In ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ one of the characters tells the story of the little onion. In it, a nasty old woman with no redeeming characteristics at all dies and is descending into hell. She has a guardian angel, and the angel searches its memory for something, anything, that might save this meanest of all humans from the flames. In desperation, she finds something. At one point in life, the mean old woman had given a beggar a very small onion. The angel reaches down and holds the onion out to her. The woman grasps the onion, and she is saved from hell. Primo Levi describes this story as “revolting.”[1]

I started this book determined to find a middle way, one in which the achievements of the last decade could be kept and its aberrations swept away, but in the process of writing it, it became apparent that certain recent practices in terms of the way that human children are educated may well be abhorrent, but they are not aberrations. The system is infested with totalitarian abuse and children are subject, in some schools, some of which seem to resemble cults, to inhuman behaviour in the name of raising test scores. The leaders of these organisations may have done some good, but that good is that of the woman with the onion. 

When Andrew Adonis came up with the idea of academisation and of chain providers, most of whom have not been remotely guilty of the problems listed in this book, and some of which provide an excellent and caring education, he will have had no idea that, in some instances, he was giving permission for arguably psychologically unsuitable people to take over the education of children. Michael Gove, however, in creating free schools, as an intelligent man, might have given consideration to this possible consequence. Something systematic must now take place so that the machine no longer dominates the humans in it.

The education system must be less certain of itself, properly research-informed rather than wearing the pretence of this as a badge to show that certain extreme ideological positions own the scared science and its highest positions should be reserved for those who seek equality of opportunity for children more than they personally seek power; indeed, for those who think that a desire for power should, as Billy Connolly once said, automatically preclude them from having it. Equality of opportunity does not destroy merit. It bestows it on the deserving.

The proud intellectual tradition of the profession should be reinstated as compulsory study for new teachers, and lessons must be learned from the ‘Teach Like a Champion’ scandal. Reading should be from a range of sources, of whatever political stripe, but those sources must be part of an intellectual tradition and not just the money-and-power-motivated spilling of inexpert certainties to followers clapping like guffawing sea lions on social media.

This ugly moment in educational history should be remembered so that it does not happen again.

Lifton writes about what he calls the protean self: a version of the self that is ever changing, a work in progress. Our legislators might sensibly consider why a protean education system might be a good idea and what it might look like in practice. An education system that regards itself as a work in progress that is continually refining itself through a dialectic process in which the opinions of experts (who might be from contrasting ideological viewpoints) are sought and valued might be a more sensible foundation for a system that nourishes and respects the children it exists to serve. Education is never settled.

Referencing the findings of cognitive science is clearly of value when we are constructing curriculums, long-term plans and individual lessons, but it must be made the case that no ideology owns exclusive patronage of it. The totalitarians are right to assert that students should have the right to access to parts of the literary canon, but this was the case under the previous Labour administration. The access to literature should be broadened so that more modern texts that have more specific reference to current political realities and which acknowledge that Britain is ethnically diverse and that representation matters are included.

The system must be less utilitarian, less concerned with short-term demands and priorities and more concerned with its contribution to the kind of society that we want to live in. It must also be less concerned with winning never-ending wars. It should ensure that children in British schools are allowed the right, as Vaclav Havel had it, to live “within truth.”[2]

While one of the concerns of education, of course, is its contribution to the future economy, we have had a long period where the only metric that counted was the grades on certificates for academic subjects. This restorationism, this valorisation of abstraction, is backwards thinking and is also probably not serving the needs of the economy particularly well either. Education must also be about the present we inhabit and the future we want to create; to locate it solely in the past is entirely wrong-headed and could be argued to be a move to create a more obedient working-class who worship at the altar of their white gods and those gods’ culture.

Building the Creative Society

Within the academic realm, the most urgent thing to look at is the place of the arts on the curriculum. In terms of creating a more equal society, the stunted view of the arts as being solely vocational areas must be discontinued. The argument that teaching drama, music, visual art and dance to state school pupils just creates more unemployed actors, musicians, artists and dancers has some minor validity but not much. Engagement with the arts not only liberalises anyone who encounters them, it enriches the human experience, develops passions that continue to motivate people (from within rather than without) to action for the whole of their lives, builds creativity and the kind of imagination[3] and freedom of thought that might find solutions to long-standing problems. Creativity is, by nature, revolutionary. It gives young people a voice and the media through which to employ it, and it is generally, as it was in the Prague Spring, the vehicle through which totalitarian regimes are eventually overturned. Involvement in the arts creates participation; access to its magical kingdom allows young people to turn pain into poetry, torments into salve. The arts, as the vehicle for human expression, are self-evidently humanist, and a new focus on them in British schools is an antidote to the anti-humanism of the last ten years.

Education must believe again in the existence of human goodness and should again seek to attain the moral weight that comes from having a proper set of human values that are attached to normal morality. This does not mean that schools should be weak on discipline, but externally imposed discipline is not the point of education: gifting young people with the reasons to locate it in themselves is. It must also have a much more intimate relationship with truth. People will still want to build careers, but the achievement of a public career should be based more on the value of one’s work, the nature of one’s political integrity and the ability to come up with insights into education’s recent past and possible future than it currently is. Some of the more ‘reputable’ voices in education in recent years appear to have more ability to destroy than to create. 

The history of the political struggle might be termed a clash between, as Jacques Rupnik said in his presentation to the Czech Writer’s Congress in 1967, “writers and regime.”[4] It is artists and writers who undermine the legitimacy of regimes that brutalise. It is when artists and intellectuals withdraw that totalitarian politics flourishes and, as a society, we need to ensure that, in the future, there are enough of these voices from the working and lower middle classes to ensure that the electorate, as far as is possible given the ownership of the media and the deep pockets of those who fund moves to support rising inequality, gets to know how society is structured.

The fact that in Year 9, when options are decided, state school students only have the option to study one of the arts I’ve always felt to be misguided. A move to allow those who to study two is a move to the creation of more renaissance-type people and might profitably be announced under the banner of ‘building a creative society’. A developed people who are steeped in culture would be, in the words of Kundera, “prepared, shaped, realised by novels, poetry, theatre, cinema, historiography, literary reviews, popular comedy and cabaret, philosophical discussion – that is, by culture.”[5] A centre left administration might want to set out its stall as regards the curriculum as having the intention to create an era of culture as it is purpose. As seen in the rejection of the practices at a former version of Uncommon Schools, it is our best protection against dark forces. Young people’s cultural identities must be protected, not stripped from them. 

How one might achieve this structurally is through the reframing of the status of mathematics. Whilst numeracy is clearly important, its equal status with English in which young people learn the skills of communication and develop the ability to articulate ideas is arguably undeserved. It should remain a core subject, but you could put together an argument that it does not deserve a higher status than science and should be taught for three periods a week at Key Stage 4 rather than five. This would free up curriculum time for further study of the arts.

The English curriculum should be expanded so that spoken English is awarded its own qualification, which is seen as no less valuable than language or literature. This would guarantee curriculum time being given over to the development of student skills of articulation and would be likely to create public engagement in politics as the material for this course could be predominantly political speeches and the art of rhetoric. The English language curriculum should also be reframed so that creativity is rewarded more than analysis. The ability to analyse is important, but this is adequately covered by the literature qualification; it is the ability to create that changes society. Students should be assessed predominantly on their ability to write. This links in well with a new spoken English qualification as writing and speaking form a feedback loop and improvement in one area results in improvements in another. This will contribute to a more articulate populace that are better able to express their needs and their beliefs.

Diversity

A system that does not properly value diversity is one that writes off talented people. Every study ever undertaken has concluded this. The education system must, once again, ensure that this diversity is celebrated but that, this time, it does not forget to celebrate the culture of white working-class children as their lack of inclusion in cultural celebrations is and always has been alienating to such students. Cultural celebrations must celebrate our commonality as much as our diversity, point out that the children in our schools are more alike than they are different and that white people have suffered too. 

A panel should be set up of senior democratic voices that are respected in the profession: this panel must be culturally and gender diverse and consider the views of the LGBT community. It will examine what the education system might do to celebrate our multiculturalism, what steps it might take.

Consideration should be given as to whether a range of appointments might be made to quite senior advisory roles in which ‘commissioners’ act as liaison between certain communities and the secretary of education. This must include a representative for the white working-class community. It is high time that the cultural disconnect between this community and the education system is confronted. No government has ever been properly serious about this. 

 

Recommendations for a New Vision for Education for a Centre Left Government

• Reinstate the right for minority ethnic students to read more literature from their home cultures at GCSE. This should specifically include Muslim authors.
• Reinstate the idea of English literature as being literature written in the English language rather than literature written by English authors.
• Cancel the EBacc measure of accountability as it discriminates against working-class students being in receipt of a full grounding in the arts.
• Investigate the Russell Group’s view of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ subjects and see if anything can be done to investigate whether this view is bigoted and if anything can be done, if necessary, to alter it as a measure of intellectual achievement.
• Investigate what might be done to improve the status of both sociology and media studies.
• Commission a study into representation issues in the curriculum so that black and minority ethnic students and female students have the offer of role models on the curriculum they might aspire to.
• Appoint unpaid advisory panels on the cultural issues that affect achievement: this, specifically, to look at engaging with the cultural issues that affect white working-class engagement with education but also to investigate male Pakistani students’ engagement, Caribbean West Indian engagement and the cultural issues experienced by dual heritage students. These appointees to be drawn from the communities themselves.

• Take the analysis of unseen poems from the literature curriculum, shorten the weight of poems to be studied and ensure, alongside canonical poems, that more poems from working-class voices are included.

 

---

[1] Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (Abacus: London 1989) p57.

[2] Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Crimes Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe (M. E. Sharpe: Armonk, 1985) p21.

[3] It is imagination, according to Lipton, that is largely responsible for human adaptation and its particular genius.

[4] Jacques Ruknik, ‘Milan Kundera: Address to the Czech Writers’ Congress, 1967 in Milan Kundera, A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe (Faber & Faber: London 2023) p5.

[5] Milan Kundera, A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe (Faber & Faber: London 2023) p69.