On Sunday I went to the Cheltenham Literary Festival to bang the drum for free schools. I was expecting a warm reception. The local MP is a Lib Dem, but the county council is Conservative. This wouldn’t be like my trip to Manchester last month. Almost as soon as I stepped off the train I was recognised by an anti-government protestor who greeted me with a cry of ‘Fuck off back to London you Tory tosser.’
The first event was a discussion chaired by Marcus Brigstocke in which Natalie Haynes, Shazia Mirza and I had been asked to read three books we wouldn’t normally read. Natalie chose Who Moved My Cheese? and Shazia selected The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and they were both very funny about them. I chose Dickens’s Hard Times and made the mistake of being both too flip and too earnest.
Flip, because I thought it would be entertaining if I praised the central character, Thomas Gradgrind, for creating the Victorian equivalent of a Free School. I was on slightly dangerous ground here because ‘Gradgrindian’ is a catch-all term of abuse used by progressives to describe any approach to education that doesn’t include ‘project work’ on multiculturalism, climate change and LGBT History Week. I spotted several beardy-weirdies in the audience scribbling down notes and I knew it wouldn’t be long before my eulogy to Gradgrind’s school came back to bite me on the bum.
Earnest, because I had a more serious point to make about rote learning and factual knowledge — the two main characteristics of Gradgrind’s academy. I quoted from Katharine Birbalsingh’s recent lecture at the Cass Business School in which she criticised the educational establishment for placing no value on the teaching of common knowledge, thereby short-changing children from deprived backgrounds who don’t pick it up at home.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in