{"id":1267,"date":"2005-08-15T10:19:49","date_gmt":"2005-08-15T14:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2005-08-15T10:19:49","modified_gmt":"2005-08-15T14:19:49","slug":"lament-for-the-younger-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1267","title":{"rendered":"lament for the younger generation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.marlboroughcollege.org\/\">Marlborough<\/a> College is <a href=\"http:\/\/education.independent.co.uk\/news\/article305937.ece\">trying to expel<\/a> a boy merely for being thick and unpleasant. Perhaps you had to have been there to understand how absurd this is. It&#8217;s like being thrown out of Big Brother for being a shallow exhibitionist.<\/p>\n\n<p>This is a school which has been hated by any <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookrags.com\/biography-john-betjeman\/\">pupil<\/a> of any <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Louis_MacNeice\">intelligence<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bruce_Chatwin\">sensibility<\/a> for as long as it has existed. When I was there, the punishment for new boys thought clever was a kind of gang rape involving boot polish and sometimes sodomy with a broomstick. At the time, I would have welcomed, perhaps incredulously, any sign that the authorities thought <em>anyone<\/em> could be too stupid or too nasty for the school. Now I know better. If the school has shareholders, they should sue it at once for diluting its brand equity. Up until now, to be an Old Marlburian has made a very clear statement about a man &#8212; that he is at best a rather <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Geoffrey_Fisher\">pious evangelical<\/a> Christian, but very probably nastier, more fucked up or more stupid than even the average Anglican bishop. Should this change, no one will know what being an old Marlburian means, and the \ufffd22,000 a year that parents pay to brand their children will be entirely wasted.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marlborough College is trying to expel a boy merely for being thick and unpleasant. Perhaps you had to have been there to understand how absurd this is. It&#8217;s like being thrown out of Big Brother for being a shallow exhibitionist. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1267\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1267\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}