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Infinitives Unsplit – Yet More Frankly Unbelievable Education Crassness

Baby, you’ve come a long way since Laura Ingalls.

(You wanna know what’s funny? The word illiterate always makes me stop and read through it slowly thinking it’s wrong. It’s all the vertical lines. They just look wrong.)

Update (2.1):

Telegraph – Born in a Tory cradle, rocked by a nanny By Alice Thomson

Second item:

Bimbo branding is where it’s at: just ask Chantelle and Paris

You have to pity pushy parents. They spend years helping their children to achieve 10 A*s at GCSE and then Paris Hilton and Chantelle Travelodge (pictured) come along. Now it’s not just cool to be dumb, but a career choice with financial advantage. Paris, who will inherit £30 million from her parents’ hotel empire, doesn’t know that London is in Britain; Celebrity Big Brother’s Chantelle thought Dundee was next door to Swansea. But they’ll both make a fortune from bimbo branding.

They know that, to be taken seriously, you have to act naïve. While George Galloway’s political comments were bleeped out, Chantelle’s advice on hair extensions was seen as vital viewing. Jeremy Paxman led Newsnight on her success. The Guardian expended 15,687 words on the Essex blonde. Meanwhile, Hilton has been expertly increasing her assets with her own reality show – The Simple Life – raising another £10 million last year.

Even parents who only want their children to be happy now discover that their offspring’s memoirs are worth nothing unless they have suffered hardship. Equally dispiriting for perfect mothers and fathers is the thought that the Government is handing out £170 million a year in extra benefits to those with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or “naughty child/hopeless parent syndrome”. Instead of struggling to pay for tutors, parents would be better off teaching their children how to throw tantrums.

Schools aren’t helping, either. Your budding geniuses are no longer allowed to put up their hands if they know the answer, in case they are oppressing less knowledgeable children. And if your child does go to university to read physics, don’t let them marry another boffin. According to Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University (brother of Ali G, another brilliant exponent of dumbing down) scientists and mathematicians are more likely to produce autistic children. So get rid of the mini-scientist kits, throw out the fish oil tablets and buy your daughters some white cowboy boots, satin tutus and yellow eye shadow.

Actually it’s Asperger’s. And it’s surging among children in the Silicon Valley. Latter day goiter.