Kit-Kat time

Short break - one, three, ten days, depending on the Force. The reasons for this are twofold:

1) The general insanity of the human condition. Kinda draining don't you find? And...

2) Turning 40. I've decided to be cool with it, bit crumbly perhaps - but better than the alternative. All of grace and not of my doing, so a couple of days celebrating good fortune with kith and kin is in order...

Peace and blessings to all men of goodwill.

But may the fleas from a thousand camels infest the armpits of all men of ill-will.

Commons defeat for government

Excellent news - this was an ill-conceived bill that sought to regulate what shouldn't be regulated, and what cannot be regulated. As Polly Toynbee put it yesterday,

"Much argument has been made for this bad bill. It belongs in the same nonsense league as banning "glorification of terrorism". Ideas cannot be policed, though blatant threats always have been."

Not much one can add - except to say this bill also sought to regulate emotions as well; very silly indeed. I liked Jamie K's description of the government's behaviour:

"(The bill has been) mauled by the Lords…but no, they just keep on coming, like a deranged child trying to hammer a sausage into a concrete floor with its forehead while humming at the top of its voice."

One of those one's that shouldn't make any sense - yet it still does, somehow.

On religion, harm and politics

Following Richard Dawkins' much-debated recent Channel Four programme on religion being the root of all evil, I've been trying - and probably failing - to follow a conversation going on in the blogosphere prompted with the question of why it is that Dawkins is unable to acknowledge the possibility of any good in religion.

An interesting response from OB at Butterfield and Wheels, if I understand correctly, argues not that religion is incapable of motivating people to do good, only that the harm it causes outweighs the good and since the two are indivisible, it follows that religion is a net bad in this world of ours. There's more here and here with stuff about 'quasi-Hegelian' arguments, which I don't understand at all, but I was struck - and maybe I'm missing something - by how utilitarian the arguments used by both sides are, both in this debate and others where the protagonists disagree more fundamentally (this is a disagreement amongst atheists).

Here the argument against religion on the basis of reason and science has been folded into a utilitarian-historical one about how much harm it has done both now and in the past. I understand why this should be to the point of wondering if they can be separated because both strands have historically rather neatly done the same: there can be no doubt at all that organized religion has been responsible for all sorts of oppressions and tyrannies, pogroms and persecutions, murders and wars. The merging of the concepts is incredibly difficult to resist because history made the two an issue simultaneously. When, for example, the Orthodox Church has a priest in every church telling peasants that it is their God-given vocation to defend their Tsar by charging on German machine guns even if you happen to have the misfortune of not even having any bullets for your rifle - and that this was done to preserve a bankrupt and irredeemably degraded tyranny in the name of a religious fiction - it's not difficult, with this and numerous other examples, to see how the distinct notions of religion being false and religion being harmful became conflated.

But still they shouldn't be because they are two separate questions: it is perfectly reasonable to argue that religion historically has been responsible for numerous calamities that have been inflicted through wars, oppression, persecution and the rest; it is also perfectly reasonable to argue that religion is essentially false, involving as it does not only the belief in something for which there is no evidence, but in some cases, believing something in denial of the evidence. However, I do not think that it follows, either logically or empirically, that religion has been in the past, and is now, harmful because it is false.

It can't because such an assertion requires, not least by those who make it, some historical evidence - and I would argue that no such evidence exists. I'm sure I'm missing something because not many seem to agree but I would contend, standing from the viewpoint of the early years of the 21st century (which I can't help - and no-one can), that one of the lessons of the last is that these kinds of questions are impossible to answer. In other words, the idea that religion per se has 'caused more harm than good' is a proposition for which there is no evidence - close to what Dawkins described as 'faith', no?

Because it's impossible to answer. There can be no doubt whatsoever that in terms of human misery, the sadism that human beings are capable of, the sheer scale and speed at which the corpses piled-up, was matched and surpassed by the regimes of the twentieth century that claimed science as the basis of their cognitive infallibility. How does the utilitarian grapple with this? This, as Eric Hobsbawm has said, was the age of extremes - characterised by the appearance on the human stage of 'mega-deaths', possible only because of advances in technology. Yet so many people died because there were so many in the first place, only possible (lest the environmentalists forget) only because they could be sustained by the application of science to the business of production - the same spirit of scientific enquiry that gave birth to steam power, the internal combustion engine, modern medicine and above all, enough resources to leave only questions of whether we've been able to create so much that the idea that "there's too many off us humans" is a problem. I've no doubt the Spanish Inquisition or whoever could have matched Stalin in the body count if they'd gone hi-tech - but they didn't, because they couldn't, so it's not really a historical question.

And I'd argue from this that the proposition that religion has been a net harm because it is false falls under an even greater weight. The historical harm from organised religion came not from insisting that God exists, that the world was created in seven days, that Yahweh or Allah specifically instructs you not to eat pork or whatever - but from insisting that others do likewise, that everyone should be a replica of oneself, regardless of whether they share your religious convictions or not. The harm it does depends on the extent to which conformity is enforced. If one can abstain from pork or alcohol because of one's religious traditions, despite the fact that this is not the majority position, this is relative liberty - compared to one that banned the sale of pork or alcohol, which is illiberal - compared to a society that flogs people for consuming alcohol, which has obviously passed into tyranny.

It is not whether a belief is true, whether it is rational, that has been essential to the argument, despite the protestations to the contrary. No one expends too much energy complaining about people going to an astrologer because those that do don't hold any political power and are only likely to harm their own purse if they are foolish enough to think that they should make life-decisions on the basis of the notion that there are only twelve types of people in this world. In measuring harm, surely it's the human impulse to enforce belief, whether that be rational or not, that has lead to the greatest harm? Here I would contend that while it is not possible to determine whether religion has been on balance more harmful historically than secularism, I do think one can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that the marriage of cognitive infallibility and state power - whether religious or secular - has been the root of more human misery than the politics of scepticism. Talking from opposite poles it seems but one is really talking about the same thing: whether it is the Spanish Inquisition, Calvin's Geneva, the Crusades, or the Soviet Union, it has always been the idea that a state's subjects have a duty to conform to the Truth that has been the source of the loss of liberty and of untold human misery.

The issue isn't really what is believed - it is faith in action, and whether and to what extent it exercises political power. I do think one can say with a confidence based on historical evidence that when it does, it really does 'cause more harm than good'. But the exercise of political power to enforce conformity of belief has unequivocally not been the exclusive perogative of the religious: disaster awaits any society that attempts to eliminate the boundary between the sacred and the profane, whether religious or secular.

Hamas landslide

Does the Hamas election victory owe anything to the helpful advice given to them by the PR company they employed recently to advise them on electoral strategy? Amongst the helpful tips they received from Nashat Aqtash in helping them with their 'image problem' were:

"Say you are not against Israelis as Jews

Don't talk about destroying Israel

Do talk about Palestinian suffering

Don't celebrate killing people

Change beard colour (if red)"

It's at times like these I know I'm in the wrong job; there's clearly a lot of money to be made out there for stating the bleeding obvious - and it requires minimal effort, as far as I can see. A hundred grand for saying, in effect, the penchant for blowing yourselves up isn't playing well with swing-voters? I'd have been willing to part with this breath-taking insight for a lot less than that.

Because most people - including, obviously, people in Palestine - take a fairly dim view of this blowing yourself up business, on account of it being a bit - can we say unpleasant without being accused of Islamophobia or being a Zionist crazy or something? Because most people haven't been trained in the moral relativism laced with western liberal guilt that seems to be so popular with the Guardian. Today, for example, Jonathan Steele invited critics of Hamas not to get 'hung-up', man, with the self-exploding business:

"Murdering a Palestinian politician by a long-range attack that is bound also to kill innocent civilians is morally and legally no better than a suicide bomb on a bus. Hamas' refusal to give formal recognition of Israel's right to exist should also not be seen by Europe as an urgent problem. History and international politics do not march in tidy simultaneous steps."

I'm not saying blowing-up people in wheel-chairs is a terribly good idea, and it's certainly bad PR, but Steele's first sentence encapsulates the entire problem with journalists of his ilk, Livingstone, Galloway and his ex-friends in Respect, and all the rest. Their logic is (painfully) simple - if people get killed, they get killed - and if someone is responsible, there is no moral difference between them and a suicide-bomber because there is no room for qualitative difference in their politics.

I had thought of turning out a couple of gruesome hypothetical examples to illustrate this, undergraduate philosophy style - but what's the point? We've been here since 9/11 and although I suppose I shouldn't be, I'm still shocked to read the liberal apologetics for those that declare there to be no difference between civilian casualties incurred and those who target only civilians; between those who might be shown to be careless, even criminally negligent with regards to civilian casualties and those for whom killing civilians is as legitimate pursuit of their ends as killing Israeli or American soldiers - because for them the concept of a civilian is meaningless, if the civilian in question happens to be a Jew.

Still, it's a promising sign that normal people who aren't bloggers, clapped-out pseudo-Marxists, and liberal journalists obviously don't feel like this. Why else would Hamas play it down, which they did - as Steele reluctantly, and only half-concedes?

"It is true that Hamas candidates did not make relations with Israel the centrepiece of their campaign. They focused on reform in the Palestinian Authority. But few voters were unaware of Hamas' uncompromising hostility to occupation and its record in fighting it."

You can sense it's hurting him here but it seems clear that it was the former focus that swung it Hamas' way. Steele describes the result as the 'best news from the Middle East for some time', which strikes me as being slightly insane, yet if it can possibly be interpreted as representing a step towards the routinisation of politics in the PA, that would be welcome.

In the meantime - expect lots of hand-wringing about the hypocrisy of our democracy from the usual suspects, with liberal eyes rolling at the mention of anything to do with terrorism from any western politician. Just quibbling because they don't like the result of the election, they'll say.

Here's a 'quibble' - just as a wee reminder...

Education: the ignorance and the rage

David Aaronovitch has a piece in the Times about Blair's proposed education reforms. You'll no doubt be astonished to learn that Mr Aaronovitch supports them. His reasoning is that to support comprehensive education is so last century. No, that's not quite right - rather, he sees something distinctly primordial in the Labour back-bench rebellion:

"They are opposed to further change as much for what it represents to them as for what it actually is. It is, in other words, a fetish. They have fashioned an animal skin, named it comprehensive education and tied it to a stick."

The aim, of course, is to present the opponents of this Education Bill as conservatives - which he does quite neatly by linking attitudes to the present system with those in the Tory party who cleaved to the grammar school system: only dinosaurs oppose more marketization in education.

I just love education debates in the blogosphere. There's something about this topic that really makes people come out, say what they really think. And when this happens, it turns out there's a whole load of social Darwinists out there. There's some pretty hardcore, unalloyed contempt for the lower-orders from some in this strand, for example, at HP. In it someone made reference to Nick Cohen's observation that most people don't realise how good pupils from grammar and private schools actually are. Having read some of the comments, I have to concede that I too was one of the unenlightened but now realise the excellent work being done in these august citadels of learning: I find there's not a few grammar school and public school boys who, despite having not by definition participated in the comprehensive system, and clearly having done no research, are nevertheless experts on the subject of how it should be run. It's very impressive I must confess; selective education obviously does wonders for the confidence, if nothing else.

The New Model army of education experts eschew boring stuff like empirical evidence and international comparison, on account of its annoying tendency to spoil a perfectly good rant. For instance, the Darwinian model obviously has problems with the fact that Finland topped an international comparison of educational standards, despite having the evil comprehensive system. And on the other side, those who make comprehensive education an article of leftwing faith might have a few problems with the fact that only Finland and Korea do better than Northern Ireland, which retains the grammar school system. We don't know how England compares because despite giving the impression to the outsider of having a system that makes a fetish out of formal assessment (I'd welcome an anthropological analysis of this strange phenomenon, Mr Aaronovitch), they were unable to supply the necessary data. But we do know that Scotland's comprehensive system produced results that were above the OECD average in reading, maths and science - but compared to Northern Ireland, better only in maths.

Tempting then to conclude that structure doesn't matter a damn. Tempting but wrong, because if one believed this, you could conclude that Blair's proposed reforms - even if you didn't think they were a terribly good idea - won't make that much difference. I sincerely doubt that there's anybody on the face of this planet that is less misty-eyed about the present system than me. I think I could make the case for urgent reform to our schools with more venom, and rather more evidence, than most people could muster. Yet these reforms should be resisted, because change isn't to be welcomed - not if it makes matters worse, which these ill-considered reforms surely will.

The cult of the private, of private management techniques, the general embrace of the market principle into the public sector has already disfigured education in this country to a devastating degree. And by 'this country' I mean Scotland. Here we have no grammar schools at all, no city academies, a fraction of the number of schools run by various experts in the supernatural compared to England, a smaller private sector - yet we've still managed to mess everything up by embracing the market to the limited extent we have. League tables and parental choice have created a supermarket of schools where people vote with their feet and the people from the Executive who brought you the centralisation of medical services pounce on the opportunity to gain economies of scale by annihilating local education provision with a series of closures where 'failing schools' are shut down and amalgamated with supposedly 'successful schools' - duly extended courtesy of PFI, of course.

According to the market theory, everyone should be 'levelled-up' as the 'good practice' of the 'successful school' rubs-off on the plebian pupils and teachers from the closed school. Meanwhile, back in the real world, what quickly emerges is that whatever success previously enjoyed by the 'beacon of success' school had sweet f.a. to do with the management of the school, or the quality of the teaching, or - most absurdly - the 'expectations' or 'ethos' of the school and everything to do with the fact that hitherto they just had it easy with lots of nice, fluffy middle-class kids. Indeed, the lesson of these amalgamations is that both the management and some of the teaching staff in the 'successful' school is that they are relatively incompetent in their dealings with difficult kids compared to the troops in the trenches who understood their charges and the problems they faced.

In Glasgow, even the limited extent to which the logic of the market has been embraced has proved itself to be an unmitigated disaster of, in my view, quite scandalous proportions. Non-denominational secondary education in Maryhill, Glasgow has been completely obliterated and the intake has been mostly absorbed by schools in the west end of Glasgow, despite the fact that it is a much smaller area geographically. I have taught in every one of these schools. I tell you no lie when I say there ain't a whole lot of 'levelling-up' going on.

That the situation in England is already much worse is demonstrated in the neurotic response you get from the average middle-class parent in London when education is discussed - an anxiety the depth of which continually takes this foreigner by surprise; they're almost as worried about education as Americans are about health care. And that, as anyone who has been there can testify, is a lot. This White Paper aims to extend the principle immeasurably. I'd have to confess, behind this there is a remarkable degree of idealism - as David Aaronvitch's fantasy of how the City of Choice in Education might function in reality demonstrates:

"So how might good schools expand? Possibly by becoming the lead institutions in a constellation of local schools and colleges who agree to co-operate. This could happen across LEA boundaries, or between secondary and primary schools and FE colleges. New schools might be started up by collectives of parents, or groups of businesses, charities or even religious bodies."

How funky and tolerant this new strain of social democracy is - that it embraces the prospect of MacDonald's and the Jehovah's Witnesses playing a more active role in the education of our children as 'progress'. And as for the idea of a 'collective' of neurotic middle-class parents being actively involved in the establishment of a new school - what can I say? One man's utopia is another's dystopia, I guess.

It's times like this, when I realise I'm just not modern enough, I like to pop over to see if Polly Toynbee - a sometimes disagreeable but reliable - keeper of the social democratic sensibility has any words of support. And when I feel like this, she rarely disappoints. She asks, for example, amidst the bullshit about ethos and standards and all the rest:

"At least this dangerous row is about something important. This is no airy ideological dance. Conservatives - and Blair - know that a lot of schools could be improved rapidly, and maybe many middle-class families wooed back to inner-city state schools, by allowing schools to arrange their admissions according to "ethos" - or anything else that's a proxy for class. (Was there ever a school whose ethos expressed a yearning for difficult children?)"

No there wasn't - and that's the heart of the problem: there is no reward in the market for dealing with the problems that most people are either unwilling or unable to deal with. Yet these people exist - and it has been this blogger's privilege to work with such, to witness their skill, and their commitment to teaching as a vocation. It's a beautiful thing - yet such are dismissed and treated by contempt by the Blairites and the Cameronians (is there a difference?) as non-entities working in 'bog-standard comprehensives', whose real contribution to learning and teaching is extinguished by the heartless advance of the cult of choice.

And our Polly, with a line sure to raise a yawn amongst the free-marketeers, but which strikes a chord with me, raised the awkward problem of inequality. Even if we had a perfectly-functioning education system where there was equality of opportunity for all, do we want a situation where 'meritocracy' means via education there is an equal chance of stepping over beggars as you walk into the opera? Not my idea of utopia - but even if it were, I think most people have not the least idea how far we are from even this.

The rage of title, as you'll have discerned by now, is all mine. I've written before about the way in which poverty is used as an excuse for educational failure but the social Darwinists have got my back up and I feel like bearing witness. I've taught in the east end of Glasgow. Many of the kids there are physically smaller, have faces like clenched fists, and many of them live in schemes where the rule of law is but a faint rumour. There isn't any 'equality of opportunity' for these kids - and Blair's Sainsbury's approach isn't going to do them any favours. It's these that I think Polly Toynbee is right about, if I understand her correctly: the problem with our education system is that no-one - not Blair, Cameron, nor all the rest of the privately-schooled experts in education, gives a fuck about them. They say they do - some of them are paid to say that they do - but they don't. Not really. Meritocracy? As Chris Rock would say: let's keep it fucking real, ok?