I’m proud that my Dad has graduated, but a degree is no safety net from stupidity

YeSteRDaY my father took care of a spot of unfinished business. He put on a black gown and a white bow tie and attended his graduation ceremony at St andrews University, less than a mile from the council house where he grew up.

In the late 1950s the distance probably seemed greater. Boys from council houses were rarely to be found in the lecture halls of Scotland’s oldest and most august university. It barely even crossed their parents’ minds they might benefit from further education. What they would benefit from, mums and dads reckoned, was getting a job and earning their own money.

So that is what my father did. Beginning his career in journalism at DC thomson in Dundee at 17, he later moved into tV news and documentaries and dwelled little, as decades passed, on the absence of letters after his name.

In his 60s he was elected to the Scottish parliament, serving two terms in a chamber packed with smart cookies. there was Jack McConnell, for example, with his BSc Dip ed from Stirling – and alex Salmond, chuckling as well a St andrews University economics and medieval history graduate might.

Into this intellectual bear pit my father strode and, save for the time he became the first MSP to utter the F-word in a parliamentary speech (quoting Bob Geldof rather too accurately for comfort) he seemed to muddle through okay without the degree.

and now, in his 70s, this: Ma (General) – ‘with Distinction’.

It would be churlish not to congratulate the old boy on his achievement, but now that he is officially a member of the clever club I hope he does not find the company too disappointing.

For if there is a lesson for those with degree scrolls only from the university of life it is surely that further education offers no safety net for stupidity. Indeed, as the proportion of graduates among the population has steadily increased, so too, it often appears, has the poverty of intellectual rigour in public life.

We should remind ourselves that theresa May is a highly intelligent woman with a degree from Oxford University. But, in the past few weeks alone, those years of learning amidst the dreaming spires afforded little protection from the political lunacy of torpedoing her premiership by gambling on a general election she did not need to call.

they did not rescue her from fogyish prattle about running through wheat fields when asked in an interview about the naughtiest thing she had done as a child; nor did they furnish her with the street smarts to engage with victims of the Grenfell tower tragedy. Boris Johnson is another impressive intellect even if, on quiet days off from the buffoonery, he does still beat himself up for missing out on a first class degree at Oxford.

But my guess is he still has not twigged – as more slowwitted mortals have – that he would do considerably more harm than good to his country and party if he were ever to become Prime Minister.

Nicola Sturgeon left Glasgow University with a law degree but, two weeks after her party was shredded at the General election as a result of her refusal to take Indyref 2 off the table, she still does not seem to have figured out what to say to us about it. Hint: re-read your first speech as First Minister – the part where you promised to govern for ‘all of Scotland’, not just independence supporters. the answer’s bound to be in there somewhere.

Perhaps it is little surprise our politicians have forgotten they are supposed to be clever. Many of their critics have too.

take the much retweeted comment by journalist Shehab Khan that the cost of making Grenfell tower nonflammable would have been the same as five pairs of Mrs May’s leather trousers.

What? either we want to know why dozens died horribly in their homes or we want to mock the PM’s leisure attire. No logic can link the two matters – only blind, anti-intellectual hatred.

We live in times where common sense is frequently trumped by absurdity insisted upon by busybody products of universities. a few years ago, a Midlothian school decided to change the names of its two primary one classes after deciding pupils of 1b might feel inferior to those of 1a.

Parents could hardly believe their ears. they can hardly believe what is written in their children’s school reports any more either because teachers are discouraged from writing anything negative. Meanwhile healthy competition, a concept their youngsters will need to understand when it’s time to get a job, is not encouraged either at schools because it might also involve acquainting them with the idea of losing.

Where do you think these supposedly progressive ideas take root? at colleges and universities, is my educated guess – at the same institutions where students try to ‘no platform’ speakers such as feminist Germaine Greer if they express opinions with which they, aged 20, disagree.

as my father embarks on his much-deserved gap year before deciding what to do next with his life, I hesitate to offer filial counsel. He knows my mistakes better than anyone.

So let me patronise his younger, fellow graduands instead. those letters after your names certainly prove you can think – but not necessarily that you do.