Wednesday, November 29, 2006

kids these days

The Vol-in-Law told me last night that one of his students told him she wasn't too sure about this free speech thing - after all she'd "never heard of it until the Mohammed cartoon thing."

"What are they teaching kids these days?" I said.

"Nothing," he said. "Absolutely nothing."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The student, a particularly high ability Muslim student with very good grades, told me that she didn't believe in free speech, didn't know anything about it, and thought it had been invented during the Mohammed cartoon troubles, apparently as some kind of conspiracy.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you clarified that it was a Muslim student who had not heard of free speech. Surely she did not go to primary and secondary schools in the UK? (You know what I'm thinking) VolMom

Anonymous said...

Heh, no, she's ethnically Pushtun Pakistani AFAIK but she has an upper-middle-class English accent and although she wears shalwaar khemeez (loose flowing robes) she doesn't wear the hijab headscarf & she seems English-educated to me. A non-Muslim student might not actively object to free speech, but probably more from apathy than anything.