PETER HITCHENS - THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL REVOLUTION BETRAYED

[@TheLastSongbird124]

As a kid born into the Liverpool dockland slums of the 1950's, the 11plus exam gave me entry to a grammar school which subsequently led to me accessing university. This education was the foundation for the rest of my life, which was a special, exciting, happy and fulfilled life. Who would have thought it looking at me as a 5yo?

[@marknash4442]

I was "educated" at a comprehensive in the middle of a post-war sink estate in Bristol during the 70s. It was appalling and a complete failure. At 16 I joined the Royal Navy, the best thing I ever did, thats when my real education started.

[@roverchap]

I was lucky enough to pass my 11 plus in 1970 and go to a state grammar school which shortly afterwards became a comprehensive. The size of the school more than doubled from 700 pupils to around 2000, and standards slipped. I have known and worked with many people from working class backgrounds, for instance in Wythenshawe, Manchester who benefited from a local state grammar school back then and were able to move up the socio-economic ladder as a result. There are few prospects for bright kids in these areas now.

[@normanchristie4524]

I failed the 11 Plus twice, went to a Senior Secondary in 1956 and left in 1959 with nothing. A work colleague persuaded me to complete my City & Guilds Technology Certificate, and with his encouragement I did with Extinction. I then went on to graduate from the OU.

[@Rootle2]

Good on ya

[@datguygg9498]

I went to a 'great' academy school in the early 2000's . During a summer i stayed in Bristol to attend a course where 90% of the kids attended a grammar school, i noticed a vast difference in the thinking, speech including vocabulary and confidence compared to my school. Granted this may have been due to the fact that many were middle/upper class however, i do think their schooling played a huge part from my interactions with them. Its always stuck with me.

[@patrickselden5747]

Thank you very much indeed, gentlemen, for this profound and informative conversation about the catastrophe that's befallen British education in the last sixty-five years. As Mr Hitchens says, it's an almost unbearable tragedy, but I appreciate learning about it.

[@nancybowie7460]

My Dad was born in to poverty in Glasgow in 1940. He and his numerous brothers and sisters were all highly intelligent but expected to leave school at 15 and go to work. They all managed to make lives for themselves but I would say there was little opportunity for them to reach their full potential. Grammar schools maybe okay but my Dad's family were so poor, they couldn't afford the mandatory uniforms, gym kits etc which was a humiliating experience for a child - told off and punished by their teachers because their parents were poor.

[@Rootle2]

Did or didn't your dad go to a grammar school?

[@gordonsmith7885]

I went to a grammar school 1964 to 1970 ..it was ..for me fantastic despite coming from a middle class family..opening my mind in a wonderful way

[@AnnBurgess00]

Two girls who had failed their 11+ turned up in my form in the grammar school, at the beginning of the second year. They went straight into the A form and became star pupils, who achieved a lot. The London Borough of Bromley had good solutions for late developers, and failing your 11+ was definitely not the last word on your progression through secondary school. My old school is still a grammar school; but sadly, it is now a grammar school with such a wide catchment area, that almost nobody can get into it, and it certainly does not perform the same service for the local community that it used to in my day.

[@horse69outside]

In the late sixties, as a young boy, my mother, perhaps worrying about my prospects otherwise, tried to get me into a local Grammar School. I can't remember the steps involved, but I did attend for interview, and I do remember being quizzed as to my dads occupation, along with the name of the President of France. I was aware my dad worked on building sites, as I had recently spent a long day with him, sequestered in a site office, well out of harms way, so I announced brightly that I was unsure of his precise job title, but that he worked in a small hut where there were calendars with topless ladies on every wall, and that the men all went to the pub at lunchtime, but had to drink very quickly, as they only had an hour. And Pompidou. So, instead of a bullet proof education amongst high achievers, mixing creased trousers and blazers with Greek and Latin, I dutifully attended at a nearby Middle, and latterly, a local High school, where the acned and muscled toughs already in attendance were loudly protesting the introduction of school uniforms, by staging walkouts and strikes, to the amusement of assembled news media, and the considerable irritation of the new Headmaster. Luckily, both these schools were busy streaming the students ability wise, so I was eventually able to take O and A levels, and ended up with the top grades at my school, for my particular year. All this whilst being invited into said headmasters office, to explain my role and participation in gambling on the results of professional soccer matches and horse races, and making weekly visits across the city to the dog racing track, on school nights, with exams looming.... several slightly older boys were eventually expelled for 'running a book' at the school, and had to take their exams elsewhere. We continued our gambling and darts and snooker playing at one expelled boys house at lunchtime and after school each day. I would go home at six, eat supper, and then hit the books in my room, music cranked until someone pounded on the ceiling below, or friends called to see if I was going to the pub, if it was a Friday night. I even tried for Oxford, once it became clear to me that I might, but was again let down at interview, this time by my inability to ingratiate myself sufficiently with a Physics Don of Eastern European extraction, who knew nothing of my struggles to teach myself advanced mathematics well beyond my station, using books borrowed from the public library, and who was unmoved by my starred Geography paper. My headmaster was actually congratulated by someone at the college on my Geography result, which irked me, as A level Geography teaching at the school had been in large measure perfunctory, and often wholly imaginary. If anyone had thought to offer me a place reading Geography, I should have accepted on the spot, but it never happened, and I never thought to suggest it. The caper did mean that I got to stay at my intended college for a couple of nights, enjoying a set of cold and damp rooms I was given for the occasion, and so vested was I in the whole experience, I believe I soaked up more of the flavour of what was on offer there in that short sojourn than many a jaded and ill suited student would in three long years of hellish toil. I toyed with one humourless table at dinner, deliberately confusing St Johns with the Ambulance Brigade, to elicit the wicked smiles of several girls in attendance, but alas, that was as close as I got to that particular piece of the prize.

[@peterstephenson9538]

Really great entry. Keep going & publish it.

[@horse69outside]

Thanks! My literary goals are to fuse Elmore Leonard with Alan Bennett.

[@nickwyatt9498]

Excellent post which chimes in with much of my experience, right up to the nights spent in cold damp rooms (Magdalen) while taking the Oxford entrance. My examiners obviously had lower standards than yours as they let me in. Classics and Modern Languages (Paul Calf voice: "That'll coom in 'andy")

[@tropics8407]

🧐 So tops in O levels and A levels. Despite obstacles. What was next ?

[@bertphillips8930]

Why can't we get these people into government. The country would be a lot better for it.

[@louishiggins8881]

I went to a grammar school in the 1960's, pupils were bused into school from all over town. It was a mixture of pupils from wealthier backgrounds to pretty poor environments, selection based on "intelligence" (ie. passing a test at 10) 😂. But, the really poor couldn't send their children because of the associated costs !!! They were relatively egalitarian, and a lot of bright children got a really good start in life (I count myself in that group) 😁. However, the alternative "secondary modern" schools were starved of funding and resources, so not so good ☹️. The move to comprehensive schools meant houses in "good catchment" areas became more and more expensive, so became self-selecting !!! Would they work today if generally widely introduced, not sure, wealthier families would tutor their children to pass the "11+" exam, families with less disposable income not so much ☹️.

[@Mark_Dyer1]

One, of five, children, born to working class parents, I was fortunate to attend Chatham House, Ramsgate (Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Frank Muir, Bill Wratten, Edward Heath) which, at one time, had the largest number of Who's Who entries for a State School. Although I studied Theology at university, I was unable to be ordained in the early 70s: because I did not feel a 'call' to celibacy. My sister attended the girls' Grammar School, Clarendon House; but our three middle brothers had an excellent education at St George's C of E Secondary Modern. The two who survive are better educated than many of those who qualify for 'uni' these days; to judge from the way English is used. The Grammar Schools created far more 'social mobility' than is possible today: which is - of course - why Politicians of all sides wished to scrap them. Surely, post-covid, the wish of Politicians to get us back "within our lanes" has to be obvious. They want us out of 'their' skies, off 'their' roads, and unable to feel as comfortable as 'they' are in our homes.

[@sisiphas]

Universities are fot the most part a lost cause in other than hard sciences now. A good challenging humanities education barely exists now.

[@myroseaccount]

My brother went to a Secondary Modern. By the time I attended the same school it had been turned into a Comprehensive. And the traditional teachers who taught my brother, where they were not retiring, moved on. I recall the Art teacher referring to the Comprehensive as a nut house. In the 50s and 60s before we attended this school it regularly used to send one or two pupils up to Oxbridge. After 1972 that never happened again. I think the better argument is actually the loss of the traditional secondary modern which should have been funded and properly supported as well as expanding the grammar and technical schools. Instead we all got herded into gigantic comprehensive institutions. We should just admit it was a terrible mistake and start over again

[@shelleyphilcox4743]

@myroseaccount The children didnt change, they were exactly the same material. Perhaps it is about the snobbery of Oxbridge and not the intellect of the children that is at fault. Children from Grammar schools sat the same exams as children from Comprehensives, and it was shown that Oxbridge would take children from private and grammar schools, but not children with the same grades from comps.

[@anthonyreed480]

Grammar schools birthed Alan Rickman. I rest my case.

[@nickwyatt9498]

You ought to indicate whether or not you like Alan Rickman (I do).

[@anthonyreed480]

@@nickwyatt9498 I thought it went without saying, yes!

[@eightiesmusic1984]

@@anthonyreed480 So did I.

[@MrMjp58]

For me, this whole issue is about the bizarre elitism of the UK private schools. Virtually everyone I’ve ever read about or met who runs anything, went to one. Politicians and social engineers will always feather their own nests. Wrangling over where the lower classes go to school is an irrelevance to them. Our rulers don’t much care about academic ‘ability’, they are only concerned with perpetuating their own positions. Private schools are perfect for this.

[@jonathantwort6980]

Sir Roy Strong said if his teacher had not bought him shoes and a uniform to go to the grammar school and then onto Oxford he would never have got out of his socio economic background. In spite of being clever. I am a great believer in grammar schools. It gave children whose parents could not afford public school an opportunity. I grew up in the Colonies, and they modelled their school system on the English Grammar. We all say how fortunate we were to have had such a very fine education! When something works so well, I could never understand the English government doing away with it! Your only hope now is to find out about Katharine Birbalsingh’s Community school in London. She is achieving great results with her Traditional school, and people are coming from all over the world to see how the school is run. The Education Ministry would do well to take note. The school is called Michaela.

[@jonathangammond3019]

One of the people we interviewed for an exhibition on schools in Wrexham quoted the first headmaster of St David's Secondary Modern, Gareth Vaughan Williams - this school is a secondary modern, but we won't be offering a second rate education.

[@blackcat-ru1oz]

My grandfather grew up in what we'd now term poverty in the Lower Falls in West Belfast. His father was a gambler and frittered away whatever money he had (he was often unemployed due to his habit) - if my grandfather had have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth it would have been pawned in two seconds flat. He attended a grammar school and despite missing three years due to illness, he was accepted into university thanks to his exam results. He secured a steady middle class job and all six of his children would go on to be granted places in a grammar school which required an A grade in the transfer test. My own childhood was fairly humble - I was raised in a single mother household and lived in working class areas as my mum was working entry level jobs at the time. I was accepted into the same grammar school as my mum and her siblings and would go on to achieve As in all of my GCSEs and A levels (not very impressive due to the degradation of standards which occurred in the 2010s). Contrary to what The Guardian etc asserts, I never received tutoring and was not the victim of some relentless form of tiger parenting - I don't think my mum could have even told you what GCSEs I was doing. The most intelligent students in my year came from working class areas and the majority had totally unremarkable backgrounds. Catholics in NI academically outperform all other native populations in Britain. I've heard it remarked that working class Protestants just want to be British while working class Catholics just want to be middle class Catholics. The insinuation being that scratch beneath the revolutionary surface and you'll find a venal class traitor - people may refer to the prevalence of landlords in Sinn Fein for example. The reality is that many Catholics believed that their intellectual merits entitled them to a better quality of life, and grammar schools were the perfect vehicle for overcoming the obstacles preventing them from upward mobility. I can not for the life of me understand why the English left want to abolish grammar schools given the extent to which they have uplifted both my family and so many others like us in NI. Seriously, what arguments are they making? The only people to benefit from such a move are the upper classes who can afford to send their children to private schools where the bathrooms don't reek of skunk. What is even more baffling is that it's the nationalists in NI that want to ban academic selection despite it being such a boon to the community they represent.

[@Nauysvyf]

The problem I have is that I got sent to a Secondary Modern school where they had no ambition for any of the pupils further than being a Secretary for girls and working in a factory for boys. Obviously I didn’t pass the 11 plus, but I took the exam about 2 months after my father died and I didn’t give a damn at that point. I had to take 2 sets of exams with 2 separate syllabuses for CSEs and O levels and had to go to a 6th form College to do A levels. The whole experience put me off education for life.

[@MOGGS1942]

I attended a Grammar School, in Wales, from 1953 - 1959. It was a terrible experience, mainly due to the attitude of the Headmaster towards pupils who came from the wrong side of the Town. He proudly announced in the local Press that he wanted to turn the School into " another Eton ". Parents, and the local MP, had a field day with the fool, and he had to retract his statement. Unfortunately, he then proceeded to take his fury out on certain pupils who he didn't want at the school. Needless to say, he was a real brute.

[@athelstan927]

Always an exception to the rule.. I hope you didn't use you're poor experience as an excuse for life!

[@RichardEnglander]

I had a mixed education including prep school, assisted place at a barren windswept northern boarding school rife with peer bullying and culture of abuse, a 6th form college, Liverpool University, Edge Hill for my PGCE, then almost 15 years in secondary teaching in some incredibly hard schools in Knowsley, Wembley, South Harrow, Lewisham... The entire thing is broken, there are loads of fantastic teachers but the management tends to be poor, and the idea of a student as a customer rather than a humble apprentice is pervasive. Many low achieving students owe that to their teachers and support staff going way beyond the line in terms of support. It makes it look like these students have some organisational skills, motivation, common sense, literacy... but that is a facade. The parents who tell their kids to respect teachers are rare, the one who lambast and debase teachers in front of their children are common. Many such are infested with ideas of conspicuous consumption and 'get rich or die trying' mentality, not hard work and invest to make a better future. The rot is so deep, multifactorial, and has so much momentum I don't know where to start to solve the problem. Ending mixed ability classes would be one of them.

[@eightiesmusic1984]

Education is a disaster. I taught for nearly thirty years but wild horses would not drag me back. Behaviour in many secondary schools is often unacceptable, with so called low level disruption inhibiting learning for those who want to make progress. An OFSTED report in 2014 found that in some schools up to a day per week is lost due to low level disruption-it will be worse now. The issues in schools are indeed multifactorial and the rot is deep on so many levels. Bullying of staff is rife in schools. Pay is poor but unless the culture of bullying changes ( it won't until thousands more teachers have left), the situation cannot improve. Lack of support for staff is commonplace, with staff blamed for poor behaviour, and those that do uphold standards are often seen as a problem just for following school policy. I have to be careful what I write because I do not want to be identified by chance if someone reads this and links it to me ( unlikely but not impossible) but there is so much else I could say about the system. Lack of parental support, poor attitudes to learning, low attention spans and many students treating staff with contempt are just some of the other problems afflicting education, and it is only going to deterirorate further in the next decade. I threw the towel in rather than be treated the way I was because I have enough self respect than to put up with it. One of forty four thousand teachers in the last year of working age to leave, except in my case I will probably never work again.

[@johnbull1152]

I considered myself a free marketeer, but the more arguments o hear from the SDP on the economy and grammar schools (I supported even before this video), you are slowly converting me

[@pwcfuster]

Excellent discussion.

[@Lampredi4]

Clouston is the rare politician who reads and reads well. That he has read both Gray on the nature of today’s zeitgeist and that he reads Hitchens on where Britain erred fills me with hope.

[@seanmoran2743]

I’ve tried to listen to Gray and I still do not understand we’re he is coming from (he’s starting point seems vague)and what sort of society he believes in Can you enlighten me

[@geraiswaiya2347]

@@seanmoran2743 Guy who sees that atheism (well, most varieties of it) and modern liberalism are failures yet still sits on the agnostic fence, pontificating safely from his LSE Chair.

[@seanmoran2743]

Unfortunately this country will sink lower until it gets to a series of very real crises. I agree with Peter and others that this great country never recovered from 1914

[@seanmoran2743]

50% going to University wasn’t about education it was about Induction into the Cultural Revolution

[@eightiesmusic1984]

Nonsense. It was about trying to bring British attendance at university closer to the European average.

[@lukebayshaw1958]

Great stuff

[@iananderson6705]

I'm n Irish and I am glad grammar school was retained. There is nothing wrong with the distinction between academic and vocational education. People are different and trying to make them fit in the same box is appalling to me. I'm an old fashioned lefty and believe the left has disappeared but never agreed with the dissolution of grammar schools.

[@seanmoran2743]

Great Conversation

[@Dawkins007]

I've never been a member of a political party, but I'm very tempted to join the SDP. I suggest you add some information to your video descriptions. This will help them to be found in searches and could also act as a method for people to get more information. Some text directing people to your website and suggesting they become members would also be an obvious thing to put in all the video descriptions. The name of the interviewer and some information about them would also be useful.

[@stevecrane6163]

I had a superb grammar school education in the 1970's without it I would never have had the opportunities to do the things I have, seen the places I have seen and met the people that I have met. My school went back to at least the early 14th century and most likely much further back to a foundation that Queen Edith Edward the Confessors wife founded in the 11th century at the minster church to which my grammar school was still attached when I attended in the 1970's - nearly 1000 years of education for the "deserving poor." Amongst the alumni of my school were Richard Fox Bishop of Winchester Henry VII's minister of state, William Cecil Lord Burghley Elizabeth I's great minister of state and Isaac Newton one of the greatest scientists the world has ever known. In fact Margaret Thatcher even attended my school for latin lessons as the girls grammar school didn't provide that subject to be taught. Not a bad list which I could continue for quite a while. (On the other side Frederick Rolfe - Baron Corvo - was a master there in the 1880's.) All lost now on the altar of equality and spiteful revenge. It is strange though that neither the Labour or Conservative parties have ever abolished private (public) fee paying schools - odd isn't it...

[@EmotionallyBankrupt]

The school is still a functioning selective school. And so is the corresponding girls' school on Sandon Road. What did happen was that the GCSE was introduced in 1988, and it was not as difficult to pass as the previous O-level. My thesis (a big word that you won't hear many Grantham people often say, trust me) is that the current GCSE is no more difficult to pass then the CSE of the 1980s. I didn't take the GCSE, so I know how stringent that the O-level was. It caught lots of people out, as you probably know. Grantham is not that middle-class. The outskirts are - head up the A607, and look at the asking prices of typical houses.

[@seanrm]

@@EmotionallyBankrupt They had to do away with the old GCE O-level. Making access to university easier by introducing less demanding A-level courses was never going to work if the bar to get to A-levels in the first place was still too high. There is a common misconception that the O-Level became the GCSE, but this is not true. Your thesis is entirely correct: they abolished the O-level and the CSE became the GCSE.

[@ColonelMuppet]

@@EmotionallyBankrupt My father taught at Grammar schools and then at Comprehensives where he became headmaster. He taught for forty years and also marked examination papers for the JMB. Even after retirement he still marked papers. He told me upon retiring in 2009 that the quality of examinations had declined to such low levels he thought the whole process was a joke. He was appalled how far standards has collapsed and the fact that bright kids were not getting the attention they deserved and would have had at Grammar schools. Basically he saw the whole process as crushing the countries potential all on the pathetic, infantile ideas of social equality. If he were still alive he would have loved what Hitchens is saying. His biggest regret is that me and my brother got a comprehensive education and that our arc of success was lowered as a result. Not that we’ve done badly out of life, but I can only imagine the generations of bright working class kids - I knew several - where they have been trapped below their potential and have been a wasted resource for society.

[@mhballa5866]

Great interview. minor nitpick the interviewer has a habit of saying "hmm...hmm" which is very annoying.

[@stephenshipley1066]

Hand in hand with the move from grammar schools to comprehensives came the creative writing movement. This started wit the cry "don't worry about spelling or grammar, just write the story". This soon moved into "you're answering a geography question, the spelling doesn't matter". In turn this changed into a general "it doesn't matter". think this had a lot to do with falling examination standards.

[@normanchristie4524]

The greatest thing was the 1944 Education Act. The 11 Plus/ Qualifying exams were far from perfect.

[@benbeasant3443]

Currently reading this excellent book

[@seanrm]

03:40 An extension of the equivalency of "A-Levels at the same level of a US undergraduate degree", was the accepted acknowledgement that a UK undergraduate degree was, in academic terms, at the same level as a US postgraduate degree. But those days have gone.

[@nathaniel4334]

Excellent. What a government these two could form.

[@public.public]

FINLAND HAS THE VERY BEST EDUCATION SYSTEM It puts the bent idea of the grammar school system in the toilet where it belongs.

[@sisiphas]

It was betrayed and children like I was now fester in failure. So sad

[@benjamin4894]

I'd quite like to see Mr Hitchens put his money where his mouth is, stop telling the increasingly beleaguered younger generations that all hope is lost and to seek a better life at some undisclosed foreign destination (a profoundly unconservative response, if ever there was one)... I think it's high-time that he and that lovely Katherine Birbalsingh opened a new Grammar school somewhere in Oxfordshire. It would be a good semi-retirement project for the old boy! 👏

[@craig_berry]

How does this work in rural areas? In the Highlands, the Cowal peninsula is served by one secondary school (formerly a grammar school). Education attainment has been historically poor in the Highlands - albeit Gaelic played a part in that. How would education attainment improve if we shifted back to being a grammar school?

[@robertallen591]

conservatism is about the protection of advantage but success comes from meritocracy , they make us week

[@notv_internetuser3789]

Is Peter Hitchens going to join the SDP?

[@joshuamatiasrecalde5157]

Sadly not

[@marknash4442]

It's a nice thought, but I dont think he will ally himself to any party, but he'll talk to anyone who is sensible

[@evolassunglasses4673]

I think he understands we are in civilisational decline (hypa Liberalism and open borders Globalisation post 1945 has hollowed us out) and we can't vote ourselves out of this. But we can slow the decline and hopefully sow seeds for the future.

[@marylowrey8911]

I’m so sorry to hear Peter’s gloom, even sorrier I fully understand it😢.Like him, I hope we are wrong and a meritocracy might emerge. The biggest brain of the offspring of my group of friends is off to America to start his new life.

[@landoremick7422]

I went to a secondary modern and it was trying to be like a grammar school. I liked it for the first two years before the Labour government changed things. Whilst it had competition from the grammar schools, it tried hard and did well. Once it became a socialist experiment comprehensive, it went down hill.

[@eightiesmusic1984]

Secondary moderns did not try to be like grammar schools. Comprehensives are not socialist experiments.

[@TheWorldofMomus]

People often remark at the quality of our politicians and how that is leading us to darker times. But even if we had a better crop of politicians it wouldn't make that much of a difference. Look at the upper and middle management in most local authorities (that is where the actual workings of the governance exist), they are massively incompetent to carry out their jobs with exception of few. They are consistently wasting our taxes and wrecking our progress and stability. As Hitchens says, what could have been if we had those educated in grammar schools, what could have been I wonder if those were in charge of our local authorities and civil service today as they were before. The current disintegration of society has high incompetence, lack of critical thought and a sense of courage at the heart of it. I do think it can be turned around, but perhaps if we start now, it will take at least 2/3 generations.

[@colourperfect]

Why is Peter Hitchen's audio feed so poor?

[@alanhill4334]

According to Wiki Peter Hitchens attended York University and prior to that a couple of higher education establishments. In this interview he appears to claim that he left school at fifteen. Well he may have left a school at fifteen but if Wikipedia is to be believed his education didn't stop there.

[@rjw4762]

My Mum and Uncle were fatherless at 4 and 7 (death) - and so grew up in poverty (Midlands mining village). Turns out my Uncle was 'born' very intelligent - and got into the local Grammar School. In the 1970s he was part of a Team nominated for a Noble Prize, and became a Doctor. No-one can convince me that if he had been forced to attend the local 'comp' he would have succeeded so much in his life. Sorry to break it to the leftists, but the majority ride on the coat-tails of the few, and we should do all we can to encourage the gifted, not put them next to the thick, feckless and unmotivated in the hope that they influence them. The opposite is true. The Compreshnesive system is a socialist ideal, whereby everyone has 'potential' - not true.

[@seanmoran2743]

My mother went to a secondary school and her mathematics and english is better than many I’ve come across from comprehensive schools

[@eightiesmusic1984]

You mean secondary modern?

[@public.public]

The education system is by the middle class for the middle class. And it is poetic justice that the middle class is shrinking due to computer programs and AI. All that piss on the poor policy inflicted by the middle class on the lower class is biting the middle class R's. The grammar schools and their 11 plus exam where questions could be answered several different ways meant those that passed were picked by those behind the system... the middle class.

[@seanmoran2743]

There will always be an elite It’s what sort of Elite we should have A more Altruistic Pragmatic approach with as little ideological thinking as possible is surely the way forward. I think Peters description of Social Conservatism during a previous SDP talk was spot on

[@damianbylightning6823]

I'm glad he mentions Wales and its previous successes - it's an odd and enlightening case. Teaching-preaching seems to be part of its culture. When schools were left to their own devices, they did well. Today, Wales has the most centralised, regulated and managed education system in the world. It also has the most dysfunctional and expensive ed system in western Europe. The politicos blame 'Tory cuts' - which is just bizarre nonsense that seems to be widely accepted in media coverage. Wales is given £1.20 for every £1 spent in England! Centralism,regulation and extra funding has only led to a boom in pointless 'experts' and managerial ed jobs. Meanwhile, the poor and ignored and subjected to ever more experimentation and control. This was imposed by a scummy Labour Party that is either deluded or evil.

[@davy_K]

We still have them in Northern Ireland, and you still need to pass the equivalent of the old 11+ to gain access. Unfortunately we also still have a degree of educational apartheid across Catholic/Protestant traditions.

[@blackcat-ru1oz]

Hi Davy, I am also from NI. I left quite a longwinded comment documenting my experience with grammar schools. I was wondering if you could elaborate on the educational apartheid that exists here. Do you just mean that Catholics and Protestants attend different schools or are you implying that there is something sinister/discriminatory going on? Cheers.

[@tomthumb2361]

Why Labour didn't go for the tripartite system and made sure there were high-performing technical schools as well as grammar schools, and excellent 'ordinary' schools. My own small Northern town had to fight to get a GS at the end of the C19th. It started as a technical school. Eventually became a GS. It ended as a Comp. I was the only non-public-school-boy reading my subject in my Cambridge college when I arrived. It was a culture shock to them, I think, to find a person with an accent with a brain.

[@edwardkerrigan5356]

The tripartite system was absolutely excellent but too few Education Authorities implemented it, which was a dreadful waste. It should have been much more widespread. As one beneficiary - there were thousands more - I can give one example. I was out of the country for some of the war and returned at the age of eleven to live in Surrey, but was just to late to take the Grammar School exam. I was sent to a Central School (they were virtually Grammar Schools) and from there, as Surrey did have the system, took the Examination for the Junior Technical School, ending up at Wimbledon in the building stream. In my later years, and seeing the direction education went, I realised that that was the best thing that could have happened to me. The school was superb - in the pep talk we received on arrival we were told 'you are here because you failed to get to Grammar school. Now just up the road is Whitgift Grammar - but don't worry about that. You are going to do in two years what they do in five', and he was right. But to achieve it the standards required of us were extremely high. Being a technical school, obviously some academic subjects had to be omitted to allow for technical ones, but the emphasis was actually on the Academic. Everyone in the school went on into one of the building related professions - not one went 'on the tools' as it were. They all went on to study, and qualify in, Architecture, Civil and Structural Engineering, Building Management, Estimating and the like. I myself went on to Qualify as a Chartered Quantity Surveyor. Those were the days, of course, when University was an option only for very few, which meant that after the rigours of the Tech. we then faced several years of evening classes - in most disciplines, to cover the scope of the subjects, this amounted to six years of classes at four nights a week. Does wonders for your social life. Today's students, and probably the teachers as well, would be appalled at the way we had to work and the standards that were demanded of us, but those standards, once inculcated, stayed with us for life. Peter Hitchens is right, the system should not have been changed, it should have been amplified and improved over the years. If it had been we would have a society today that had been properly educated.

[@tuckwatsellers]

Yeah secondary moderns were great.

[@ParcelOfRogue]

This theft of the original logo, with none of the members, politicians, I.P or assets. This policy is even about face wrong. It's sad, like the Chinese owing Rover cars.

[@Rootle2]

16:44 It's weird to think of Hitchens having a different girlfriend before meeting his wife

[@missaleromanum5614]

Probably from his free-wheelin’ communist days

[@normanchristie4524]

Get rid of private schooling!

[@eightiesmusic1984]

Exactly.

[@stevehakes9785]

Should any rightminded person trust UK state indoctrination?

[@Rootle2]

Why?

[@sosalpha]

Don't worry we have STEM today....

[@johnbest4513]

why must everything be about destroying the old English aristocracy?

[@damianeastwood]

Who did grammar schools disbenefit? 😂 - hmm I looked it up and it’s a perfectly acceptable word. 🎉

[@benphilips9918]

Why weren't the secondary moderns able to provide the kind of academic rigour of the grammars? Is it not possible to have academic excellence within a comprehensive system provided you have streaming within them? I don't understand why you have to hive off scholars and the academically gifted to separate institutions. I'd be interested in a response. Second we should acknowledge the appalling record of practical and vocational education in this country which is an even greater scandal and must have cost the country trillions in lost jobs and unrealised commercial ideas. Those in Whitehall, politics and the media have no idea about that kind of work, hence the lack of coverage and public awareness.

[@colindant3410]

@benphilips9918 I attended school in the UK from 1959 until 1973. I commenced my secondary school education in 1966, having passed the 11+ examination. Schools in my area went comprehensive in 1968, but nevertheless, since I was in a grammar school cohort, nothing much changed in the path of my own education. At the time, my understanding of the purpose of secondary modern schools was to provide a more practical education to youngsters who were deemed to be less academically inclined than their grammar school counterparts. It could reasonably be argued that the education system at the time was set up to meet the needs of the economy, there being plenty of opportunities in manufacturing jobs, apprenticeships in various trades, and factory jobs. Bearing mind the difference in the type of education provided in secondary modern schools and grammar schools, it was no surprise to me that there were problems amalgamating secondary modern schools and grammar schools into one unified comprehensive school. The most obvious problem would be the difficulty teachers might have in teaching such a wide range of ability in a comprehensive school. Even with streaming, it is not unusual for teachers today to be expected to teach the full range of ability in the 11-18 age range in a typical comprehensive school. A tall order indeed. Realistically, the best and brightest of 18 yr old school-leavers are not as likely to aspire to become teachers as they may have done years ago, when the status of teaching as a career was higher than it is today. There are far more potentially financially rewarding career options today, and in today's crazy economy, who in their right mind would choose to become a teacher in the UK, with housing as expensive as it is? In my lifetime, the exams have been dumbed down, and the books have tended to over-simplify the study material, short-changing the educational experience of the pupils.

[@anonosaurus4517]

I just want to say that I'd give anything for an American analogue to the SDP. If either of our two idiot parties had any desire to serve the American people, they'd copy the platform of the SDP verbatim and then go like gangbusters to implement it. I'd give anything....

[@jeffteahan2326]

Peter Hitchens being interviewed by the SDP? My eyes deceive me. Should I be voting SDP in the next election? 🤣Well it will be anyone but Tory or Labour...so maybe....

[@chrisdavie8163]

I do think grammar schools are a great idea and do help the working classes, but I think you'd have to change the whole education system if you were to bring them back on a massive scale. At the end of the day in the current system, whether you go to an comprehensive, grammar or private school, you all do the same GCSE's and you all end up in the same universities doing the same degrees of worth. You would have to fight for radical change of the entire system rather than just fighting for grammar schools. You would have to make GCSEs, A Levels and Degrees harder. You would need to scrap many degree courses and invest in STEM subjects. You would need to have fewer university places in general and have exam entry tests for those selective places. You would need to either merge some universities or close some down because of the fewer courses and places. You would need to make apprenticeships look attractive. And guess what? The kids will hate you for it. They honestly will. And so will the staff of those universities you will have to tamper with. They'll probably hate you too. I think the Government needs to sell apprenticeships to the kids. They need to send people to schools and talk about why apprenticeships are the future and how they can earn an instant salary rather than going to university and facing the burden of debt with a low worth degree because too many have them and the status it's worth has gone. Employers have known this for quite a few years now. Many have their own tests at interviews. The Government also need to get career advisors back in schools. Kids need to be advised on what degrees are useless and which degrees will get them a good career at the end of their course. They should be thinking about careers as soon as they enter secondary school. There should be a meeting with a careers advisor every few months until they leave. There are too many kids coming out of education and not having a clue on what they want to do. They need guidance.

[@geraiswaiya2347]

Pretty good production values but sound is a bit scratchy

[@francescahamilton6856]

The human race is designed ao that only a small percentage of them have high cognitive ability. We must give much higher status to working with your hands, as we do with Artists ie painting, writing, sculpture & architecture; so why not manual skills like Masons builders etc. University is for Scholars. The rest of us should be at Technical College, Polytechnics & doing Apprenticeships. The majority of the human race is not very bright cognitively. There is a reason for this. We are meant to work on Farms, digging potatoes and shovelling earth...parents are deluded; hence a massive Labour Shortage. Wake-up.

[@ncey8713]

Wish Hitchens would let Will get a word in.. nothing worse than a selfish partner in conversation..

[@marknash4442]

Hitchens is the interviewee, the man we want to hear from. I thought Will was great, allowing him to vent his opinions, knowledge and experience.

[@peterhitchens4240]

William is interviewing me about a book that I have written. It is natural that I say more than he does.

[@burtingtune]

If you tuned into Parkinson or the Graham Norton Show and they had someone who had made a film or written a book, would you expect the host to talk equally as much?

[@marknash4442]

@@burtingtune Tuning into Parky was a staple of my childhood and youth, and even then I loved it. However listening to Norton is inconceivable. Or anything else on the bbc

[@hernandorourk5186]

P R O M O S M

[@rheazeus123]

The least intelligent hitchens.

[@Blank-km4qr]

Please get better audio very bad

[@datguygg9498]

I went to a 'great' academy school in the early 2000's . During a summer i stayed in Bristol to attend a course where 90% of the kids attended a grammar school, i noticed a vast difference in the thinking, speech including vocabulary and confidence compared to my school. Granted this may have been due to the fact that many were middle/upper class however, i do think their schooling played a huge part from my interactions with them. Its always stuck with me.