Will a TV series show us that reading and writing matter?
By Roger Scruton - Daily Telegraph - June 8, 2003 - original
Like the majority of British children, I and my sisters were dependent on the state for our schooling, and my father's socialist convictions made him suspicious of every tradition or initiative that forged a link between the state system and the public schools.
Like many Labour politicians today, he was far more anxious that children should emerge from their schooling as social equals, than that they should commit the unforgiveable fault of knowing something. After all, knowledge is a source of distinction, and the one who knows has an advantage over the one who doesn't. In a truly egalitarian society, knowledge would be forbidden.
My father was therefore very ambivalent towards the local school I attended from the age of 10, High Wycombe Royal Grammar School, used as the setting for That'll Teach 'Em, the new series - the first episode was screened last night - where 16-year-olds are given the sort of 1950s education I had.
The school was at the time presided over by a headmaster, Mr Tucker, who sincerely adhered to the ethos of the public school and who believed that a grammar school should improve its pupils in every way: intellectually, morally and socially. Hence, although my parents did not pay a penny for my schooling, I was taught to emulate the boys at Eton and also offered glimpses - or at any rate, interesting parodies - of the social rituals and elitist aspirations that make Eton what it is.
At the time, High Wycombe RGS was second only to Eton in the number of alumni it could boast who were fellows of Oxbridge colleges - a remarkable achievement, considering that the school had no choice over admissions and was compelled to take every boy in the area who passed the ll-plus.
I attended the RGS from 1954 until 1961. The school had been able to attract a wonderful team of masters, many of whom were returning home from service in the Colonial Office, bringing with them the public spirit and rigid discipline that were integral to their previous career.
It was Mr Tucker's ambition to surpass Manchester Grammar in the number of Oxbridge scholarships that his pupils obtained, and the whole school felt the pressure of this academic goal. Discipline was strict, with a spartan regime for the boarders and corporal punishment administered fairly (i.e. liberally) throughout the school. There was the usual emphasis on sport and cadets, while improving forms of torture were offered by the school chaplain, the boarding-house matron, the senior prefect, the deputy head and other ingenious specialists.
But the RGS was far from being either a barracks or an exam machine. On the contrary, it was a place of wide culture. Thanks in great part to those ex-colonial "beaks'', with their Baden-Powell attitudes and self-reliant habits, the school offered every kind of extra-curricular activity.
Although I was studying science subjects at A-level, I was able to pursue my musical and literary interests, to take part in theatrical and operatic productions, to learn the cello and to isolate myself from my hearty contemporaries. Through a sixth-form discussion group I became acquainted with the A-level syllabus in English, French and Latin, and fell under the spell of a Leavisite English master (whom I never met, but whose pupils breathlessly relayed his exhilarating messages, and persuaded me that nothing on earth mattered as much as high culture). I can truly say that I learnt more in my six years at the RGS than in any six years since.
It was assumed by everyone that the school existed to provide knowledge and character, not pleasure. Fun was simply not on the agenda.
For that very reason, our friendships were intense and durable; we came to understand that happiness is in a way the opposite of fun, and that it is better to be melancholy but interesting than cheerful but dumb. Many of us remained close friends at university, knowing that we shared not just a body of knowledge, but also a way of life.
Twelve years ago, I was invited back to my old school to give the prizes. I was amazed by what I found. The school still gave prizes, and these prizes took the form of books - yes, boys were still being encouraged to believe that a book is worth owning, and is a fitting reward for effort!
The ceremony was enlivened by the Bach double violin concerto, with strings and continuo played by pupils. The school jazz band gave a brilliant performance under the baton of a keen music master, and other displays showed the impressive artistic and scholarly achievements of the sixth-formers. The greatest poet of the 20th century - T S Eliot - had briefly served as an English master at the RGS, and the prayerful melancholy of The Waste Land and Four Quartets still seemed to drift about the corridors as they had drifted about them 30 years before.
I told the boys of my own sad fate at the RGS - for I had never concealed my outsider attitudes and was expelled at last for setting fire to the stage. But the boys showed no inclination to follow my example, and were gracious, well-spoken and candid, wearing their uniforms with what seemed to be genuine pride as they received the improving books that I placed in their hands.
Education requires discipline; but it also thrives on competition. The state has turned against competition, holding it to be incompatible with egalitarian orthodoxy. Grammar schools have therefore survived only by the skin of their teeth. Instead of blaming teachers for educational decline, we should blame the state, which ensures that teachers have no real reward, and also the parents, who refuse to encourage study.
A school such as the RGS focuses the mind and the eye of the pupil on the written word, teaching him that knowledge slowly acquired by reading and writing is more valuable by far than the soundbites and images that flit across the telly screen. The RGS taught us to be suspicious of television, as the enemy of reading, and to be suspicious, too, of our parents who, even in those early days, were already in league with the box.
Sad that the virtues of the RGS will become common knowledge, only because people are watching the thing that has done most to destroy knowledge.