We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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We have recently had a bit of a storm in a thimble about the subject of university degrees and how this apparently fuels the “Enemy Class/hegemony/Nanny State-which-must-be-smashed-by-something” sort of issue. The original subject was nannying government threats about issues concerning diet. Suddenly the issue came up of the sort of folk pushing for this: David Cameron with his Oxford University PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics). Regular commenter IanB then constructed what I regard as an unwarranted and extraordinarily broad-brush thesis. He caused so much offence to our editor, Perry de Havilland, that, entirely within Perry’s rights as owner of this turf, IanB’s subsequent remarks were deleted. Now he has responded, over at the Counting Cats blog. He’s clearly upset, or at least, does not, in my view, fully grasp the reasons for the annoyance his remark caused.
This is my take on the matter. There is certainly a “bubble”, or malinvestment issue, in higher education in much of the West. I also think that the school leaving age should be reduced. Heck, I also have argued that labour market rules should be eased to make it easier for firms to take on apprentices so that young people can do something productive and lucrative. A lot of graduates are likely to come out of universities feeling bitter and betrayed at having degrees that are of limited market use and yet are saddled with heavy debts. The whole model needs to be rethought, and radically. I have said so in the past and intend to repeat this point from time to time.
But to target liberal arts degrees such as the polymath forms of PPE, Greats, History, in the particular way that IanB does is truly mad.
Consider this paragraph from this comment thread: (February 20, 2011 05:35 PM)
“The PPE degree is entirely sinister. The university system, and the education system beneath it are primarily sinister. We live in a sinister political and social structure, designed by sinister people, for sinister ends. There is no shame in hating that which is evil. That some proportion of PPE graduates do not go on to participate directly in the evil of the State no more disproves the general observation than finding a few good eggs in your local Communist party would exhonerate Communism.”
(Emphasis mine)
Now that’s madness on a motorcycle. “Entirely sinister”. “Evil”. No ifs, buts, or maybes. No, if a 20-year-old goes to college to study bits of economics, philosophy, politics and maybe history, there is no redemption for them. While Mr “B” might concede that quite a few libertarians/classical liberals have done such degrees – I know around 10 who have – in general, it is “entirely sinister” and should, presumably, be suppressed. Yet I know of people who did this degree, or others like it (I read history), with no end-goal of working in government, or of propping up some “establishment”; in fact many seem to have worked in business or done things very different. The degree may have started out as an entrance exam for government, but that is by no means its only, or even dominant, use these days.
In any event, if we are worried about Big Government, nanny statism and the whole prevailing Precautionary Principle mindset – and we are – then it seems a bit arse-about-face to focus on the subjects that future politicians/civil servants choose to study, since how can we predict that learning a course A rather than B is going to turn out a certain mindset we approve or disapprove of? Sounds a bit like hubris to me. (Hubris, of course, is a word that comes from those poncey Greeks).
Rather, would it not make rather more sense to cut governments down to size and worry about what the Davids, Johns or Nigels will study later on, if at all? Who is to say that in a private education world, or homeschooling one, that there will not be quite a lot of demand for polymath arts-type exams, as well as others? Let a thousand flowers bloom how they may, I say.
A historical point: In the early 19th Century, many of the leading political figures of the day – Robert Peel (double-first at Oxford), W E Gladstone, etc, were classical liberals in their broad philosophy of government, and a grounding in the Classics, and understanding of the lessons of Ancient Rome and Greece, proved useful. Ditto the US Founding Fathers. They all did those dead languages about times long ago, no doubt to the bemusement of some. The writings and speeches of Cato and Cicero, or Seneca and Tacitus, were part of their mental DNA. Of course, some of this could have been self-taught, but without those fusty old universities, might not have been made nearly so widespread.
Anyway, I see that IanB has no desire to return to these comment threads, which is a pity, since he is more or less one of the good guys with whom I agree more often than not, especially on things such as the nanny state. But I feel that I need to state these points for the record lest he gets it into his head that he is some sort of wronged party here. Anyway, if he wants to chat to me about this over a beer or three, he’s got my email address.
Update: IanB has complained of my quoting him out of context, such as the paragraph containing all that use of the word “sinister”. Well, it was certainly eye-catching, and I was not going to reprint the whole thread.. I copied and pasted it because, as I replied to him in a private email, that was a paragraph that clearly summed up how he felt about these things. He’s a first-class writer; if you use words like “sinister”, or “evil”, to describe a fucking exam, then naturally, some folk are going to pick on it. We can do all we can with nuance and emphasis, but that paragraph was pretty plain in its meaning. Of course, we all write or say things we meant had come out a bit differently. I certainly have.
Another update: BTW, I have re-calculated in my head the number of people whom I would call classical liberals/non-idiotarian Tories/even a few more sensible lefties, who have done liberal arts degrees at the more swanky universities in the UK (I have not included all the various folk in the US, as this would be a very big number). I come up with about 100 people. (The figure includes recently graduated students, as well as one or two people who are sadly no longer with us, or getting on a bit, and who played big roles in the libertarian movement, such as Chris Tame, or in the more conventional conservative/liberal side further back, such as Anthony Flew, Roger Scruton, Michael Oakeshott, Isiah Berlin, Kenneth Minogue, Shirley Robin Letwin, etc).
Now, IanB might still claim that this is a tiny percentage, no significance, as is his wont. Then again, I would argue that this shows that the so-called “Enemy Class” is being quite effectively infiltrated by a fairly determined, if relatively small, number of folk on “our side”. I mean, take the think tanks: Adam Smith Institute, Institute of Economic Affairs, Taxpayers Alliance, Policy Exchange, Cobden Centre, Centre for Policy Studies…..Hardly a tiny, insignificant part of UK political/economic intellectual life. Many of them were founded, staffed and backed by people who did the sort of degrees that IanB largely writes off as “gatekeeper” exams. If they are “gatekeeper” exams, then it would appear that they are not quite performing as intended. In fact, the gate has a bloody great hole in it.
How about adding some math lessons to plot statistically the chance of an Arab suicide bomber and a gay socialist vegetarian pacifist wearing a Che Guevara tee shirt and no sense of irony all ending up on the same bus in London?
Sigh…Math was never that much fun in my school days.
State education is beyond parody.
– Perry de Havilland commenting here
I’m against the rise in student fees… ‘cos it ain’t fuckin’ high enough
– Thaddeus Tremayne
An ex-Marxist deputy head teacher called Katharine Birbalsingh got a standing ovation at the Conservative conference.
Among the things she said were:
“If you keep telling teachers that they’re racist for trying to discipline black boys and if you keep telling heads that they’re racist for trying to exclude black boys, in the end, the schools stop reprimanding these children.”
… and …
“When I give them past exam papers to do from 1998, they groan and beg for a 2005 or 6 paper, because they know it’ll be easier. The idea of benchmarking children and letting them know how they compare to their peers is considered so poisonous by us teachers that we don’t ever do it.”
The management at her school were not happy and sent her home to await their judgement. It should be noted that she had only worked at this school for a few weeks, so most of the experiences she related referred to her previous schools.
It turns out that the “executive head” (not sure what that means) who sent Ms Birbalsingh home was quite happy with some other forms of political activity. Dr Irene Bishop allowed St Saviour’s and St Olave’s School, of which she is also head or executive head or whatever, to be used as the backdrop for the launch of Labour’s 2001 election campaign. I remember Matthew Parris describing the occasion in the Times as “breathtakingly, toe-curlingly, hog-whimperingly tasteless”.
Ms Birbalsingh is now back at work. But it also turns out that she is also Miss Snuffleupagus of To Miss With Love, a very fine education blog. I cannot link to it because at some time over the last few days it was taken down.
Laban Tall grabbed a bit of it via Google Cache:
The girls push open some doors at the top of the staircase and draw back quickly.
‘Nah… we can’t go down that way.’
I frown. ‘What do you mean, we can’t go down that way?’ They are visibly frightened.
So I push past them, enter onto the staircase landing and find a bunch of boys half way down the stairs, sitting on chairs, gambling with paper money and cards. We are in the middle of lesson time. The girls are uncomfortable. They have clearly been briefed to make sure they avoid such scenes. And these boys are not happy either to be interrupted.
‘Come on girls!’ I shout. ‘Let’s go!’ And I motion for them to follow me down the stairs towards the boys. The girls follow me, reluctantly.
These boys don’t know me of course. I have no clout in this school. So I know I cannot inspire fear. ‘Sorry boys!’ I sing. ‘Coming through!’
The boys look up at me, almost growling. As we approach, one of them puts his foot up on the chair, on top of the money, and blocks our way. I step over his leg. ‘Thank you boys!’ I smile. The girls follow sheepishly. As we continue now on the other side, moving down the stairs, I call back up, grinning. ‘Boys… I’m sure you’re not meant to be doing that right now! Better watch someone doesn’t catch you!’
And off we go. Phew. I can almost hear the girls’ relief.
The A-Level pass rate has risen for the 28th successive year.
Debasing the coinage. It’s what governments do.
Toby Young is a hate figure for lefty educationalists (i.e. 99% of them) because he is a leading figure in setting up one of these “free schools”, deregulated state schools on the Swedish model that the coalition government hopes to introduce. In this article he carefully debunks five of the scare stories the left has spread about the free schools.
Though like all of us I am sure he has faults, Toby Young is a Good Thing. Free schools are not free and not perfect but are, or will be, a broadly Good Thing. The dissemination of true information in place of false is a Good Thing. Mr Young’s fivefold debunking is well worth reading if you wish to be better informed about the nearest thing to a Good Thing that has hit British state education in years.
It is sad that in almost every case I would have preferred the myth to be true. Here is why I wish Mr Young’s five debunked myths were not bunk after all.
Myth No. 1. “Money for free schools will come from ‘the extremely wasteful Building Schools For The Future’ budget.” Suzanne Moore, Mail on Sunday, July 11, 2010
I gather there has been some sort of row about this, which I would research if I didn’t have toenails to cut. Government money, like all money, is fungible. So long as you bear in mind that it all ultimately “comes from” – as in “is extracted by force from” – the taxpayer, you can think of it as coming from whatever government budget heading makes you happy. I would have been made happier by thinking it came from a notoriously wasteful budget.
Myth No. 2. “Free schools will have to find their pupils from somewhere, preferably poached from existing local schools, shrinking their budgets and possibly leading to a spiral of decline …” Fiona Millar, The Guardian, June 18, 2010
What the hell is wrong with poaching pupils from existing schools anyway? The very word “poaching” reveals a mindset that regards the children as the property of the schools. They are not. It would do most of the local schools (“local” being next to meaningless in this context other than as a means to arouse feelings of protectiveness; every school is located somewhere) a power of good to be put in fear of losing their pupils. They might have to take desperate measures to keep them; possibly even going so far as to provide an education. And if the dear, sweet local schools cannot or will not do that then let the spiral of decline commence, though a vertical downwards arrow of decline would be better.
Myth No. 3. “It’s freedom, in our view, to reduce the vision for 21st century schools to children being educated in a run-down flat over an off licence …” Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, April 9, 2010
So long as they are educated, who cares where? The NASUWT is the least worst of all the teachers’ unions but even so I suspect that the real objection here is that young people emerging from run down flats to take up a scholarship at Oxford or Cambridge might suggest that the all money put into shiny school facilities does very little good.
(Mind you in debunking this one Toby Young twists the knife with delicacy: “Chris Keats also said in the same speech that the Conservatives’ Free Schools policy would favour the “pushy and privileged”. How? By enabling them to educate their children in run-down flats above off licenses? This is typical of the double-think at the heart of most Free School critiques. They are going to be run by a bunch of religious nutters in nissan huts at the bottom of their gardens and, at the same time, siphon off all the most motivated learners, thereby depriving neighbouring comprehensives of a vital resource.”)
Myth No. 4. Free Schools are a “vanity project for yummy mummies in West London”. Tristram Hunt, The Today Programme, May 18, 2010
Nothing could be a better omen of a project’s success than to have its fortunes linked to the vanity of a group famed for its (a) vanity and (b) success at getting what it wants.
Myth No. 5. “[P]ushy parents can set up a bijou academy free of any sane inclusive admissions policy …” Steve Pound MP, The Ealing Gazette, June 29, 2010
Toby Young says, “Not true. The admissions policies of Free Schools will have to be fully inclusive…” Oh, dear. Oh, damn. This was the most depressing debunking of all. I can’t put it any better than one of Mr Young’s commenters, sevendeuce, who says,
However, I can’t help feeling that you are allowing a very large cuckoo into the nest by accepting the existing admissions codes.
The failing schools that parents want to escape from are not failing because of their buildings, Heads or teachers. They are failing because of the presence of disruptive, unmotivated and sometimes violent pupils – often with disruptive, unmotivated and violent parents.
If you end up with exactly the same cohort of children from the locality as is present in the state schools, I’m just not sure you will see that much improvement.
You may be hoping to attract better teachers through freedom to pay more. That’s fair enough, but will the better teachers come if they are going to face the same disruptive kids as in the local Comp? I suspect not, unless the pay differential is huge. I think they will do what they do now, move to an independant school or elite state school.
It may be you are stuck with the Admission Code and have no choice. Then the only hope is to have a rigorous exclusion policy, with no appeals panels. Then perhaps the worst of the worst will be removed within a matter of days and their influence minimised.
Great was the lamentation among the staff of the General Teaching Council when Michael Gove, Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Education, decided to abolish it. Less great was the lamentation from pretty much anyone else. Teachers did not seem bothered.
In case you were wondering the GTC is…
Don’t go away! Sex! Nazis! Nazi sex! Oh, all right, no Nazi sex. But there are evil Australians, so keep reading.
… the GTC is an official body that regulates teachers. When talking to teachers it described itself as in some sense belonging to them; the equivalent of the British Medial Association or the Law Society. (Alas for teachers’ bank balances, it was not nearly as good at conspiring against the public as these two bodies are.) When talking to government it downplayed that aspect and up-played its aspect as a government-appointed regulator.
Anyway Mr Gove has said he will abolish it. A bloke called Martin Dean, co-chair of the Public and Commercial Services Union at the GTC, defended it in this Guardian article.
I was particularly struck by one of the arguments he used to bolster his claim that the GTC was a worthwhile body. He writes,
Gove should have been aware that the GTC has identified over 10,000 people who were teaching but not qualified, and has taken action to facilitate their removal from classrooms. We are still called upon by employers to clarify overseas-trained teachers’ professional qualifications, and we contact headteachers to inform them if one of their staff is not suitably qualified.
In other words the GTC tracked down ten thousand teachers against whom no complaint had been made and forced their schools to sack them, caring nothing for the disruption that caused to the education of the children they were teaching. Ten thousand people who were peacefully doing their jobs had their jobs taken away from them because they did not have the right pieces of paper. In most cases it was not even that these were unqualified teachers (not that I would care, but some people do); in fact most of them were qualified teachers, just not qualified in Britain. What the GTC has heroically put a stop to is the tradition, beneficial to school and teacher alike, of young teachers from Australia and New Zealand doing a few years in Britain before going home.
Consider again that these words were put forward by a member of the GTC in an effort to make people like it more.
Well done, Mr Gove. Now if you could just drop your own magical thinking and credentialism (he has proposed to “increase the status of teachers” by forbidding the profession to those with only a Third class degree*), you might turn out to be quite a useful education minister, in so far as such a thing can exist.
*CORRECTION: Commenter rosscoe says “I don’t think he’s said that people with a third can’t be teachers just that the tax payer won’t pay for their training.”
Sam Bowman, whom I mentioned in my previous posting below about the IEA, responded by emailing me further proof that he is taking his Cobden Centre duties seriously:
The Cobden Centre Education Network is a new network of students in the UK interested in libertarian and classical liberal economics, especially the Austrian school. Working with the Cobden Centre it aims to connect libertarian and classical liberal students across the UK and help them develop their interests and involvement in classical liberalism and libertarianism.
This summer, the Cobden Centre Education Network will be hosting a series of seminars studying Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy and State, a seminal work in Austrian economics that lays the foundation for further study of the Austrian school. The seminars will take place twice a month at the Institute for Economic Affairs in London, and Cobden Centre board members and fellows will join us for some sessions. Electronic copies of all reading materials and a study guide will be provided.
As well as being a unique opportunity to develop a comprehensive knowledge of the Austrian school, this will give Education Network members a chance to meet some of Britain’s foremost libertarian and classical liberal thinkers.
If you are interested in joining the Cobden Centre Education Network, please email Sam (sam @ cobden centre (all one word) dot org – I trust that will deter at least some spammers – BM) with your name, contact email address, and university and course if you are currently in education. Please also state if you are available to attend events during the summer in London.
Outstanding. And good on the IEA for lending them the place to do this.
Badgering politicians is worth a go, because you can get lucky, and because even if they don’t listen, someone else might, especially in an age when letters can double up as internet postings. But politicians will mostly just do their thing, which is fire fighting the fires on their desks within the limits set by public opinion, or by what they suppose to be public opinion, and within the limits that they all set amongst themselves. What matters is the long-term intellectual struggle, that is, the process of creating the limits within which politicians and other decision makers will operate in the future. The above enterprise is a fine example of how you go about doing that.
In the age of social media, blogs, emails and so on, it is tempting to suppose that personal contact is a bit superfluous. But I suspect that the most lasting impact of such novelties is creating and strengthening old fashioned face-to-face contacts, between people who might otherwise never have been introduced.
I wonder if there is an upper age limit.
I thought that this quote, by a commenter called “Berlinerkerl” in response to a Guardian article that really was called “Arm our children with media studies”, was too good to be left languishing in the “more than 50 comments” bilge tanks of a Comment Is Free article.
In his detailed study of Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men, Jones (2001) draws our attention to the mass of early post-modernist contradictions running throughout the series. Whilst Bill and Ben live in an idealised, hedonistic, not to say nihilistic world, they only come out to play when the Man Who Works in the Garden, the authority figure par excellence, goes to have his dinner. Whilst the Class Oppressor is therefore an absent figure, he nevertheless should not be ignored. Class Oppression is, indeed, a recurring theme, as every time Slowcoach the Tortoise appears, the Flowerpot Men dance on his back, as Marxist critics such as Stalin (1995, p786) have pointed out.
That the Flowerpot Men are invariably awoken by the Little Weed is a clear pointer to a drug-addicted subculture. The language used by the Flowerpot Men harks back to the Theatre of the Absurd – Smith (1997, pp 129-150) draws parallels with Ubu Roi.
Bee-bop-flobbalob 🙂
Another commenter called Pressman56 suggested instead that instead of arming our children with media studies we arm them with Kalashnikovs.
According to “Messenger”, a guest poster at Bishop Hill blog, they – in the form of the Climate Change Schools Project – are “bringing climate change to the heart of the national curriculum.”
So far the the Climate Change Lead Schools network only consists of 80 schools from across the North East. But fear not, says the Project’s website, “They are helping to pave the way for what is hoped will become a national programme of positive climate change education and action, led by our young people.”
I have a feeling that the words “led by our young people” are strictly conditional on said leadership being in one particular direction.
The “Climate Cops” activity that so angered Messenger, in which children “book” their friends or parents for crimes against climate, has already reached beyond the area of the North East in which the “Lead Schools” were situated. I saw a leaflet about it in my local library. Creepy website here. It is sponsored by nPower, the gas and electricity company – another example of how big energy corporations, far from opposing climate change activism, frequently pay for it.
On the BBC’s morning news show, was a short spot about unruly school pupils. One of the issues that was raised by the presenter was the fact that in a lot of schools, headteachers do not really have a very strong idea of what goes on in the classroom. A bit later in the show, a female headteacher was asked about this and she said something to the effect of “Well, I am on the road a lot and out of the school attending conferences and so on, but I have children of my own”.
Nice.
Mental hospitals in this case.
I sometimes get stick on Samizdata for pointing out that the demands of practical politics in a media democracy mean that it is pointless to try the public statements of politiicans against an ideological touchstone, and unreasonable to believe that they believe everything they say from day to day. But I do greatly resent two consequences of populist pandering: first, the willingness to distort the facts to flatter or inflame public delusions and foster moral panics; second, the blithe adoption of policy that is logically or strategically utterly incoherent, suggesting they have no understanding whatsoever of what they are doing. Today brings an example of the latter:
The Conservatives’ planning system would remove potential obstacles to the development of new schools by curtailing the power of local authorities in this area, according to the document.
The leaked planning policy says “for the [education] policy to be successful it is essential that unnecessary bureaucracy is not permitted to stifle the creation of new community schools”.
Fine. Perfectly sensible. Get the monopoly producer interest out of the way. That is entirely consistent with an implicit aim of Tory education policy (definitely not publicly advertised as such) of permitting competition between schools. But..
Under the policy, as well as planning decisions on new schools being taken by the secretary of state for children, schools and families, anyone would be able to turn an existing building into a school without the need for planning permission.
Which might be good, but the madness is starting to creep in. If any building can be converted into a school ad lib (excellent), then what “planning decisions” could there be for the Secretary of State to take? And how does that accord with a general claim to be in favour of decentralisation?
And when an existing school closed, that land would not be allowed to be used for any other purpose without the agreement of the schools secretary.
Straightjacket for Mr Neill, please. That is just crazy.
“Let us establish a ratchet/racket whereby the proportion of land and other property occupied by schools is calculated to increase, regardless of demand. Let us destroy much of the advantage of the freeing up of planning, by making it clear to investors that they may be stuck with the change of use. Let us put future Secretaries of State in the position where they are directly politically responsible for the closure of any school, and therefore likely to be under pressure to resist it from concentrated interest groups, and constantly preoccupied with campaigns over particular cases. Cottage Hospitals, you say? What are they?”
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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