by Aristoskank Fri Jan 02, 2009 4:52 pm
6+5 is a nonsense that won't achieve what it's designed to do, and may well achieve the opposite.
Same as all positive discrimination really, it's a half measure that can be as obstructive as it is progressive. While some might point to Obama as a success of such policies, such a claim is naive because Obama is not from a pisspoor background, didn't go to some violent hellhole of an inner city school, wasn't surrounded by drug dealers and gangs his entire youth, etc. etc.
He's successful for the same reason most people are - they had a secure and moderately well off background which enabled them to explore various options until they found something they were good at.
And this is why positive discrimination doesn't work - because adding points to someone's university application at the age of 18 or 20 is too late, and does nothing to address the very real and continuing problems. That person may have gotten better grades and a better education had they been a better school, but they weren't. So they get a place on a university course ahead of someone else who may have been smarter, or harder working, and the school that let them down remains a failure, which only means we'll have to keep doing this for future generations. Plus, it means that universities (and businesses and government institutions and so on) will have to set their standards lower so they don't exclude someone they've only got because of some daft points system that is meant to make up for that person being failed by a prior institution. Which means the whole system retrogresses and declines in the name of accommodating its own failings.
In the footballing example the races are for the most part switched, in that it's predominantly white English footballers complaining that some dark foreigner has taken their job but the principle is the same - those English players shouldn't get a place at the top clubs just because they happen to be English. It's a form of protectionism, but again, it's about lowering standards in the name of accommodating failings. If we in English produced better footballers then we wouldn't have this problem. There'd be an abundance of local talent so we'd only look abroad for the sort of exceptional talents that offer something a bit different in terms of style, attitude and so on. It's only because we produce average footballers that we need to protect 'their' places at top teams from darkie foreigners.
There's another element to this that EMP's sorta pointed out already, that this will (at least for a time) add an additional premium to English players. This will further embed the glamour and wealth culture of English football which will attract some but put off others who might be of particularly professional disposition and therefore make very good players.
It's a shameful policy. I doubt it will work.