The Govies can mock this all they like, but what are they going to do about it?
Ministerial defence of the grammar schools came from “Red Ellen” Wilkinson of the Jarrow Crusade, and from her successor, George Tomlinson. Their academic defence came from Sidney Webb, author of the old Clause IV, and from R H Tawney. Their vigorous practical defence came from Labour councillors and activists around the country, not least while Thatcher, as Education Secretary, was closing so many that there were not enough left at the end for her record ever to be equalled.
They were protected in Kent by a campaign long spearheaded by Eric Hammond, the veteran leader of the electricians’ and plumbers’ union, who was a lifelong member of the Labour Party. They were restored by popular demand, as soon as the Berlin Wall came down, in what is still the very left-wing former East Germany. And the public successfully defended them in, again, the Social Democratic heartland of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Within and around the very academic Labour Government of the day, there was great concern that the events of 1968 would lead to a loss of State funding for universities, and thus to a loss of academic freedom. C B Cox and A E Dyson were Labour supporters when they initiated the Black Papers, and Cox was vilified by the Thatcher Government and its apologists when he resisted its, their and her Gradgrindian philistinism, epitomised by her replacement of O-levels with GCSEs, her worst ever domestic policy, right down there with Blair’s reclassification of cannabis.
As much as possible of the anything but Gradgrindian, anything but philistine grammar school and O-level tradition was maintained at classroom level by individual, often very left-wing teachers until they themselves retired. To say the least, they would have had no objection to the inclusion of Latin in the English Baccalaureate, any more than Andy Burnham, with his English degree from Cambridge, could really have shared the view of those who objected to that inclusion.
Full employment, workers’ rights, strong trade unions, municipal services (including council housing), public ownership and the Welfare State made possible the civilised and civilising world of the trade unions and the co-operatives, of the Workers’ Educational Association and the Miners’ Lodge Libraries, of the pitmen poets and the pitmen painters, of the brass and silver bands, of the male voice choirs, of the people’s papers rather than the redtop rags, of the grammar schools, and of the Secondary Moderns that were so much better than what has replaced them.
A new educational charity should elect to Associateship those pupils in all schools who, on leaving the Sixth Form at 18, had attained since beginning Year 10 examination results at or above the average in the remaining state grammar schools, both in terms of the marks themselves, and in terms of the range of subjects studied. It should also elect to Fellowship those teachers whose pupils attained such results over 10 consecutive years.
Associateship would be automatic, so that hostile schools or whoever else would not be able to deny it to anyone. The most prestigious universities would be contacted in order to make the Associateship an admission requirement. And this charity would be called after a Labour politician who fought to defend the grammar schools as the ladder of working-class advancement. There are plenty to choose from: Ellen Wilkinson, George Tomlinson, Sidney Webb, R H Tawney, Eric Hammond, to name but a few.
That would be a start, anyway.
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Thank you so much for posting this under Toby Young's latest outpouring of gibberish. That man has taken over the education debate in this country on no basis except his position on the London media drinking circuit. The impossibility of getting rid of him is a regular source of despair in the print by Julie Burchill. But until now he has never been a menace in an important field of public policy.
ReplyDeleteThe only point of Young's posts is to elicit the searing comments of a really old-fashioned left-wing academic who functions in a college rather than a department and publishes on whatever happens to interest him, profoundly influencing the lives and thoughts of undergraduates. A man who has been a supply teacher in some of the toughest schools imaginable. A man who did two four-year terms as a governor of two superb schools (one primary, one secondary) before uproar was provoked when he was a removed by a politician whose own party then banned him from seeking re-election.
The high-ups can expel David Lindsay, but the grass roots remain that loyal to him. Like his past and present students, in fact.
There is nothing that scares them more than the working class intellectual. The fact that sounds like the punchline to a joke today is kind of the point.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, the primary school I attended and the library I used were both built, as it said over the door, through the donations and physical work of the community and its unions. That is a history the 'Toadmeisters' of this world would really rather we all forget. I think thats a good chunk of the problem right there.
Those crazy lefties eh. Spent all day crawling around underground in the dark and after a quick wash went off to drop a few coins in a tin and build libraries and schools with their own hands. Terrible people, if only they had Toby's right wing reliance on public funds.