Sunday 4 September 2011

Toby Young - Teenage Time Traveller

How could I not be drawn to Anthony Seldon's Guardian CiF post, "Toby Young has a point"? To find out what point Toby has, I went straight to the page. And I quote.
 "When the hapless Young arrived at Oxford from his northern grammar school, he was bowled over by the likes of Boris and David Cameron. They may not have had better A Levels than him, nor been smarter academically than their state school colleagues: but they had an assurance that contemporaries from humbler backgrounds altogether lacked."
When young Toby arrived at Oxford he dedicated himself to wandering around in a moody kind of way, wearing a lot of black and making his way in the student press scene. It's highly unlikely he was bowled over by David Cameron, whose Oxford career did not even begin until two years later. Unless of course Toby  invented the Time Machine, and I've an idea he studied English or PPE or something else arty with no research into time travel involved. I've no idea whether Toby Young's free school is a good idea or not, though of course I hope that he succeeds if his aim is to improve education. But depicting him as some kind of class warrior seems unlikely in the extreme.

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