28 May 2007

"Making state schools fit for all children"

In the Mail on Sunday (27 May) David Cameron says he will ‘make state schools fit for all children – including mine.’

State schools can never be made fit for any children because it is fundamentally immoral to deprive an individual of the liberty to make his own evaluations of the uncertain existential situation and deploy his own resources to react to it in what seems to him the best way. (Basic Moral Principle.)

Now it is true that state education may appear to be very bad even to a person who takes into account only a few of the crudest principles. But even if on these very crude criteria (literacy, juvenile crime) it appeared to be ‘good’ it would still be morally wrong, and would be having bad consequences which were less quantifiable. Even if it could be ‘proved’ that it had no bad consequences of any kind it would remain morally wrong.

In fact, it is only on superficial and rationalised grounds that it is admitted to be ‘bad’. Actually it is doing precisely what it is really aimed at, making life as difficult as possible for the functional and formerly respectable high IQ individuals.

What could be more appropriate than that such an individual should be forced to pursue the aims of his highly-taxed life among an unemployable and criminal population?

‘We need ... schools ... that deliver the goal of a truly socially mobile society’ says Cameron. And what does that mean? Rapid descent for the high IQs, I suppose. But it has already happened quite a lot, and is still happening fast enough. There is really no need for any further acceleration.