[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Unsentimental Education

[Bill Totten]

Britain's strange private school system causes immeasurable harm

by George Monbiot

Published in the Guardian (January 22 2008)


If only the government would justify the paranoia of the ruling classes.
They believe, as they have always believed, that they are under
unprecedented attack. All last week the rightwing papers rustled with
the lamentations of the privileged, wailing about a new class war. If only.

The whinge-fest was prompted by the publication of the Charity
Commission's new guidance about public benefits {1}. If institutions
want to retain their status as charities, they should demonstrate that
they do good {2}. The benefits they create should outweigh the harm they
might do, the poor should not be shut out, and "charities should not be
seen as 'exclusive clubs' that only a few can join". It hardly sounds
radical: after all, what sort of charity is it that doesn't meet these
conditions? Well, it's a distressed gentlefolks' association called the
private school, and it costs us GBP 100 million a year in tax exemptions
{3}.

Though they cannot meet even the crudest definition of charities, the
commission - doubtless terrified of the force they can muster - grants
private schools a series of escape clauses. Their charitable status will
be preserved if they provide some subsidised places to poorer pupils or
share some of their facilities with other schools, even if they charge
for them {4}. Thus, according to Melanie Phillips, Simon Heffer and a
Telegraph leader, the commission has launched a "class war" {5, 6, 7},
motivated (according to Heffer) by "government-orchestrated spite" or (a
headteacher writing in the Telegraph) "the rhetoric of envy" {8}. As
seven of the Charity Commission's nine board members were privately
educated {9}, this seems unlikely.

The private schools and their alumni have been fighting a class war for
centuries. "Public schools" are so-called because this is what they once
were. Eton was founded in 1442 exclusively for the children of paupers:
no one whose father had an income of more than five marks could study
there. Harrow, Winchester, Rugby and Westminster were also established
as free schools for the poor {10}. But they and their endowments were
seized by the nobility, often by devious means, and the paupers were
booted out. Today, private schools continue to capture public resources,
by buying up the best teachers (trained at public expense) from the
state sector {11}. Under the Tories they received a further government
subsidy, called the assisted places scheme.

No one who read Nick Davies's investigation a few years ago into the
state of our schools could doubt that the harm done by private education
outweighs the benefits {12}. Drawing on academic research, he found that
the schools which fail are the ones whose pupils are overwhelmingly
poor. "If the bright middle-class children are being siphoned off into
private schools and a minority of state schools ... then children in the
rest of the system will fail to achieve comparable standards. The system
fails because it is segregated, because it leaves the struggling
children to struggle alone." {13} The Charity Commission's loophole -
private schools can keep their taxes if they subsidise places for the
bright children of the poor - exacerbates the harm they inflict on the
rest of the system.

But the damage goes far beyond this skimming. British private schools
create a class culture of a kind unknown in the rest of Europe. The
extreme case is the boarding prep schools, which separate children from
their parents at the age of eight in order to shape them into members of
a detached elite. In his book The Making of Them the psychotherapist
Nick Duffell shows how these artificial orphans survive the loss of
their families by dissociating themselves from their feelings of love
{14}. Survival involves "an extreme hardening of normal human softness,
a severe cutting off from emotions and sensitivity" {15}. Unable to
attach themselves to people (intimate relationships with other children
are discouraged by a morbid fear of homosexuality), they are encouraged
instead to invest their natural loyalties in the institution.

This made them extremely effective colonial servants: if their commander
ordered it, they could organise a massacre without a moment's hesitation
(witness the detachment of the officers who oversaw the suppression of
the Mau Mau, quoted in Caroline Elkins's book, Britain's Gulag). {16} It
also meant that the lower orders at home could be put down without the
least concern for the results. For many years, Britain has been governed
by damaged people.

I went through this system myself, and I know I will spend the rest of
my life fighting its effects. But one of the useful skills it has given
me is an ability to recognise it in others. I can spot another early
boarder at 200 metres: you can see and smell the damage dripping from
them like sweat. The Conservative cabinets were stuffed with them: even
in John Major's "classless" government, sixteen of the twenty male
members of the 1993 cabinet had been to public school; twelve of them
had boarded {17}. Privately-educated people dominate politics, the civil
service, the judiciary, the armed forces, the City, the media, the arts,
academia, the most prestigious professions, even, as we have seen, the
Charity Commission. They recognise each other, fear the unshaped people
of the state system, and, often without being aware that they are doing
it, pass on their privileges to people like themselves.

The system is protected by silence. Because private schools have been so
effective in moulding a child's character, an attack on the school
becomes an attack on all those who have passed through it. Its most
abject victims become its fiercest defenders. How many times have I
heard emotionally-stunted people proclaim "it never did me any harm"? In
the Telegraph last year, Michael Henderson boasted of the delightful
eccentricity of his boarding school. "Bad work got you an 'order mark'.
One foolish fellow, Brown by name, was given a double order mark for
taking too much custard at lunch. How can you not warm to a teacher who
awards such punishment? ... Petty snobbery abounded", he continued, "but
only wets are put off by a bit of snobbery. So long as you pulled your
socks up, and didn't let the side down, you wouldn't be for the high
jump. Which is as it should be." {18} A ruling class in a persistent
state of repression is a very dangerous thing.

The problem of what to do about private schools and the class-bound
system they create has been neatly solved by the Guardian columnist
Peter Wilby {19, 20}. He proposes that places at the best universities
should be awarded to the top pupils in each of the UK's sixth forms,
regardless of absolute results. Middle-class parents would have a
powerful incentive to send their children to schools with poor results,
then to try to ensure that those schools acquired good resources and
effective teachers. They would have no interest in sending their
children to private schools.

But who is prepared to fight the necessary class war? Not the
government, or not yet at any rate. Not the Charity Commission. Unless
the Labour party starts to show some mettle, we will be stuck with a
system which cripples state education, preserves the class structure and
permits a few thousand frightening, retentive people to rule over us.
And this will continue to be deemed a public benefit.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. The Charity Commission, 2008. Charities and Public Benefit: The
Charity Commission's general guidance on public benefit.
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Library/publicbenefit/pdfs/publicbenefittext.pdf

2. The Commission is interpreting the Charities Act 2006, which is
explained here:
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/upload/assets/www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/third_sector/charities_act_interactive.pdf

3. Polly Curtis and David Brindle, 16th January 2008. Do more for poorer
children or lose your charitable status, private schools are told. The
Guardian.

4. The Charity Commission, 2008, ibid, page 25, paragraph 3.

5. Melanie Phillips, 16th January 2008. A most uncharitable campaign.
The Spectator.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/452356/a-most-uncharitable-campaign.thtml

6. Simon Heffer, 18th January 2008. Our chippy ministers revive the
class war. The Daily Telegraph.

7. Leading article, 16th January 2008. Labour's class warfare in
independent schools. The Daily Telegraph.

8. Martin Stephen, 16th January 2008. The crime in teaching at
independent schools? The Daily Telegraph.

9. Email from Sarah Miller, the Charity Commission, 18th January 2008.

10. Nick Davies, 8th March 2000. State of despair as public schools get
the cream. The Guardian.

11. Two new studies, by Francis Green and Stephen Machin, are summarised
here: LSE, 2008. New research on independent schools - their effects on
teacher supply and the returns to private education.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2008/IndependentSchoolsResearch.htm

12. Originally published in the Guardian, his findings are collected in
Nick Davies, 2000. The School Report, Vintage.

13. Nick Davies, 15th September 1999. Bias that killed the dream of
equality. The Guardian.

14. Nick Duffell, 2000. The Making of Them: The British attitude to
children and the boarding school system. Lone Arrow Press.

15. page 58.

16. Caroline Elkins, 2005. Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in
Kenya. Jonathan Cape, London.

17. Nick Duffell, ibid, page 7.

18. Michael Henderson, 17th November 2008. Prep schools can still teach
us something. The Daily Telegraph.

19. Peter Wilby, 20th September 2007. As arbitrary as ever.
New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/200709200015

20. Peter Wilby, 26th March 1999. Give every school an Oxbridge place.
http://www.newstatesman.com/199903260006

Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/01/22/unsentimental-education/

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