Melissa Benn's Nostalgia for the days of Gove

Sticking with the problem of left and right not being what they seem to be, here's an interesting outbreak of sympathy between a supposed Left-wing activist and a supposed Tory reactionary.

 

Just before the election I took part in an Oxford panel discussion about democracy, in which one of the other participants was Melissa Benn, daughter of Tony and Caroline Benn. I thought her wrong,  but thoughtful and intelligent, and possessed of that indispensable attribute, a sense of humour (which, as James Hilton���s great fictional teacher ���Mr Chips��� pointed out,  is really a sense of proportion).

 

One of the things she���s wrong about (as were her parents) is comprehensive education.

 

And I was struck this week by an article she wrote for the Guardian���s education section.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/08/grammar-school-expansion-kent-selective-education

I have discussed here the utter lack of support for selective state schools shown by my former friend Michael Gove .

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/05/more-details-of-michael-goves-attitude-towards-grammar-schools.html

 

 

We haven���t spoken more than a few words(which were, as I recall ���Good Evening���), since he sent his daughter to Grey Coat Hospital school, see

 

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/03/more-thoughts-on-michael-goves-school-choice.html

 

What���s interesting is that Melissa Benn has also noticed this. She says in her article, about a possible extension of one grammar school in Kent:

 

���It will also mark a significant retreat from the Gove years, when there was a strong commitment to the principle of non-selective education and rejection of old-style Tory claims that grammar schools promote social mobility.���

 

See that? A strong commitment to the *principle* of non-selective education���

 

What principle is that? By ���non-selective��� she of course means ���not selected by ability���, as she and her allies are quite happy with the current system of selection by money, elbows and cunning.

 

What is this principle shared by the heir to Tony Benn and by Michael Gove, blue hope of the new Tories? I shall have to ask Melissa, when next I bump into her.

 

By the way, I���d link to link here to a long moan by the fashionable media person Giles Coren (The headline is ���Thanks for nothing, you middle-class scum') about not being able to get his four-year-old daughter into two good local state primary schools. He���s going private. He blames self-righteous local lefties for manoeuvreing their children into the two schools��� tiny catchment areas.

 

But I can���t link to it. It���s behind a paywall.

 

He tells readers of ���The Times��� not to dare to ���look down on him��� for going private. We have come to something when he feels he must address such an appeal to readers of  ���The Times���. But there you are.

 

Thus do the British middle classes, in their various ways, avoid the problem of selection by ability (which would of course have a huge and beneficial effect on state primary schools, compelling them to restore their lost rigour).