Here’s a depressing thought: two of the bloodiest current operators in the Middle East both had a good Western education. Saif Qadaffi went to the London School of Economics, and produced — or had produced for him — a respectable PhD dissertation (I’ve read some of it, and it looks academically respectable). And Bashar al-Assad, currently presiding over murder and torture in Syria, trained as a doctor in London (which means, among other things, that he subscribed to the Hippocratic Oath). So the belief that a good education civilises its recipient needs to be taken with a large helping of salt.