One Flew over the villains' nest
Dennis O'Keeffe
POWER TO THE PARENTS: REVERSING EDUCATIONAL DECLINE by Antony Flew
Sherwood Press, £12.95, £6.95
Antony Flew is at his robust and fearless best in his latest book, which is a mixture of his familiar anti-socialist argu- ment, honed to perfection, and some newer economic sociology, which needs further development. Here it is given that sharp edge which makes one wish more good philosophers would try their luck in the social sciences. The thesis, though not original, is very well put. Local Education Authorities (LEAs) are misnamed; they are really LEMs (Local Education Mono- polies). Power is locked up on the supply side of production. Only a shift of power from the supplier-syndicalists and towards the parents-taxpayers-consumers, can achieve either efficiency or equity.
The insincerity of the education sup- pliers is revealed in their unwillingness to submit to proper assessment. He who is truly concerned to effect a particular goal must of necessity be committed to having his efforts measured, indeed as Flew care- fully stresses, externally measured, since the practice of making judgments in one's own cause is inequitable.
The suppliers insist on either non- measurement or wrong measurement. Too many . curriculum specialists, Flew observes, try to wrong-foot their oppo- nents with saws like the one which rails against those 'who know the cost of every- thing and the value of nothing'. When they do measure they use the wholely unaccept- able index of resource-input, and totally refuse to consider what really matters, namely output in relation to costs, i.e. productivity. The National Union of Teachers, now fortunately undergoing a huge outflow in members, has been parti- cularly assiduous in claiming that the only way through any educational difficulty is to throw money at it. Such is the general economic logic of the largest body in what Flew calls `edbiz'.
The soubriquet is witty but a trifle misleading. For the NUT is not predicated on genuine education or business proper but on maintaining its place in a vast system of corrupt socialist interest. There are countless examples of this corruption and Flew gives a pithy account of the worst one in recent years. When Cox, Marks and Pomian-Srzednicki first produced their Standards in English Schools in 1983 they were subjected to a prolonged campaign of vilification and misrepresentation. This re- vealed what unscrupulous scoundrels re- side in the in-house educational establish- ment. The authors showed, on an unpre- cedentedly large data base, using examina- tion results as the only really useful avail- able proxy for output, that `comprehensi- visation' has been a comprehensive disas- ter.
The DES statisticians issued a cryptic methodological denunciation which was not exposed as bogus until after a savage press campaign designed to smear the authors as `right-wing bigots'. What they really are are the brave engineers of the most important breakthrough in applied educational studies in recent decades. When chapter-and-verse demonstration of the alleged flaws was finally demanded, and could not be produced, the DES officials apologised. I want to know why they were not sacked, and why the journal- ists whom in charity we may assume to have been misled, did not in turn apolo- gise. Flew names some of them: Ted Wragg and Peter Wilby, for instance. Don't they know how to say sorry?
Flew holds that schools should become like individual competing firms. Quite so. Competition and its attendant calculus of reward and failure is the only known mechanism for improving and regulating standards. A good analogy is with banking. The reason interest rates as between banks converge on comparable loans is not that they collude; it is that they compete. The wild variations in standards between schools with very similar potential are proof positive that they are not competing. We should turn back on its perpetrators the charge that we would create 'sink schools'. There are plenty of those already. The point is to identify them and release their unhappy victims.
Does the espousal by this present gov- ernment of a fair degree of intended decentralisation in any sense date Flew's book? I think not. First, it is by no means certain that there will be much decentra- lisation in practice. We will have the national curriculum, that irresistible gravy trough for the syndicalists. But a mighty coalition is lining up against what we need most: effective exit for parents dissatisfied with their children's schools. The govern- ment is trusting too much to 'voice' as a remedy. Do we really care all that much if a few more Guardian readers end up on governing bodies?
Flew deliberately eschews further treat- ment of the neo-Marxist sociology of knowledge. This is a pity; a sociology of knowledge defending liberal capitalism must be put on the agenda. The material on racism, peace-studies and so on is, however, quite simply magnificent vintage Flew. The discussion of vouchers is also excellent, though I see them as a half-way house. What we really need to talk about in the long-run is the nature and scale of compulsory schooling.
The best thing of all in this book is that its author cares about educationally neg- lected children. So loud and insistent is the boasting of the educational establishment that it is easy to forget the rule that those who ostentatiously trumpet their 'compas- sion' never really have any.
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