Clodbergs

They showed some little acumen, but their fundamental error is this — they pride themselves on their intelligence. No man of any real depth ever does such a thing as this. He knows very well that whatever he is, there are half a million more so; that the age of exceptional intellects expired, at least in this country, with Mr. Edmund Burke, and is not likely to rise from the dead. Now we are all pretty much good useful clods on a level: education, like all good husbandry, tends to pulverisation; and if the collective produce is greater, let us be at once thankful and humble.

R. D. Blackmore - Clara Vaughan (1864)


It’s an interesting quote, this one. It suggests that education has a tendency to create a standardised product and does not foster individual intelligence.

Well we knew that but don't do much about it. Even as a casual idea with the inevitable exceptions, it does explain the vast number of educated clods we churn out. They mostly seem to end up in the media or politics which has the advantage of keeping them visible.

Or does it keep them visible? Maybe there is an iceberg effect too. Many more educated clods do seem to lurk beneath the more visible clods of public life. Maybe a clod of them was responsible for the dramatic sinking of the previously unsinkable HS2. 

Clodbergs we could call them.