A Revolution Betrayed: How Egalitarians Wrecked the British Education System

Mail on Sunday columnist Hitchens (The Abolition of Britain) contends in this cranky screed that efforts to level the playing field in British education have backfired. In the 1960s, critics asserted that grammar schools­ (“state secondary schools that selected their pupils on merit and charged no fees”) were entrenching class divisions and unfairly determining a child’s life “by a single test at the age of 11.” The criticism led, Hitchens contends, to “a huge decline in secondary education,” exacerbated by “a new system of selection by wealth”: students who cannot afford to attend one of England’s fee-paying public schools are subjected to unrigorous “common” schools, where “the old canon of expected and accepted knowledge, in literature and history, has been mocked, deconstructed and replaced.” Hitchens dives deep into the history of British education and the political battles waged over the distribution and funding of grammar schools, but readers without a background in the subject will find themselves lost in a sea of obscure names and legislation. Though he pinpoints inequalities and discrepancies within the current system, Hitchens’s condescension toward comprehensive school educators grates, and he fails to seriously consider how socioeconomic factors, rather than “parental hostility or indifference to education,” may affect student performance. This provocation misfires. (Mar.)