Drama, French and Media Studies: Educating Women is Economically Pointless

The following piece of news is illuminating. Educating women in Britain has only created an 'academic underclass' with useless degrees in drama and flower arranging. Note how the blame is placed at the feet of 'Government' - the fact that women seek out these useless subjects for study of their own volition is never discussed. Also, they are said to have 'abandoned' serious topics of study such as mathematics and physics, while the historical record indicates they have never been great achievers in those disciplines. Indeed, the fact that women automatically gravitate towards the path of least resistance in every sphere of life can explain the utter irrelevance of education to the vast majority of them:

Girls are in danger of becoming an educational "underclass" as they abandon tough science and language subjects in favour of softer options such as media studies, it is claimed today. A new report turns on its head the widespread belief that girls are outshining boys at school and beyond.

It claims crude Government targets are concealing an alarming trend for girls to shun the most academically challenging subjects. According to the report from right-leaning think-tank Politeia, the failure of Government policies to improve women's chances begins at school where girls seem to be doing well. They have pulled ahead of boys at GCSE and A-level and now account for 59 per cent of university students. But girls, according to report author Dr Sheila Lawlor, in fact have lower educational aspirations than they did a decade ago.

They risk becoming marginalised in an "academic ghetto" as they increasingly desert traditionally tough disciplines such as maths, physics and modern languages. The number of girls taking A-levels in physics and maths has declined over the past decade even though 25,000 more girls are staying on to do A-levels, the report said. In physics, the decline is nearly 10 per cent. A similar trend applies to French and German while the numbers taking media studies have more than tripled. Drama entries have practically doubled. The number of women taking physics and mathematical sciences at university drops further, according to the report.

"Are girls now better educated? If anything, the evidence suggests the reverse" said the pamphlet titled "Forever Enslaved? Female Dependency and the State".

"Far fewer girls than boys take the more rigorous subjects and ... the overall number of girls taking such subjects has fallen dramatically. By contrast the 'soft options', the less academically challenging subjects such as media studies and drama, are growing.

"Women's aspirations do not appear to be as high as they were a decade ago, nor as high as men's, in terms of taking the academically rigorous subjects at school or university.

"We may now be looking at a future academic underclass peopled by two many women who will have been deprived of the education needed to equip them as full members of the human race."

The report blames an official obsession with targets which monitor boys and girls separately and treat women as "a race apart".

"The culture of numbers and targets masks the comparative poverty and aspiration of women, academically and intellectually."

Women are further failed when they reach the job market as policies designed to help them spectacularly backfire, claims the report. Benefits designed to help working families mostly go to women, inviting them to take jobs "no matter how dead end the prospects". Dependent on state handouts, they find themselves trapped in low-status menial work.

"Women do not need low-level, part-time, poorly paid jobs, nor should they be induced into taking them by the patronising pin money of the state," the report says.

Meanwhile maternity rights are too prescriptive, forcing growing numbers of women into a pattern which involves taking around a year off for each baby. They often return to lower-level jobs or may not be hired at all because the growing bill for maternity pay could put off employers.

"Women should be able, without the inducements of the state, to decide on how best to fulfil the commitments of maternity and employment. It may be that a longer career break when children are at the pre-school age (followed by professional retraining) wil be better.

"Or a far shorter break which avoids serious disruption might be preferred if full-time childcare could be arranged."