We Don' Need No Edge You Kayshun: Was Waters Being Ironic?

I wrote the following in response to Katherine Birbalsingh's Torygraph blog and the discussion that followed.
I'm sorry if you were inticed in thinking there was going to be something about Floyd, because there is nothing.

I saw a cartoon in the Independent once that said Britain compares itself to Germany ten times more than Germany compares itself to Britain. Perhaps Germany should compare itself more often to Britain, because the same debate is starting there that happened here thirty years ago that has led us to this awful state of state education. If they observe us more closely, perhaps they can avoid our parlous problems.
I taught Theory of Knowledge for the International Baccalaureate Diploma for many years in which students were expected to develop sophisticated argumentative skills and present these arguments in a balanced and rational way. In class discussion and in their reading, they were presented with many different opinions and analyses without fear. For example, Japan's history of WWII, China's version of Tiananmen Square, the Israeli-Palastine conflict et c.
It often struck me that we could not do these things without getting into troubel, if they were in a British state school. I cannot imagine the alternative narratives of the reasons for Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan or the morality of fractional reserve banking being discussed.
I could do these things, possibly, because the students before me were the children of the great and good and therefore it was acceptable for them to develop the critical faculties that might allow them to come to the conclusion that most of the world is being shafted, because they are not among the shafted.
After all, it has been observed that NICRA activists were all grammar school educated, as were many of the other groups in the rest of the free world similarly educated that led to the great upheavals of 1968 and led, eventually to nearly thirty years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.
To further this argument, in whose interests would be a well educated populace? (rhet.) The idea of the philosopher soldier or the shop assistant with whom you can discuss 3 down in the Times crossword is very nice, but hardly practicable.
On the other hand, true democracy can only come about in a well educated, critical thinking community. It seems the focus of education in this country in my absence has shifted heavily towards utility, or at least has tried to, but utility without critical thinking skills is useless.
I saw another cartoon in the Telegraph of a Conjeror saying,
". . . For my next trick, I will attempt to fail a GCSE . . ."
Apropos of nothing at all.