ABSTRACT
I suspect that the way it is read now is not that we should aspire to a great deal of learning – to break the pain barrier of learning. But that we shouldn’t open the Pandora’s box of knowledge to many people at all. After all what good would it do them, or it wouldn’t do to give people ideas above their station! Much better, as the New Labour Department of Education does, to witter on about the pre-eminent educational values of vocational competence and individual self-esteem. It is the old reactionary trope that humankind cannot bear too much reality, but given a contemporary and more philistine spin.2
