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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting question (quoted in full in the article) for an exam because it forces you to face a difficult issue outside of your comfort zone.

In addition, let's face it and rightly or wrongly, Eton educates many of the future elite (CEOs and Cabinet Ministers) who will have to carry out this sort of task during their professional life, both in terms of making hard choices and in terms of taking responsibility for them and explaining them, even if hopefully in less extreme circumstances.

It would be interesting to have Eton explain what they are seeking in a 'good' answer.

If anything this 'outrage' about the question highlights the issues with social media, not Eton.

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Right. I don't understand why you were downvoted.

I don't think Eton College was trying to imply that such a brutal intervention was moral or even necessary, but they simply wanted to test a student's ability to argue and reason that it was despite how difficult and internally conflicting such a stance would be to most people.

The difficulty was the point, no? They could've chosen a less controversial prompt, I suppose, but why not this one? What difficult stances are not controversial?

I think it is pertinent to highlight that this question was posed to 13 and 14 year olds. I don’t think anyone at that age can properly address this question.

I mostly agree, but wasn't this part of acceptance into a scholarship program? I'd imagine they want to see aptitude beyond their age.

There are many ways to try and measure the aptitude of a 13 year old without putting the idea of supporting state sponsored murder into their heads and forcing them to defend it. I would argue that the possible damage done to a person at a very impressionable age by asking them to justify murder outweighs the vetting process for a scholarship.

> I don’t think anyone at that age can properly address this question

I guess it depends on what you mean by "properly" but there's absolutely no reason why a reasonably well educated child of that age shouldn't be able to both understand the nature of the question and make a decent stab at an answer.

If the Eton cadet force is like the one at my private school, that age is also when they start training you in the use of an actual rifle ...

(heavily locked down on a range, but you're definitely primed to support the military in this context!)

>In addition, let's face it and right or wrong, Eton educates many of the future elite (CEOs and Cabinet Ministers) who will have to carry out this sort of task during their professional life

Exactly. People are upset about the question, yet every day, all around the planet, normal people and politicians are forced to make such decisions. Isn't it best to have considered it before the heat of the moment?

To be perfectly frank it is the perfect illustration to why they are such failures of leadership. The policy is foregone lethal force in response to those suffering from their own failures with no consideration of alternatives, only ass covering. The people who are supposed to be making decisions aren't. The situation could make a good uncomfortable ethical scenario question or a nuanced issue but this isn't it.

It is the context which makes it especially odious - a defense attorney position question would have done the same thing and emphasized fair handed protectionism without the brainwashy aspects - noting that deliberate failure to provide a proper defense to the best of their ability because of a dislike of the accused would risk rights and ironically could get them off.

I was originally thinking along the same lines; this question is quite interesting, to see what kind of response it might elicit. However, after quickly mulling it over, the really objectionable part is that it presupposes that sending in the military is a good idea. Something that an impressionable, albeit privileged, 13-year-old may take to heart.

It could be turned into a good question quite easily: ask how you might deal with the situation, before you get to the nuclear option, and then how/if you could justify it morally.

The scenario of the question depicts extreme circumstances. It does not imply that sending the military is a good idea to deal with any protest.

Sure, it doesn't imply using military force in any protest is justifiable. However, presuming the PM commands the army, then it's his decision -- and the context thereof -- that needs to be justified. It does imply that, in this instance, using the army was the right thing to do.

The question doesn’t presuppose that sending in the Army was the right thing.

You're the PM; the army's been sent in, at your command; now you have to justify your decision. Thus it presupposes it was the "right thing" in the PM's context.

It doesn't presuppose that the killing is right. It's asking the child to formulate a speech as if they were a PM justifying it.

Understanding how public figures use language to justify their actions is a very useful skill. Being able to use language persuasively is also a very useful skill.

And it's common practice in these types of exercise to use either scenarios that are difficult to argue or to argue both sides.

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