...and tommy go to school

...'Orrible little think tankers.

Ex-servicemen and women should be retrained as teachers to bring military style discipline to tough inner city schools, a think tank has said.

The government is being urged to adopt a US-style programme returning former soldiers, sailors and airmen to school.

The Centre for Policy Studies says ex-soldiers could have a profound effect on discipline and learning.

via. Ha. My uncle was thirty years in the army (admittedly in the Army Education Corps), rising to major at retirement rank, then went off to teach in a not too bad school… where the kids made fucking mincemeat out of him. And that was back in the eighties

OK, so the actual soldiery is indifferently paid, badly housed – even badly fed at times - often shoddily equipped and sent off on monumental fools errands. You can do something about that or you can indulge in some bogus valorization of supposed military virtues, such flattery being cheaper than those uniforms, though they’re starvation cheap.

Personally, I can’t think of a softer, stupider, more indisciplined and featherbedded existence than think tank membership. I’m not saying that the quality of public thought would be greatly improved by having the entire staff of the Centre for Policy Studies cleaning latrines with toothbrushes for twelve hours a day over a couple of weeks, but somehow the thought cheers me up immensely.

Comments

[redpesto]

I do wonder whether politics and social science graduates ought to do a module called 'How to set up and run a think tank'. They couldn't do much worse than the ones that actually exist.

[ejh]

It's just another variant on "the proles are lazy and undisciplined and need a kick up the arse".

It scores high on the "saloon-bar solutions to all our problems" meter, though. Perhaps Nick Cohen will take it up?

[Rochenko]

Why don't they just draft the poor instead? Just think of all the 'potential' that could be 'unlocked'?

[jamie]

I think there's generally more interest in finding jobs for ex-servicemen than inundating a fighting army with hordes of kids who don't want to know.

Anyway, why stop at schools? what about general counterinsurgency? The Crumpsall tribal council has a nice ring to it, and I'm just about getting to the time of life where I'd be a credible elder and a river to my people, even unto the old biddy at number 47.

They'd have to dig me a well in the back garden, though.