in many countries today. It has got to the stage where even Fettes educated Tony Blair has to affect a mockney accent to pretend he is one of the peeps. But it is all a pretence, and it is against the interests of ordinary people to mock 'high culture' and intellectual pursuits, as if they are only the preserve of the elite.

What a ridiculous generalisation.

"Intellectuals are BORING."