It is sometimes hard to tell whether politicians really mean what they say. Take Andrew Adonis. A glittering background – 1st in Modern History at Keble, DPhil a few years later, fellowship at Nuffield, journalist at the FT and Observer before joining, and later heading, the No. 10 Policy Unit. Now a junior minister (in the Lords) in whatever his half of the Department of Education is called now. Well, ok, I do know, it is the Department for Children, Schools and Families, but I find that kind of nonsense irritating. Clearly a smart fellow, who can think straight.
Now look at his article in yesterday’s Times under the headline “Talent isn’t rationed. Nor should success be”, which surely qualifies as a variant on the celebrated “It is a scandal that half the population are below average”. It is blindingly obvious that talents are not evenly distributed, Horowitz played the piano dramatically better than I (or almost everyone else) could. Of course, every one of us is unique and important, but that does not mean that we are all equally good at mundane things like writing prose, solving differential equations, or running. Yes, with a huge effort those with little talent for X can do tolerably well at X, but they will never approach the few who are hugely talented at X.
The second half of the headline is even more nonsensical. Who on earth suggested that success should be rationed? No one. But it is again blindingly obvious that only one person comes first in each race. You can waffle on about how wonderful it is to take part, but the fact is that one competitor gets the Olympic gold and the rest don’t (in any given event).
We then get a few hundred words of drivel about the latest GCSE exam results. Surely it is transparently obvious that (A) it suits most of those involved (politicians, teachers, parents) to pretend that standards are not declining, but (B) they are. When I start to doubt my sanity I just pull out my old O-level papers (for those too young to remember, GCSE is the dumbed down version of O-levels) from 1963 and my old A- and S- level papers from 1965. Again many will be too young to remember that A/S distinction. Part of the dumbing down has been to split the A-level exams into two parts AS and A2, so that poor, burdened young minds don’t have to remember the AS part when they come to do the A2 part. The old S- levels were nothing to do with that, they were harder additional papers.
Ah, but the marking is different these days, the Adonises will cry. It certainly is. In my day you could lose marks for getting pre-requisites wrong, but not gain them. So if you wrote a beautifully phrased, perfectly grammatical historical essay which did not answer the question, then you got nil. These days you would get say 30% because of your command of English. If you think about it, that is just bizarre.
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