Education and the paranoid style of politics #1

I see this largely, but not exclusively, as a rightwing phenomenon where people with power and influence strike a pose - apparently in all sincerity - as oppressed outsiders. I was reminded of this when reading the following by James Delingpole on the state of education:

"Britain’s state school system is a conspiracy against the public on an epic scale."

A nice piece of understatement, I think you'll agree. I found this via Ms Birbalsingh on Twatter who adds the comment that this hysterical nonsense does a "fab job of saying exactly what I'm trying to say!"

Now, I'll return to this in more detail later because the whole 'debate' about schools in England has become extremely silly indeed. I'll confine myself to a couple of observations just now:

1) I refer to schools in England advisedly because despite what Ms Birbalsingh and Mr Delingpole would have us believe, there is no such thing as 'Britain's state school system'. I hope you don't think this is too pedantic a point to make. I'm not doing it on nationalistic grounds. It's just a plea for simple accuracy and one I think is worth making to those whose criticisms of education include the idea that learning facts is underrated in today's system.

2) I was reminded of the paranoid style after reading Mr Delingpole's line about "a period of at least three decades" where "generations of children have been sacrificed on the altar of an entrenched ideology". The question of whether and to what extent the criticisms of 'progressive education' have any validity is one I intend to return to later. I'll restrict myself for now to asking the question: even if this were so, who on earth do these people think have been running the country during this time?

Three decades ago Thatcher had been in power for two years and the Conservatives did not return to opposition until 1997. Then we had Blair and his notion of 'progress' seemed to draw a good deal of inspiration from Gladstonian Liberalism - this being amongst the reasons that Mr Gove declared himself to be such an admirer of him.

One would have thought at the very least those who complain about the progressive takeover of education, and liberal elites controlling the media and so on, would have drawn from this a lesson about the limits of what can be achieved by having their lot in power?

Koran burning

Two short points on this:

1) It shows, again, that those most likely to engage in acts designed to outrage people of a religious disposition are other religious people.

2) There's been the usual pious nonsense about free speech not meaning a right to offend and the need to respect other people's religious traditions.

One should be clear here. Those responsible for the murder of the seven UN workers think a particular book is more sacred and valuable than other human beings.

This represents a long tradition seen in most religions at various times in their history where the invisible deity or deities, along with physical objects, places or buildings that are taken as being sacred because of their proximity to, or actual possession of, the divine material, must be protected from desecration to the point of shedding blood.

Respect that if you must but I don't think you should. And I personally find the suggestion that I should very offensive. You could go as far as to say it hurts my feelings and strikes to the core of what I believe. But I won't be killing anyone because of this.

[See also this. Filed under, Making My Point For Me.]

AV and minority parties

In a previous post, Norm rightly argued that AV can't make it easier for minority parties to get elected because the hurdle required by this system is higher. Now with this post he addresses the question: what if it did?

"But if your commitment to democracy means anything, is an electoral method to be rejected just because it accommodates results which you don't like? What's the difference between this and simply outlawing the party whose influence you don't wish to see grow? What I'm asking is, how much weight should we give, anyway, to the consideration that an electoral method might increase the influence of a party or parties we judge to be pernicious?"

It's a reasonable point, although I would have thought the difference between banning an extremist party and simply having a system that makes it difficult for it to flourish was fairly obvious. But I'm not happy with Norm's choice of words. It's not a question of what parties I don't want to see flourish; the concern with some voting systems is that they can allow extremist parties to exert disproportionate power and thereby produce situations that the majority, by definition, did not want. I don't quite see how taking this into consideration is indicative of a shallow commitment to democracy.

But this isn't, in any event, the issue with AV when it comes to the question of extremists. It is right to suggest that it will almost certainly be more difficult for minority parties to win under AV but their second preferences will matter more. They must matter more simply because at the moment they don't matter at all, as FPTP has no mechanism to record them. What I'm not clear about is why people are so convinced that they should matter. This is not confined to the issue of redistributed BNP votes, although I think this is a legitimate concern. Why is a potential situation where parties of the right might vie for these and where a winning candidate could easily get less first preference votes than the person who comes second so obviously superior to what we have now?

#Libya

The UN has voted 10 to zero in favour of intervention. China and Russia have not used their veto as permanent members and prior to this the Arab League gave their support.

Slow and possibly too late - but fast by UN standards. So now the die is cast, the planes should be in the air now. Not a decision that was as obviously easy as some have suggested it should have been - and the outcome is uncertain. But that this is so doesn't mean we shouldn't conclude that the UN is on the right side of this one.

On being 'appropriate'

Unsure whether it is necessary in the world of Facebook and Twitter to point to someone else's stuff but this by Chris Dillow on Jamie Oliver's 'Dream School' contains an observation that is so true it hurts:

"The use of [the] word (inappropriate) is a hallmark of a particular character that thrived under New Labour. It’s someone who is enough of a moral relativist not to want to use the terms “right” and “wrong”, but not so much of a relativist that they are prepared to forego the power and wealth that comes from passing judgment upon others. Egalitarianism only goes so far."

Sounds familiar. I'd like to modify the observation just a smidgen. It is indeed a term for people unwilling to take the step of placing their criticism on an objective level on which one could then take issue with on a rational basis.

But it is also for those too pusillanimous to claim responsibility for what are usually subjective, and aesthetic, preferences. These people, it goes without saying, are usually management - or management wannabes*. That way they avoid conversations like this:

"Do you think that was appropriate? I don't approve of what you did there, Mr McGlumpher."

"Thanks for sharing, Mr/Ms Repetition of Meaningless Jargon, but I'm not looking for your approval. Now run along; unlike yourself, I've got work to do."

Isn't difficult to see how the semantic Third Way developed when you see it in these terms...


*Imagine having such a dismal ambition - and then failing...