6 OCTOBER 1973, Page 20

More means less

Rhodes Boyson

Inequality Christopher Jencks (Allen Lane £5)

It is very fitting that the English edition of this at times brilliant and clear . thinking

American book should come out just before the Labour Party Conference and it could be read with advantage, alarm and probably horror by many socialists and indeed supporters of other parties. It shows clearly the naked and not the human face of socialism.

Christopher Jencks's argument for equality is interesting. He tollows Bentham's dictum that society should be organised so as to pro duce the greatest good for the greatest number and Jencks then claims that under the law of diminishing returns the total happiness of society will be increased by taking from the rich who have more and giving to the poor who have less. Thus the happiest society will be one where all have an equal 'income and presumably are as equal in material goods as cows grazing in a field.

This presumes that men will be happy and content with equal goods and Jencks's own analysis why men gain high income and high status jobs — through ambition and persistence — would suggest that some men would jump the gate out of the field of equal ity to greener and richer pastures elsewhere and the inequality spiral would begin again. Only a repressive totalitarian government run by men made incorruptible by a burning political zeal for equality could hold ambitious men back for six months, never mind a lifetime!

The compilation of the research findings by the Harvard Group led by Jencks certainly demolishes the idea that schools will equalise society and shows that Roy Hattersley and the compulsory state comprehensive schools' advocates, with no private schools permitted, are not only totalitarian in intent but ineffective totalitarians since they will not achieve their aims! Jencks concludes that if all high schools in America were equalised then cognitive (academic intellectual) in equality would be reduced by one per cent or less. To achieve equality through schooling is as likely as to cure senility in hospitals — it is beyond our powers.

The author also passes important judgements on the influence of the various stages of education: pre-schooling (nursery schools) has little effect, elementary schools can be important in the development of skills which can be measured on standardised tests and secondary schools and colleges can boost test scores to some extent. Primary education which can be helpful to middle-class children is critical for working-class children. This emphasises the point that we should concentrate on the development of primary school teaching efficiency and not extend education below five or over fifteen when its effect is minimal or nil.

The author concludes from the ineffectiveness of schools in promoting equality that they might as well be an enjoyable consumer good with brightness and cheerfulness all round. 1 would conclude that they should give the basic skills, a knowledge of man's achievements, and vocational skills, in the shortest possible time in the cheapest way. Additional resources poured into schooling are, as many of us suspected, generally wasted. The size of class is unimportant and big gymnasiums are unlikely to foster academic and intellectual abilities.

Jencks estimates that roughly 10 per cent of income differences arise from genetic intellectual ability, 25 per cent at the very most through the length of education in our structured society (as compared with no schooling), 5 to 15 per cent by the quality of schools of which the background of the pupils is more influential than the quality of teaching, 20 per cent by family background which is largely hereditary and the other 30-40 per cent arises presumably from genetic hereditary ambition and persistence. Luck, that other curse of the egalitarians, must also be allowed for.

The farce of reverse discrimination now fostered by the Labour Party is clearly shown:

This means trying to allocate the most favourable environments to those individuals who start life with the fewest genetic advantages. By implication, of course, it also means allocating the least favourable environments to those who start with genetic advantages. If, for example, some students have more trouble than others learning to read, this strategy implies that the teacher should ignore the fast readers and give the slow learners extra help. If this does not work, a remedial reading teacher should be called in tu provide intensive help of a kind not available in the regular classroom. Taken to its logical conclusion, this strategY would imply that anyone who was reading above the norm for his age should be sent home, and' the entire resources of the schools dvevoted to the laggards.

Even if this was achieved it would last only one generation and if the more intelligent again had children then it would, need to be repeated in every succeeding generation. It also presumes that the bright excluded from school did not learn in libraries or become successful businessmen or counter-revolutionaries by the age of fourteen. A further suggestion is to remove children at an early age from their families and have them all adopted by some random method which could remove some 10 per cent of cognitive inequality. The family is obviously a reactionary elitist concept! The book clearly reveals other problems of equality. It points out that there is more inequality between individuals within groups (rich and poor, black and white) than there is between groups. This is unrecognised by the egalitarian Left because it proves the individ. ualism of men and that they are naturally unequal. Jencks also points out the injustice ot 'free' school and higher education which then enables individuals to earn more money—fees and loans are more socially just. He defines poverty as not the inability to buy some goods or services but as being the inability to, participate in a social system now equippen with telephones, cars and television sets and he suggests wisely that those receiving less„ than half the average wage in any society win always feel, and thus be, poor and social outcasts. It is a pity that Jencks's whole idea ot equality is built on a fallacy — the greatest happiness of the greatest number and the law of diminishing returns do not prove that the happiest society will be that of total equality. Man is an individualist and one man's hapP1' ness is the next man's misery. The freedom lover and the Right-thinking person believe

that the happiness of society is fostered not by all having an equal income with an increasing number of services being free but in each man disposing of his own total inco.ne in a way which maximises his happiness. This is the divide of Right and Left! This book should be read by conservatives to see the philosophy they should be opposing. It pays to know one's enemy.

Rhodes Boyson is headmaster of Highbury Grove School.