Nick Cohen's not-even-Standard column
Nick Cohen in his Observer column famously blamed "liberals" for supporting the war in Afghanistan and making Britain a target for terrorists, and then famously blamed "liberals" for the opposite in the case of Iraq. His Standard column doesn't quite plumb those depths, it tends to be more of a "Cor blimey guv'nor, where are the Routemasters, why won't cabs take you South of the River, isn't modern architecture rubbish" kind of stuff.This week however he took on the fact that on Question Time a week ago or so all of the panellists and the compere went to public schools (which he lovingly named) and this showed that we need grammar schools to allow the working-class to compete with them.
The people on the show were David Dimbleby, Tim Yeo, Tessa Jowell, Sir Max Hastings and David Laws. Except Laws, they all left school (assuming the left at 18, if they left at 16 it would be two years earlier, before 1965 (Jowell), with Hastings and Yeo 1963 and Dimbleby the earliest in 1956. Thus they were 11 in 1949, 1956, 1956, and 1957.
The first comprehensive school (except for geographical reasons) was Kidbrooke School in Greenwich, opened in 1954, and it and a few other early adopters Wikipedia says "modelled themselves firmly on the grammar school, with teachers in gowns and lessons in a very formal style". It says the "Rising Hall Comprehensive" in Islington in 1960 was the first "to offer an alternative to this model".
In other words it is absurd to suggest that it was the failure of comprehensive schools that led to this panel being so constituted. Even if you believe no-one worthy of appearing on Question Time could come from a comprehensive, hence the age group of the panel, this would imply the same was true of grammar schools, and in their heyday!
Cohen's transformation into Melanie Phillips appears unstoppable.
posted by Matthew @ 11/03/2005 09:38:00 AM
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