> The year is 2040. There have been riots in the streets of London after Britain has run out of petrol because of an oil crisis in the Middle East. Protesters have attacked public buildings. Several policemen have died. Consequently, the Government has deployed the Army to curb the protests. After two days the protests have been stopped but twenty-five protesters have been killed by the Army.
> You are the Prime Minister. Write the script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation in which you explain why employing the Army against violent protesters was the only option available to you and one which was both necessary and moral.
If there are "violent protesters" or "rioters" who have "damaged public buildings" and, as a result of the riots, "several policemen have died," the government has some cause to use force.
The line between legitimate violent upheaval and illegitimate violent upheaval is blurry. I don't see anythig wrong with the question.
This kind of role-playing is a big part of certain types of education. It's basically the whole point of model UN and various games-based massive exercises that kids with a serious interest in government or international relations or whatever usually end up participating in during secondary school. Asking a student to take a perspective and work from there is not remotely the same thing as endorsing that perspective and it'd be crippling to take away that tool or only use it to examine "acceptable" perspectives.
[EDIT] I should add that it's incredibly powerful and probably under-used outside the Poli-Sci department and perhaps business schools. Trying it for, say, some position you aspire to, like development lead or CTO, for example (I've been hired, it's day one, orientation's over, what do I do first? What's important? Who do I talk to? What info do I need? Who has it? What systems might exist to get it? How should I present myself to others in various positions?) can quickly expose gaps in your knowledge or education, suggesting what to focus on first to get there. You can also use it to figure out how to interact with people in other positions to be as helpful to them as possible while keeping them off your back (because you're giving them what they need to do their job) especially if they're not great at what they do. It's damn useful.
> “you’ve just overthrown the government in a socialist workers’ uprising. The royal family and all members of the nobility have been executed by firing squad. As the recently elected chairman of the Greater London Soviet, explain why this was both necessary and moral.”
Surely that's equally "acceptable" perspective for a role-playing exercise, yes?
In your edit you commented that it's an exercise for practicing for "some position you aspire to". Doesn't that imply that someone who aspires to be a PM should practice concocting excuses to explain why it was "both necessary and moral" to kill protestors? Wouldn't better practice for a PM in this case to be to express sorrow about the deaths, announce the start of an independent investigation into the issue (and not be people with ties to the government), etc.?
Doesn't this sort of exercise also reduce the number of people who enter political science simply because they don't want to spend time to defend a some positions they believe to be unconscionable?
I took a foreign language class once and we were asked to practice by having a debate on some topic. I don't remember what it was, so let's say "for or against smoking in public restaurants". I was assigned the task of defending the ability to smoke in a restaurant - something I am very much against - and refused to do it.
Just like a social activist teenager with a history of going to demonstrations might be against needing to justify the morality of killing protestors.
Or the teenager from the ranks of nobility might not want to justify killing his or her family for the needs of the Greater London Soviet.
Really? "Event X from 46 years ago was bad and unforgivably handled by the government. Therefore, you should never prepare for giving a speech about a future event similar to X."
Just to be fair, I think an analogous prompt for Americans might be:
"Terrorists have just destroyed the Empire State Building and Willis (fka Sears) Tower in simultaneous attacks. Three days later, you have ordered troops to invade the suspected state sponsors of these attacks. Write a speech defending this military action."
Subtly different arguing for an invasion of another country. A better analogy might be "imagine that BLM protests have been raging for several days in Pittsburgh, write a speech defending the use of federal troops to clear the streets(+) and the use of drone strikes against suspected sniper positions."
(+) yes I know this is unconstitutional, that's the point
> yes I know this is unconstitutional, that's the point
How so? The National Guard is a federal troop organization that can be called upon by a state Governor in a state of emergency. Doing so is hardly a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
Given the role of Eton in this country and given the sensitivity of the political situation in Northern Ireland I would say it does look somewhat crass.
So you're saying that a PM has actually been in this situation? Do we need a better reason for Eton to ask for arguments supporting the government's position?
If you look at UK history, it has actually happened on several occasions. Peterloo, Amritsar. Why shouldn't we think about what to say?
In the real life situation above, the solution was; to cover up the atrocity (by planting weapons on the bodies), claim the soldiers were fired on (they weren't), and prevent the only MP in the House of Commons who had personally witnessed the event from speaking on the floor (in contravention of parliamentary tradition).
I think the point is that a political undergrad should be able to white a speech justifying any position, since this is a generally useful skill for a future politician.
Defending and justifying a position you don't personally hold is an especially useful exercise imo.
It has happened so infrequently that it rather highlights it as an unusual choice of question - why not a terrorist incident, foreign war, natural disaster or incident with a Royal?
You would almost suspect that they are trying to select individuals who have a natural instinct to maintaining current power structures, but clearly that is nonsense and what they are looking for is a carefully reasoned response.
I guess you're implying the white, priviledged, and uniformly similar kids with the same opinions and the same upbringings who attend Eton are somehow not drones.
Interesting. Fussell, in his Class, also calls out the US middle class as a kind of outlier from the rest of the class system, cursed with an abundance of class anxiety but also a distinctive class identity and slew of misconceptions about the higher classes that often leave them looking silly in their attempts to imitate the higher classes (which they're very interested in doing thanks to the aforementioned intense class anxiety), including on matters of what proper or polite behavior & activity looks like.
You could have so easily made the point that Eton aims to train the elite without being viciously dismissive and condescending. Coming in here and attacking using a throwaway account undermines the ability for the community to have a discussion.
Citation needed. Because in the US it’s considered some straight up age old bullshit that being rich makes you some kind of high minded philosopher smarter than the joe.
The US doesn’t really have a class system though — it has a middle class and an underclass. The fact that some middle class Americans are very wealthy doesn’t change the fact that they’re essentially middle class in behaviour and outlook.
The British, on the other hand, have a very complex class system and a meaningful upper class. I wouldn’t recommend trying to transport your understanding of “class” across the Atlantic.
The wikipedia page on the UK's class system says it is mostly wealth and education, but you make this case for behavior and outlook, which I'm guessing you really mean is ideological. But really would like some clarification.
I think that you are correct, there isn't anything wrong with the question in itself, but Eton would be serving its students and its nation much better if, after asking that quesiton, it then asked "Now, you are the leader of the opposition. Write the script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation in which you explain why the government's actions are unnecessary and immoral, and how you would have handled the situation."
One of the best exams I ever took was a two-part exam, 90 minutes per part - the first part gave a narrative of a set of facts and the disposition of a lawsuit arising from the facts, then asked us to write the majority opinion for the appeal. The second part (which was handed out after we turned in our answer to the first part) simply said "Now write the dissenting opinion."
These sorts of questions force to you use the best arguments of ideologies you may not agree with. I think that is very useful, particularly in today's political climate.
The problem is not so much "justify a controversial position as a thought exercise", but the choice of the position (armed defence of the elite) and that they would never choose or perhaps even allow the corresponding left-wing controversial position. e.g.
"The government has announced the banning of a large opposition party, and that its leaders will be subject to internment without trial. A peaceful demonstration was organised, but the Army fired randomly from sniper positions into the crowd, resulting in thirteen people dead. Write the speech you would give calling for a general strike to shut down the government until democratic representation and human rights can be restored."
> If there are "violent protesters" or "rioters" who have "damaged public buildings" and, as a result of the riots, "several policemen have died," the government has some cause to use force.
This is more or less the exact argument of the Chinese Communist party against the HK demonstrators, by the way.
Edit: I see my example controversial position is controversial on here, too.
If you add that the banned party was popular and democratically elected a month ago before being ousted by the current government which is primarily sponsored by the army and usa intelligence community, then you have Bolivia, and the people answering the justification question are news organizations like the New York Times.
You can't imagine a situation in which a government is justified in using force to suppress protesters. It's hard for me to view that as anything but a failure of imagination. Your perspective also demonstrates over reliance on analogy: hypothetical violent riots over gas prices are equivalent to pro-democracy riots in HK.
I think this sort of exercise would be beneficial for everyone to do. Even the most benign government policies are enforced by the police and the military. I'm continually surprised at how often people offhandedly suggest that the government should do this or that, without even considering whether they would be personally willing to throw someone in prison for not going along, let alone if they would be willing to do violence to the person who refuses to go to prison. How many of our pet policies are we willing to do violence for, when push comes to shove?
Imagining the worst possible outcome and arguing that it's worth the price is a valuable exercise, and I think a lot of people would find it's not worth the price as often as intuition suggests, it's just not always as obvious as killing protesters.
I agree, but I think it’s valuable to make it explicit. Many people talk about requiring this or that as though it has no cost beyond just asking people to do it.
Indeed. This is a thought experiment libertarians often suggest. Just substitute "The government should ..." with "We should send men with guns to people's homes in order to ...". A bit hyperbolic maybe, but a useful lens.
I agree that we should keep in mind that violence underlies everything the government does, but I don't think we should act as if the violence is always realized. For example, we don't let a chemical plant emit more than a limited amount of certain toxic chemicals into the air. How does this "not letting" happen? The company operating the plant is careful to stay within legal limits because it does not want to be fined. It does not want to be fined, because if it does not pay, the financial institutions it does business with will freeze its accounts on order of the government. The financial institutions will freeze the accounts because their officers do not want to commit a crime by failing to do so. The officers do not want to commit a crime because they don't want to go to prison, and if they refuse to go to prison willingly, men with guns will take them there.
I'm just guessing at the exact chain of enforcement, but I think we both agree, ultimately it comes down to the state's capacity for violence. However, that doesn't mean that when we pass environmental regulations we should envision people being dragged from their homes screaming in the middle of the night at gunpoint while their children soil themselves and are traumatized for life. We should envision what actually happens: companies keeping their emissions within legal limits and paying fines when they fail to do so. We should think about the reality of what enforcement will actually look like, not imagine the bank officers in solitary confinement for struggling with prison guards and their children in therapy for PTSD.
I agree that we should keep that stuff in mind when that's the reality of enforcement. Drug laws, for example, do result in a lot of young kids seeing their parents and siblings dragged out of their homes at gunpoint. But I think it's a misleading image when talking about most government uses of power.
I don't think I agree. I think the drug example makes very explicit what the cost of this kind of enforcement is, and as a result a lot of people have very reasonably concluded that the price of enforcement is much higher than the cost of people being allowed to do drugs.
Companies generally follow the law because it's very expensive not to, so much so that it hardly feels like coercion, as you explain. They basically agree that they should act a certain way, which is good for everyone, to be sure, but it's not like they could choose to act a different way. As you say, if they actually refused all the way to the end, they would be dragged off to prison, and we wouldn't necessarily feel bad for them, because the pollution they visited on the surrounding community would be real and terrible. But I think all this illustrates is that sometimes coercion is justified, and where it's very justified, everyone more or less agrees to go along, because people know that they would be dragged off to prison AND look like jerks. I don't think it illustrates that the system isn't that coercive, though.
I think this view of coercion is rather like people consuming more meat because they're so far removed from the slaughterhouse. When you're in a McDonald's, it really doesn't feel like an animal died for that hamburger, it's just another thing to eat.
Likewise, when most people follow the rules to the extent that it doesn't feel like coercion, we forget just how violent the system is to people who refuse to go along (and like I said, that violence may be justified, but the threat of it is never absent).
Edit: I feel like we have been taught that coercion is always bad and never justified and so we want to do mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that what we're doing isn't really coercion, and I think it would be healthier for us to acknowledge coercion where ever it happens and also acknowledge when we all believe that we have found such an obviously correct policy (like no toxic pollution) that not only is coercion appropriate, but any sort of resistance to coercion would be seen as ridiculous. This acknowledgement has the upside of forcing us to be fully aware of the thin line we walk between a fair and just society and a violent and oppressive one.
Making a mountain out of a molehill. As others have said, the further up the chain you go the harder the decision you have to make. The wording of the question is careful to avoid the outrage that people are stirring up. If you believed the narrative people are pushing on Twitter you would think Eton are training young people to commit atrocities and get away with it. It's pathetic and it's tiring.
Exactly, this type of question is to appraise the student's critical thinking and how well they can defend an action. Not an assessment of morality. It reminds me of Religious Education GCSE exams where they give a statement such as (from my GCSE):
"Women should be allowed in front-line roles in the army. State your opinion and explain why."
They weren't looking for a "right" answer but were assessing critical thinking and the ability to defend your belief.
Given the setting 20 years in the future and the situation provided, and the task the students were asked to perform, it's entirely possible they'd at least tolerate, if not reward, some reasonable and restrained invention of future events and situations on the part of the students. Not creating some full-on sci fi world or whatever (though hell, depending on the reviewer and the quality of the work, maybe) but some plausible light world-building to support the speech. On something like this the speculative component is rarely strictly limited to the question asker, within the bounds of taste, reason, and necessity.
[EDIT] which is to say I wouldn't bet that writing the answer from a point of view even more abhorrent than the student may already find the lower bound for the situation would disqualify the student, and, done well, it might help them stand out from the ones who write theirs straight and conservatively. Cribbing patterns of argument from various tyrants and autocrats might be entirely appropriate, even if intended as an implicit indictment of this hypothetical future-UK government.
>The prospective students of Eton are then asked to imagine they are the prime minister and write a speech to explain how they would convince the public that they did the right thing.
If they disagree ... isn't that kinda the point? Eton's like, the future-PM factory, right? Do they honestly expect they're never going to have to give a speech defending something they disagreed with, or at least, had strong reservations about?
(And, as others noted, it's not fair to call this killing "protesters", but rather, "rioters".)
> Do they honestly expect they're never going to have to give a speech defending something they disagreed with, or at least, had strong reservations about?
This is .. low-integrity behaviour, though? It used to be part of the operation of both ministerial and cabinet collective responsibility that ministers had a responsibility to agree or resign. The gold standard of this was Claire Short, who resigned rather than support the Iraq war: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1429856/Clare-Short-quits-C...
Arguably the erosion of this has led us to the crisis of the present day.
If you have a problem with this question you have a problem with John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, which has stood the test of time for a reason, and I propose such people look up Heterodox Academy https://heterodoxacademy.org, started by Jonathan Haidt among others.
Without diversity in viewpoint, you don't know what you know or not, and when you face someone with an opposing viewpoint, you find yourself impotent and confused. They will likely beat you in debate and influence others more effectively. Your emotions may become intense, undermining your ability to bring others to see your view. Challenging your own ideas teaches you and strengthens you.
This is an educational exercise and the article is pure pearl-clutching. Being assigned a point to argue is how schools teach students to argue with research and reason rather than emotion and bias.
As an aside, this site has awful responsive design, with buttons and ads covering the content. Everything about the page reeks of clickbait.
The question should be viewed in context. There's an excerpt from Machiavelli on cruelty in politics and then the test subject has to answer three questions:
(a) summarize the argument,
(b) form an opinion of the argument,
(c) use the argument in a practical situation.
These questions are clearly ordered by increasing complexity and test the ability to (a) understand, (b) evaluate, and (c) use an argument. It's intellectually dishonest to take the question out of context. The point of the question is to adapt an argument, not to justify violence.
2010 paper has a similar question. It asks the test subject to adapt Thamus's argument to express concerns about the invention of computer technology.
This is an interesting question (quoted in full in the article) for an exam because it forces you to face a difficult issue outside of your comfort zone.
In addition, let's face it and rightly or wrongly, Eton educates many of the future elite (CEOs and Cabinet Ministers) who will have to carry out this sort of task during their professional life, both in terms of making hard choices and in terms of taking responsibility for them and explaining them, even if hopefully in less extreme circumstances.
It would be interesting to have Eton explain what they are seeking in a 'good' answer.
If anything this 'outrage' about the question highlights the issues with social media, not Eton.
I don't think Eton College was trying to imply that such a brutal intervention was moral or even necessary, but they simply wanted to test a student's ability to argue and reason that it was despite how difficult and internally conflicting such a stance would be to most people.
The difficulty was the point, no? They could've chosen a less controversial prompt, I suppose, but why not this one? What difficult stances are not controversial?
I think it is pertinent to highlight that this question was posed to 13 and 14 year olds. I don’t think anyone at that age can properly address this question.
There are many ways to try and measure the aptitude of a 13 year old without putting the idea of supporting state sponsored murder into their heads and forcing them to defend it. I would argue that the possible damage done to a person at a very impressionable age by asking them to justify murder outweighs the vetting process for a scholarship.
> I don’t think anyone at that age can properly address this question
I guess it depends on what you mean by "properly" but there's absolutely no reason why a reasonably well educated child of that age shouldn't be able to both understand the nature of the question and make a decent stab at an answer.
>In addition, let's face it and right or wrong, Eton educates many of the future elite (CEOs and Cabinet Ministers) who will have to carry out this sort of task during their professional life
Exactly. People are upset about the question, yet every day, all around the planet, normal people and politicians are forced to make such decisions. Isn't it best to have considered it before the heat of the moment?
To be perfectly frank it is the perfect illustration to why they are such failures of leadership. The policy is foregone lethal force in response to those suffering from their own failures with no consideration of alternatives, only ass covering. The people who are supposed to be making decisions aren't. The situation could make a good uncomfortable ethical scenario question or a nuanced issue but this isn't it.
It is the context which makes it especially odious - a defense attorney position question would have done the same thing and emphasized fair handed protectionism without the brainwashy aspects - noting that deliberate failure to provide a proper defense to the best of their ability because of a dislike of the accused would risk rights and ironically could get them off.
I was originally thinking along the same lines; this question is quite interesting, to see what kind of response it might elicit. However, after quickly mulling it over, the really objectionable part is that it presupposes that sending in the military is a good idea. Something that an impressionable, albeit privileged, 13-year-old may take to heart.
It could be turned into a good question quite easily: ask how you might deal with the situation, before you get to the nuclear option, and then how/if you could justify it morally.
Sure, it doesn't imply using military force in any protest is justifiable. However, presuming the PM commands the army, then it's his decision -- and the context thereof -- that needs to be justified. It does imply that, in this instance, using the army was the right thing to do.
You're the PM; the army's been sent in, at your command; now you have to justify your decision. Thus it presupposes it was the "right thing" in the PM's context.
It doesn't presuppose that the killing is right. It's asking the child to formulate a speech as if they were a PM justifying it.
Understanding how public figures use language to justify their actions is a very useful skill. Being able to use language persuasively is also a very useful skill.
And it's common practice in these types of exercise to use either scenarios that are difficult to argue or to argue both sides.
You want to sell out your country to foreign business interests. To convince the poor who will be hardest hit you'll need to demonise refugees, immigrants and any other minorities necessary until you get the 1/3rd of the vote necessary to give you complete control of parliament.
Write a speech that makes your elderly voter base frightened of the other, but do so in a way that makes you seem like a jovial and inoffensive bumbler to them, and yet somehow convinces them that human rights, renewable energy and climate change are ominous hoaxes intended to steal their country from them by dangerous extremists.
Paraphrase: Write a justification for the use of extreme physical violence against your own population to preserve the current established order. This assignment will be used to determine where you sit in this order.
Of course PC principal can’t stand for this but being able to argue any issue from any point of view is considered to be a hallmark of the well educated by people who have been in the education business for centuries. In 9th grade my history teacher routinely randomly assigned us to write one of two positions on the same issue (capital punishment is unjust, etc). Much of the present state of modern electoral politics can be traced to a widespread inability or unwillingness to understand the people who disagree with you.
I've been told by multiple people I respect variations of "If you cannot argue the other side's argument in good faith and well, then you really don't know what you believe yourself".
I do fail in this with some of the extremes. I just cannot figure out the why of the "flat earth" thing since I don't understand who "profits" in some way from a cover-up.
Sometimes there is no good faith intent; "write an argument explaning why a Nigerian prince would use a random person from the Internet for a money transfer".
Other than the lack of a prince in the first place, I can actually see, given some of the US banking laws, a good faith argument where the offer is genuine. Won't believe it ever (much to regret of the actual IT industry trying to start there), but I think someone could do it well.
Although, that strays more into scenario as opposed to opposing beliefs.
Isn’t the “flat earth” thing a bunch of talented trolls who captured an army of gullible idiots? I can understand why there is a population of people so willing to believe government conspiracy theories — the government has perpetrated so many sociopathic conspiracies from Tuskegee to Mossadegh to PRISM that it’s proven willing to commit arbitrary amounts of evil. With an entity like that it’s not too hard to convince
someone that they’re lying about something small like the Flat Earth.
As part of the debate team in high school, I had to do the same thing (prepare for both sides). I think it is an excellent exercise in critical thinking, even if you wholly disagree with what you're arguing for. Sometimes it even led me to find points I never thought of in the opposing side that I agreed with.
In general I agree this is a good thing, but I do wonder if it leads to a modern day society where educated people are able to rationalize the indefensible, as long as it's good for whatever organization/bureaucracy they've aligned themselves with.
> I do wonder if it leads to a modern day society where educated people are able to rationalize the indefensible, as long as it's good for whatever organization/bureaucracy they've aligned themselves with
We have good reason to believe this has been the case since at least 500ish BCE and one may well suppose the phenomenon pre-dates that, so it seems to be more a society thing than a modern day society thing. It's probably hard to educate people to defend or promote ideas well without also enabling them to defend or promote bad ideas better than most people can do for good ones.
> The year is 2040. There have been riots in the streets of London after Britain has run out of petrol because of an oil crisis in the Middle East. Protesters have attacked public buildings. Several policemen have died. Consequently, the Government has deployed the Army to curb the protests. After two days the protests have been stopped but twenty-five protesters have been killed by the Army.
> You are the Prime Minister. Write the script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation in which you explain why employing the Army against violent protesters was the only option available to you and one which was both necessary and moral.
If there are "violent protesters" or "rioters" who have "damaged public buildings" and, as a result of the riots, "several policemen have died," the government has some cause to use force.
The line between legitimate violent upheaval and illegitimate violent upheaval is blurry. I don't see anythig wrong with the question.