Wednesday, October 21, 2015

The more things change

Something that sounds familiar from an early post-war report on a Student Christian Movement conference at Westminster:

"The outstanding fact revealed by these discussions was the ignorance of most students. By comparison with most European students in the groups they were ill-informed. A few had a wide general interest but had not mastered for example UNO terminology: a few had strong particular interests – Federal Union for example: a few were communists or near communists or had been to Yugoslavia. Many clearly did not bother to read a good weekly or daily newspaper, and the most common practical decision taken was to do so in future. Here and there the opinion was expressed that the salient facts are kept in the hands of Governments and the ordinary person is prevented from having a point of view, a labour-saving fallacy with a superficial grain of truth in it to make it highly dangerous." – Kathleen Bliss, The Christian News-Letter, #303, 21 January 1948, 5.

(Part of the 'historical bycatch' series; explanation.) 

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