Re: bn

Matthew Huntbach wrote: 
Frances Kemmish wrote:

Matthew Huntbach wrote:

On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Frances Kemmish wrote: 


I don't know what your political views are, really, but you do come
across as someone with a huge chip on your shoulder.



Because I'm sceptical about cheap-and-easy fixes proposed to solve problems
which are actually rather complex - "bring back grammar schools and all
our educational problems will be solved" is a typical case - or for other
reasons? I don't like sloppy thinking, and that often leads me when I see
someone putting a one-sided argument to raise the objections to it. Does
this come across as having a huge chip on my shoulder?



No; it has more to do with sweeping comments such as:

 "Sure, the odd bright working class kid made it into the Grammar, but
commentators often make out Grammar schools were stuffed full of bright
working class kids, rather than that there were a few of them, left
feeling socialy awkwarrd, in an overwhelmingly middle class environment."



So it's fine to make sweeping statements attacking comprehensive
schools and blaming them for social immobility, but it's to "have a
huge chip on your shoulder" to suggest the criticisms are overblown and
there was some merit in ending the situation where pupils were
permanently divided by a test at the age of 11?



The "whining" applied to your tone. You didn't "suggest the criticisms are overblown and there was some merit" in changing the situation; you made a sweeoping generalisation about the grammar schools that bore no resemblance to my experiences.

Some of your earlier comments about attitudes to Roman Catholics had the
same sort of, frankly, whining tone. One is left to assume that these
are the result of your personal experiences, and they do not mesh with
my own.



So it's fine for newspapers like the Guardian to make sweeping
one-sided attacks on the Catholic Church, and fine that a vicious
anti-Catholic novel becomes a world best-seller, but to "have a huge
chip on your shoulder" to try and put the other side?


If you contented yourself with simply putting the other side, there wouldn't be a problem, but you don't I told you at the time that I thought that the Guardian had published a varied selection of opinion, but you only want to refer to the ones you don't like.

So I defend things which it's become fashionable to attack, and for
that I'm to be put down as a whiner with a chip on his shoulder?


Think that if you want to.
.

Relevant Pages

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