Education and Society

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury on securing this debate and, more importantly, on introducing it with a beautiful blend of insight and compassion.

The one disadvantage of being the last Back-Bench speaker of the day is that you are not quite sure what you are going to say. Every time you hear a speaker, you cut out a paragraph from your notes. After hearing 40-odd speakers, there was not a single sentence in my notes that I could keep. I was therefore confronted by the arrogance of a virgin sheet of paper, and I thought that all I could do was to write whatever I could rustle up as being relevant to the debate and say it. So I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I do not sound very profound; rather, my concern is to raise certain important questions which, in my view, have not been raised but need to be.

The educational system of any country is generally shaped by two factors: first, what kind of world do we live in that imposes constraints and parameters that you cannot cross; and, secondly, what do we want to do with that world? Therefore, we need some understanding of the factuality of the kind of world we live in and some aspirational element regarding the kind of world we wish to create. The dialectic of this gives us some idea of the kind of educational system that we wish to create.

My first question is: what kind of world do we live in? That world has four characteristics. The first is diversity. It is a world in which there is a constant movement of people, ideas, new ideologies and new religions. Every day we are confronted by people we have never seen before, whose dress, manner of talking and morals are unfamiliar. Diversity is one inescapable feature of modern life.

The second is technology. Increasingly, our lives are dominated by technology. That is happening more and more with artificial intelligence, on which my noble friend Lord Giddens has been doing some excellent work, robotics and computers. Technology is in danger of replacing reflective human reason by reducing it to a pure technique.

The third factor is globalisation—the interdependence of one part of the world on another, but also, more importantly, bringing home to us the suffering of other people in the world and making it real to us so that the whole idea of the human species is replaced by the idea of a shared humanity or human community. The treasures of another civilisation matter to us as they did not matter to us before. Starvation in other parts of the world matters to us not because television presents us with pictures, but because we have come to make them a part of our mental universe.

The fourth feature of the world that we are living in is the market. Whether we like it or not, the market is here to stay. It is being extended into areas where it has not been before—namely health and education. If this is the kind of world that we are condemned to live in, what should we do to flourish in it? How can we bend it to our will or improve it? How can we negotiate our way through it? Of all the capacities that human beings will need to negotiate their way through the world that we have all been talking about, I want to emphasise three that have not been given the attention they deserve. In my view, they are critical. I say that as someone who has spent 60 years of his life in the field of education, first as a student and more latterly as a vice-chancellor.

The first capacity that we badly need is imagination—not just analytical intelligence, which is easy, but imagination. By that I mean the capacity to conceive an alternative, asking a question about anything that we face. Can it be done otherwise? What are the possible ways of doing this? Is this the best way? Can we not only conceive an alternative but appreciate others’ alternatives? If I see other religions, I ask myself, “Why are they different?”. Why is Hinduism different? The noble Lord, Lord Gadhia, talked about Hinduism and how the Guru-shishya tradition is pursued differently. Why is the Indian guru different from today’s western teacher, who is different from the earlier teachers of Socratic or Stoic tradition? The question is about understanding and appreciating alternatives and, in the process, expand our moral consciousness so that we develop sympathy.

Imagination is the only way to expand the range of sympathy and to take others into our mental universe and make them ours. Imagination is also the capacity by which we can counter the power of technology. Machines and robots can do anything except imagine. Their imagination is limited to what we put into them. Imagination is the capacity that allows you to prevent reason becoming a mere technique—a mere Cartesian tool—and to make it reflective and self-critical.

The second capacity that is important for us is self-criticism. Self-criticism means seeing through prejudices as they accumulate over the course of one’s life. As one grows up in a particular culture, certain prejudices come naturally to us, but to be able to see through them and then rise above them is rare. I give one example from Indian history. India has a long tradition of public debate. In 1820, when the Christian missionaries came out to India, the maharaja of Benares organised a public debate between them and the Hindu Pandits. There were 6,000 to 8,000 people in the audience. The Jesuits asked the Hindu Pandits the first question, “Do you believe in one God or many?”, expecting the answer to be obvious. The Hindu Pandits said, “Your question is incoherent and blasphemous because you are presupposing that God is a being. If God is Shakti—power or energy—the question makes no sense. Is electricity one or many? The question is absurd because you are assuming that God cannot be or is not an impersonal power. It is also blasphemous because you are reducing God to the limited categories of the human mind. Why can God not be both one and many, or why can he not be neither? Whether God is one or many presupposes that these two between them exhaust the range of possibilities”.

What is wrong here? It is not the questions but the inability to question the questions themselves. You ask the other questions expecting an answer which you can then decide is right or wrong, but you are judging the answer by your categories of what a conventionally good answer should be. But what if the addressee of your question turns on you and says, “I question your questions”? I could go on but I shall stop before the Whip stops me, as she tried to do last time.

In that context, rising above prejudices, since the noble Lord, Lord Gadhia, mentioned a Sanskrit quotation, I might show off my knowledge of Sanskrit. In Sanskrit literature, which I have studied closely, knowledge or education is defined as, “Sa vidya ya vimuktayeh”, which means, “That alone is learning which liberates you”. It liberates you from your conditioning and your prejudices, making you increasingly able to liberate yourself from this or that prejudice. The whole of life is the accumulation of prejudice and the gradual liberation from it, and that process is learning.

The third characteristic, which is absolutely important in this capacity, is, in the absence of a better word, what I would call wisdom, which is what philosophy is supposed to be about: philo and sophos. Wisdom is basically the capacity to understand the value of something. To understand the value of something is to know both its significance and its limits. Human rights, for example, are very valuable, but when we push them in an area where we talk about an old lady being asked to eat sitting on her toilet seat and say that her human rights have been violated, or when we talk about a child’s right to be loved, you have to ask: is the term “human right” being used properly? Is everything a matter of human rights? Human rights are important, but they have their own place and should not stray beyond a certain point.

Likewise the market, which is very important but has its limits. In my view, and I say this with great humility, what Margaret Thatcher did was to extend the market into areas where properly speaking it did not belong. The market was extended not only into the welfare state but into education. The scandals of vice-chancellors’ salaries and students complaining about not getting a proper education that is worth their money is all the fault of the marketisation of education. That marketisation is the result of not having sufficient wisdom and not knowing the value and limits of the market.

Education: Early Years

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by complimenting the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on securing the debate and introducing it so well.

When we talk about childcare and early years education, we need to bear in mind the context. If one looks at the social situation, the following facts are striking: 10% to 15% of pregnant women suffer from depression and anxiety, a third of the violence against women is committed against pregnant women, 1 million children in our society suffer from attention or conduct disorders, and 50% of our children below the age of three have experienced family breakdown.

In that context, we must ask ourselves what government policy should be aiming at. It is absolutely right to concentrate on childcare facilities. The importance of early years provision and the Government’s intervention can hardly be overestimated. Such intervention ensures that the disadvantages that a child brings from home are countered, a level playing field for children, and that no child starts school at a disadvantage. It also makes sure that no child builds up resentment and frustration at society for not giving them the chance to live up to their potential. No less important, it makes the rich people in our society realise that the poor are their responsibility and they should be making sacrifices for them.

The advantages of early-years education are absolutely crucial. In that context, I compliment the Government on their plan to introduce 30 hours a week of free childcare for those who earn less than £100,000. I am also pleased that the Ofsted report tells us that the proportion of good and outstanding nurseries, childminders and preschools has risen, and is now at 91%. The gap between children eligible for free school meals and their peers in reaching a good level of development is also declining, and that is warmly to be welcomed.

While welcoming all this, I want to point to a few important difficulties with the Government’s scheme. First, the target—working parents who earn less than £100,000 a year—is a very wide social group. It does not target those who need childcare the most. In other words, it is very important that we should be thinking not about those earning £100,000—lots of people earn £100,000—but people who earn much less, and prioritise them so that their claims are not ignored.

Secondly, the scheme explicitly excludes foster children from the additional 15 hours of childcare. This is discriminating and not terribly rational. Thirdly, the funding for the scheme is inadequate. In several cases, parents have to put down some money to keep the childcare or preschools going. Around 1,000 nurseries and childminders have gone out of business in the last two years—something that should worry those of us who are concerned about the future of our children.

Teachers involved in childcare schemes, preschools and childminding need proper status, recognition and career patterns so that they know where they are on the career path and how they can go further. There must be some chance for them to improve their qualifications so that they are not stuck in a cul-de-sac or simply seen as preschool teachers. They should be able to come out and join the mainstream after acquiring certain qualifications.

Finally, it is striking, as various reports point out, that the range of local children’s services is not integrated, and different branches of local authorities function in different ways, without much co-ordination. There is also insufficient understanding of what constitutes disadvantage. We talk about helping disadvantaged children, but what is disadvantage, how do you measure or quantify it, and how do you deal with it? I have not seen any research in this area or any attempt to highlight the problem. Moreover, there do not seem to be any specific targets to improve the outcomes for the most disadvantaged. In any scheme to improve people’s situation, the goal should be that 10% or 20% can achieve a certain level of outcome. Without that kind of vision, one has no means of knowing how well a particular scheme is doing. With these reservations, I welcome the Government’s proposals and hope the Minister will answer at least some of these questions today.

A Manifesto to Strengthen Families

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister to his new appointment. I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and his colleague in the other place, Fiona Bruce, for drafting the manifesto. It presents a very depressing picture of what is happening to family in our country. We are almost a world leader in family breakdown, and in economic terms the estimated cost of family breakdown is about £48 billion. By the age of five, around half the children in low-income families have seen matrimonial breakdown. That leaves deep scars. So in addition to the economic consequences there are psychological and moral scars on people growing up. The question is: what do we do about it?

The manifesto points out several reasons why this happens, including poverty, fathers not being involved in the raising of a child, domestic violence and poor ability to manage relations—all those factors are responsible. In the 18 policies that the manifesto articulates, these problems are addressed.

However, in the minute and a half that is left to me, I want to concentrate on two major difficulties that I have with the report. First, I began to ask myself what kind of family the report is talking about. Family is an abstraction. There is one structure of family among Afro-Caribbeans, another among the south Asians and a third among the white community. What kind of family model did the manifesto’s writers have in mind?

If you look at the manifesto closely, it is striking that the ethnic-minority family is virtually absent. For that family there are certain peculiar problems. Parental pressures can be exerted over children asking them to perform, sometimes beyond their capacity. There can also be cultural conflicts, with children going out to school and bringing back certain cultural mores and customs that parents are unable to cope with. There can even be linguistic and conceptual problems, where parents are unable to communicate with their children. A few years ago I was part of a BBC film called “I Can’t Talk To My Parents”. It focused on a girl who wanted to go to university in another town, but her parents could not understand why she wanted to do that and not stay at home with them and study. She said that she wanted to explore herself, but she did not have the language to explain that concept to her parents—neither the parents nor the child could explain to each other what they meant. The report does not fully take care of Asian families and others.

The other difficulty is that the report talks about strengthening families. I always worry when I see normative concepts such as “strengthening”. In many cases, for the south Asian family it is not a question of strengthening the family bond but of it being too strong. There are occasions where children are very deeply bonded to their parents and unable to exercise autonomy and independence, especially girls. In that situation, what does strengthening the family mean?

I have several difficulties of this kind. However, I simply intend to alert the writers of the manifesto to the problems that this will create and not at all to detract from the considerable merit of the manifesto.