Education

Nearly six million people are on out-of-work benefits. It is claimed that, for most of those, going back to work would not be financially worth it. Aristotle would have agreed with them because for him, leisure was the most important possession a man could have. The ancients generally had no concept of the dignity of labour, apart from idealistic views about the farmer working in harmony with gods and man for the moral betterment of mankind. For most people, work was a painful necessity whose only purpose was to keep you from penury. The farmer-poet Hesiod (c.

Dear Secretary of State, thank you for meeting me and one of my deputies on Monday. You will have noticed in our meeting how disappointed we were with your responses to the questions teachers have about the government’s proposals. I assure you, we are not alone in that feeling. As teachers, we often hear politicians say how much they care about education. One of two things follows: either they turn out to be that rare politician who is truly interested in schools; or they are that all too common politician who simply wants to appear that way. Our meeting confirmed that you are firmly in the latter category. Politicians who truly want to raise standards for our most deprived communities would ordinarily be interested in hearing from the people who know best how to do it: teachers.

One does not like to disagree with one’s editor, but while the image of Rome salting the earth of its bitter rival Carthage is a striking way of describing Labour’s plan to wreck our current system of education, Rome was not in the habit of destroying the advantages that its conquests produced. The salting story is a 19th-century invention, endorsed by no less an authority than the Cambridge Ancient History (1930), but now rescinded. As Mr Gove made clear in last week’s magazine, the universal imposition of a national curriculum, among other measures, will remove the freedom and choice – the two words you will find nowhere in discussion of Labour education policy – which played such a crucial part in improving educational attainment.

Schools are a relatively new phenomena in human history. In Britain, they expanded in the 19th century and early 20th century in step with industrialisation and urbanisation, but in many places in the world, what little education the young receive occurs at home. The assumption most share, not unreasonably, is that where there are schools to attend, parents should send their children to them so they can avail themselves of the opportunities for academic learning, for socialisation and working through what they might do after they leave with the rest of their lives.

The headmaster of one of the best comprehensives in the country was once asked the following question by Tony Blair: ‘If you could do one thing to improve state education in this country, what would it be?’ ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he said. ‘I’d line up every civil servant in the education department and machine gun the lot of ’em.’ No prime minister has ever asked me that question, but my answer would be more diplomatic. It would be to insist that every incoming education secretary memorise the serenity prayer. This is the prayer that members of Alcoholics Anonymous recite at the end of their meetings: ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Last month, after 21 years studying and teaching Classics at the University of Cambridge, I resigned. I loved my job. And it’s precisely because I loved the job I was paid to do, and because I believe so firmly in preserving the excellence of higher education, in Britain and beyond, that I have left. When I arrived in Cambridge two decades ago, giants were still walking the earth. Students could attend any lecture, at any level, in any department; graduate and research seminars were open to any interested party, and you could sit at the feet of the greats. Unforgettable gatherings of everyone from undergraduates to professors would discuss the big questions late into the night.

The welfare state was designed to serve everyone’s needs. But those needs were defined by the state. So schools teach fronted adverbials (but what about hindmost ones, eh?) and trigonometry, and may (absurdly) have to teach maths to all up to 18. Do these really fulfil the needs of all our children, far too many of whom are not (apparently) leading happy, useful lives? In the ancient world education was for the sons of the elite, to prepare them to run the country. But some elite Romans did without it. When Marius, who early on made his mark in battle and was picked out as a likely leader of men, became consul in 107 bc, the historian Sallust put a speech into his mouth in which he contrasted himself, the outsider, with the educated elite.

Lessons to learn Sir: Your leading article ‘Requires improvement’ (7 September) rightly raised concerns that a curriculum review in England might reverse the excellent progress in schools following the Gove reforms. Fortunately, there are two very good examples of what happens when you replace rigour and the acquisition of knowledge with left-wing dogma and woolly thinking. The introduction of the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland has led to a dramatic fall in standards in Scottish education and a resultant collapse in its Pisa [Programme for International Student Assessment] ranking. Last year Wales recorded its lowest-ever Pisa ranking.