Reason Not The Need...

Since the publication of A Level results last Thursday, the media has been awash with all the usual stories and opinions, from those of the asylum seekers who could barely speak English in January but who have just earned dozens of A*s to that of the student with mega results who was turned down by all of the universities to which he or she applied to the constant quoting of statistics about how many people are now chasing each available university place. It is to be wondered why journalists bother to write anything new at this time of year since you could pretty much predict in advance what they are going to be saying. Then there’s the story that appears in newspapers every August with tedious regularity, the one that could be headed, “Who Needs University Anyway?”

You know it well: a newspaper’s restaurant critic or motoring correspondent (these supposedly being “successful” people) will pompously hold forth about how they never went to university but, instead, got a job with an insurance broker at the age of ten before working their way up through hard graft and “talent” – which, apparently, you need to be a newspaper hack. Their views will be backed up elsewhere by the story of some top A Level or International Baccalaureate student who has rejected the university option in favour of training on-the-job as an accountant or something in a bank. Such students will be quoted smugly opining that their chosen route is preferable because it will give them a career without the need to amass a huge debt gaining an “irrelevant degree”.

Yes, yes. No-one wishes to run such people down, but when their views are an implied criticism of those who do choose university, it is difficult not to leap to the defence of the thousands of young people who, every year, put their hearts and souls into securing a place in higher education.

The first question to ask is, in what way is going to university less a “job” than paid employment? The accusation that those who go to university are somehow avoiding reality often lies at the heart of the “who needs university anyway” article. But how is this the case? How is studying – often late into the night – any less “real” than pushing paperwork around an office from nine to five every day? And, in the sense that students make a massive financial commitment that is effectively an investment in a derivative valued solely on their future prospects, it could even be said that those who get a job and see money coming in from an early stage are taking the easy way out.

That said, the main reason for attending university really has got nothing to do with money at all. Over the years, I have, obviously, spoken to many pre-university students about their aspirations and what has more often than not come back is the sense that they have given little thought to the career they might eventually enter. Some have, of course. There will always be the student who has known since he or she was a toddler that they wanted to be a lawyer, sometimes at a particular firm. But, for the most part, students have a much clearer sense of what they want to do at university and where, ideally, they will do it. University is their goal, not what it will lead to. This is the problem with the “who needs university” articles: they are predicated on the false premise that university is exclusively about gaining job-market-relevant qualifications. It is not. It is a valid experience in its own right. Given the costs involved, it would be a foolish student who did not have half an eye on how he or she is going to pay back his or her debts, but that rarely seems to be the major motive for going in the first place. University is a rite of passage that changes the way you think and the way that you interact with others. If you go on to take a higher research degree, you can go further in making a fairly selfless contribution to the improvement of society.

The journalists who line up every August to poo-poo university and all it stands for are guilty of the assumption that everybody shares their worldview. Many do not. Many do not see the earning of money as the be-all and end-all, but place a higher value on the experiences, both intellectual and social, that university is uniquely placed to grant them. That is what is in the minds of so many of the students currently working their way through the grind of clearing and subjecting themselves to the kinds of anxieties that those working in offices or shops can only guess at. May they all get on to their chosen courses

Nepotocracy and the August Riots

What caused the August riots?

In the search for an answer, the first point to make is that we might question the appropriateness of the word “riot” in that it implies an agenda and a political consciousness that remained unarticulated by participants. Certainly, no leader emerged and no demands were made. To all appearances, the riots were what one commentator described as “shopping with violence”, an opportunistic orgy of shoplifting on a grand scale. It may be telling that no public buildings were attacked, no party headquarters were stormed and, if you were the proprietor of a bookshop, you had little to worry about. Instead, it was shops that stocked consumer durables and fashion items that bore the brunt, specifically, shops that stocked the types of consumer durables and fashion items that appeal primarily to teenagers.

Of course, it would be wrong to attribute all of the anarchy to one age group, just as it would be wrong to blame a particular ethnic community; numerous examples of people of all ages, not to mention socio-economic backgrounds, have appeared before the overworked magistrate courts during the last, vaguely surreal, week. That said, TV pictures, combined with court records, confirm that the riots were a phenomenon driven predominantly by the young – either teenagers (and, shockingly, some who are even younger) or those who, until relatively recently, have been teenagers. It is surprising that no-one seems to have noticed any significance to the timing: the riots took place in the middle of the long summer holiday when methods by which teenagers alleviate their boredom are at a premium.

In trying to account for the riots, a consensus is forming in the media around the notion that they are an inevitable consequence of a policy agenda that mollycoddles young people, that goes to often ludicrous extremes to protect them from everything – even, and, perhaps, especially, the consequences of their own actions. Teachers will recognize some truth in this, but it is surely not the whole story. Three youths interviewed on Sky News this week attributed their part in the riots to what they saw as inequalities in “the system”. They compared their relatively poor condition to those of wealthy bankers and other ill-defined groups favoured by “the government”. They spoke – sympathetically – of their failed attempts to get into the mainstream through employment and education. Their case was somewhat undermined by their acknowledgement that the looting in which they had been involved was no more than a method of acquiring the expensive goods that they could not otherwise afford, but they said enough to confirm that it is overly simplistic to see the riots as mere mindless thuggery.

What those youths and the many hundreds of others like them had done is to test the boundaries of the social contract that holds any Western country together. As history has shown again and again, people’s social compliance can only be forced by the application of massive resources and a willingness to use draconian measures of repression. In a “free” society, such as that of the UK, public order relies on people’s voluntary compliance, the police force being, for the majority, a largely symbolic presence. The limits of this dispensation were horribly exposed by the August riots: the rioters quite simply stopped agreeing and withdrew their compliance. In this sense, the riots were a profoundly political act, even if those responsible may not have been aware of it.

There is, however, a more immediate way in which they exposed a growing political and social problem in contemporary Britain. They can be seen as a response to the increasing extent to which power and influence in this country is concentrated in the hands of a narrow “nepotocracy”. This was precisely what Sky’s interviewees were saying in their rather clumsy and hostile way.

In order to explain this, it is worth making reference to the summer’s other big story – the hacking scandal. Although it went unremarked upon, the most telling moment of the House of Commons debate on the matter was arguably when Ed Milliband stated that his current spin doctor-in-chief once worked for Education Secretary Michael Gove. To me, this served to highlight the extent to which a relatively small number of inter-connected people in this country have their fingers in all the pies, particularly those that have a bearing on public debate. Politics, the media and the arts are now essentially run by a cabal of family members, old school pals and hangers-on who manipulate their address books in order to gain influence and promote their careers. Think about this. Three of the most powerful positions in this country – Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mayor of London – are all occupied by men who were members together of an exclusive club, the Bullingdon, within their already exclusive university, Oxford. Lest we mistake this for a purely Conservative characteristic, though, we should remember that four of the positions on Labour’s last front bench were occupied by a husband and wife team and two brothers. The numerous young female playwrights who have been presenting their glorified soap operas on subsidized stages in recent years almost all have connections that made their passage from slush pile to production easier than for most. Then we have the ubiquitous Speaker's wife who is set to become an MP – one of the people who runs this country – on little other recommendation than that she has the right contacts.

And the examples could go on and on… In fact, it is hard to think of any other time in recent history that has seen this country so completely in the grip of a mutually-back-scratching elite which rarely issues invitations to potential new members. There is little cause for smugness if you happen to be an American, since you come from a country of over 300 million that, nevertheless, has picked two of its recent presidents from the same family and, from a different family, another recent president and the current Secretary of State. Much the same, to varying degrees, could be said of other Western countries.

Putting yourself in the position of the rioters, then, looking from the outside at a club you will never be asked to join and which will never pay any attention to your voice, the decision to rip up the social contract becomes more understandable. It also gets to the heart of the educational problem that, as was alluded to earlier, has been mooted as a key seedbed for the riots. Put simply, young people might well ask why they should bother with school if their future prospects will rely not on their educational achievements, but on who they know.

So what’s to be done? The first task should be to ensure that the frankly iniquitous system of unpaid internships be done away with; nothing restricts access to politics and the media quite so effectively as that particular closed shop. Next, choice of Parliamentary candidates should be truly local, central offices losing all power to influence such decisions; the Conservative “A List” at the last election was, in practice, just another mechanism by which the nepotocracy extended its range. Finally, there is a strong case for making all job applications anonymous prior to interview stage; this would allow applicants to be judged purely on their merits and achievements and not on their surname (or, in a happy side-effect, their probable ethnic origin).

Those who talk of “broken Britain” are usually referring to the lower end of the social spectrum. But, Britain is broken at every level, going right to the very top. If the social contract is to be renewed, it needs to be built around genuine opportunity for all. Education can play its part, but pupils have to see some purpose to it; if they perceive it as a cynical game that gives an illusion of opportunity while the nepotocracy goes about its business untouched, then we can look forward to chaos on the streets becoming a regular occurrence.

Liberal Versus Vocational

As I write, I can hear various exotic birds and beasties singing and calling in the Australian sun beyond my window. I am, as you have probably guessed, on holiday down under, but, before you start worrying that this has morphed into a travelogue blog (a traveblog?), there is a specific educational point that I want to make later related to my current geographical location.

For now, let’s go on a different journey – to a very famous public school some years ago. The occasion is a meeting of HMC Heads of English and I am in the audience. The speaker – who happens to be the Head of English at the very famous public school in question – is introducing the day with a passionate defence of “traditional” educational values. He speaks of the need to maintain standards, to focus on the literary cannon and to guard against the encroachment of easy options. He is, to use his own formulation, seeking to defend “liberal” education from the growing threat of the “vocational”. I am struck by the dichotomy, but not entirely certain as to what he could mean. What is the difference between the two and why should we be bothered if one is expanding at the expense of the other?

“Vocational” seems simple enough: presumably, it refers to education related to some specific job or occupation.  A lot of degrees fall broadly into this category. Exam boards are also offering more and more pre-university, post-16 qualifications of a similar type. Already, though, we have hit a problem: while a course like Hotel Management is pretty clear about which side of the divide it occupies, where would we accommodate such “traditional” subjects as Law and Medicine, both of which would seem to be very directly related to specific career options? 

If there are difficulties here, they are as nothing to those which emerge as soon as we attempt to define “liberal” in this context. Of course, it’s one of those concepts with which everyone knows what they mean, but can’t quite pin down in a satisfactory way. Liberal education is – well, you know... For what it’s worth, my view is that a liberal education is all about defining one’s individuality. Whether a liberal education creates the self, as John Locke appears to suggest, is open to debate, but it certainly helps to develop the self. A person has a clear sense of his or her personal capabilities and interests as a result of a liberal education. An education that is vocational, by contrast, allows someone to play a role in a pre-existing socially-constituted structure and, therefore, it might more properly be termed “training”. It is perhaps worth noting that this distinction is very ancient; if one examines school curricula from the past – even the distant past – they have never been about training. Aristotle did not teach the future Alexander the Great how to make weapons or ride a horse or even how to manage a group of soldiers. And Julius Caesar’s school days were spent mastering literature, philosophy and rhetoric – not boning up on the strategies that would allow him to conquer Gaul.

Perhaps these examples should be borne in mind when the questions of usefulness that I touched on in a previous entry are considered. Advocates of vocational education might well argue that “defining one’s individuality” is all very well, but so what? Society doesn’t need a bunch of deep-thinking, but ineffectual, individuals – it needs people with the skill set required for future progress. Modern day Caesars, the great captains of industry, are often cited to prove that education, meaning a liberal education, is unnecessary for success in the world. Richard Branson left school at 15, we’re told, and Alan Sugar at 14. Neither enjoyed the benefits of any social capital to give them a start in life; they’re self-made men. Yet, as Katharine Birbalsingh has recently pointed out, it is wrong to state that Sir Dick and Lord Shuggs eschewed education in favour of making their own way. Yes, neither chose to pursue education beyond the minimum leaving age at the time, but they had perfectly normal, liberal educations up to that point. Far from proving the uselessness of a liberal education, they are paradigms of the advantages it confers; the mental disciplines they gained from school – a breadth of knowledge of different types, the ability to assimilate information critically, the ability to re-interpret information, numeracy, social skills – have been the bedrock of their business success. Indeed, they almost lead us to a conclusion: that a liberal education gives people the breadth to push new ideas and change whereas vocational courses are always going to follow in the wake of a pre-ordained occupational structure. Getting back to myself in Australia, I can say that I am able to operate here - and would even be eminently employable - because much of my education has been liberal and, thus, unconstrained by narrow parameters, making it international in scope.

However, the vocational should not be dismissed quite so lightly. It could be argued that Law and Medicine, as first degrees, are broad and academic and require further training to be converted into the truly vocational, but that is to ignore the fact that they still tend towards a specific career option. Vocational education is important, ensuring that vital knowledge and skills are preserved within society and passed on from one person to another. It is at our peril, though, that we move towards seeing that as the be-all and end-all of education. Those who would see a liberal education as “useless” ought perhaps to think again...