T he attempt to get rid of ancient history A-Level, which
Monday’s appearance by Boris Johnson in a toga was intended to stop, is a little saga of how ‘dumbing down’ works. No one involved set out to undermine the subject, yet that will be the effect.
Instructed to squeeze down A-Levels into four units instead of six, because of the complaints about too much assessment, the Oxford, Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts Board (OCR) found it hard to get agreement in what is known as the ‘subject community’. So, to achieve a ‘single suite of exams’ (the jargon is omnipresent), it decided to reduce ancient history into a ‘pathway’ in the less demanding A-Level called classical civilisation. As with the reduction of individual sciences into something called ‘double science’ at GCSE, which is said to make physics and chemistry more babyish, some of this is to do with the lack of the right teachers in state schools. Speaking to a crosssection of one pupil currently studying the A Level (my son), I find that it is much liked because it offers what he calls ‘real history’ — the chance to get to grips with the actual sources. In some cases, the origins of Athenian democracy, for example, the sources are so few that the pupil can study everything — e.g. the relevant aside in Herodotus about how Cleisthenes, in 508 or 507 BC, ‘joined the people [demos] to the company of his followers’ — known to scholarship. The Renaissance was so called because the study of the classical world was reborn (grammar schools were one result, being designed for the study of Latin, not English, grammar). We need a word for the opposite — the steady removal of that study from any serious place in our culture. The Remort?
In Scotland at the weekend, I inquired of a resident expert why, from a unionist point of view, the referendum on independence that the SNP demands should not take place. I was told that Alex Salmond is so clever that he would somehow find a way of winning. The best thing was to let the whole subject drop, as the Scots were not truly interested in it anyway. I know very little about Scottish politics, but this strikes me as bad psychology. Surely the unity of Labour, Liberals and Tories in refusing to let the people decide the future of Scotland will make Salmond’s argument for him. Polls suggest that the Scots would not, in fact, vote for independence, but until that decision is clearly made, those calling for it will always have the moral advantage over those avoiding it. Why don’t the Conservatives lead the call for a referendum and put the unionist case? They have little to lose. Why, by the way, is the clearly disreputable Mr Salmond so effective? It must have something to do with the fact that he looks and even sounds like Shrek, the computer-animated film hero — funny, cunning, grotesque, lovable.
As I strolled through Westminster last Thursday on my way to watch Tony Blair’s latest farewell broadcast and comment on it on Channel 4 News, I heard someone calling my name. It was the Environment Secretary, David Miliband. He was just off to speak to the Country Land and Business Association, he said, and his speech would be conciliatory. He had even managed to find these words by Aneurin Bevan, of all people: ‘Where the countryside is neglected, it always takes its revenge. Unless town and country march together in reciprocal activity, civilisation will limp on one foot.’ The fact that Mr Miliband had chosen to make that speech to that audience at that moment finally convinced me that he really is not a candidate for the leadership this time.
Up in Sedgefield, in the Trimdon Labour Club from which Mr Blair said goodbye, various tunes were playing as they awaited the departing hero, including ‘Things Can only Get Better’. But whenever Sedgefield is mentioned, I always think of the song that Pigg sings to Jorrocks in Handley Cross. Trying while drunk to ascertain the weather outside, he sticks his head into a cupboard, under the impression it is the window, and reports that it is ‘hellish dark and smells of cheese’. Then he strikes up a song about the prowess of the Lambton family hounds:
Let Uckerby boast of the feats of the Raby, And Ravenscar tell what the Hurworth have done, But the wide-spreading pastures of Sadberge can swear to The brushes our fleet pack of foxhounds have won: Then that Sedgefield, our country, all countries outvies, sir, The highest top-sparkling bumper decides, That we’ve foxes can fly, sir, or sinking must die, sir, When pressed by the hounds o’er which Lambton presides.
As Mr Blair, speaking like some American preacher, told us that Britain was ‘very blessed’, I had a vision of what the song calls ‘the brave Sedgefield fellows’ once more beside ‘the green waving whins of our coverts’, free at last.
Po or Gordon Brown. The grim seriousness of his ambition for No. 10 is proved by the fact that he is smiling so much. The procedure is clearly painful for him, and he has not yet learned to coordinate the action with his words. But the public demand that our leaders grin is now absolute. Why should this be so? The future Queen Mother, when first engaged to the future King George VI, was rebuked by Queen Mary for smiling at the public. The theory was that to smile was to pretend to acquaintance. I suppose that is still the theory, but now such pretence is admired. But why should leaders smile in public? Did Jesus? We are told only that he wept. Did Mr Gladstone, or General De Gaulle? Smiling in politics only took off with the totalitarian age. Think of the most embarrassing book dedication in history, Henry (Tarka the Otter) Williamson’s ‘To that man across the Rhine, whose symbol is a smiling child’.
‘ack’ Weatherill, the former Speaker of the J House of Commons, who died recently, was proved right in his prediction that the televising of Parliament would reduce the rudeness and yobbery of the debates. I am not so sure, though, that this was a good thing. Rudeness and yobbery were by-products of the fact that people felt that the debates in Parliament mattered. In the days before broadcasting, a politician could not make a reputation without impressing his parliamentary colleagues in debate. He did this, in part, by showing he could survive attacks, and attack back. When television came along, the public were disgusted by the bad behaviour, and so the manners improved. But it did not mean that the debates became more thoughtful and constructive. Instead, they ceased to matter, and the real political game started to be played elsewhere. The television cameras have ‘stolen hence the life of the building’.
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