Daily Mail, September 23 2002

When something of great value is harmed, our reaction is to try to repair the damage. Some of our deepest instincts lie in conserving what is precious, because we know that what makes us prize such things – whether it’s a box of love letters, a gallery full of Old Masters, or the natural environment -- is unique and can never be replaced.

Yet strangely, we don’t apply these instincts to important areas of our national life. Instead, we allow them to be neglected, eroded and injured. Then we conclude that they have now fallen into disrepute and so should be replaced altogether by something entirely different – with the implication that what we once esteemed was never really valuable in the first place.

This is now happening in the great A-level row. In the wake of the scandal over the doctored grades, there is growing pressure to replace A-level by the International Baccalaureate (IB). This is because A-level is now said to have been discredited by both grade inflation and the taint of mass swindling.

The IB, by contrast, is administered by a body beyond the reaches of political chicanery and its standard remains unsullied. This has given the Department for Uneducation – which has long had the ‘élitist’ A-level in its sights – its chance, with its mouthpiece Estelle Morris yesterday discovering the advantageous ‘breadth’ of the IB over the depth of A-level.

But the fact is that A-level was better than the continental IB because depth, which produces rigour, is more valuable than breadth, which delivers dilettantes. The greater depth of A-level meant that those who couldn’t manage a university degree were weeded out so that most students stayed the course, unlike European universities with their high drop-out rates.

That is why the undoubted erosion of A-level and its collapse of credibility are so appalling. Surely that means we should be rescuing it, not tossing it aside? Surely we should be hauling ministers to account and demanding that this invaluable guarantor of educational excellence be restored to its former probity?

But this is only the latest in a long line of similar attacks on national assets followed by changes that institutionalise the damage. Take our drug laws. Our society decided that drugs were so dangerous that it made their possession and distribution illegal. But because the authorities mistakenly decided to throw the book at drug dealers while treating users as victims instead of criminals, demand exploded and supply followed suit.

Swamped by hard drugs, the police and customs officers effectively gave up on cannabis. This was a failure of drug law enforcement. But instead, the law itself was said to be at fault. So instead of working out ways to make drug law more effective, we are now salami-slicing it out of existence altogether, destroying any protection for society.

The destructive trajectory of divorce followed the same pattern of self-fulfilling prophecy. From the 1940s onwards, reformers claimed that divorce law had to be brought into line with changes in behaviour. But behaviour changed every time the law was modified, when divorces shot up as a result.

The increasing acceptance of divorce which developed led the courts to relax their implementation of the law, a slide which in turn caused people to clamour for the law to be changed to be brought into line with reality – fuelling more rises in the divorce rate. This spiral has now made marriage itself increasingly meaningless. So instead of protecting an institution which is the bedrock of society, we actually institutionalised the attack upon it.

A similar remorseless process now threatens the concept of public service broadcasting. The BBC has badly lost the moral and intellectual plot. Standards on its mainstream TV channels are lamentable, having exchanged quality, interest and creativity for tackiness, mindlessness and sadism.

The declining standards of its TV news bulletins, and its decision to axe respected political programmes in favour of less demanding fare, are lamentable. The proposed BBC 3 channel threatens to further grovel to a ‘youth market’ defined as brainless and amoral. The strategy of competing for ratings in the marketplace means that it is fragmenting its audiences among unwatched digital channels.

In all these ways, the BBC is taking an axe to its public service remit. So it is hardly surprising that a clamour is growing to abolish the licence fee. Why should we be forced to pay a tax for a public service that (radio honourably apart) no longer exists?

But public service broadcasting was a noble and wonderful concept. It elevated the cultural standards of the nation. So why do we not fight to restore the concept? Why are we sliding instead towards endorsing and sealing this process of cultural vandalism?

Why, indeed, are we content to destroy what we once held most dear? Why are depth and intellectual rigour at A-level no longer viewed as essential? Why do we no longer value the protection of the law against society-shattering drugs? Why are we so complacent about the undermining of marriage?

Much of this damage is being inflicted by an élite class with an agenda to create their dream of utopia. They are doing so through propounding a doctrine which holds that everyone must be equal, both in their attainments and in their ability to take decisions for themselves without anyone passing judgement upon them.

This means that consumer choice must trump everything else. Anything that interferes with an individual’s choice of behaviour is bad. So is anything that differentiates between attainments. Therefore any hierarchies that distinguish between anyone or anything on the basis of merit, or any rules that interfere with freedom of choice, have to go.

At the core of the BBC’s public service remit was the belief in elevating popular taste. But that whole concept is now held to be unforgivably élitist. Instead, we are now supposed to worship at the shrine of the lowest common denominator, the very philistinism that the BBC was supposed to be against.

Similarly, the idea that A-levels should play the role of gatekeeper to ensure the excellence of university intakes is an anathema against the dominant egalitarian dogma which holds that half the population must gain university degrees –with the inevitable destruction of standards having to be concealed from the public, as the current scandal demonstrates.

And as for laws prohibiting drug use or underpinning marriage -- well, plainly they have to go to allow a free market in behaviour. The resulting social harm will be airbrushed out of the picture through censorship, ridicule, distortion and lies.

For nothing can stand in the way of ‘modernisation’, the slash-and-burn doctrine that says all change is good and all tradition is bad. And there is no more cynical and effective way to achieve this than to undermine valuable institutions and then conclude that they must be abolished to keep pace with the changing times.

Just watch those A-levels disappear -- and watch yet another valuable seam in our social fabric become unpicked.

Posted by admin at September 23, 2002