Bernard Chapin has conducted an enlightening inteview, “The Decay and Fall of the West,” with the great “skeptical doctor,” Theodore Dalrymple. Much of it relates to the degeneration of education in the West. A sample:

BC: What is the doctrine of “social inclusion” and how has it corrupted modern education?
Dr. Dalrymple: Trying to understand the concept of social inclusion is like trying to catch a cloud with a butterfly net. Roughly speaking, it means or implies that the bad outcomes for certain social groups are the result of acts of exclusion by other, more privileged groups. The excluded then suffer from poor self-esteem, which can be boosted by telling them that they are doing very well, irrespective of what they actually do. In order to compensate for their alleged exclusion, they are included by not holding them to the standards of the rest of society. Of course, this keeps them exactly where they are; if you were a Marxist, you would think that the British and American public education systems were conspiracies by the bourgeoisie to keep the poor poor.