This phrase has established itself in everyday dialogue in education and in the media, and for me it just slips too glibly off the tongue, considering the huge hidden agenda (deliberate or not) behind it. It reminds me most of ‘oven ready’ chickens, which are processed to be easy for us to cook, rather than having to draw, pluck and dress them. The point here is that those chickens are prepared according to a predetermined method, probably on an assembly line, and they all end up looking more or less the same. When they were alive their differences might have been too subtle for me to notice, but I’m pretty confident the chickens could recognise them in each other.
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