Independence for all? - 1 comment
Just a quick post, for the time being, on the latest education proposals.
Jonathan has collected a variety of views that are hostile to/unconvinced about the changes here, and I'm sure more critical articles will appear over the next few days.
The idea that it is those middle-class Labour politicians who have had the benefit (oops, there's a point conceded already, I think) of a private education who are now, after all these years, pushing them onto the rest of us, having had a pretty cushy life as a result, is hardly credible. The view always used to be that non-State-educated Labour politicians were the most hostile to private education and to grammar schools, and could therefore be given a booting for wanting to "pull the ladder up". Tony Crosland ("I will smash every f***ing grammar school in the country") went to Highgate School and Oxford. And as for Tony Benn...
Our Cramlington councillor is prepared to put an alternative view. It's more optimistic, less cynical, and doesn't rely on the use of "Christian" as a euphemism for "Dangerous/Creationist/George W. Bush". So, all in all, I find it attractive. Some extracts:
We won't win the argument for secular, liberal education by prescribing from the centre that all schools must be that way. It hasn't been tried for over one hundred years, and in all likelihood it would just encourage religious division. Instead we need to make clear the advantages as we see them of a liberal secular education. Bluntly, we have to win the argument, instead of relying on parliament to make laws that enshrine our beliefs in law.
The debate around schools reform, and how willing we all are to get up and argue for what we believe in, rather than rely on the party in government to do it for us, is a microcosm of the challenges facing the parliamentary left in the UK for a generation to come. We might not want to spend more time in debates, and campaigning for secular schools, or schools that aren't the plaything of powerful vested interests, but since those voices are already being heard its our job to raise ours.The spectre of the "11 plus" still looms from the 1960s, alongside the memory that failing it meant you'd blown your one chance at climbing out of manual, dead-end employment. Would the return of selection in this day of age really have the same social affects in Blair's slick, mobile Britain? I loathe the private education gravy-train with a passion, but since when did selection, per se, mean you only have one chance to climb, and that being shown not to be "academic" condemned you to inferior treatment? Why shouldn't these measures be combined with policies that took from the most academically capable to help those at the bottom of the education scale, for whom life is going to be a struggle, with or without money behind them?
If I get time, I'll post some more thoughts later. I had worked on a piece about school vouchers and thr risk of ghettoisation, but I can't find it now - I always work on scraps of paper, many of these finding their way into the recycling bin before their time.
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EDUCATION WHITE PAPER
We are at a crucial point in this country's culture in which we are in a real danger of abandoning a concensus on the social contract. Thatcher denied that it existed, Labour fought to uphold it during the eighties and early nineties and now there is an attempt to sideline this as a left wing issue. All this is being done during a Labour administration which even if you are of the belief that the political system is cynical must still seem shocking. In many minds it seems to perhaps confirm that the most unthinkable changes that would be opposed if implemented by a Tory administration are easily implemented by a Labour one. Entrenching the seemless interests of the establishment which remains in control under its many guises.
I receieved an education in a secondary modern school from 1966 to 1973 when I then went to Art College after taking the then 'O' levels and then 'A' Levels. It was the post war generation who realised and felt keenly the importance of education in its holistic and productive purposes.
My mother was denied a grammer school education in the late 30's because her father claimed that education was wasted on a woman and she was determined that her children were motivated with and valued their education. Education was a gateway to opportunity and perhaps its truest test.
Despite the controversies of the 11 plus system there was a sense of idealism about education and an ownership of it. In many ways it was a time when we were happy to embrace the untidy processes of debate and thinking without being product led, in which we realised that it was the process that was important and resisted the materialistic concerns of utilities for their own sake. In other words we learnt the structures of thinking and learnt the skill of thinking for yourself and did so with others where we learnt the importance of society even if we fiercly debated our concepts of this. Democray and informed democracy was as important then as it remains now.
The reason that I have described this personal story now is to underline that the perception/values of the current debate around the Education Bill has a wider perspective outside of the tit for tat my side your side manner of debate.
Inclusion and empowerment as unselfish social values, we hope, are first experienced at school from the first time we enter our schooling. We spend time through formative years exploring what this means in language, history, arts, culture and the products we produce. Through these values we know the how and we have the opportunity to explore and gain ownership of the why. The debate about private schooling then and now shows that it has never been perfect, however I contend that it has always orbited around this social and cultural force/tendency.
Education is an institution and a value which teaches us about society, about the context of the 'me' in the many and that the resolving of the tension between both makes us all winners. It is a problem shared, it is a problem we need to share and in sharing we find a value for itself. These are social and social democratic values.
The argument and grounded concerns around the Education Bill about unequal access to resources, the division between the haves and have nots are relevant and pressing but are not intended to put the forms of education in stasis. Modern does not equate to valueless.
Having freedom to arbitrate my needs without recourse to the authority of others may seem like a worthy cause. Do we embrace this freedom when the consequence is the risk that we may be excluded from the standards that others have won and take for granted. Is that then freedom that we recognise? Do we embrace the freedom of schools to sort out their admission procedures which will entrench the system of privelige where social and educational difficulty is a burden instead of the litmus test which proves we are all of value?
What do we know of the trickle down argument where quality will percuate down the social scale, where did we hear about this first and are we convinced that this will work? Have we reached mature conclusions? Will this trickle down be thwarted by limited resources and countered by statistical success of the middle class mean?
Informed debate is being truncated by a PM in a hurry. Dissent is to be cowered. Not this time not this time! History informs us that crisees can be precipitated in a short time and take an age to remedy. When the issues and problems surrounding the education bill come home to roost the electorate will remember the voices that were not listened too and the deceit of the party who came to power on the values of meritocracy, access to decision making and the slogan "Education. Education Education".
This breech of trust and faith will take an age to recover from whilst an ex PM with his wife will be earning a mint on the lecture circuit with a peerage to suit.
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