“Book smart, but world dumb” is the phrase I used to describe our eldest growing up. She’s turned out to be a fine human being
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My dad used to tell me
“Most people eat to live, you live to eat” !
Just like our daughter. A mum of 2 and a Managing Director of Allianz X!
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I have always had a ‘healthy appetite’ Jane, as my unusual shape will verify !
Why indeed. Knee-jerk emotional reaction and 0 fact checking or logic. Typical Daily Wail and it’s followers.
I suspect @Porridge hit the nail on the head with “It was cancelled because they couldn’t afford the heating of the hall.”
This thread drifted a bit but makes very interesting reading all the same.
I’m with @Geof_Cox on the constant change of panto, and various cultural tales. At primary school in Beirut, Fez and lastly Algiers I absorbed a steady but bewitchingly evocative variety of historical tales, including Ali Baba and 1001 Arabian Nights. Perhaps I was thick but to me they were wondrous and illuminated much in the world I saw around me. Nor at that age did I register much difference between Chinese and Arab. I wasn’t a little English girl in a little English school surrounded by only English people. I was surrounded by people of every skin hue from ebony to milk white and I thought the whole world was like that. Souks in Marrakech and Taroudant had all the smells and the glitter and the faces. In no way did any childhood tales make me anti-Arab. Quite the opposite. Although there can be absolutely nothing to condone slavery. (Either in Qatar or in UK car washes.)
That said, I gather that it is not exactly the tale of Aladdin that is so offensive to Arab culture. It is the fictionalised white washing of the principal characters and stereotypical grotesque exaggeration of the Arab characters in ridiculous Hollywood/Disney mode.
I’m not sure how this conversation drifted into drag but the famously English penchant for men dressing up as female characters and vice versa in panto may not sit that well with middle eastern cultures. (Not that they don’t enjoy a beautiful dancing boy in a dress, but that is another topic.) Peter Pan will surely come in for some schtick if gender reversed roles were the problem, not to mention Hamlet. So likely less about that.
If an Arab director and Arab actors were to undertake Aladdin, written historically and properly pronounced, would it not be magical? Without the mocking tone of panto that may well cause offence. Disney 2019 movie really should not be considered Aladdin at all, between the Indian and orientalist confusion it really can hardly be considered Arab. But the first thing to definitely bin would be all of those heinous Disney song lyrics :
“ I come from a land,
From a faraway place,
Where the caravan camels roam.
Where they cut off your ear
If they don’t like your face.
It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.”
How is that not offensive?
@Geof_Cox is right, this discussion does come up regularly. No need for everyone to get all defensive and heated.
My alternative suggestion would be to take the tale right back to its 18th century inclusion in the 1001 Nights tale by Antoine Galland. Aladdin can be Chinese again, the Muslims mentioned Uyghurs and Tajiks along the Silk Road.
I see a marketing bonanza. Someone call Mr Spielberg!
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This is an interesting comment. What do you think of the arts or humanities, and degrees in those subjects?
On inappropriate song lyrics- I really do wish now that I had paid more attention to my maternal grandfather’s amazing catalogue of songs which he used to sing to me in the car on the way to the markets in the morning. The only snatch I can remember of one is the refrain 
Oh curse ye, curse ye, curse ye,
It’s the ‘orribilest coffee in Persia.
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Probably mostly unused i.e. supply exceeds demand.
Agreed.
Our youngest son is a graduate of Birmingham University in Geography and planning, he works in banking.
That reminds me a little of a song I’ve played with the band a few times:
My name it is Sam Hall (Sam Hall).
My name it is Sam Hall (Sam Hall).
My name it is Sam Hall and I hate you one and all.
My name it is Sam Hall, damn your eyes.
All about a man on his way to be hung. 
Sounds a hoot, remind me not to go to one of your gigs.
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Usually sung just after “One whiskey, one bourbon and one beer”. 
There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of education - especially higher education - in some of the foregoing posts.
A few, such as law, might be fairly simply vocational - but even in these all the most important skills are actually generic (eg. marshaling masses of material, interpreting evidence, rational argument, writing and speaking coherently, etc, etc). Other subjects (like geography - my eldest daughter’s degree - who also now works in finance!) are much less directly vocational - but this doesn’t mean they are ‘unused’, any more than somebody with a law degree that goes into politics (as many do) is not ‘using’ their degree - they use the generic skills.
Moreover, there are many benefits to higher education beyond generic skills - very much higher level accomplishments like drawing connections across disciplines, creative thinking, aesthetic appreciation, understanding how people and the world really work, the getting of wisdom.
To reduce all this to the pedestrian level of getting a job in some obscure commercial office, like some latter day Gradgrind, is not only to miss the point about education - it’s to miss the point about living.
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My banker friends read a variety of things from music to Japanese or classics or natural sciences or English. I think it would be so utterly dreary if everyone had to stick to something purely utilitarian. Getting a degree is as much about acquiring habits of mind and transferable skills as it is about becoming an expert on eg mediaeval Mongol tax systems.
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Everyone pays the government and then the government pays the nobles. (Big hairy chaps with clout.)
The UK is already in play
Thanks Geoff for your explanation. Far from a misunderstanding I suspect your resume of the benefit of education, be it higher or not is well understood by the vast majority.
Turning it on its head I suggest that some but certainly not all graduates have no understanding of your explanation and believe a degree is a trophy to greatness and respect of thier achievement. Then when entering the real world reality takes hold and only then does life learning begin.
Our 4 children all have University degrees, two practice what they learnt directly and two apply their skills in unrelated subjects and all 4 use the skills of learning as you describe. They were fortunate when growing up to have hard working parents who learnt them the skills that you suggest only higher education provides yet neither parent walked that path.
There are many ways to acquire life skills which are not unique to higher education.
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Mrs. W, has a couple of degrees in law, she worked in politics too, at l’assemblée nationale, some of her written text is law today. Since she’s worked in national banking and national financial institutions, then finally in national transportation infrastructure and international law and the structuration of national documentation.
When the company she worked for became by decree SNCF, her pay grade was up’d significantly just because of her educational degrees, not for the post she acquired. The French system! though she didn’t complain of the salary.
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Up to a point. You can read my dissertation if you need a deep refreshing sleep…
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The whole concept of policing degrees in the UK is being reviewed ,one of the issues that is that as it is one of the few degrees which students don’t need to pay for , people were considering signing up for the police degree intending to then do a post grad course in their chosen profession and not be saddled with the debt of a student loan
@vero, I am someone who would not in the least find soporific your dissertation on the Mongolian sphere. Would that be original version or PRC approved ‘revised’ version for schools in China? 
Timely, I read today that the horrid Viktor Orban of Hungary was seen swanning about in a scarf with redrawn map of Hungary to include countries that are currently not Hungary. Including a part of Ukraine.
‘Mykhailo Podolyak, one of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s advisers, appears to have shared his thoughts on the matter and said anyone who wants to have political points in the 21st century by parasitising historical traumas “poses a threat to international security”.
“Unlearned lessons from history repeat. Even in Hungarian,” he added.’ Sky News.
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