Another voice
Towards apartheid
Auberon Waugh
The inspiration behind the Rampton Committee of Inquiry into what is euphemistically called the 'under-achievement' of West Indian pupils in British schools was at best silly, at worst mischievous, so we cannot really complain if the report published last week is outstandingly silly. It might have been worse. No useful purpose could be served by drawing attention to racial differences in academic achievement within a single community. The suggestion that racism is itself to blame for the phenomenon could scarcely, in the sublime depths of its fatuousness, be better calculated to feed the racism which it claims to discourage.
However, there is all the difference in the world between saying that certain subjects are best left undiscussed in public — which I honestly believe to be the case here — and allowing other people to discuss them in public foolishly.
Nobody has yet disputed the Committee's central finding, which is that there is an enormous disparity in the level of academic achievement between different ethnic groups, of which the most extreme examples are those of West Indian descent, who come bottom of the list, and those of Asian descent, who come top. Others would appear to come closer to the Asian level, although they have not yet been broken down. What is certain is that the West Indians are stupendously behind the Asians, achieving satisfactory '0' and 'A' level passes in a ratio of approximately one to six.
That is the central fact which has caused so much agony of mind in the race relations industry. To the question of what we are to make of it and what, if anything, should be done, The Times contributed a leader called 'Looking the Facts in the Face'. This is how we were invited to face them: 'Explanations exist to suit every prejudice. . . . The possibility that West Indian children are merely less clever than others is among the simplest and least useful. Intelligence is a cluster of aptitudes and putting a value on them cannot be a wholly objective process. . .
I think this means, in English, that intelligence tests are unreliable, but I am not sure. An idle reader might suppose it to mean that intelligence is not a factor in determining academic achievement. Let us proceed: 'Even if there are differences in aptitudes between races, they are so small compared to the variation within each race that they have no significance for the treatment of individuals. The differences discussed here are far too great to be convincingly explained without reference to environmental factors.'
I do not quote this extraordinary string of non-sequiturs simply in order to berate The Times under its excitingly gritty new leadership. Presumably this piece was written by one of the newspaper's educational correspondents.
The writer seems to be inhibited by moral considerations from admitting the possibility• that Britons of West Indian descent might be a great deal stupider than Britons of Asian descent. Nothing else can explain the bald statement that such differences of environment within a group are no less marked than differences of intelligence. We are dealing with a group, not with individuals inside it. The problem, if it is a problem, is a group one, not an individual one. Let us approach it from a slightly different angle, that there is nothing repugnant to reason or charity in the notion that one ethnic group might be significantly more intelligent than another. Where identical teaching is offered, and where there is no external handicap like a language barrier (which works against the Asians, in any case) or physical disability like deafness, there can be only two determinants of academic achievement. These are intelligence and application. 'Application' is used to replace the old-fashioned word 'industry', and has itself been replaced in America by the prettier-sounding 'motivation', but they all mean the same thing, and their opposites remain the same: inattention, laziness and bloody-mindedness.
The disparity in academic achievement between these two groups is given as being in the ratio 6:1. It must follow that if their intelligence is equal, the West Indians are six times lazier or less attentive or more bloody-minded than their Asian fellow pupils. I should have thought this proposition an absurdity, but even if it is not—and it has been seized upon by all the environmental determinists in our educational establishment as being the only true one — it is scarcely less humiliating for West Indians than to be told that through no fault of their own they would appear to be academically less intelligent. The course of sanity would be to tell them neither of these things and let them get along as best they can, but that option is no longer available thanks to the busybodies on the Rampton Committee of Inquiry.
So let us examine the suggestion that environmental factors are decisive. The Rampton Report agrees that the physical conditions of both groups, characterised by poverty and overcrowding, are very much the same, although the Observer sidestepped this on Sunday by blandly asserting, without a shred of evidence, that successful Asian candidates must come from prosperous East African Asian families. Somebody in the Observer really ought to do a little counting to test the likelihood of this assertion. If the physical conditions are roughly similar, as is otherwise generally agreed, then the environmental difference must lie in the spiritual or cultural background.
So perhaps it is true that West Indians are inadequate parents, alternatively neglectful and over-affectionate, over-permissive and violent, as has been suggested. No doubt it is also true that they have a higher proportion of single-parent families but I doubt a higher proportion of night-shift workers vis-à-vis the Asians. This seems to me to be the most insulting explanation of all, but that is not my point. The great question, having inadvisedly raised the matter, is what, if anything, should be done about it, and this is where the real mischief lies.
The Observer demands an 'action research project', whatever that might be, whereby the government would produce money `to provide day-long care for nursery-age black children whose parents are at work, and employment for black youngsters.' The institution of these allblack nursery schools would kill two birds with one stone, the Observer points out. Sounds cosy.
The report itself recommends the recruitment of more West Indian teachers, school governors, government school inspectors and career officers, as well as praising the study of West Indian history and West Indian writers. Readers may notice that I have not yet mentioned English pupils OD the grounds that they are irrelevant to our discussion of this very human problem, but I can't help worrying whether this course of West Indian studies, taught by West Indian school teachers, inspected by West Indian school inspectors, is really suitable for the much greater number of Asian pupils in our schools.
No, the whole tenor of recommendations to date has militated towards the idea of separate development, and whereas I can quite accept that many — if not most — West Indians in the bigger concentrations would welcome the idea of separate development on their own terms, I do not see why they should be allowed to get away with it. The crux of the matter, which nobody has mentioned, is whether the West Indian Britons in our midst should be treated the same as everyone else or whether they should be treated differently, on account of their special problems, whatever they are. A solution which is universally regarded as wicked and abhorrent to nature in South Africa suddenly emerges as the best and most progressive way ahead for Britain. 00 balance, I feel that the wisest course for government is to treat West Indians as being the same as everyone else, and, if theY misbehave, hit them on their heads — jUst like everyone else, and certainly not a fraction harder.
Previous page
