THE PAST BEST LEFT UNEXAMINED : The news that Sheffield University Archaeology Department is the first to close as a result of the Tory government’s funding cuts to universities has the champagne corks hitting the ceiling at the Department of Education.
It’s long been recognised that the greatest contemporary threat to the kind of Britain Boris Johnson and chums want to create lies in the past. More specifically “learning from the past”. Near or far. Happily in Mr Williamson the PM has a willing foot soldier in the war against understanding, because “he understands nothing”.
The surface reasons given for the closure are government pressure to cut costs as a result of Tory changes to the way higher education is funded. Additionally there is pressure to cut student numbers to lower unpaid student debt levels, which is also the fault of Tory changes to the way universities are funded. But the big prize is not spending less money educating our nation’s children, but in what they will never learn.
“The girly swots did it to themselves,” a source inside the Department for Education told LCD Views. “Can you imagine the shock inside the Conservative Party when it was announced that in all probability Cheddar Man wasn’t white? The first Englishman wasn’t white? That’s a completely unacceptable discovery. So too the discoveries across Europe that ancient Europeans were generally a lot darker than we thought. Throwing in a pair of blue eyes is not sufficient to compensate for the trauma felt within the party ranks.”
It’s hoped the closure at Sheffield of a department ranked 12th in the world will show other universities which way they need to travel.
“Hopefully we can completely abolish the humanities, arts, useless sciences like archaeology and have universities which are solely focused on raising rents from students. That’s the ultimate aim.”