Virginia Blackburn

BRACE yourselves: another “snowflake generation” story is coming up. This one concerns a Cambridge professor who warned his students against partying and told them to study hard. Don’t be “fooled” by other students “partying around”, warned Professor Eugene Terentjev, a director of studies in natural sciences at the university’s Queen’s College. “You can only do well (ie achieve your potential, which rightly or wrongly several people here assumed you have) if you are completely focused and learn to enjoy the course.”

Excellent advice, you might think, and just what you’d expect at a top educational establishment. However, Cambridge students didn’t seem to think so. They have lashed out at the good professor, accusing him of sending an “extremely damaging” message regarding an “unhealthy and dangerous way to live”.

This is becoming beyond parody. An eminent academic at a world-class institution tells his students to work hard and is accused of damaging their mental health. From what planet do these people come?

Actually we know the answer to this: from our own closed and cosseted little world, children brought up to think of themselves as the centre of the universe, totally unprepared to cope with the demands of normal life.

Elsewhere in the news there is a newly trained teacher, 22, who has left the profession after just one term because, among other things, he was working so hard that he didn’t get home until 6.30pm and just couldn’t cope. Six thirty! And that’s not even when he left work!

In a decade or so this crowd is going to be in a position in which they are running the country and heaven help us all then. Because you can bet that in those Far Eastern