Save A-Level #Archaeology
The AQA Exam Board have decided to remove Archaeology from the A-Levels, a most untoward and foolish decision.
A certain professor emeritus would like a word:
To the AQA Exam Board:
I have just been told the most hideous news, and by this letter, I am hoping that someone in your organization can make this business intelligible to me. I have been told that your little collection of
directors has decided to remove archaeology from the A-Levels. If I have heard rightly, and I suppose I have, because everybody seems to be undermining education these days, you can be very sure I will refute this nonsense, and I will not yield nor will I bend to the officious and nothing-meaning excuses of budget cuts or needing to make way for what your set deem to be more lucrative subjects until this decision be reversed. What can you mean by removing archaeology from the A-Levels? A student does not get into archaeology because he wants to learn how to make money-- that is what the law is for-- he gets into archaeology because he wants to discover what the annals of time have dismissed.
Archaeology is not an optional subject, it is not antiquated piddle-paddle-- it is a necessity! Its grand scientific arms reach every corner of our existence, and it does so whether you care about it or not. It is a science, and like all sciences, it is integral to the understanding of life. Archaeology is the study of where we have been as a species, and history is its grand partner in the scheme of pedantic pursuits, and by doing away with one, you negate all veritable claims to the chronicles that countless men and women have compiled throughout the centuries. By removing archaeology from your curriculum, you are disparaging every archaeologist and historian that is currently working in the field and you disgrace and discredit every exquisitive scholar. It is degradation unconscionable to deter any young person from wanting to pursue knowledge, and by removing archaeology or any subject from your invented syllabus implies that you would rather a child learn how to be useful than intelligent. We have enough people who think themselves useful; we do not have enough of those who actually are, and by dissuading those who are genuinely interested in sciences from learning them, we will have more directors than we do noetic specialists, and the world would do well without the interference of those who would not know the importance of a science if it leapt up and smacked them in the mouth.
Directors, especially those on academic boards, very rarely do as their profession recommends: they hardly direct anything at all. They do not so much direct to as they do veer away from, and in my experience, the only thing a director does is create idiot momish children by saving pennies that would be better spent on the very thing they have been commanded to take money away from. Archaeology is not merely a curiosity; it is an irrefutable absolute of life, and considering your country is in possession of some of the world's most exquisite archaeological sites and artifacts, I cannot believe that no one on your board of academic do-nothings does not see the value of learning how to study them. It is unconscionable! It is ignorance run mad in an academic system that been creeping down the path of dilapidation for the last ten years. Archaeology is not a commodity, to be bought and sold at haphazard, to be shown and locked away again when someone who could not find the merit in a ham sandwich grows tired of it. It is your national inheritance, your standard of integrity, to be cherished and bequeathed to future generations, not be to looked at and pushed aside like some lolling lace-mutton. Archaeology is humanity's birthright, and to deprecate it is to tarnish your country's scholars with the stain of academic illegitimacy.
Knowledge is the currency of the future. Do not dare cheapen the intelligence of the young by telling them what they should learn, or their interests will be as diminished as your vision of education is.
P.E. Bartleby Crulge, Academy of Marridon
A certain professor emeritus would like a word:
To the AQA Exam Board:
I have just been told the most hideous news, and by this letter, I am hoping that someone in your organization can make this business intelligible to me. I have been told that your little collection of directors has decided to remove archaeology from the A-Levels. If I have heard rightly, and I suppose I have, because everybody seems to be undermining education these days, you can be very sure I will refute this nonsense, and I will not yield nor will I bend to the officious and nothing-meaning excuses of budget cuts or needing to make way for what your set deem to be more lucrative subjects until this decision be reversed. What can you mean by removing archaeology from the A-Levels? A student does not get into archaeology because he wants to learn how to make money-- that is what the law is for-- he gets into archaeology because he wants to discover what the annals of time have dismissed.
Archaeology is not an optional subject, it is not antiquated piddle-paddle-- it is a necessity! Its grand scientific arms reach every corner of our existence, and it does so whether you care about it or not. It is a science, and like all sciences, it is integral to the understanding of life. Archaeology is the study of where we have been as a species, and history is its grand partner in the scheme of pedantic pursuits, and by doing away with one, you negate all veritable claims to the chronicles that countless men and women have compiled throughout the centuries. By removing archaeology from your curriculum, you are disparaging every archaeologist and historian that is currently working in the field and you disgrace and discredit every exquisitive scholar. It is degradation unconscionable to deter any young person from wanting to pursue knowledge, and by removing archaeology or any subject from your invented syllabus implies that you would rather a child learn how to be useful than intelligent. We have enough people who think themselves useful; we do not have enough of those who actually are, and by dissuading those who are genuinely interested in sciences from learning them, we will have more directors than we do noetic specialists, and the world would do well without the interference of those who would not know the importance of a science if it leapt up and smacked them in the mouth.
Directors, especially those on academic boards, very rarely do as their profession recommends: they hardly direct anything at all. They do not so much direct to as they do veer away from, and in my experience, the only thing a director does is create idiot momish children by saving pennies that would be better spent on the very thing they have been commanded to take money away from. Archaeology is not merely a curiosity; it is an irrefutable absolute of life, and considering your country is in possession of some of the world's most exquisite archaeological sites and artifacts, I cannot believe that no one on your board of academic do-nothings does not see the value of learning how to study them. It is unconscionable! It is ignorance run mad in an academic system that been creeping down the path of dilapidation for the last ten years. Archaeology is not a commodity, to be bought and sold at haphazard, to be shown and locked away again when someone who could not find the merit in a ham sandwich grows tired of it. It is your national inheritance, your standard of integrity, to be cherished and bequeathed to future generations, not be to looked at and pushed aside like some lolling lace-mutton. Archaeology is humanity's birthright, and to deprecate it is to tarnish your country's scholars with the stain of academic illegitimacy.
Knowledge is the currency of the future. Do not dare cheapen the intelligence of the young by telling them what they should learn, or their interests will be as diminished as your vision of education is.
P.E. Bartleby Crulge, Academy of Marridon
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