In my opinion Michael Gove’s announcement today of changes to GSCEs in England is a direct parallel for the struggle between left and right in politics.
Over time more pupils have been attaining A grades at GCSE and generally the number achieving A, B or C (which were considered a pass) has also increased.
Now of course there can be a number of reasons for this level of raised attainment. It could be that the standard of teaching has improved; it could be our schools are providing a better environment for learning. It could also be that pupils are working harder or it could be a combination of all of the above. On the other hand it could be that the exams and the course work are just getting easier and/or the marking less stringent.
If you’re a politician on the right it doesn’t really matter, what matters is that the result is more success and less failure, and a movement to that dreaded position of equality. Politicians on the right hate equality with a passion.
For the status quo to be maintained (which is the best position for a conservative) there must be inequality. There must be the elite and the rest, the successful and also rans. In this situation the less advantaged can be told they need to work harder in order to make it into the elite, which of course means the elite have a willing workforce to exploit for profit.
If the result of the education system is to produce only successful students there will be inevitable unrest when the job market cannot fulfil the raised expectations of the qualified students. So the answer from the politicians of the right is to make the exams harder and marking tougher to ensure the result will be an elite that pass and a majority who fail. This satisfies the view of the right wing that they are elite and they must protect their position at all costs, whilst placating the masses with the “try working harder” mantra (if you want to join the elite).
The result of capitalism is inevitably a wealth pyramid (see below)
Wealth Pyramid
This emphasises the elite/masses nature of the economic system that is prevalent across the globe. The graph shows that 0.5% of the population of the world own 37.5% of the world’s wealth and that 3bn people (68%) have to be content with just 4.2% of the wealth.
Of course this is a situation that the left want to change, to re-distribute this wealth more fairly across the population. That is why the left do not see anything wrong with a student body that has more passes than fails. That is because in a world where a job is guaranteed for all and a living wage is provided for all workers expectations of a successful student can be fulfilled.
Just time for an analogy to finish, the premier league in football was introduced earlier this century. As a result the TV money lavished on this elite league, premiership footballers have become amongst the richest people on the planet certainly in the 0.5% of the graph above. However football at the grass roots level has withered, there are more and more football clubs folding and relying on hand outs from well healed supporters to survive. A classic case of the success of the elite at the expenses of the rest. However the game in the UK is dying, more and more of the elite are imported from poorer countries (which still have hungry kids at grass roots level). Here there is no money in the lower levels for coaching and fewer talented players coming through. It could be that the very success of the elite eventually leads to the downfall of the game because it becomes starved of the talent it needs.
Could this happen elsewhere?
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