When it comes to authoritarian presumption, it seems that leftist intellectuals just can’t help themselves:
Is having a loving family an unfair advantage? Should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring?
So asks ABC’s “educational broadcaster” Joe Gelonesi, before turning for an answer to a mind even loftier than his own:
Once he got thinking, [political philosopher Adam] Swift could see that the issue stretches well beyond the fact that some families can afford private schooling, nannies, tutors, and houses in good suburbs. Functional family interactions — from going to the cricket to reading bedtime stories — form a largely unseen but palpable fault line between families. The consequence is a gap in social mobility and equality that can last for generations. So, what to do?
Dr Swift, whose interests include “sociological theory and Marxism,” starts with the obvious. Obvious to him, that is:
One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.
It’s a bold move, one that’s been suggested many times, typically by people bedeviled by totalitarian fantasies and insatiable spite. Thankfully, our concerned academic shies away from such directness and even praises the family and its “love-based relationships.” Instead, he wants to, as Gelonesi puts it, “sort out those activities that contribute to unnecessary inequality from those that don’t.” Dr Swift’s definition of “unnecessary inequality” will soon become clear.
What we realised we needed was a way of thinking about what it was we wanted to allow parents to do for their children, and what it was that we didn’t need to allow parents to do for their children.
What “we” will allow parents to do. For their own children.
Our expert in “social justice” and “egalitarian theory” proposes a test (or rather, an excuse) for statist interference. An excuse based on “those unique and identifiable things that arise within the family unit and contribute to the flourishing of family members.” One thing is immediately flagged as impermissible:
“Private schooling cannot be justified by appeal to these familial relationship goods,” he says. “It’s just not the case that in order for a family to realise these intimate, loving, authoritative, affectionate, love-based relationships you need to be able to send your child to a private school.”
Yes, spending your own earnings on lawful and private things – things that may give your children a better chance in life, perhaps better than your own – these things, you see, aren’t needed and therefore they shouldn’t be permitted. Whether any given parent or child might feel otherwise, perhaps based on their own experience of state education – and whether their views ought to carry more weight than the opinions of a passing stranger – are, oddly, unaddressed.
Conceivably, there are quite a few parents and children who would like to escape a state education similar to my own, where those deemed overly studious ran the risk of being bullied, tormented or whipped across the face with bootlaces, thanks to the attention of the school’s dozen or so budding sociopaths, who amused themselves, in corridors and in class, with apparent impunity. A state school, a comprehensive, where objects of discernible value were routine targets of vandalism and theft, and where the teaching of basic grammar was thought inegalitarian and therefore superfluous. A conceit embraced by other ‘progressive’ educational establishments.
But it’s not all Thou Shalt Not:
In contrast, reading stories at bedtime, argues Swift, gives rise to acceptable familial relationship goods, even though this also bestows advantage.
Ah, this “we” would allow.
Swift makes it clear that although both elite schooling and bedtime stories might skew the family game, restricting the former would not interfere with the creation of the special loving bond that families give rise to. Taking the books away is another story.
No, “we” won’t take your books away. So there’s that.
However,
We could prevent private schooling without any real hit to healthy family relationships.
Sadly, Dr Swift doesn’t say whether he has any personal experience of the state education system that he thinks the rest of us should make do with in the name of “social justice.” But perhaps he could share his comforting words with some of the children left at the mercy of such schools, where, as one national survey of teaching staff puts it, “a climate of violence” and “malicious disruption” is the norm, the assaulting of staff and pupils is commonplace, with almost half of those surveyed witnessing such behaviour “on a weekly basis,” and where vandalism of personal property is “part of the routine working environment.” Perhaps he could share his wisdom with the children being bullied daily for being clever, enquiring or polite. A fate I escaped, narrowly, thanks to a proficiency in throwing chairs, thereby deterring lunchtime assaults. Such were the thrills of the state education to which our leftist academic would have your children forcibly consigned.
But let’s close on a happy note:
“I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,” quips Swift.
One more time:
Parents reading their children bedtime stories… are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children.
Readers may also wish to ponder the oddness of the idea that caring, functional parents, parents who make sacrifices for their children, have something to atone and apologise for. That, having done the best they can for their children and having given them opportunities, they have sinned against “social justice.”
We’ve been here before, of course. Several times.
Via Tim Blair.
Update:
In the comments, several readers note that Mr Gelonesi’s article, and the comments by Dr Swift, serve chiefly to advance the notion that those who escape state education are doing wrong and, implicitly, should be stopped. And yet the practical and moral consequences of banning private education aren’t examined at all in the article, even briefly. No-one even registers the sheer arrogance of the idea. It’s simply assumed by both parties that doing so would be good and could have no downsides worth noting. Because – magic words – “social justice.” There’s apparently no expectation that the presenter and his guest might pause to consider the fallout for the people who would be victims of their homogenising fantasy.
But this fits a wider pattern in discussions on this subject. The people who presume to confine the rest of us to state education are very often people with little or no first-hand experience of it. Certainly no experience of less glamorous state schools, where the scenarios above were, and are, commonplace. (Names that spring to mind include Zoe Williams, George Monbiot, Polly Toynbee, Kevin McKenna and Arabella Weir. All Guardian contributors.)
A few months ago I checked the Ofsted report for my old state school – now a ‘community arts college’ – and it made for grim reading. “Attainment in key subjects” – English, maths and science – is rated “low” and “well below average.” Indiscipline and absenteeism are major issues. And it’s worth pointing out that during my stay the school was pretty typical of others in the area. In local terms, it wasn’t regarded as a failed school; it wasn’t remarkable at all. It was how many state schools in the area were. That’s what you were given. But wishing to prevent children from escaping such schools is pretty much a default attitude among our leftist intelligentsia. It’s a standard social marker of the Guardianista class. And the witlessness of that attitude was expressed rather neatly in a Normblog Q&A profile of the novelist Meg Rosoff:
What do you consider the most important personal quality?
Compassion.
What personal fault do you most dislike?
Mediocrity.
And,
If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be?
Outlaw private education.
Yes, a professed dislike of mediocrity can apparently coexist with a desire to restrict the educational opportunities of children and thus impose substandard uniformity. Private education would no doubt be outlawed for reasons of compassion, by people who care.
This blog is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. 
“And the witlessness of that attitude was expressed rather neatly in a Normblog Q&A profile of the novelist Meg Rosoff”
Rosoff’s a Marxist?! Well that would explain a lot. I should have guessed that worthless hack could only have been given the accolades she had through having the right political beliefs. It certainly wasn’t though literary talent, as anyone unfortunate enough to have read the godawful “How I Live Now” will readily attest. It makes the Hunger Games look like Shakespeare.
Any parent, if they can read, can read a bedtime story to their child. To do so requires only a little time and effort. But as no state interference, no grants, no edicts, no dire penalties, no equality counselling, no authoritarian diktat, no establishment of licensing and the required training, no diversity and equality officers, no check ups by social workers (who may be absent while doing this from, say, Rotherham) and no arrogant pronouncements from marxist small minds, it follows that any fair-minded person must be against reading to their children.
The warning signs must say: ‘Do not care for your children. They belong to us, the state.’ By obeying, a form of happiness in measured amounts will be doled out to all minions.
Great blog. Tip jar hit.
Great blog. Tip jar hit.
Coinage and buttering always welcome.
parents reading their children bedtime stories… are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children
That’s one of the most perverse things I’ve ever read. It’s deranged.
That’s one of the most perverse things I’ve ever read. It’s deranged.
Yes, it’s gloriously wrong-headed. Like so much Marxoid “theorising,” once you strip away the pseudo-intellectual veneer and state the thing clearly, it sounds a tad bonkers. And disagreeable.
http://cmcforum.com/opinion/04302015-why-yes-can-mean-no
Massively above the Poe Limit (the density of contradiction needed to detect parody).
ac1, you do realize there’s a link on that page to an article titled ” Flirting Is Not Consent…(Un)Chained: Finding Liberation In a Sex Dungeon”…Which itself does have a trigger warning. Here’s the titillating intro:
…I thought I had something to say about this but, what’s the point?
‘We could prevent elite private schooling without any real hit to healthy family relationships, whereas if we say that you can’t read bedtime stories to your kids because it’s not fair that some kids get them and others don’t, then that would be too big a hit at the core of family life.’
IOW: “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but let’s do this one step at a time.”
or
“All in good time, my pretty, all in good time. These things must be done delicately, or you ruin the spell.”
It’s plain to see that their mindset is evil in the serious and classical usage of the word.
“Your definition of “worse” is 180° out of phase with theirs. They’re just hoping to get their stuff implemented before anyone else figures that out.”
“Yes, but not worse for them, or for anyone they care about.”
Both partly and often true; but its more complicated. SJWs can be vicious ideologues with a belief that they and theirs will have privileges as members of the enlightened vanguard. Or they may genuinely believe in equality of misery for all. Or they may simply be very vague, believing that revolution will replace capitalism with something nicer – a more inclusive, equal, generous, trigger-free, safe-space society, but one in which such alleged improvements will not have any costs or disadvantages (eg remorseless tyranny) and where they still have their ipads, internet, foreign holidays, lattes and craft beers. Oh, and a decent merlot.
The last group is large compared to the other two, and they just don’t get that the cure they prescribe would be worse than the ills they diagnose.
TBH It might be one better than the Fabians deciding who to sterilise and thus preventing any “inferior children” needing education.
dicentra @ 4/4 22:39: Your definition of “worse” is 180° out of phase with theirs.
Which is why historically they have no problems with mass graves.
File under “I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S NOT THE GUARDIAN!” Also, this is nice, ” bedeviled by totalitarian fantasies and insatiable spite”
If he’s well into this zero-sum-of-education view, isn’t Mr. Swift’s supposed brain the size of a planet depriving someone …err… less “privileged” of knowledge?
Isn’t he thus disadvantaging someone else?
IOW: “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but let’s do this one step at a time.”
Setting aside the contrived unobviousness of it all – unobviousness being currency in academia’s Clown Quarter and often mistaken for profundity – I suppose the underlying idea is to displace responsibility (and an exploitable sense of guilt) from those who might deserve it – neglectful parents, say – and then pin it onto the left’s Designated Oppressor Group – i.e., just about anyone who’s functional and remotely bourgeois. We’re told that, “Parents reading their children bedtime stories… are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children.” But functional parents don’t “unfairly disadvantage” the children of bad parents. Bad parents do that.
And then there’s the rhetorical trick noted earlier, in which a nakedly totalitarian idea is pitched then shied away from, in the hope of making a less scandalous idea, but one that’s still reprehensible, seem almost reasonable. They, our Marxoid betters, won’t abolish the family outright; that they will allow. But only because of those “love-based relationships.” And they won’t even take away our children’s books, despite the “disadvantage” they cause. See how accommodating they are? But banning educational choice is such a little thing to ask, given what could be taken from us. And, you see, something must be done about the family, which is an obstacle to “social justice” and therefore “ever more in need of a rationale for existing.”
Though I guess the effectiveness of the gambit depends on whether anyone is sufficiently credulous to listen to Marxoid academics. Which, all things considered, doesn’t seem terribly wise.
My son has always gone to an excellent private school who are clearly developing the young fruit of my vigorous loins into a very well-rounded human being indeed.
The costs to me are not inconsiderable.
I also pay a six figure sum in income tax (true) and I suspect a portion of that also goes to pay for the state oiks. Now before anyone get aerated about my last comment I actually have no problem whatsoever with this as I have friends and many members of my family who cannot afford what I am fortunate enough to be able to afford.
He also has far more of what are considered “material goods” than were even beyond my own vast imagination when I was his age.
He is also I am sure very secure within his familial environment and has the keenest sense that he is supported (to the death if necessary) in all his endeavours. I sense this is only strengthening his ego structures and will serve him very well in his fully integrated and peacefully productive adulthood.
His modeling behaviours also suggest that he will be a completely law-abiding citizen and will probably be a likeable human being.
What am I doing wrong David?
I am wracked with guilt.
Should I start beating him?
I am wracked with guilt. Should I start beating him?
I’m afraid we’ll have to purge you of that WrongThought™ humour. [ Wheels in correction booth. Fires up generator. ]
People like Dr Swift and any number of pious Guardianistas present themselves as the saviours of education, of standards, and of clever kids from modest backgrounds. But the more closely state education matches the typical Guardianista worldview, as expressed, for instance, here, the more likely it is to fail clever children and indeed be hostile to them. Apparently, the idea is to distribute brighter kids among the dullards and ruffians, who are deemed “disadvantaged,” thereby making state schooling more fragrant and civilised. As Arabella Weir put it, “They will learn to make room for people of different abilities… They will learn street sense, who to be wary of, who to avoid, how to keep their heads down.” Lovely things like that.
Though Ms Weir shied from elaborating on how these things might be learned.
And that’s the thing. The cost to the children being distributed in this way seems of little interest to those who feel entitled to position them fairly, as defined by socialists, as if the children’s own needs and preferences, and those of their parents, were immaterial. I have little doubt that people like Weir, Toynbee, Monbiot, Williams, et al imagine themselves to be a good and caring people, compassionate warriors for “social justice.” At least they tell us so often enough. But shutting down escape routes, locking people in and robbing them of freedom, which is what such people advocate, doesn’t suggest altruism or compassion. It suggests arrogance and sadism.
The cost to the children being distributed in this way seems of little interest to those who feel entitled to position them fairly. . .
The idea of providing a leavening of decency and achievement in the “dough of dysfunction” sounds superficially appealing until you realize it’s all about punishing the designated “oppressor” class. The Arabella Weirs of the world cannot nor will not create anything of real value. Rather they must destroy. If it were otherwise, Ms. Weir would resign her current position and taking a teaching job at one of the comprehensive schools she wishes to foist on the rest us.
a leavening of decency and achievement in the “dough of dysfunction” sounds superficially appealing
Provided, of course, that you regard other people’s children as little more than components in a social engineering experiment.
And needless to say, it doesn’t seem to work. The beneficial effect for non-academic kids is somewhere between negligible and zero. The effect on bright kids, however – those being sacrificed for the socialist ideal – can be terrible. Some clever kids have a really bad time and many learn to give up, leaving school with grades well out of step with their intelligence, or dropping out altogether. There are several examples of academically able kids who quickly grew to resent the fact that their well-heeled lefty parents had sent them to an ideologically correct comprehensive, in effect using them as a political experiment. Or a socialist credential.
In my case it was mostly tedious and demoralising, occasionally enlivened by a bit of physical danger. I didn’t see any evidence that my presence there was elevating any of the less able kids or inspiring the thugs to more gentlemanly conduct. If anything, it seemed to provoke the opposite. Hence the chair throwing.
>Now before anyone get aerated about my last comment I actually have no problem whatsoever with this
Maybe you should have a problem. You pay for their kids AND yours!
People should pay for their own kids. Anything else is just fertility redistribution.
In my case it was mostly tedious and demoralising, occasionally enlivened by a bit of physical danger. I didn’t see any evidence that my presence there was elevating any of the less able kids or inspiring the thugs to more gentlemanly conduct. If anything, it seemed to provoke the opposite. Hence the chair throwing.
. . . and add in a pair of emphatic psychopaths that breed for the sole purpose of collecting the social benefits of being parents, while clearly and consistently refusing to actually bother with being parents, and the mix gets even more toxic . . .
ac1,
Thank you for that. Yes, I do see your point I really do but I have retained a sense of what is called collective responsibility and believe there is such a thing as “society” and so accept a degree of culpability for the outcome of the “rest”. Possibly a quaint and old fashioned notion but there we go.
I have a distaste for the notion of completely pulling up the ladder behind me and then go and live in a gated community in a secure, clean bubble. I don’t know of any such model that looks attractive…to my eyes anyway…..Elysium come to mind….Just a film, I know.
I think a point I was trying to make was that it is a truism that not everyone can possibly all have the goodies and I have, in truth, chosen to raise my child the way I do without actually being denied the chance for my son to have an education…However, unattractive the option….
I find myself wondering though just how good the state system would become if private schooling was abolished and the elites were forced to utilise the same set-up as the proles?!
Oh I dunno…I’m sure there are many angles to this one.
“One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family.”
The family will not be abolished.
It will however largely disappear.
The definition of family has become so stretched as to be almost meaningless- “It is what you find behind your front door” is a definition which was en vogue a few years ago.
To state that the ideal family would comprise a married mother and father and their biological children is to invite the accusation that you are disparaging any family that does not match the ideal.
The State, through its schools and otherwise, increasing intrudes on the rights of parents to bring up their children as they see fit- with, it appears, teachers, police, social workers (of course) all trained in the mindset of the State as all-knowing and superceding the rights of the family.
A lefty friend of my wife likes to use the expression “It takes a village to raise a child”. Behind that folksy faux-wisdom lies the totalitarian mindset.
Unfortunately, the book is not that interesting! Or at least not for the reasons suggested here. We don’t argue for the abolition of private schools, or even argue that people who send their kids to private schools are always doing something wrong. And the book is a sustained argument AGAINST abolishing the family. Of course, reading bedtime stories to your kids is great, because it teaches them to read and listen, both considerable virtues.
[In the book] we don’t argue for the abolition of private schools, or even argue that people who send their kids to private schools are always doing something wrong. And the book is a sustained argument AGAINST abolishing the family.
And yet the interview quoted above.
Oh, but they hate the kibbutzniks, just as they adore Hamas and Hezbollah.
You’ve got to recall that prior to 1967 the left adored Israel. It was perceived as left wing and in need of support by progressives. Kibbutz were a big part of that dream. Remember too that the left has tried on many occasions to create small scale utopian communities, over several hundred years. Google ‘New Harmony’ for one example amongst many. So of course they loved Kibbutz then. All left wing reference points follow the same arc: Initiation and celebration; Decline and excuses; Disaster and distancing. After 1967 the left moved away from Israel but it took a generation to move to full blooded Hamas support. In 1979 the SWP was pretty supportive of PLF but there were sufficient older members who were not on board with demonising Israel. Of course another ten years would see the stirrings of Rushdie hatred and the hard left forgot they ever backed those nasty Zionists.
and where the teaching of basic grammar was thought inegalitarian and therefore superfluous.
“One of our faculty who teaches Composition I and II will not grade on grammar. She thinks that’s immoral. You see, correctly written and spoken English is the language of the rich and powerful… How are any of these students supposed to be upwardly mobile if they’re not fluent in the “language of the rich and powerful?””
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/417986/how-civilizations-die-ongoing-series-jonah-goldberg
One of our faculty who teaches Composition I and II will not grade on grammar. She thinks that’s immoral. You see, correctly written and spoken English is the language of the rich and powerful…
I’m tempted to laugh, but it may not be funny for the victims of such colossal self-indulgence. I’ve mentioned before how, thanks to left-leaning teachers who didn’t want to share the secrets of basic grammar, learning a second language was rather tricky. It generally helps if you already know what various bits of the language are called and what their relationships usually are. My long-suffering German teacher couldn’t quite believe that his ‘A’ stream students had so little formal knowledge of their national language. As a result, he had to spend a sizeable chunk of his lessons providing remedial English tuition to some of the brightest kids in school.
Kevin Williamson has some thoughts on this:
Oh, there’s more.