Schools: Classics

Lord Stevenson of Coddenham Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Stevenson of Coddenham]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and congratulate him on instigating this debate. I join with him in recognising the extraordinary work of Peter Jones, without whom I do not think we would be here. I do not think there would have been a revival of classics without Peter Jones; he is a remarkable human being. I think I am a vice-president of whatever it is he runs and I should declare that interest. I agree with everything that has been said, so I am not going to repeat it. Where else can you learn the basics of comparative philosophy, literature and history in one go—and the basis of our civilisation? It is the only way, so take that as read.

I want to make two much more banal, practical points addressing government. First, this is cheap. My other obsession with schools is reintroducing musical education into schools—that is expensive. I had a modest part to play in the financing of Minimus; that was not expensive. Organising the kind of teacher training and the serving up of Latin and Greek—Mansfield and all in schools—is not expensive in the big scheme of things.

Secondly, I buy everything that the noble Lord, Lord True, has said, but I am unapologetically going to argue the utilitarian, vocational case. I am fed up with people saying, “Well, it’s jolly nice but it’s over there. It’s not very vocational, as though it were nuclear physics or medicine”. From my experience—and I am afraid that I am going to talk about my experience—I found it vocationally very important to me.

Bear with me if I say that most of my life has been spent setting up things—enterprises for profit and a lot not for profit. What do you need if you are going to do that? First, you need rigour, intelligence and the ability to analyse—there are no two ways about it. Secondly, you need resilience. Thirdly, you need creative resourcefulness in a tight corner, because you get into tight corners whether you are in a for-profit business or, as I am at the moment, a large mental health charity. What do you think doing a Latin unseen is about? It is about bashing your head with pure a priori logic against what is happening. I am sure that all previous speakers had no problems in getting Latin unseens out, but when you are up against it, boy, you need resilience—there are 30 minutes to go and you are panicking. Fourthly, when you are five minutes from the end and you have not got it out, you need outstanding intelligent creativity to produce something that might fool the examiner. Many a true word is spoken in jest, but I have found that grounding extremely helpful and useful.

I would argue everything else, but I just look down the Table at the Minister to say that the facts are clear: a revival is going on; it has not cost very much; to keep it going will not cost very much; and it is fundamentally useful for our children. Finally, in the briefing papers I read the astonishing statistic that 70% to 80% of private schools teach classics, whereas the figure for maintained schools is a small minority. The private schools, I regret to say, are not doing it out of cultural wisdom; they are doing it for fundamentally utilitarian reasons.