The brazen cheek of brazen elitism
Posted on Tuesday 19 January, 2010
Filed Under Education
FOR AN Old Etonian to promise a ‘brazenly elitist’ approach to state education – as Tory leader David Cameron has done this week – is nothing if not brazenly cheeky.
It’s a nice catchphrase of course, chiming as it does with the popular perception that something is wrong with the system, and that sex-crazed pothead Sirs and Misses of the type parodied in that Channel 4 comedy-drama a few years back bear most of the blame.
To be sure, there is nothing wrong in principle with offering more money to attract people to a sector where vacancies are hard to fill. That, the economics textbooks tell us, is how labour markets are supposed to work.
But let us not even pretend that any government is going to provide state school teachers with the kind of starting salaries that Oxbridge graduates can pull down in the City or at a City-oriented law firm.
The parasitical dominance of financial services has distorted the British economy to the point where these are virtually the only realistic career choices for anyone who desires anything as basic as a house in a half-way decent part of London.
Teaching used to attract good people with good degrees from good universities, because they made the conscious decision that they wanted to be teachers. Indeed, it hopefully still does, at least to some extent.
But that was before the abolition of student grants and the introduction of tuition fees – surely the two most socially retrogressive policies enacted by any British government since the war – left graduates massively in debt before they even find employment.
On the surface, the new Conservative proposals attempt to tackle that problem head on. Yet in reality, the net impact will not be to pull in breadhead geeks who would otherwise have gone into investment banking. What we will see instead is the diversion of talent away from other professional public sector specialisms, with the loss of potential social workers and food standards inspectors.
In the end, the whole Tory diagnosis misses the point. The roots of Britain’s shocking educational underattainment, which has condemned generations of neglected school-leavers to functional illiteracy and innumeracy, is the ongoing educational apartheid that polarises David Cameron’s really and truly brazenly elitist Eton on the one hand with Bog Standard Comprehensives for the rest of the population on the other.
Schools need to have the socially mixed intakes that facilitate classroom learning. Working class children need to be incentivised to swot by the knowledge that if they do, their options genuinely do extend beyond MacDonald’s apprenticeships.
As long as the rich can buy Jeremy and Jocasta one-way tickets to guaranteed privilege, buggering about with bungs of a few grand here and few grand there to trainee teachers won’t achieve anything in particular.
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31 Responses to “The brazen cheek of brazen elitism”
“To be sure, there is nothing wrong in principle with offering more money to attract people to a sector where vacancies are hard to fill.”
I don’t think vacancies being hard to fill is the right way to put it. Doctors are few but the vacancies are not hard to fill, it is just the supply is restricted by certain social barriers. I say social because these barriers are not natural. France has double the number of Doctors we do but they are paid less. This ‘elitism’ is just social engineering, creating a class of people paid way above the average – a sort of Labour aristocracy.
As someone who has spent four decades in education as a dispenser and longer than that as a recipient and then a dispenser, I have a couple of points to make.
Back when every student got a grant, ex-students were not burdened with horrendous debts when they graduated. Unlike now.
One solution to the teacher shortage – and a variant of it could be used to address the doctor shortage, too – would be a system of bonded labour.
Each student would be supported throughout a degree course plus a later PGCE or the equivalent on the clear and legally-binding understanding that s/he worked in Cumbria – for example – for 10 or 15 years.
The ninth paragraph is not addressing the issue at all. The kids who go to Eton, Harrow, Roedean, Cheltenham and to preparatory schools beforehand are no smarter than the kids who go to the schools which produce illiterate and innumerate 16-year-olds. The equation is a complex one, but teacher quality is only a small part of it.
Parental love, support, encouragement and – yes – discipline is a far more important factor in ensuring a child gets a decent education than teacher quality. I had read the Collected Works of Beatrix Potter by seven and ploughed through the ‘Wind in the Willows’ by eight. Some would argue that the ‘Viz Annual’ would do just as well these days, mind you.
Non-teachers might care to look at the *Frank Chalk* website on the issue of chalk-face education and everything associated with educational issues.
Here endeth the lesson.
RECOVERED MEMORY
I remember meeting a Canadian doctor whose tuition and so one had been funded on the binding understanding that he endure doctoring in the Yukon for a period of years.
Frank Chalk is here:
http://frankchalk.blogspot.com/
On this very issue, no less!
Is the
http://winstonsmith33.blogspot.com/
Winston Smith here
the same Winston Smith what posts here
Martin,
Not even I believe Winston can be that right wing and so criminally irresponsible.
This is a guy supposedly working with vulnerable people with a blog called Working with the underclass and posting stories such as “Rewarding young criminals” which is a story about people he is charged with helping. He also calls for sterilization of the parents of people he is charged with helping!!
Intereestingly he does quote Frank Chalk who Bill Corr also quotes. With recommendations like those I would aviod Frank at all costs.
Anyway back to post,
I think we can see a policy difference between New Labour and the Tories on Education, the Labour policy is far more progressive. Almost enough to get off one’s arse and into the polling booth.
I’m afraid it’s a different ‘Winston’ over at the Sullivan recommended blogspot.
Personally I’ve nothing against Ketamine, and the nose bleeds alluded to can be avoided by adopting a more sensible route of administration, as many contributors to this blog will verify.
The rest of the guy’s screed reads like a ‘new labour’ policy document, with all the alleged horrors of an the dreaded ‘underclass,’ exposed in their lurid glory for the ‘respectable’ voyeur.
The only ‘benefit’ claimants I get upset about work in the corporate sector, Parliament or the Palace of Westminster.
JOHNNO, Labour new or old or whatever are for the minimum wage and increasing it. They have introduced apprenticeships for the young. They have increased pensions for the oldies. They have introduded fuel allowance. They have poured billions into the NHS and education. All the aforementioned despised by the Tories. Any real so called socialist should not have difficulty in who to vote for. The looney lefties of course will want the Tories in thinking this will take them a stage further in their fantasy world of revolution.
“Working class children need to be incentivised to swot by the knowledge that if they do, their options genuinely do extend beyond MacDonald’s apprenticeships”
There is the argument that they have to first be convinced that such apprenticeships aren’t a good idea.
I’ve met working class kids who have about as much aspiration as a chair leg. Coming from a working class background myself, it’s pretty disheartening.
Dick Puddlewaite. I think some working class adults are still kids. I recall a woman cleaner talking about her own daughter. She stated that her daughter wanted to go to college and told her daughter that there was nothing wrong with earning money from being a cleaner. I reckon it was down to the fact that the mother preferred instant money from the daughter rather than help her out to a better future. I suppose it is good to be rich. You have choice.
Why do we have to put up with ‘Jimmy Glesga’? He claims to have a long record of involvement in ‘working class politics’ (but can’t provide any evidence to back up his claim) but he says the most ludicrious things that betoken nothing but gross ignorance about the British working class and socialist politics. I know he is entitled to state his opinion, but quite frankly, why do the rest of us have to listen to it? He constantly carps and slags off the working class, accusing them of only being interested in football hooliganism, drink and instant money, and then he comes out with foul mouthed obscenities, expecting us to be shocked. And then, he tries to convince us that this reactionary Labour Government is the bee’s knees. Perhaps, he’s been at the ketamine.
I dinae mind old Jimmy Glesga. He’s no Piccadilly Highlander.
And less auld acquantance be forget we should remember that he makes Rab C. Nesbit sound like Noel Coward. And ye cannae say fairer than that.
Besides, I have a stong suspicion that Jimmy is actually the Glaswegian writer, James Kelman.
Jimmy is short for James, and Glesga is an anagram of ‘As leg.’ As leg is a cryptic reference to the word ‘Legend.’
Jimmy Legend, or James the Story teller. James Kelman.
Jimmy Glesga, you are revealed as James Kelman. How late it is, my friend, how late. But never too late to confess.
Come on Mr Kelman, ease your soul. Confess man, for the good of your immortal soul, confess.
Winston, I have two souls located on the respective feet. If having the luck! to be advised of my impending death I have decided to convert to the various religions keeping my options open. I have to admit my stupidity in ignoring the so called itellectuals and having great respect for people that do endure and help the less well off. Mein Gott I have just bared one soul.
SueR, the intention was you can read it and trash it if you want. Please carry on at your leisure. I will mention the word betoken when I am doon the pub. I like the ketamine word that will really impress the lads and wummin. We will call a special executive meeting to discuss such things and then get pissed. You can chair our bevvy converstion. You will have to pay for a round of drinks. I appreciate that may be a difficulty for the English! But I will if required help out.
“Besides, I have a stong suspicion that Jimmy is actually the Glaswegian writer, James Kelman . . . “
More likely it’s Baron Martin of Springburn with time on his hands since his recently enforced retirement.
JOHNNO seems to misunderstand, wilfully or otherwise.
This is from the DAILY WAIL no less:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1244562/Allison-Pearson-It-isnt-elitist-insist-teachers-spell.html
Look, if I – or anyone – provides a link to any opinion-site it does not necessarily mean that I or the unknown anyone agrees with every word on it.
SueR,
I have before questioned Jimmy’s credentials. Funnily enough I think he does have a point about the difference between New Labour and the Tories. To us on the far left they may be unpalatable but these differences can mean life or death to some people.
Bill Corr,
Looking back at your original Frank Chalk comment it certainly read like a recommendation. (Which is the word I used).
Jimmy – if you are James Kelman, I saw you perform in an upstairs pub in Glasgow for the social during the Class War national conference, circa 1994!
Had no idea who you were until after, and no idea what you were on about, but the Scots all seemed to enjoy it.
It’s all just words. You pays yer money and you takes yer choice. ‘Take the wheat and leave the chaff’. Read it and ignore what you don’t like. Language is dissolved officially.
To be honest, I think that Cameron has done us all a favour by yapping publicly about education, even if what he had to say was one cheap shot after another.
The issues need periodic public debate, and not only by homeschoolers, freeschoolers, Summerhillbillies, Risinghillbillies and the likes of Rhodes Boyson.
Probably the biggest REAL bummer about British society these days is that there are far fewer easy breaks and fast tracks for smart kids of poor provincial working-class background than there were 40 years ago; for kids like Alan Bennett, for example.
On teacher quality, it never ceases to smack me sideways to meet qualified teachers who think that childish = childlike and uninterested = disinterested, let alone never having heard of the Korean War but – to be brutally honest – knowledge of that kind isn’t really all that important for those teaching the mass of young learners, for whom a ‘Daily Mail’ standard of literacy is all that’s really needed.
Anyone who can read the ‘Daily Mail’ can cope with ‘Socialist Worker’ if the mood takes him or her.
And, JOHNNO, please believe me when I assure you that a good few teachers would vote for sterilizing both males and females of the feckless underclass if guaranteed a secret ballot. It’s interesting to look at the list of thoroughly fine and decent people who thought the basic ideas of eugenics perfectly sound until the National Socialists in Germany got the whole subject a bad name.
This is not related to British education, unless you thought your chemistry teacher was, literally, a zombie:
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2010/01/haitis_voodoo_p.php
Please pass it along.
This isn’t a very good post. It tippy toes around the culture of under achievement and low aspiration that far-left nutters might claim is some form of “capitalist oppression”, but everyone else knows is self inflicted even if they consider it taboo to acknowledge this.
Some people don’t care for their kids education and this results in low aspiration and achievement (this is the real problem), some people do. Some people who do care have the resources to put behind a better education, be it a private school, a home in a better neighbourhood, a few hours a week private tutoring. They’re not trying to get away from the poor, they’re trying to get away from the people who don’t care for education. Some people do care for education, but don’t have resources, they have to make do with encouraging their kids and fostering a culture of achievement and aspiration, and just hope that those who don’t care for education don’t drag them down too much.
Having better teachers isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t deal with the taboo of how to deal with the bad parents who don’t give a fuck about their kids education and hand that attitude on to their kids. It would be wicked and mendacious to set up the straw man that this is because these people are poor, even poor people are able to care about and encourage their kids, so they shouldn’t be tarred as bad parents for the sake of a taboo. By the same token trying to get those who do care for their kids education to take the weight for those who don’t cannot be right, they’ve got enough on their plates being good parents to their own kids, why should they have responsibility for others’ shitty parenting imposed on them if the shitty parents get to opt out of that responsibility?
MJW,
Even if all you said on some simplistic level were true it still doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. How does society utilise the talents of it’s people most effectively. Does it do it by ‘elitist’ education. I.E. restricting quality education to those able to afford it, or does it try to foster as much talent as possible to best capture and invest in the brightest students and raise the general level of education.
The Tories want the ‘elitist’ system and the New Labour want the ‘meritocracy’.
Personally I think New Labour have the superior strategy out of the 2.
Internationally you only have to compare the education standards of Haiti and Cuba to see where ‘elitism’ can lead and to see the folly of your ‘bad’ parent red herring.
P.S. Wasn’t this once a blog for socialists to thrash out issues? Where did all the right wing scum come from?
So someone with whom JOHNNO disagrees deserves to be called ‘right wing scum’ – like Sunny H. briskly deleting ungoodthinkful submissions or the Stalinists at Socialist Unity sweeping dissent away?
NuLab has done almost everything in its power to destroy the educational hopes of literally millions of working-class parents – the rich can always look after themselves – and the bloody Tories have, in practice, proved themselves to be no better at all.
Ali,
“So someone with whom JOHNNO disagrees deserves to be called ‘right wing scum’”
No there are many on the left who I disagree with but at least I know when debating with them they broadly share the same values.
Right wing is an accurate description, the scum bit refers to the far right politics espoused, which coming from the left I find obnoxious. Scum is an adjective I am happy to use. However I didn’t say anything about sweeping ‘dissent’ away, I was just lamenting the fact that this site is fast becoming a talking shop for fascists, racists and ignorant morons.
There’s a point Dave seems to have overlooked, in his utter and complete wrongheadedness about the evils of what he chooses to call educational apartheid.
I wonder whether he is a parent of school-aged children. If so, some fearlessly truthful personal disclosures are in order.
As for me, my own two children went to Irish State secondary school in Drumkeerin, County Leitrim. Both are now in their twenties, literate and numerate. One is an instructor of outdoor pursuits, the other is currently doing an MA in International Entrepreneurial Management, which sounds like something dreamed up by the Medellin Cartel.
That fictional but drawn-from-life pair, Jeremy and Jocasta, may well have parents who really have to scrimp and save and forgo foreign hols and all sorts of nice treats to afford a better education for their offspring than the local state sector school offers, assuming that it’s awful.
Not all state sector schools in Britain are awful, of course, but enough are ghastly enough to act merely as Stations of the Cross for those with enough get-up-and-go to get up and leave:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/7033452/Teaching-Its-a-job-for-a-saint.html
I’m a weeny bit surprised that the homeschoolers and Summerhillbillies haven’t entered this debate. I have a lot of time for Summerhill and similar heroic endeavours but I’m realistic enough to accept that schooling which is – let’s be honest – appropriate for the creative and neurotic children [or grandchildren] of the well-off cannot be considered as a model for the whole country.
Ditto those Blair-beloved silly Fundamentalist Christian Academies in Gateshead and so on; while they may – it is alleged – insist on telling the nippers in their classrooms that an All-Caring God let his Only Son Die For Our Sins because a gullible woman ate a Magic Fruit after being tricked by a Talking Reptile, those nippers leave school literate and numerate.
But that, like Dave’s very silly point about educational apartheid, brings us to the harsh fact that education is not a cheap pair of slacks in the January Sales: one size does NOT fit all.
JOHNNO,You on the far left that will eventually turn right have a choice. You can help Labour inspite of your differences or you can help the Tories. You know the far left have no chance. So do you want the weaker in our society to suffer from Tory cuts just to satisfy yourself. Face up to it JOHNNO you have to be in power to achieve anything. The hard left will never achieve power.
JOHNNO, You need to start up a site called in agreement with JOHNNO
What an irony that there are so many contributors to a thread discussing the People’s Republic of China, over which nobody here has any influence, and so few to a thread concerning education in the UK, an issue over which all UK residents reading this site do in fact have some influence.
Something which I perhaps ought to have included in my last submission, which included a reference to Summerhill and the fundie Christian academies, is that neither tolerate loutish behaviour or bullying. They’re very different places but both are safe environments for non-violent children.
MJW ought to contribute more to this thread.
On the ‘evil poor’ and ‘poor but honest’ classes:
http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2009/04/evil-poor.html
Not terribly recent but nothing much has changed …
Thanks for posting this. Would be intrested to read more or possibly please contact me by email thank you!