The state of education

Adam Ramsay is the President of Edinburgh University Students' Association. He has an article in today's Scotsman although it's behind the subscription wall. However, I have the dead tree version.

Mr Ramsay is complaining about cuts in language teaching at Strathclyde and Edinburgh.

He writes:

For 30 years, we have sheltered under the umbrella of speaking the same language as the world's only super power. We have based our economy on an American model of deregulation. We depended on the idea that everyone else would speak English.

What's that about deregulation? How many of Mr Ramsay's fellow students know that a certain George W Bush increased regulation?

Under Bush, the regulators have added more pages of rules than any administration ever. The cost of regulation has gone up more under Bush than any president before. And yet, because of the bad media coverage and assumptions about Republicans, people think it was laissez-faire.

So let's get it straight: we in the Anglosphere have been getting more regulations on business, not less.

Then Mr Ramsay suggests that China will become the next dominant economic power. He may well be correct - if, that is, China continues with its recent policies of deregulation. If future Scots have to learn Chinese it will because we over here will have abandoned economic freedom, not because we have embraced it.

Then Mr Ramsay tells us not to "cut spending" or else we wont be able to "kick-start our economy". "Our" economy, Mr Ramsay? Speak for yourself Comrade Keynes. My economy is being devastated by having to pay for an out-of-control public sector, including education. This public sector largesse has bankrupted the country. We either stop it now with massive cutbacks or our creditors will impose even larger cuts on us. It is deeply depressing to think that today's student leaders are utterly unconnected with economic reality. When insolvency strikes, it won't matter what languages we speak.