Something about this news story struck me as funny. Head of Sorbonne attacks ‘ignorant’ student protesters:
The president of the world-renowned Sorbonne University has branded French students protesting about the country’s new employment law “ignorant and stupid”.
Reacting to protests over the law, which makes it easier for employers to fire, and therefore presumably more willing to hire, young workers, Jean-Robert Pitte said the youngsters had no dreams but believed everything was due to them as a right without having to work for it.
“I’m very angry about the demagogy, the ignorance and the stupidity of the young and of the French,” said Dr Pitte, 56, a geography professor who has taught at Oxford and Cambridge and holds the Légion d’honneur.
“Today’s youth don’t have dreams, they have illusions. To dream is to want to accomplish something difficult that is a challenge. Instead youngsters believe they have a right to everything and if things don’t go the way they want it’s someone else’s fault.”
I always thought people went to school because they wanted to learn something they didn’t already know. Isn’t that what ignorance means? I.e. not knowing? But, no, the head of the Sorbonne has instructed us that the students should already know everything.
Where could they possibly have gotten such ideas? Could it have been at school? So he’s blaming the student for not learning rather than the schools and himself for not teaching them?
