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Eton College exam question asks students to justify the Army killing protesters

43 points by BerislavLopac 7y ago

mytailorisrich 7y ago
This is an interesting question (quoted in full in the article) for an exam because it forces you to face a difficult issue outside of your comfort zone. In addition, let's face it and rightly or wrongly, Eton educates many of the future elite (CEOs and Cabinet Ministers) who will have to carry out this sort of task during their professional life, both in terms of making hard choices and in terms of taking responsibility for them and explaining them, even if hopefully in less extreme circumstances. It would be interesting to have Eton explain what they are seeking in a 'good' answer. If anything this 'outrage' about the question highlights the issues with social media, not Eton.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  To be perfectly frank it is the perfect illustration to why they are such failures of leadership. The policy is foregone lethal force in response to those suffering from their own failures with no consideration of alternatives, only ass covering. The people who are supposed to be making decisions aren't. The situation could make a good uncomfortable ethical scenario question or a nuanced issue but this isn't it. It is the context which makes it especially odious - a defense attorney position question would have done the same thing and emphasized fair handed protectionism without the brainwashy aspects - noting that deliberate failure to provide a proper defense to the best of their ability because of a dislike of the accused would risk rights and ironically could get them off.
- xn1727 7y ago
  Found the weasel.
- farrelmahaztra 7y ago
  Right. I don't understand why you were downvoted. I don't think Eton College was trying to imply that such a brutal intervention was moral or even necessary, but they simply wanted to test a student's ability to argue and reason that it was despite how difficult and internally conflicting such a stance would be to most people. The difficulty was the point, no? They could've chosen a less controversial prompt, I suppose, but why not this one? What difficult stances are not controversial?
  - wbronitsky 7y ago
    I think it is pertinent to highlight that this question was posed to 13 and 14 year olds. I don’t think anyone at that age can properly address this question.
    - farrelmahaztra 7y ago
      I mostly agree, but wasn't this part of acceptance into a scholarship program? I'd imagine they want to see aptitude beyond their age.
      - wbronitsky 7y ago
        There are many ways to try and measure the aptitude of a 13 year old without putting the idea of supporting state sponsored murder into their heads and forcing them to defend it. I would argue that the possible damage done to a person at a very impressionable age by asking them to justify murder outweighs the vetting process for a scholarship.
    - lucozade 7y ago
      > I don’t think anyone at that age can properly address this question I guess it depends on what you mean by "properly" but there's absolutely no reason why a reasonably well educated child of that age shouldn't be able to both understand the nature of the question and make a decent stab at an answer.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      If the Eton cadet force is like the one at my private school, that age is also when they start training you in the use of an actual rifle ... (heavily locked down on a range, but you're definitely primed to support the military in this context!)
- aguyfromnb 7y ago
  >In addition, let's face it and right or wrong, Eton educates many of the future elite (CEOs and Cabinet Ministers) who will have to carry out this sort of task during their professional life Exactly. People are upset about the question, yet every day, all around the planet, normal people and politicians are forced to make such decisions. Isn't it best to have considered it before the heat of the moment?
- Xophmeister 7y ago
  I was originally thinking along the same lines; this question is quite interesting, to see what kind of response it might elicit. However, after quickly mulling it over, the really objectionable part is that it presupposes that sending in the military is a good idea. Something that an impressionable, albeit privileged, 13-year-old may take to heart. It could be turned into a good question quite easily: ask how you might deal with the situation, before you get to the nuclear option, and then how/if you could justify it morally.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    The scenario of the question depicts extreme circumstances. It does not imply that sending the military is a good idea to deal with any protest.
    - Xophmeister 7y ago
      Sure, it doesn't imply using military force in any protest is justifiable. However, presuming the PM commands the army, then it's his decision -- and the context thereof -- that needs to be justified. It does imply that, in this instance, using the army was the right thing to do.
  - larnmar 7y ago
    The question doesn’t presuppose that sending in the Army was the right thing.
    - Xophmeister 7y ago
      You're the PM; the army's been sent in, at your command; now you have to justify your decision. Thus it presupposes it was the "right thing" in the PM's context.
      - lucozade 7y ago
        It doesn't presuppose that the killing is right. It's asking the child to formulate a speech as if they were a PM justifying it. Understanding how public figures use language to justify their actions is a very useful skill. Being able to use language persuasively is also a very useful skill. And it's common practice in these types of exercise to use either scenarios that are difficult to argue or to argue both sides.
leftyted 7y ago
The full question, from the article: > The year is 2040. There have been riots in the streets of London after Britain has run out of petrol because of an oil crisis in the Middle East. Protesters have attacked public buildings. Several policemen have died. Consequently, the Government has deployed the Army to curb the protests. After two days the protests have been stopped but twenty-five protesters have been killed by the Army. > You are the Prime Minister. Write the script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation in which you explain why employing the Army against violent protesters was the only option available to you and one which was both necessary and moral. If there are "violent protesters" or "rioters" who have "damaged public buildings" and, as a result of the riots, "several policemen have died," the government has some cause to use force. The line between legitimate violent upheaval and illegitimate violent upheaval is blurry. I don't see anythig wrong with the question.
- arethuza 7y ago
  "I don't see anythig wrong with the question." I think many would see it as rather tasteless given fairly recent UK history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)
  - larnmar 7y ago
    Taste is a middle class concern. If you want your kids to be middle class drones obsessed with not offending anyone then you can send them to another school. That’s not what Eton is about.
    - esotericn 7y ago
      Not sure why you're being downvoted here; I think it's a fairly important distinction to make. Different social classes operate differently.
      - merpnderp 7y ago
        Citation needed. Because in the US it’s considered some straight up age old bullshit that being rich makes you some kind of high minded philosopher smarter than the joe.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
SilasX 7y ago
>The prospective students of Eton are then asked to imagine they are the prime minister and write a speech to explain how they would convince the public that they did the right thing. If they disagree ... isn't that kinda the point? Eton's like, the future-PM factory, right? Do they honestly expect they're never going to have to give a speech defending something they disagreed with, or at least, had strong reservations about? (And, as others noted, it's not fair to call this killing "protesters", but rather, "rioters".)
- pjc50 7y ago
  > Do they honestly expect they're never going to have to give a speech defending something they disagreed with, or at least, had strong reservations about? This is .. low-integrity behaviour, though? It used to be part of the operation of both ministerial and cabinet collective responsibility that ministers had a responsibility to agree or resign. The gold standard of this was Claire Short, who resigned rather than support the Iraq war: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1429856/Clare-Short-quits-Cabinet.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1429856/Clare-Short-quits-C... Arguably the erosion of this has led us to the crisis of the present day.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  Maybe electing trained liars isn't a good idea.
paggle 7y ago
Of course PC principal can’t stand for this but being able to argue any issue from any point of view is considered to be a hallmark of the well educated by people who have been in the education business for centuries. In 9th grade my history teacher routinely randomly assigned us to write one of two positions on the same issue (capital punishment is unjust, etc). Much of the present state of modern electoral politics can be traced to a widespread inability or unwillingness to understand the people who disagree with you.
- farrelmahaztra 7y ago
  As part of the debate team in high school, I had to do the same thing (prepare for both sides). I think it is an excellent exercise in critical thinking, even if you wholly disagree with what you're arguing for. Sometimes it even led me to find points I never thought of in the opposing side that I agreed with.
  - paggle 7y ago
    And, then you have time to prepare rebuttals to these points.
- protomyth 7y ago
  I've been told by multiple people I respect variations of "If you cannot argue the other side's argument in good faith and well, then you really don't know what you believe yourself". I do fail in this with some of the extremes. I just cannot figure out the why of the "flat earth" thing since I don't understand who "profits" in some way from a cover-up.
  - paggle 7y ago
    Isn’t the “flat earth” thing a bunch of talented trolls who captured an army of gullible idiots? I can understand why there is a population of people so willing to believe government conspiracy theories — the government has perpetrated so many sociopathic conspiracies from Tuskegee to Mossadegh to PRISM that it’s proven willing to commit arbitrary amounts of evil. With an entity like that it’s not too hard to convince someone that they’re lying about something small like the Flat Earth.
ksdale 7y ago
I think this sort of exercise would be beneficial for everyone to do. Even the most benign government policies are enforced by the police and the military. I'm continually surprised at how often people offhandedly suggest that the government should do this or that, without even considering whether they would be personally willing to throw someone in prison for not going along, let alone if they would be willing to do violence to the person who refuses to go to prison. How many of our pet policies are we willing to do violence for, when push comes to shove? Imagining the worst possible outcome and arguing that it's worth the price is a valuable exercise, and I think a lot of people would find it's not worth the price as often as intuition suggests, it's just not always as obvious as killing protesters.
- AlexB138 7y ago
  Indeed. This is a thought experiment libertarians often suggest. Just substitute "The government should ..." with "We should send men with guns to people's homes in order to ...". A bit hyperbolic maybe, but a useful lens.
  - dkarl 7y ago
    I agree that we should keep in mind that violence underlies everything the government does, but I don't think we should act as if the violence is always realized. For example, we don't let a chemical plant emit more than a limited amount of certain toxic chemicals into the air. How does this "not letting" happen? The company operating the plant is careful to stay within legal limits because it does not want to be fined. It does not want to be fined, because if it does not pay, the financial institutions it does business with will freeze its accounts on order of the government. The financial institutions will freeze the accounts because their officers do not want to commit a crime by failing to do so. The officers do not want to commit a crime because they don't want to go to prison, and if they refuse to go to prison willingly, men with guns will take them there. I'm just guessing at the exact chain of enforcement, but I think we both agree, ultimately it comes down to the state's capacity for violence. However, that doesn't mean that when we pass environmental regulations we should envision people being dragged from their homes screaming in the middle of the night at gunpoint while their children soil themselves and are traumatized for life. We should envision what actually happens: companies keeping their emissions within legal limits and paying fines when they fail to do so. We should think about the reality of what enforcement will actually look like, not imagine the bank officers in solitary confinement for struggling with prison guards and their children in therapy for PTSD. I agree that we should keep that stuff in mind when that's the reality of enforcement. Drug laws, for example, do result in a lot of young kids seeing their parents and siblings dragged out of their homes at gunpoint. But I think it's a misleading image when talking about most government uses of power.
IceCreamGondola 7y ago
Making a mountain out of a molehill. As others have said, the further up the chain you go the harder the decision you have to make. The wording of the question is careful to avoid the outrage that people are stirring up. If you believed the narrative people are pushing on Twitter you would think Eton are training young people to commit atrocities and get away with it. It's pathetic and it's tiring. Side note: How awful is the design of the https://www.indy100.com https://www.indy100.com website?
- dehrmann 7y ago
  And it's not like the rubric was also posted. Maybe a speech sarcastically praising Tiananmen Square and Kent State would do well.
  - IceCreamGondola 7y ago
    Exactly, this type of question is to appraise the student's critical thinking and how well they can defend an action. Not an assessment of morality. It reminds me of Religious Education GCSE exams where they give a statement such as (from my GCSE): "Women should be allowed in front-line roles in the army. State your opinion and explain why." They weren't looking for a "right" answer but were assessing critical thinking and the ability to defend your belief.
    - shantly 7y ago
      Given the setting 20 years in the future and the situation provided, and the task the students were asked to perform, it's entirely possible they'd at least tolerate, if not reward, some reasonable and restrained invention of future events and situations on the part of the students. Not creating some full-on sci fi world or whatever (though hell, depending on the reviewer and the quality of the work, maybe) but some plausible light world-building to support the speech. On something like this the speculative component is rarely strictly limited to the question asker, within the bounds of taste, reason, and necessity. [EDIT] which is to say I wouldn't bet that writing the answer from a point of view even more abhorrent than the student may already find the lower bound for the situation would disqualify the student, and, done well, it might help them stand out from the ones who write theirs straight and conservatively. Cribbing patterns of argument from various tyrants and autocrats might be entirely appropriate, even if intended as an implicit indictment of this hypothetical future-UK government.
pjc50 7y ago
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eton_Rifles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eton_Rifles
petermcneeley 7y ago
Paraphrase: Write a justification for the use of extreme physical violence against your own population to preserve the current established order. This assignment will be used to determine where you sit in this order.
gatherhunterer 7y ago
This is an educational exercise and the article is pure pearl-clutching. Being assigned a point to argue is how schools teach students to argue with research and reason rather than emotion and bias. As an aside, this site has awful responsive design, with buttons and ads covering the content. Everything about the page reeks of clickbait.
ZeroGravitas 7y ago
Could be worse. You want to sell out your country to foreign business interests. To convince the poor who will be hardest hit you'll need to demonise refugees, immigrants and any other minorities necessary until you get the 1/3rd of the vote necessary to give you complete control of parliament. Write a speech that makes your elderly voter base frightened of the other, but do so in a way that makes you seem like a jovial and inoffensive bumbler to them, and yet somehow convinces them that human rights, renewable energy and climate change are ominous hoaxes intended to steal their country from them by dangerous extremists.
spodek 7y ago
If you have a problem with this question you have a problem with John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, which has stood the test of time for a reason, and I propose such people look up Heterodox Academy https://heterodoxacademy.org https://heterodoxacademy.org, started by Jonathan Haidt among others. They released the relevant parts of On Liberty I recommend https://heterodoxacademy.org/mill https://heterodoxacademy.org/mill. Without diversity in viewpoint, you don't know what you know or not, and when you face someone with an opposing viewpoint, you find yourself impotent and confused. They will likely beat you in debate and influence others more effectively. Your emotions may become intense, undermining your ability to bring others to see your view. Challenging your own ideas teaches you and strengthens you.
mopsi 7y ago
Link to the paper: https://www.etoncollege.com/userfiles/files/KS%202011%20General%20Paper%201.pdf https://www.etoncollege.com/userfiles/files/KS%202011%20Gene... The question should be viewed in context. There's an excerpt from Machiavelli on cruelty in politics and then the test subject has to answer three questions: (a) summarize the argument, (b) form an opinion of the argument, (c) use the argument in a practical situation. These questions are clearly ordered by increasing complexity and test the ability to (a) understand, (b) evaluate, and (c) use an argument. It's intellectually dishonest to take the question out of context. The point of the question is to adapt an argument, not to justify violence. 2010 paper has a similar question. It asks the test subject to adapt Thamus's argument to express concerns about the invention of computer technology.

43 points by BerislavLopac 7y ago

This is an interesting question (quoted in full in the article) for an exam because it forces you to face a difficult issue outside of your comfort zone. In addition, let's face it and rightly or wrongly, Eton educates many of the future elite (CEOs and Cabinet Ministers) who will have to carry out this sort of task during their professional life, both in terms of making hard choices and in terms of taking responsibility for them and explaining them, even if hopefully in less extreme circumstances. It would be interesting to have Eton explain what they are seeking in a 'good' answer. If anything this 'outrage' about the question highlights the issues with social media, not Eton.

Nasrudith 7y ago
To be perfectly frank it is the perfect illustration to why they are such failures of leadership. The policy is foregone lethal force in response to those suffering from their own failures with no consideration of alternatives, only ass covering. The people who are supposed to be making decisions aren't. The situation could make a good uncomfortable ethical scenario question or a nuanced issue but this isn't it. It is the context which makes it especially odious - a defense attorney position question would have done the same thing and emphasized fair handed protectionism without the brainwashy aspects - noting that deliberate failure to provide a proper defense to the best of their ability because of a dislike of the accused would risk rights and ironically could get them off.
xn1727 7y ago
Found the weasel.
farrelmahaztra 7y ago
Right. I don't understand why you were downvoted. I don't think Eton College was trying to imply that such a brutal intervention was moral or even necessary, but they simply wanted to test a student's ability to argue and reason that it was despite how difficult and internally conflicting such a stance would be to most people. The difficulty was the point, no? They could've chosen a less controversial prompt, I suppose, but why not this one? What difficult stances are not controversial?
- wbronitsky 7y ago
  I think it is pertinent to highlight that this question was posed to 13 and 14 year olds. I don’t think anyone at that age can properly address this question.
  - farrelmahaztra 7y ago
    I mostly agree, but wasn't this part of acceptance into a scholarship program? I'd imagine they want to see aptitude beyond their age.
    - wbronitsky 7y ago
      There are many ways to try and measure the aptitude of a 13 year old without putting the idea of supporting state sponsored murder into their heads and forcing them to defend it. I would argue that the possible damage done to a person at a very impressionable age by asking them to justify murder outweighs the vetting process for a scholarship.
  - lucozade 7y ago
    > I don’t think anyone at that age can properly address this question I guess it depends on what you mean by "properly" but there's absolutely no reason why a reasonably well educated child of that age shouldn't be able to both understand the nature of the question and make a decent stab at an answer.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    If the Eton cadet force is like the one at my private school, that age is also when they start training you in the use of an actual rifle ... (heavily locked down on a range, but you're definitely primed to support the military in this context!)
aguyfromnb 7y ago
>In addition, let's face it and right or wrong, Eton educates many of the future elite (CEOs and Cabinet Ministers) who will have to carry out this sort of task during their professional life Exactly. People are upset about the question, yet every day, all around the planet, normal people and politicians are forced to make such decisions. Isn't it best to have considered it before the heat of the moment?
Xophmeister 7y ago
I was originally thinking along the same lines; this question is quite interesting, to see what kind of response it might elicit. However, after quickly mulling it over, the really objectionable part is that it presupposes that sending in the military is a good idea. Something that an impressionable, albeit privileged, 13-year-old may take to heart. It could be turned into a good question quite easily: ask how you might deal with the situation, before you get to the nuclear option, and then how/if you could justify it morally.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  The scenario of the question depicts extreme circumstances. It does not imply that sending the military is a good idea to deal with any protest.
  - Xophmeister 7y ago
    Sure, it doesn't imply using military force in any protest is justifiable. However, presuming the PM commands the army, then it's his decision -- and the context thereof -- that needs to be justified. It does imply that, in this instance, using the army was the right thing to do.
- larnmar 7y ago
  The question doesn’t presuppose that sending in the Army was the right thing.
  - Xophmeister 7y ago
    You're the PM; the army's been sent in, at your command; now you have to justify your decision. Thus it presupposes it was the "right thing" in the PM's context.
    - lucozade 7y ago
      It doesn't presuppose that the killing is right. It's asking the child to formulate a speech as if they were a PM justifying it. Understanding how public figures use language to justify their actions is a very useful skill. Being able to use language persuasively is also a very useful skill. And it's common practice in these types of exercise to use either scenarios that are difficult to argue or to argue both sides.

leftyted 7y ago

The full question, from the article: > The year is 2040. There have been riots in the streets of London after Britain has run out of petrol because of an oil crisis in the Middle East. Protesters have attacked public buildings. Several policemen have died. Consequently, the Government has deployed the Army to curb the protests. After two days the protests have been stopped but twenty-five protesters have been killed by the Army. > You are the Prime Minister. Write the script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation in which you explain why employing the Army against violent protesters was the only option available to you and one which was both necessary and moral. If there are "violent protesters" or "rioters" who have "damaged public buildings" and, as a result of the riots, "several policemen have died," the government has some cause to use force. The line between legitimate violent upheaval and illegitimate violent upheaval is blurry. I don't see anythig wrong with the question.

arethuza 7y ago
"I don't see anythig wrong with the question." I think many would see it as rather tasteless given fairly recent UK history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)
- larnmar 7y ago
  Taste is a middle class concern. If you want your kids to be middle class drones obsessed with not offending anyone then you can send them to another school. That’s not what Eton is about.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Not sure why you're being downvoted here; I think it's a fairly important distinction to make. Different social classes operate differently.
    - merpnderp 7y ago
      Citation needed. Because in the US it’s considered some straight up age old bullshit that being rich makes you some kind of high minded philosopher smarter than the joe.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

SilasX 7y ago

>The prospective students of Eton are then asked to imagine they are the prime minister and write a speech to explain how they would convince the public that they did the right thing. If they disagree ... isn't that kinda the point? Eton's like, the future-PM factory, right? Do they honestly expect they're never going to have to give a speech defending something they disagreed with, or at least, had strong reservations about? (And, as others noted, it's not fair to call this killing "protesters", but rather, "rioters".)

pjc50 7y ago
> Do they honestly expect they're never going to have to give a speech defending something they disagreed with, or at least, had strong reservations about? This is .. low-integrity behaviour, though? It used to be part of the operation of both ministerial and cabinet collective responsibility that ministers had a responsibility to agree or resign. The gold standard of this was Claire Short, who resigned rather than support the Iraq war: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1429856/Clare-Short-quits-Cabinet.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1429856/Clare-Short-quits-C... Arguably the erosion of this has led us to the crisis of the present day.
kazagistar 7y ago
Maybe electing trained liars isn't a good idea.

paggle 7y ago

Of course PC principal can’t stand for this but being able to argue any issue from any point of view is considered to be a hallmark of the well educated by people who have been in the education business for centuries. In 9th grade my history teacher routinely randomly assigned us to write one of two positions on the same issue (capital punishment is unjust, etc). Much of the present state of modern electoral politics can be traced to a widespread inability or unwillingness to understand the people who disagree with you.

farrelmahaztra 7y ago
As part of the debate team in high school, I had to do the same thing (prepare for both sides). I think it is an excellent exercise in critical thinking, even if you wholly disagree with what you're arguing for. Sometimes it even led me to find points I never thought of in the opposing side that I agreed with.
- paggle 7y ago
  And, then you have time to prepare rebuttals to these points.
protomyth 7y ago
I've been told by multiple people I respect variations of "If you cannot argue the other side's argument in good faith and well, then you really don't know what you believe yourself". I do fail in this with some of the extremes. I just cannot figure out the why of the "flat earth" thing since I don't understand who "profits" in some way from a cover-up.
- paggle 7y ago
  Isn’t the “flat earth” thing a bunch of talented trolls who captured an army of gullible idiots? I can understand why there is a population of people so willing to believe government conspiracy theories — the government has perpetrated so many sociopathic conspiracies from Tuskegee to Mossadegh to PRISM that it’s proven willing to commit arbitrary amounts of evil. With an entity like that it’s not too hard to convince someone that they’re lying about something small like the Flat Earth.

ksdale 7y ago

I think this sort of exercise would be beneficial for everyone to do. Even the most benign government policies are enforced by the police and the military. I'm continually surprised at how often people offhandedly suggest that the government should do this or that, without even considering whether they would be personally willing to throw someone in prison for not going along, let alone if they would be willing to do violence to the person who refuses to go to prison. How many of our pet policies are we willing to do violence for, when push comes to shove? Imagining the worst possible outcome and arguing that it's worth the price is a valuable exercise, and I think a lot of people would find it's not worth the price as often as intuition suggests, it's just not always as obvious as killing protesters.

AlexB138 7y ago
Indeed. This is a thought experiment libertarians often suggest. Just substitute "The government should ..." with "We should send men with guns to people's homes in order to ...". A bit hyperbolic maybe, but a useful lens.
- dkarl 7y ago
  I agree that we should keep in mind that violence underlies everything the government does, but I don't think we should act as if the violence is always realized. For example, we don't let a chemical plant emit more than a limited amount of certain toxic chemicals into the air. How does this "not letting" happen? The company operating the plant is careful to stay within legal limits because it does not want to be fined. It does not want to be fined, because if it does not pay, the financial institutions it does business with will freeze its accounts on order of the government. The financial institutions will freeze the accounts because their officers do not want to commit a crime by failing to do so. The officers do not want to commit a crime because they don't want to go to prison, and if they refuse to go to prison willingly, men with guns will take them there. I'm just guessing at the exact chain of enforcement, but I think we both agree, ultimately it comes down to the state's capacity for violence. However, that doesn't mean that when we pass environmental regulations we should envision people being dragged from their homes screaming in the middle of the night at gunpoint while their children soil themselves and are traumatized for life. We should envision what actually happens: companies keeping their emissions within legal limits and paying fines when they fail to do so. We should think about the reality of what enforcement will actually look like, not imagine the bank officers in solitary confinement for struggling with prison guards and their children in therapy for PTSD. I agree that we should keep that stuff in mind when that's the reality of enforcement. Drug laws, for example, do result in a lot of young kids seeing their parents and siblings dragged out of their homes at gunpoint. But I think it's a misleading image when talking about most government uses of power.

IceCreamGondola 7y ago

Making a mountain out of a molehill. As others have said, the further up the chain you go the harder the decision you have to make. The wording of the question is careful to avoid the outrage that people are stirring up. If you believed the narrative people are pushing on Twitter you would think Eton are training young people to commit atrocities and get away with it. It's pathetic and it's tiring. Side note: How awful is the design of the https://www.indy100.com https://www.indy100.com website?

dehrmann 7y ago
And it's not like the rubric was also posted. Maybe a speech sarcastically praising Tiananmen Square and Kent State would do well.
- IceCreamGondola 7y ago
  Exactly, this type of question is to appraise the student's critical thinking and how well they can defend an action. Not an assessment of morality. It reminds me of Religious Education GCSE exams where they give a statement such as (from my GCSE): "Women should be allowed in front-line roles in the army. State your opinion and explain why." They weren't looking for a "right" answer but were assessing critical thinking and the ability to defend your belief.
  - shantly 7y ago
    Given the setting 20 years in the future and the situation provided, and the task the students were asked to perform, it's entirely possible they'd at least tolerate, if not reward, some reasonable and restrained invention of future events and situations on the part of the students. Not creating some full-on sci fi world or whatever (though hell, depending on the reviewer and the quality of the work, maybe) but some plausible light world-building to support the speech. On something like this the speculative component is rarely strictly limited to the question asker, within the bounds of taste, reason, and necessity. [EDIT] which is to say I wouldn't bet that writing the answer from a point of view even more abhorrent than the student may already find the lower bound for the situation would disqualify the student, and, done well, it might help them stand out from the ones who write theirs straight and conservatively. Cribbing patterns of argument from various tyrants and autocrats might be entirely appropriate, even if intended as an implicit indictment of this hypothetical future-UK government.

pjc50 7y ago

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eton_Rifles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eton_Rifles

petermcneeley 7y ago

Paraphrase: Write a justification for the use of extreme physical violence against your own population to preserve the current established order. This assignment will be used to determine where you sit in this order.

gatherhunterer 7y ago

This is an educational exercise and the article is pure pearl-clutching. Being assigned a point to argue is how schools teach students to argue with research and reason rather than emotion and bias. As an aside, this site has awful responsive design, with buttons and ads covering the content. Everything about the page reeks of clickbait.

ZeroGravitas 7y ago

Could be worse. You want to sell out your country to foreign business interests. To convince the poor who will be hardest hit you'll need to demonise refugees, immigrants and any other minorities necessary until you get the 1/3rd of the vote necessary to give you complete control of parliament. Write a speech that makes your elderly voter base frightened of the other, but do so in a way that makes you seem like a jovial and inoffensive bumbler to them, and yet somehow convinces them that human rights, renewable energy and climate change are ominous hoaxes intended to steal their country from them by dangerous extremists.

spodek 7y ago

If you have a problem with this question you have a problem with John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, which has stood the test of time for a reason, and I propose such people look up Heterodox Academy https://heterodoxacademy.org https://heterodoxacademy.org, started by Jonathan Haidt among others. They released the relevant parts of On Liberty I recommend https://heterodoxacademy.org/mill https://heterodoxacademy.org/mill. Without diversity in viewpoint, you don't know what you know or not, and when you face someone with an opposing viewpoint, you find yourself impotent and confused. They will likely beat you in debate and influence others more effectively. Your emotions may become intense, undermining your ability to bring others to see your view. Challenging your own ideas teaches you and strengthens you.

mopsi 7y ago

Link to the paper: https://www.etoncollege.com/userfiles/files/KS%202011%20General%20Paper%201.pdf https://www.etoncollege.com/userfiles/files/KS%202011%20Gene... The question should be viewed in context. There's an excerpt from Machiavelli on cruelty in politics and then the test subject has to answer three questions: (a) summarize the argument, (b) form an opinion of the argument, (c) use the argument in a practical situation. These questions are clearly ordered by increasing complexity and test the ability to (a) understand, (b) evaluate, and (c) use an argument. It's intellectually dishonest to take the question out of context. The point of the question is to adapt an argument, not to justify violence. 2010 paper has a similar question. It asks the test subject to adapt Thamus's argument to express concerns about the invention of computer technology.