There’s a fascinating case study to be made of how in a generation or so the British ripped leagues of old Etonians, Harrovians, Wykehamists out of institutions to be replaced by “the best and brightest”, and then inexplicably everything became shit
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Samizdata quote of the day – …and then inexplicably everything became shitSeptember 30th, 2025 |
 30 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – …and then inexplicably everything became shitLeave a Reply |
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Perhaps so, but then David Cameron and Boris Johnson were Etonians as well, and most of what they touched turned to shit.
Hmm: Attlee was privately educated, as were Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Home, Cameron, Blair, Johnson, Sunak.
Thatcher, Wilson, Callaghan, Major, Truss, May were, as far as I know, grammar educated.
Hard to draw many conclusions.
Full disclosure: I went to a state school that had been recently changed from a grammar school.
Switching countries, France has a highly meritocratic system but I don’t see it as notably good at government in recent years.
What’s important, I think, is variety in educational approaches, life experiences, jobs, etc.
Just as a side note, none of your international audience knows what this means. Our vocabularies re: schools just don’t connect.
bobby b
Just as a side note, none of your international audience knows what this means. Our vocabularies re: schools just don’t connect.
Basically it used to be that kids were split after primary school (which Americans call “grade school”) into the smart kids who went to grammar school (and learnd Latin) and the rest of us. However, there was a big switch to “comprehensive school” where everyone merged together. My brother went to grammar school and I just missed it when they switched to the new system. Anyway, I probably wouldn’t have gotten in since my primary school teacher told me and my parents that I’d never amount to anything.
Eton and the other schools referred to in the comment are “public” schools, which ironically meant what Americans would call private schools. Eton, in particular, is in Windsor, across the river from Windsor Castle, which is kind of the foundational seat of the monarchy, and so is closely associated with the monarchy. Many kings and princes went there, as did a very large percentage of British Prime Minsters (Harrow being the other major source of Prime Ministers, including Churchill.)
They are major feeder schools for Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and those two colleges (collectively known as Oxbridge) have been the sole source of senior members of the civil service and military for most of modern British history.
Probably in the last fifty years though that is a lot less true though AFAIK nearly all really senior civil servants went to Oxbridge, in fact I believe every Cabinet Secretary (the head of the civil service) in history has been an Oxbridge graduate.
Nonetheless, I think things going to shit has very little to do with our lack of Etonians at the top. I think things going to shit comes from the fact that the civil service is an utter disaster completely unsuited to manage a modern country in a modern world.
And I think her latter comment is one that makes me throw up in my mouth a little; it is the epitome of the traditional conservative party.
Britain makes so much sense when you realise we have a Governing class of aristocrats whose sole purpose is to use their advantages to state benefit; a class of labourers whose job it is to make sure there is a country in the first place, and a middle class to both give opportunity and prosperity to the class below it and fertile recruiting grounds to the class above it.
@bobby b
And British public schools are called public because they were the first schools in the country that were open to the public (for a large fee).
Grammar schools were called that because (as Fraser said) they taught Latin (and classical Greek) – grammar.
The one that Shakespeare attended in Stratford (upon Avon), named for King Edward VI (many were founded in his short reign), is still going strong, since not every county abolished grammar schools (just most of them).
Rather than the best and the brightest the country has been deliberately been placed in the hands of the diverse and the “deserving”.
Fascinating maybe but the end result is anything but inexplicable.
Fraser,
Yes, and it’s been like that since at least the days of Sir Humphrey Appleby…
Bobby, yes there are some translation issues. It’s the same with Europe: the equivalent of a U.K. grammar school is a “gymnasium”. We don’t really have the American “high school” model in the U.K.
I went to what was called a “comprehensive”: it didn’t select on ability, but there were separate ability streams for different subjects. I was in the top ones apart from maths. It was a bit like league sports: there was an incentive to work hard and and stay in the top. The problem with selection at 11, as grammars used to do, is that a “late developer” is sort of marked for life.
In Germany, if you don’t attend a gymnasium and go to a more “technical school” instead, there isn’t the same disdain in the culture not being “bright enough”. There’s pride in different forms of excellence and accomplishment. I think there’s a lot to be said for it.
I have improved in certain topics and in a way I count myself as a beneficiary of the modern system, although it could have been far better. I’m glad I didn’t go to a posh British private school: I think I am a more grounded person as a result, although these days it’s harder to generalise. I certainly have no time for inverse snobbery: disliking someone for attending a smart school and having a certain accent. I always try and see the individual.
Likely both correlated to a 3rd thing, increased leftism and statism
John,
You might find this interesting. Our wokest universities are also, the highest rated – especially Oxbridge. We are always ruled by an “elite” all that changes is what qualifies you to be a part of it. Alas, we can’t all be gender-fluid, muslim, unidextor asylum seekers from Yemen.
I think that it’s worth remembering that those who were the middling students at school often went on to be the people who do the actual real work. The people without whom the shops would have empty shelves, the ones who get stuff built and fixed. I left school with four O Levels and did an apprenticeship in engineering. I did do further education in engineering and electronics. I spent my working life keeping stuff working, just a cog in a vast machine that people tend to take for granted.
Nick,
Your starter for ten.
What do the following all have in common:-
Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy
Israr Khan
Anita Okunde
Moosa Haraj
George Abaraonye
In light of recent unsavoury events you will probably know they are the last five Presidents of the Oxford Union.
Now your bonus round. In each case do they owe their illustrious position to being the brightest and the best or the diverse and deserving?
They’re all race grifters of one sort or another?
I’d buy that argument if we didn’t know that Public (ie private) Schools were not even more infected by the modern mind virus’. It’s not as if George Monbiot and friends were not typical.
I recall that at Eton all three groups of teachers, student and others voted on Brexit and only the other staff group (eg. caretakers, groundkeepers kitchen staff etc) voted to leave
A side effect of loosening standards, i.e. replacing a non-verbal reasoning test (turning shapes around in your head and so on) with an essay on ‘lived experience’, is not only that diverse candidates find it easier to get in, but middling white students also find it easier. It would be less damaging to have explicit racial quotas, as at least you’d know the white students were of sufficiently high standards.
In regard to bobby b.’s comment about UK education terms not translating, it would take all day to even-somewhat-more-fully flesh out the clarification.
The fundamental difference is between “private” education – paid for by the parents – and “public” education – paid for by the taxpayers. Public education only really took full shape in the late C19, and in many ways was modelled on the existing, private system.
Private education continues in very-much the same way as it has for centuries – parents will pay to send their children to school, first to ‘preparatory’ schools (which ‘prepare’ the primary-school child for the rigorous entrance exams to the many secondary private schools) and then, if they make the grade, to a private secondary school. Some, but by no means all, of these schools are boarding schools – the child lives at the school and not at home. Many of these schools are fiercely-selective, as the parents expect academic results for their fees, and the educational standard is uniformly high. Not-unsurprisingly, this system produces a disproportionate number of students who go on to do very well indeed in further education.
The “public” school system started out using a very similar model, adjusted for the fact that they were obliged to take all comers. Children were ‘streamed’, usually around age 11, and those with academic potential directed to academically-inclined schools, which took the old-system name of ‘grammar’ schools since they often included Latin and Greek in the curriculum. However, the curriculum was often broad and demanding, leaning towards the humanities but not exclusively-so. For the best part of a century, a ‘grammar-school’ education was a well-understood upward path for academically-gifted children of more-humble origins who were nevertheless prepared to work hard and achieve.
Children of lesser academic potential in the “public system were streamed into less-demanding, more-practical curricula that would prepare them for decent jobs in commerce and industry.
Naturally, such a “public” system that produced different ‘streams’ of pupils was complete anathema to the socialist and soft-socialist governments that followed WW2, and they tried, and almost-succeeded, in completely destroying it by doing away with all academic selection and placing all pupils in a single-curriculum school – the “comprehensive” system. This naturally placed everyone at the level of the lowest-performing pupils – but it was ‘fair’! A few years of this caused parents to start pushing back as they saw their gifted children being dragged down by a system based on ideology and not education. Some level of sanity has bern restored and there is now a degree of streaming and selection in the “public” system.
This system produced/produces a degree of class differentiation, but not as much as you might think. The “private” schools tended to accumulate pupils from higher classes because their parents could afford the fees, but the rigorous academic standards meant that you couldn’t just buy your way in – you had to be well-off to send your boy to Eton or Harrow, but he also had to make the grade academically. Sure, there were some pupils from wealthy backgrounds who were academically marginal – but every school has marginal pupils. And many of these schools, being centuries old and with healthy endowments, would fund scholarships and other financial aid for gifted pupils who could not otherwise afford to attend – the high educational achievement being the product they were selling, it was worth it to them to buy some of it in order to keep the standard high.
That’s the first chapter. Don’t worry, there’s more.
llater,
llamas
The comprehensive school that I attended in the 1970s had streaming. There were even remedial classes for kids who had fallen behind for whatever reason.
Back when the Labour and Conservative parties were actually different you can see the reason that Labour were against grammar schools. Upward mobility for bright working class kids would be their nemesis. The kids would become successful, become lower middle class and start voting Tory. If your party’s whole reason for existing is supposedly to represent poor people it’s in your interests to make sure that they stay poor.
Eton and Harrow may still be, but I distinctly recall my class at a second-tier day school being told that if we were considering Oxbridge we should walk out the door straight to the local comprehensive. You’d need several “A”s at Higher and a couple of A-Levels from our place, but only a few “A” or “B” Highers from the state school. That was in the mid ’80s.
And the reason they’re called public schools is that they’re open to the public, unlike the private tuition which much of the aristocracy used when they first appeared. (Oh, and – such is the way of class distinction – you’re not considered a “real” public school unless you’re in the Headmasters’ Conference. It’s like a sort of Russell Group or Ivy League of secondary education. So it’s simpler to talk of “independent” schools.)
John,
That list isn’t really diverse though is it? I mean no Patels, Chiangs let alone a Jones (or Heavens forfend!) a Cohen!
DEI is quite the opposite of what it says on the label.
As Stonyground describes, and as I have described before, the public “grammar schools” from about 1910 to about 1970 were one sure and reliable path to upward mobility for the working and lower-middle classes. A poor kid with an academic turn of mind who was prepared to work hard, and who could get ‘streamed’ into a good grammar school, could springboard that to tremendous success. Examples – Harold Wilson, born lower-middle-class in a gritty Yorkshire mill town, went to an excellent selective local grammar school (twice), scholarship to Oxford, brilliant career in government and ended up as Prime Minister. Or Margaret Thatcher – literally, a grocer’s daughter from a sleepy provincial town who rode this route through Somerville College (perhaps the single best women’s college at Oxford at the time), law school, first/best/youngest at everything she did, and once again, ended up in Number 10. Not commenting on the politics of either one, mind you, merely observing the clear route upwards available to any gifted child in the “public” school system. In those days, “grammar school boy (or girl)” was social shorthand for ‘young person of modest background but academically above-average who has had an excellent education.’
This route was further supported by both public funding for further education, in the form of grants and scholarships, as well as extensive private financial aid from many of the old universities themselves. Places like Oxford and Cambridge, with a 500-year history, were full of colleges possessed of vast endowments which provided scholarships, bursaries, exhibitions, grants and fellowships to any number of academically-deserving students who would otherwise not have been able to attend for financial reasons. When I lived outside Cambridge in the 1970s, it was said that something like 1 student in 4 at the university was on some form of financial aid from the colleges themselves. I’ve no idea how it is now.
But then, as Sam Duncan observes, all of the universities caught the social-justice virus, and began to admit students based, not on academic ability alone, but on a whole range of factors, including race, gender, income and class, all intended to produce some sort of ‘fairer’ outcomes in further education. In order to provide the perceived benefits of attending a top-tier, academically-selective university to what were claimed to be ‘under-represented’ groups, they swept away the very things that gave that education its value. And, as observed, a certain faction on the Left hated – and hates – the idea of upward mobility for the working classes based on individual merit, and so seeks to go further and destroy every possible marker and signal that these top-tier universities were in any way different, special or valuable – in other words, to make universities, like “comprehensive” schools – everyone’s the same, everyone’s equal, nobody’s any smarter than anyone else – see, it’s ‘fair’! One way to do this was to flood the universities with students who were held to lower standards than others. Another was to deliberately admit students who shared the opinion that these places were bad and needed to be deconstructed, starting with their traditions and history. So we observe, for example, the Oxford Union, for centuries a premier venue for scholarly debate and discussion, where literally anybody could walk in off the street and listen to the greatest minds and thinkers of the day discussing the great issues of the world. Again, when I attended a couple if debates there, in the 1970s, all of the officers of the Union attended debates in evening dress – white tie for the men, long dresses for the ladies – and debates took place with scrupulous courtesy. The current President of the Union now attends debates dressed like a street person who just came from sleeping in a doorway, and the current crop of speakers seems to consist of ‘rappers’ and ‘celebrities’ as much as it does deep thinkers. It’s only a matter of time before the Union becomes a ‘reality’ TV show.
More to come, kids.
llater,
llamas
There are a lot of useless people from Eton – David Cameron, Alexander Johnson, and so on. And the other ancient schools – which have become rather leftist over years. I remember Rupert Lowe saying, with great sorrow, that he no longer gave money to his old school (the Dragon School in Oxford) because whereas it used to support open and honest debate among the pupils – it now tries to enforce a certain view of the world and discourages dissent.
However, generally YES – the new people are worse than the old.
For example, saying that the laws of objective reality (such as interest rates going up because you are borrowing too much money) “limit democratic choices” is the sure sign of a fool.
As for “Andy” Burnham – he keeps going on about how he follows Catholic Social Teaching.
He does NOT – Mr Burnham does NOT go around denouncing abortion and homosexual acts and so on, he is against Catholic Social Teaching – what he means is that he follows modern Catholic ECONOMIC teaching.
This is unfortunate as this ECONOMIC teaching is a series of factual errors – for example the claims in the first paragraph of Pope Leo XIII’s (whom the present Pope has adopted the name) Encyclical of 1891 – namely that capitalism has led to a rise of poverty and immorality.
This was just FALSE – factually wrong. Indeed the idea that there was more (rather than less) poverty and immorality in 1891 than there had been in 1791 or 1691 or 1491 is utterly absurd.
I am reminded of Groucho Marx saying that politics was a matter of going around looking for problems, misidentifying them, and suggesting the wrong remedies.
In this case – the wrong remedies being more government spending and more regulations.
The Chicago Machine of people such as Senator Durbin and Cardinal Cupich – very much a successor of Cardinal Bernardin.
Chicago – Cook County Illinois is the most indebted place in the United States, the various layers of government and the various boards and what-not have pushed debt to absurd levels.
And all in the name of “helping the poor” – meanwhile poverty and crime have not declined, they have exploded.
The great Catholic economic thinkers, such as the School of Salamanca, are sadly forgotten. Instead it is “spend and regulate” and when this fails it is “spend and regulate more”.
And if anyone points out that the policies are insane – they are accused of hating the poor. Even if, like myself, the critic is poor themselves.
Perhaps “fool” was too harsh – I withdrew the word, but it is still an error to say that objective reality “limit democratic choices”.
You are free to borrow more money – interest rates will go up as a result of your choice, and if you choose to finance this by creating more fiat money – the you have created inflation.
That does not “limit your democratic choice” – it IS your democratic choice.
Just as by jumping off the roof – you have chosen to fall.
The fact that you do not sprout wings and fly to Pluto is not a “limit on your democratic choice”.
To take an example from Ludwig Von Mises.
The choice between capitalism and socialism is like the choice between a glass of milk and a glass of potassium cyanide.
You are free to make the democratic choice to drink the glass of potassium cyanide – you will then die by your democratic choice.
In case we all forget!
In 1965, Anthony Crosland – Highgate School and Trinity College, Oxford, the son of a senior civil servant and an academic – was appointed Secretary of State for Education. Crosland was the “equality” conscience of the Labour party. In true pull-up-the-ladder-after-you Fabian fashion he declared to his wife “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England. And Wales and Northern Ireland.” Do you see? It’s not about building. It’s not about better. It’s not about excellence. It’s not about fairer. It’s about spite and hate.
A few years later I – a son of a pretty poor immigrant from Ireland – got a place at a “direct grant grammar school. (llamas will explain.) A few years later, it lost this funding due to the mid-70s Labour government and became “independent”. It is still one of the best schools in the land but few poor kids go there now. What they did was deny access to opportunity for generations of bright but poor kids. For shame!
Mongoose:
I was in a very similar position. I just managed to get into a direct grant school in 1975, before Labour withdrew the funding. I have hated them ever since. The school is now independent, and it is not the same, because “quis paget entrat”, as Private Eye says.
One of my first political memories is happiness at Mrs Thatcher’s election victory in 1979, because it meant my sister would be able to go to grammar school. We still have grammar schools to this day, but there are so many Hong Kongers in the borough that white children are having a hard time getting in, unless they are tutored to buggery. That never happened “in my day”.
The decline of Britain is hard to come to terms with. It saddens me every day. What will become of us? What if there is no “us”? Is this how nations die?
@mongoose and @John K
Me too!
The Labour party has always hated upward mobility, it deprives them of voters.
As others are pointing out, the UK education system was/is full of compromises, legacies and accommodations, many of them the result of continual tension between the Left/soft Left ideological hatred for selective education, and the desires of parents for the best opportunities for their children. Mongoose name-checks Anthony Crosland, and he surely has much to answer for, but this compulsion was not limited to him and pre-dates him by decades. The Labour Party and the Left generally were siezed by an anti-intellectual fervour that reached its peak right after WW2, and this was often spear-headed (as noted) by leaders who were themselves the products of the very system they then set out to destroy.
‘Direct-grant’ grammar schools were a typical compromise which set out to maintain what were typically very-old and well-supported schools, some private and a few public, by a combination of public and private funding – a state ‘grant’ and reduced fees paid by the parents. Often, these schools had their roots in trade guilds, ‘friendly’ or religious associations, or a strong local tradition. The ‘direct grant’ system was conceived as a ‘stepping stone’ to eliminating these well-loved and -respected schools, and this plan was carried out in the 60s and 70s, when the ‘grants’ on which these schools now depended were withdrawn. A rough analogue for US readers might be the ‘charter school’. Many survive to this day either as fee-paying schools, or were spared the axe by more-sensible policies in the 70s and 80s. They are a fine example of the hatred of a certain faction of the Left for what they see as unfairness and inequity – all should be equal, there should be no distinctions whatever, and the working classes especially ahould not be encouraged to intellectual aspirations beyond what is necessary for them to do a working-class job. This played into a certain streak of anti-intellectual disdain already present in certain parts of UK society, well-captured by (for example) Orwell’s depiction of the ‘proles’ in 1984. The results may be seen in today’s younger generations in the UK, many of whom are more-or-less completely uneducated in any real sense and who generally harbour no intellectual curiosity whatever.
llater,
llamas
Wykehamist here. Son currently at Winchester.
Two points:
There’s a vast difference between Etonians, bred to swan about and ‘lead’, Harrovians, trained to be spivs and crooks, and Wykehamists (cleverer than both), generally not that ‘posh’ and trained to administer organizations.
Winchester is a good deal more woke than it was – even now accepting girls in the sixth form, with a lot more foreigners – but the ability to cultivate a passion for knowledge and thinking independently seems undimmed.
Toby James – I bow to your experience Sir.
I have been to Winchester (although never to the school) and I envy you living (as a child) in such a nice place – I am sure your son loves the town (city I believe) as he should.
Of course once Etonians really did lead – they, as officers, led infantry attacks in the First World War, as did officers from other schools such as Winchester.
The Germans often had NCO’s lead attacks – in the British army it was nearly always officers. And British infantry officers died in vast numbers.
My grandfathers (both privates) knew that officers were far more likely to be killed than they were.
Paul Marks
I bow back to your erudition, which I have enjoyed for many years.
One of the most moving structures at Winchester is ‘War Memorial’ which is a cloister with the names of the (numerous) fallen in recent conflicts – remembering that recent is a rather different term for an establishment that was founded in 1382 – and any visit never fails to stir profound emotions.
Many, but not all, of the fallen were officers, but there is a decent smattering of NCO’s and other ranks.
Likely cause if going to sh*t would be new teachers, not new kids.