Amol Rajan: Vocations should not replace academic learning

Freeview from the editos at i

Share
+More

After leaking plans to the Daily Mail last week to scrap GCSEs, Michael Gove was both denounced as an inhumane Victorian and welcomed as a one-man panacea for all Britain's social ills. Broadly, the former tendency came from the left and the latter from the right. This represents a terrible defeat for the left, and I say that as someone who is not a conservative.

Perhaps the greatest failure of the modern centre-left in Britain is its connivance in the systematic dismantling of academic education in the state sector. This has been done under the guise of vocational education, a secular tyranny which consigns the poorest students – or at least those forced down this path – to a life of diminished learning and stunted imagination. It has led to a terrible chasm in our society, which I wrote about in The Independent two years ago: skills for the poor and schools for the rich.

If you go to the great public schools around the country, or speak to its progeny, you will note that all sorts of specialist, skilled activity – woodwork, cooking, sport – is complementary to academic learning, by which I mean crunchy subjects like physics, maths, Latin, and history. It is not a substitute. This is because, in the schools that produce the most intellectually able students – and I know how contested is the measurement of intellectual ability – they know that it is tough academic subjects – organised bodies of knowledge transmitted through the generations – that learning is cultivated.

The expansion of vocational learning in the past 15 years was a way of palming off struggling poor students on to subjects that kept their attention. But there are two massive problems with this approach. First, adolescents don't know what's good for them, and in any case their interests are temporary and transient. At 14, I wanted to be a porn star, a cricketer, and a train driver (in that order). You can be the judge of how that worked out for me. Second, if a pupil from a poor background specialises in textiles at 14, and realises two years later he doesn't want to be a clothes manufacturer after all... then what? Better to have tried and failed at tough subjects than head down a blind alley with no turning back.

Vocations are fine, even laudable. But they should complement, not substitute, academic learning – and therefore be reserved for those over 18. I cannot tell you whether or not Gove's adoption of a Singaporean system is a good idea. But I do know that when people on the left instinctively denounce any plan to restore academic rigour to the state sector, they are going in for the very class warfare they used to despise.

React Now

Day In a Page

Read Next
Angela Merkel and David Cameron promenade in Meseberg in April  

Angela Merkel is David Cameron's new best friend for ever

John Rentoul
 

I would have stood shoulder to shoulder with the Suffragettes

Jessica Haynes
Andrew Mitchell: 'It's no good feeling hard done by'

Andrew Mitchell: 'It's no good feeling hard done by'

In his first interview since 'plebgate', the former Chief Whip opens up just enough to concede that, in politics, you have to take the rough with the smooth
Corruption and the FCO: Blue skies, white sands, dark clouds

Corruption and the FCO: Blue skies, white sands, dark clouds

Special report: Met police call for criminal inquiry into former diplomat's Cayman Islands rule
Fallen angel: Winona Ryder on bouncing back from her decade in the wilderness

Fallen angel: Winona Ryder bounces back

She owned the 1990s... but then she disappeared. Now, Ms Ryder is back with quite the bang in her latest role, as the wife of a notorious real-life Mob hitman.
Roman Polanski shakes Cannes Film Festival

Roman Polanski shakes Cannes Film Festival

The director's new film, 'Venus in Fur', is one of the raciest on offer
Rev Richard Coles: 'I don’t have any concerns that God is cross with me for being gay and eventually the Church won’t either'

Rev Richard Coles on the Church and homosexuality

The mellifluous, erudite and witty Coles is the nation's most pop-culture-friendly priest
'Baghdad likes to live from crisis to crisis': Civil war looms in Iraq

Patrick Cockburn: Civil war looms in Iraq

The governor of Kirkuk - one of the country's most violent but successful provinces - fears the worst
Written on the body: Tattooists at pains to point out their artistic credentials

Written on the body

Tattooists at pains to point out their artistic credentials
Conquering Everest: 60 facts about the world's tallest mountain

Conquering Everest: 60 facts about the world's tallest mountain

The IoS marks the sixtieth anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reaching the peak of the highest mountain on Earth
A new, and irreversible, Dust Bowl looms

Rupert Cornwell: A new, and irreversible, Dust Bowl looms

The destructive power of tornadoes will be as nothing once the Great Plains' vast underground water reserve dries up
Every creature's needless death diminshes us all

Philip Hoare: Every creature's needless death diminishes us all

A 60 per cent decline in our national species should alarm us, yet few of us act. But to mind more about animals would reflect well on society
Killing with kindness: Burma's religious battleground - and the monks at the heart of it

Killing with kindness: Burma's religious battleground

Six years ago, the world cheered the monks behind Burma’s Saffron Revolution. Now, a horrific new eruption of religious slaughter is being blamed on a 'Buddhist Bin Laden'.
Let's take it outside: Bill Granger's Bank Holiday feast

Let's take it outside: Bill Granger's Bank Holiday feast

You can’t always depend on the weather – but you can avoid the pitfalls of the British barbecue by preparing an elaborate outdoor feast indoors ahead of time...
The Calvin report: Stirring Champions League final shows how far English game must advance

The Calvin report

Stirring Champions League final shows how far English game must advance
10 big questions for the British & Irish Lions to answer

10 big questions for the British & Irish Lions to answer

Warren Gatland's squad fly Down Under aiming to do justice to the expectations – and hoping the Wallabies stay in the pub
The Last Word: Golf must end the hypocrisy before its halo slips totally

The Last Word

Golf must end the hypocrisy before its halo slips totally