What is education for?

Good evening. More than four thousand university courses have been closed down in what amounts to a startlingly sudden redefinition of what education should be about. Most of those being cut are in the humanities, arts, history, philosophy, languages, subjects long considered not just to be essential to a well rounded education, but as Socrates would have put it, to human flourishing.

Instead, the emphasis now is on the economic value of what you're studying. With the average graduate in England racking up fifty-three thousand pounds in student debt. It's a hard headed calculation of what return you can get on that investment, or as one Midlands University promises in its ads, degrees that get you hired. So is education an intrinsic public good, valuable in itself, producing rounded, thoughtful citizens?

or an extrinsic one to be measured by the future salary the individual can command and his or her contribution to economic growth. Either way, does everybody get a fair crack at it? Or does wealth and class still dictate elite access? Gender play a part in the employable STEM subjects science, technology, engineering, maths, are they man things? What is education for? Who is it for? Does it still have a moral purpose?

That's our moral mace tonight. The panel Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Religion and Society at King's College London, the philosopher and theologian Carmody Gray, the historian Tim Stanley. And the priest and polemicist Giles Fraser. I've just done some totting up. There are fourteen doctorates between us on this panel. So it shouldn't be too much of a challenge, should it? Giles, do you consider yourself as the embodiment of what education is for? Oh my god. With your three doctrines?

I do know what I'm saying I... I remember sitting at a high table in Oxford and sitting next to someone who's doing writing uh a PhD on the history of the semicolon and it was absolutely fascinating. I believe in Norwich for its own sake. And I don't think universities should be glorified job centres. Tim. Tim's on him.

That's all very well, but if we insist on being a democracy, and if we insist on taxing people to pay for welfare, citizens are entitled to ask what we're spending the money on and why. And that includes education, which cannot solve everything, and it cannot fill the gaps left by the collapse of the church, the family, or increasingly, capitalism. Yeah. Mona. Mona Sadiqi. So universities are now becoming businesses.

And I feel that education is still primarily not about what we produce, but who we become. And it should mae'n cael ei wneud, mae'n cael ei wneud, mae'n cael ei wneud, mae'n cael ei wneud, mae'n cael ei wneud, mae'n cael ei wneud. Comedy, comedy, grain. I think the core moral purpose of education is to preserve and enlarge our humanity.

Skills and employability are important, but they're only ancillary to that fundamental purpose. And if our schools and universities become just another tool in the market economy, we really have sold our souls.

Panel, thanks very much indeed. Our first witness is Maxwell Marlowe, who's Director of Public Affairs at the Adam Smith Institute. Um simple question, what's education for and how should we measure its value? Fantastic. Well th thank you for having me. Um look, I think education is is fundamentally extrinsic. I think it benefits the polis society f um fundamentally through who those people become and what they contribute afterwards. It's an external thing and

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ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n mynd. So if the primary purpose of education is, as you say, economic output, why not be honest and call it training?

I think it's a very good question. And I would call it training. I would. I mean, I will say, you know, the job I do now, which is, you know, which is policy research, whatever else I did learn at university, it helped.

It was a training. But I've had to learn so much more in the world outside of it. I think university could never have taught me and I I work with people who who delayed doing degrees who found they work they found much more value for themselves and for society working on a builder's yard, for example. I don't think you'd even institution to do that. No, but all of us uh learn things after we leave higher education. You know higher education

doesn't equip us for the job market all the time and even when it does we still learn things. I suppose in a way we're we're living at a time when so much of education is monetized and everything's about matrices.

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Well, what would w do you think that a STEM degree holds the same value as a arts and humanities degree? I think it holds much more value. Oh why is that? Rydyn ni'n gwneud hynny. Rydyn ni'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hyn.

Not many history grads were working on that and I think that is much more than that. People do arts and humanities subjects. And why do you think universities are still offering Um well a lot of them aren't. That's the thing. I think the demand's going down quite significantly. We're not losing anything as a result of that.

I I I don't think as a society we really are because what what is lots of education? It's we're looking at books that are already published, sp you know, hearing people things like this programme for example, which are produced outside of university. So I I I really do think they should be training centres for these things.

And I can learn, you know, by myself um working on that stuff. I may be a bit of a grin gad, you know, to quote Dickens, but um at the end of the day I I think that's how best to allocate those resources. That's precisely the problem that you're looking at education.

as something if you can't measure it, if you can't quantify it, if it's not useful in the public sphere like a doctor. I'm I'm not denying that these are not useful jobs. Of course they are. But maybe the whole purpose of education is that we still learn something that isn't measurable.

Well I I but uh this is I think this is the fundamental problem. I think you know speaking before this to the producer that this isn't an economic show but in many ways uh you know we need to work out how best to resource these universities in order to provide you know, provide them with the funding, the skills, whoever else to go and teach those humanities degrees.

The problem is is that if we're not actually working out what that price mechanism looks like, we can't allocate the capital, we can't app a allocate the skills and we can't provide that education at the end of the day. That the whole funding structure needs to be assessed.

Um for me personally, I think as soon as we said that every student, every young person should go to university, that was a mistake. I think education is by its very nature elitist and not everyone is academically equipped to to learn in universities.

But I do think that by making universities into businesses as training centres, all we're doing is producing students who are customers now, who want satisfaction, and universities are bending over backwards, not to necessarily provide a holistic education. Just question me. Yes, but he's he's listening, he's listening. When you give him an opportunity to do it.

But to actually produce students that may not need their d use their degree, but use their degree for something that's well beyond what they learnt at the age of twenty one. I think that's fair enough and we can look at the stats for this. 63% of people between the age of 21 and 35 in the UK have gone to university. We compare that to the continent where it's about 40%.

I'd I'd rate our universities much more, but you I think I do do think you do have a very good point, which is is the education they're receiving a very good value that can't be measured? And I think that's where the I think that's w that where that relies. I think we need more marketisation rather than less in order to solve that problem.

I d I don't know if I conceived and say this, but I agree with you on quite a lot of this actually. Um uh in and in terms of the extrinsic value, if if a if a degree or has an extrinsic value, if it's something to do with computer science or something. Let them fund it, you know. However, what about the intrinsic value? You said at the beginning that some of it has intrinsic value, not just extrinsic value. How do you fund the history of the semicolon, PhD?

That's a great question. And I in fact I'd like to meet that person and see where they got their funding from. And I think a lot of it comes down to philanthropy. I think that's really important. And we can't forget the role of philanthropy where People have applied their extrinsic skills to create large wealth and put that into the fun the funding of this sort of stuff and I'd like to get rich and fund that one day as well.

The wrong question because I've been sucked into this economic sort of idea and so forth. But can you see? Let's just start with a principle: the basic principle of the idea of knowledge done for its own sake, learning done for its own sake. Can you get on board with that? I I I can I can get on board that and I I do believe it's it's a good thing. But in i if at the point where we are now where there's no money left.

You know, we we're struggling for economic growth. It's making us all a little bit more miserable and a bit poorer. We need to find it somewhere. When we're a better s well, when we're a better society when we have, you know, people who just sit in rooms with books and time and and develop learning where it goes and there's something to be proud of about living in a society where that sort of activity happens.

Well I hate to use a sort of Marxist term, it's quite bourgeois, isn't it? Very bourgeois. Nonetheless. did it too i mean the church used to fund it but i mean I it did, yeah, yeah. And I think I look and look where that's got us. It's got made us some absolutely brilliant institutions, Oxford, Cambridge, uh, you know, uh some of the Italian universities, absolutely ancient. I think that's fantastic. I really do. But here's the again back to that. Turn everything into accounts.

Hang on a second. Let him let him develop his argument, Charles, please. I think fundamentally though, when it comes to looking at what what what is that critic, I think I think it's a bit of an indulgence at the end of the day. When when so many people are struggling, you know, people we have a lot of sickness in society, we have a a lot of people on the breadline who are really struggling. who needs who need that support, which I don't think is gonna help.

Shot, I mean you're you you're a sort of one argument chap in this regard, which is that allocation of race resources. Allocation of resources. I sort of get that, but aren't we? Don't we want a more diverse society where that's not the only marker of value? I would love it's not just money that's the marker of value. Yeah, I'm happy to check on afterwards but but I think at the end of the day uh no you're you're right, maybe I'm one argument.

Guns and butter. You've got to make a decision at the end of the day. I s very Bismarckian, but at the moment w there's w y you're advocating for a lot of butter here, Giles, and we'll be left with a musket. I think that's the big issue at the end of the day.

I I just want books. I mean, you know, it's just have books. No, no, no. But uh and the and the and the time and the encouragement ymwneud â phlaethau a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus a'chelus And and w if we just grad grind that away, uh that the we'll we're losing something. And I s and I think you agree with me somewhere.

I do agree with you. I do look I I mean I again I think I think we're speaking maybe across each other here, fundamentally. I would love to live in that society. I did a history and government degree. I you know, I really loved my time with my books. It was during COVID, so I was locked away for a lot of it unfortunately. It's a great shame. And I loved my degree. I had such a good time. I even stayed and did an abortive master's afterwards. Don't get me wrong. But

Uh now I've entered the real world and I look at a lot of spreadsheets now, it's difficult. But I want to get to the point in society where we can have that that academic utopia. Uh but unfortunately we're not there and I'm just looking at what the facts on the ground. Okay. I I I'm I'm glad we sort of semi agree on this and if there was unlimited resource you're saying you'd love people to be doing that. But it it can't be economics that deter determines every value in society.

That would be th I mean, I understand that th that has an important power, bread and butter and guns. I understand that. But there are other values and we need to have a society which is Mm-hmm. More variegated than that.

I think that's I think I you know, I I agree quite a lot with that. But at the end of the day, um I'm actually gonna use a non economics point here. It's about letting people choose what's best for them, fundamentally. And I think at the end of the day our universe system doesn't do that because it's resource constrained. And that's the big problem. So I want more philanthropy, I want more growth, I want people to enjoy education for what it brings there.

We don't live in that world. At the moment, it's gonna take a lot of reform, a lot of money, and then maybe we'll reach that uh that utopia. And I want to avoid the Adam Smith problem where he went to Oxford and called them torturers and robes. And I think at the end of the day, you know, we all want to avoid that.

Maxwell Marlowe, thanks thank you very much indeed. Uh our next witness is uh Julian Bagini, who's philosopher and author and on the line now. Um uh uh what do you think education should be for? Uh and how should its value be measured? Or a actually is the very idea of trying to quantify its value missing the point in your view?

Yes indeed. Well thanks so much. Well I think if you're thinking about the purpose of education, you do have to think about, you know, the compulsory education and further and higher education. They're a little bit different. In the broadest terms, what we're doing is we're preparing people to enter society. uh and in the so they can tr contribute and live the best lives for themselves. And to your second point, I entirely agree. I think measurement is the wrong

thing here. We need to make a judgment. We need to make judgments about what is is good, what's better for society, etcetera, etcetera. We can't always quantify that. And the obsession with quantification is, I think, a huge mistake. Comedy. Hi, Julian. Um Hi. Can you just say in a in a very brief and neat nutshell, what is the moral purpose of education?

Well the moral purpose I have to but it's not the only purpose, I just want to say that, right? I think you know, you do have to prepare people for the practical things, the practical skills they need to have. And a certain amount of education is about training for jobs. But does it also have a moral purpose? Well yes.

I think that we're losing sight here. I mean our former guest Maxwell was talking about enabling people to choose what is best for them, but we are social animals, as Aristotle famously said. And, you know, we need to be good members of society. So the moral purpose of of education is partly to make sure that we can do that. We can take our place in the adult world in a way that is best for us and for other people. These things uh go together.

Um but but doesn't doesn't that kind of reproduce the very logic that that uh Maxwell was was using, which is it gives a a fundamentally instrumental justification for education. Uh what would be your position on what Giles was talking about what Giles are referring to as the kind of intrinsic goods of education? Is it is it really just the case that Education is to make us good citizens. Isn't there something deeper and richer about it than that?

Well I think the way I put it is it's not just in extrinsic goods. I mean I think it is both again. I mean the extrinsic intrinsic choice is not a choice. It's it's both things. But I think it is intrinsically good to have a society in which we live our best lives and we live as best citizens with other people. That is one of the ultimate goods. It's not to serve any other purpose than for society being the best kind of society it can be.

can describe that in a way which make it s might make it sound instrumental, but I don't think it is. We're talking about the ultimate good, which is flourishing.

Yeah. I I guess the b well there's a couple of things there. I guess the point I wanted to draw out there is that There's something about our capacity in your language, about our capacity to fulfil a particular social function that leaves me with a lingering sense that that your account remains quite utilitarian and that what I'm looking for and reaching for is something more like

the old style humanistic understanding that education is about enlarging and preserving, indeed, in in tough circumstances. our actual humanity, not because that's good for anything, politics or anything else, but just because that's good. Like that's what life is that's what life is for. That's what our humanness is for. It's four.

Yeah, well I I do agree with that. I d I'm not sure that what I said was a was was antithetical to that. I mean maybe it didn't stress it. Um but in terms of pl taking our place in society, it's not just being useful in an instrumental way for society. That's not what it's about. I think that's the point about, you know, social life. How do we think about social life? It's not just about usefulness. You know, it is we we we are our best

best selves when we are in a good society in which everyone else is their best selves too. This isn't about just being useful to other people, right? It's it's i it's e it's in the ecosystem of society. I think this is another reason why to be honest, the emphasis on training is wrong. Because society is a kind of an ecosystem in which the flourishing society depends on lots of things, some of which

don't have any obvious immediate benefits whatsoever. And some of which do. And you need to have that full sort of ecosystem of education. And if you just turn it into training, you're you're just d taking out what is what is most important in life.

I and I I totally agree with you. Um but it seems to me that in the current setting we have uh an i an extreme emphasis on the extrinsic value of of education and no here's a core the core issue no functioning language to identify and articulate the intrinsic value of education.

This this value that is to do with our humanness. And so although you say that there are lots of purposes of education, that's of course true and you know b sort of b banally true. But in the current setting it seems to be much more important that we emphasise the intrinsic goods, don't you think? I think so. I think it's totally out of balance. I mean, for example, you know, my background is philosophy, I work with academic philosophers.

And they're under great pressure to talk about how, you know, philosophy degrees are not useless because actually statistics shows that people with philosophy degrees are highly employable. And you know, some of them have gone on to work in in engineering and computing and had practical inputs.

So everyone's being sucked into this discourse of utility. But all all these people in their heart of hearts at homes, that's not what they think you do philosophy for. And and they're trying to get trying to get that message out at the same time is really difficult. They're trying to do it. But it it's like it's not landing because we're not s talking enough about it. So I entirely agree we need to emphasise that much, much more. Yes.

Great. So f final brief brief question. We talk a lot about the role of the state in education. What do you think about the role of the family? Is that not a neglected Well this h well I think the family role in education is important, but I think th I I don't think we're wrong to talk about the state,'cause the fact is when it comes to family, um, you know, we end up with accidents of of of a family. If you have the right you know, the kind of family which will give you that

rich environment at home where there are lots of books and the kind of conversations you benefit and if you don't you suffer. So I think we're right to think more about what the state can do because the state's job is to pick up 'Cause not all families can provide the same environment for their kids and it's not their fault. And I think it's so I think what the state does is more important.

I want to ask the Philistine question to go back to what you were ta saying earlier about the employability of philosophers, which i is a question I think a lot of people will want to have properly answered. Which is in this age of limits when we're all hard pressed by the tax man and when prices are going up and there's only a limited number of resources, why should we in principle finance uh as many people studying philosophy as there are people who wish to do it?

Well I'm not sure about the exact balance, but I mean there has to be limits. I think that's right, you know, but it's the same for everything. Also, I I l have to say, I'm in great favour of funding higher education and I think it's a great good. But I think there's probably all sorts of things that benefit more l lower social econom economic groups with less education which also need a a lot more funding. And given that things are limited, it may well be that that, you know, we

the exact uh b amount may may not be correct. So I think that's true. So how to we have to think about how to fund it. And I think things like graduate taxes for that reason are a very good thing, right? You know, ca and a graduate tax is that kick in once you pay a certain amount, so you're not penalising people who do a degree and don't earn very much. So absolutely I think I think but th th the funding system at the moment is a complete mess.

And I don't think the answer is just to chuck th you know, millions of more public money at it. We've got to think more carefully about how to design it in such a way that it funds itself. I would suggest it's not just the funding which is a bit of a mess, but the education system itself. Now y you write beautifully for a a popular audience. Your average philosopher, and I'd apply this to many humanities as well, cannot and do not.

And they write really for each other in totally impenetrable language. And there is a sense that much of academia is people being paid to have a conversation with each other. And I what is the social utility of of that? Well I think it's changing a bit and I think it's about balance to be honest. I'm perfectly okay with there being uh some academics who

you know, no one understands what they're doing apart from three other people. That's famously true of, you know, Russell and Whitehead's great Green Kippian Mathematica and all that kind of stuff. So I think that, you know, as long as it's it we shouldn't expect everyone to be a public communicator, etcetera, etc. But the balance historically hasn't been right.

But you know, I don't know what you think, Tim, but surely this is changing because with the research assessment exercise and everything that's right. They have made There with the the emphasis on uh you know, you get rewarded for doing that. And I'm finding that in philosophy there are the extremely uh many, many brilliant communicators. Many, many more. When I was an undergraduate there was virtually none. Now people are good at it. So I think we're already going the direction you want to go.

This is the public uh impact requirement. Uh and I will just say that when I published my PhD I could tell you literally everyone who read it. Right. So that's one reason why I joined journalism and left history is because uh being read by no one that might be about me, not the people. I did say this'cause it's the same was true of my PhD, but I went on to write things which people did read. Yes, and as I say, I want to repeat you right you re write beautifully as well.

What I'm suggesting here is is that uh that's the education system perhaps acknowledging that it can be something of a straitjacket. Now a lot of in many intellectual goods are now being produced outside of the education system. They're being done online, they're being done in the world of of uh business.

I'll give you an example. Greta Thunberg actually pulled out of school, and I can't think of anyone uh produced by academia in the last few years who's had as much impact upon our our thinking about environmentalism. Well, I think a a lot of people who have an impact on environmentalism did go to university education and and tracing the causes of yeah, the the chains of causes. Thank you. Sorry.

Yeah. I f I th I think that most people ch a lot of p people change society have been through higher education, so I'm not I think you can always pick the examples that didn't. Um but you're right, there are lots of different channels, right? And again it it's about going to the idea of there's an ecosystem, there's an intellectual and creative ecosystem and everything has to sort of fulfil its role and does is academia you know, we can have a long conversation about academia.

For example, I think the biggest problem with academia is that it rewards almost entirely people for the narrowness of their work and it should we should have synthesizers, we should have people who work across uh departments bringing things together and the academia doesn't do that. So academia's got lots and lots of faults. But the fault it doesn't have is providing space for intellectual curiosity for its own sake without a thought of its immediate impact.

Very quickly, if we agree that we want people to flourish intellectually, does it have to be fifty percent of people going to university, or can they do that outside of university? Well, uh quickly I think that question yes, I think the proportion is almost certainly too too high because you know, different people have different needs and interests and university was wasn't really intended for that kind of mass uh appeal. I think it should be all sorts of different other kinds of training.

equally good, equally valued by society. The point is society's got to value it and the point is that there's still a bit of a snobbery, the degree is valued more than the apprenticeship or the trade, and it shouldn't be the case.

Julian Bugini, thanks very much indeed. Our next witness is Dr. Jess Wade, who's assistant professor in functional materials at Imperial College London. Well me neither, of course. Uh her res I'm just reading here. Her research considers new materials for optoelectronic, spintronic and quantum devices with a focus on chiral molecular materials. Well that's clear.

You you campaign um uh to get more women and ethnic minorities into science. Um from from your point of view, when asked the question who is education um uh four uh with STEM subjects at least, we're not getting it right. Is that your view? No, we're not getting it right and we definitely need to do more to get young people and older people inspired and excited about science. I think it's important to make passionate people, it's important to make people who

generate huge discoveries and breakthroughs that contribute to society, but also kind of open their eyes so they make better informed decisions in their everyday life. So we're not doing enough to encourage everyone to realise they could become a scientist or an engineer. Um I have to confess I find all STEM subjects so incredibly dull, I have no idea why anybody wants to do them. But my daughter but my daughter was encouraged and went and did a PhD uh and and did a did a degree in physics.

And I thought she was encouraged by loads of people to do that. I w couldn't I mean I thought people were falling over themselves to encourage her. So where is this stuff about women not being encouraged? What type of school did she go to? What type of school did she go to? So so f fifty percent of state schools in the UK don't send a single girl to do A level physics, which is pretty shocking. So the majority of young women in this country aren't getting a proper introduction to physics.

And you're two and a half times more likely to study physics if you go to an independent or girls' school to if you go to a general school. So there's a huge inequality of access from when you're really, really young. And that comes from lots of influencers. It might come from fathers who say they think STEM subjects are so extraordinarily boring. She still did it!

But it could come from not having experiences to go to museums or visit kind of science festivals or something like that. It could be come from things on television or radio. So there are lots of kind of external influences that impact the stereotypes we create about scientists.

And then we have a really big problem um in that most of our teachers who teach physics in schools in the UK don't have a background in physics. So we have a very small number of skill specialist teachers. So we're just not inspiring, captivating, and keeping young people motivated.

The problem is the pathway into university, but if you start with small numbers you end up with even smaller numbers when you get to professorial levels. So if we look at the demographics of who's a physics professor, there's very, very few women and next to no black physics professors. And how how would you remedy that?

I would remedy it in lots of different ways. I think we have to really think about how we teach, we have to probably reform and refresh our curricula so they're not so overwhelmingly boring or however you described it before, but we talk about things like the moon mission or quantum technologies or how we'll create technologies that support climate and and help us out of this climate catastrophe.

So we have to teach with more relevant contemporary examples to help young people see the types of careers they could do if they go and study those subjects. And then have some kind of movement around subject equity. I think there's a big misconception that subjects like physics and maths are are really, really hard. And but actually for someone like me who really loves physics and maths, I found the writing subjects really, really hard or kind of

thinking in a philosophy or history way really hard. So something around subject equity, something around improving access, modernizing curricula. Subjects are gendered in people's heads. I think subjects are gendered in some people's heads are kind of historical stereotypes and bias. But actually when you look at it

When you look at who the kinds of grades girls get when they do choose to study physics A level, girls systematically get higher grades than boys. So it's not a it's not a biological thing, it's just that the numbers and My wife teaches at university, is a university lecturer and in her subjects it's ninety percent women. In her subject.

Okay. She teaches in the arts and humanities but it's like uh ninety percent women. So I'm uh I'm just interested in whether the we we've actually this is a societal problem rather than a problem at university. Oh no, it's a massive societal problem and I think many of it most of it starts at school and probably not even secondary school, it starts at primary school in the way that we inspire and support girls and and boys to find the subjects that they're interested in.

I'd like to uh follow on um that discussion, but before I do that I hope you don't mind mind me asking, but you're at Imperial and I'm just wondering that Imperial is very proudly STEM focused. Can a university that includ excludes the humanities Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd. But within the science.

We in in the development of technology you're right, but they also do philosophy. There's joint courses with the Royal College of Music we have an incredible course now joint with the Royal College of Art and Design Engineering. And I've been teaching a new module in the past term on kind of an introduction to quantum where we've thought deeply about kind of dual use technology technologies and the ethical development of tech. So I think

We try to holistically get students and young people excited and thinking about it. We benefit hugely at a university like Imperial from being in South Kensington, which is this kind of cultural mecca for all of those different aspects. Um I wouldn't I wouldn't write our students off, I think they're passionate about the arts and humanities.

One of the things uh you've been saying is is maybe a lot of social conditioning as to why girls don't do certain subjects. Doesn't that risk dismissing women's agency? Like we've been talking about this for decades. Sure, and and I would never want to force anyone to study a subject they don't want to study. What I really want to do is make everyone realise how phenomenally exciting these subjects are.

and how many different places they can take you and how incredible it is to work in an area where you're learning new things about the world and the universe and each other every day and being able to use that understanding for social good. I'm sure you're doing that. I'm sure you're doing that and your colleagues are doing that. But my question is, why isn't it inspiring a whole new generation of young women or people from I think minorities to come forward?

Your question is why is it not working? Yeah. I think part of the reason is that it's a much bigger challenge than just a handful of academics going in front of them and telling them this is really awesome. It's a curriculum review, it's supporting teachers better, it's proper careers advice, it's really thinking about

not just what do we do to get you into university, but how do we support you when we're here when you're here. It's not just girls and ethnic minorities that are outnumbered in physics degrees, it's also hugely driven by socioeconomic class. So how do we support students when they're in these quite rigorous degrees to make sure that they're facilitated throughout to be the best that they can be?

But on that question, I mean um on that point, uh do you think that if we had more people, you know, from whether it's ethnic minorities or more women and girls? that we might be mistaking visibility for actual progress. Well actually in society there are deeper inequalities that higher education can't address, and th those remain.

I'd I'd hope that we could work on them all. I don't think there's a reason to work on n one and not the other. I think we need to work on all issues around inequalities. I think that My idea is not just that we need to give young people the opportunity to be excited by science so they come in and see what a fantastic job they could have.

I suppose the question goes back to, well, you're doing everything you can. You're not the only university that's doing this, yet you're still not managing to address a situation which is people are not coming from certain backgrounds. They're choosing different professions. There isn't anything inherently morally wrong with that, is there?

Well I would say actually there's been huge progress recently. You know, if you look at the diversity of who studies engineering degrees, there's actually massive strides in in the demographics of people who study them. My focus really is not just getting people in the door, it's supporting them when they're there.

Rwy'n credu bod yn mynd i'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio'r cydweithio. Is there a danger that certain individuals may feel that they've been selected on the basis of their identity, not their ability?

No, I don't think there's a danger of that because actually what lots of universities and initiatives try to do is kind of recognise that difference between equality and equity and it's saying that Everyone needs different types of support to be able to compete at the same level to their counterparts from different demographic groups.

And if you've come from a particular group where you've been supported and encouraged your whole life to go off to do something, you won't need the same confidence boosting technical training and support that you might do if you've come from a different demographic group that hasn't had that.

Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â phobl sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw. Doctor Wade, Jess Wade, thank you very much indeed.

Uh our last witness uh is uh Chris Bonello, who's a former teacher who campaigns to get the education system to take account of, to cater much better for, children who are autistic or what's now known as neurodiverse. He's autistic himself. Uh are are we talking here about children who are less Bright. or simply bright in some kind of different way. We're essentially talking about both.

Mr. President, one of the main problems with the education system as it currently stands is that it celebrates one particular type of intelligence, having obviously academic intelligence. There are a lot of neodivergent people, whether they're autistic or dyslexic, ADHD and and so on, who have to leave the education system and get jobs where they can start playing to their strengths before they suddenly realise that they weren't actually bad students after all. Mm-hmm.

That's so true and I identify with it. So thank you for making that point. But but I wanna focus on the the overall experience of teaching because I know you've been a teacher, I've been a classroom assistant, I know many teachers, and one thing teachers frequently say to me is

We're just asked to do too much for too many different kinds of kids. The classes are packed. Everyone has different standards and abilities. Realistically, do teachers not ultimately have to just teach one, dare I say, bog standard, class? because they've just got so many people to impart so much information to. It's one of those very unfortunate situations where you got your principles and your practicalities and practically speaking it is unbelievably uh difficult to uh provide for

let's say thirty different brains uh at the same time and ideally a bit uh really uh shouldn't be like that. But we can at least try to address these issues by well, for starters having more classroom assistance i in the classroom and um providing uh accommodations that's um

Honestly, a lot of them d uh don't even c uh cost any money, I think. That one of the other big problems with the at least mainstream education system is is that from my autistic perspective, it seems to have been built with everyone else in mind. Everything from the

physical setup of the the classroom from a sensory perspective to uh to the unspoken social expectations, which are always unspoken, obviously, and uh down to the curricular expectations expectations as well. They are designed with neurotypical uh students in mind. And that le uh leads to a a lot of people, like I said earlier, thinking that they're unfit students when honestly they're not.

Is your preference for where necessary take uh taking uh neurodivergent people out and putting them into a different space where they can be catered for, or keeping as many people with different uh needs and abilities within the same classroom?

Speaker as someone who used to be a primary school teacher and a uh teacher in a school specifically for autistic students, my answer to that is which neodivergent students are we talking about. I mean sometimes peop people ask me, is mainstream education better, is spectr education better, is home education better? It's really is an individu uh individualised thing. I uh my own personal experience as a child in mainstream education uh was I

I had a lot of academic capability and little to no sensory difficulties. So I was autistic in mainstream education and I totally got away with it. But with that said, then I grew up and became a teacher in a school for autistic students. I ended up teaching autistic teenagers who only really started to flourish once they left these schools that were built for the majority in mind rather than for everyone.

'Cause let's be honest, sometimes neurodiversity can be articul can be expressed as or mistaken for disciplinary or behavioral issues. And I guess we're back to that very difficult question of at what point do you say to someone Um I we're just trying to do too much for too many people. I'm afraid we cannot uh attend to this one student and their particular needs.

It's diffic uh difficult b uh because I think that speaking as someone who once lost a job in a special school along with half their special school staff because the... Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd.

uh to the fact that school budgets are incredibly uh influential in what uh what decisions get made. With that said, um and again talking about the principles here, I do believe that if your school can afford to accommodate twenty nine out of thirty children because the system was already built with them in mind, but they magically can't afford to accommodate the child who thinks differently, I'd argue that that's not a financial decision, that's an ideological one.

Now of course it's not just the school that has to um that has to meet the needs of neurodiverse and stud neurodiversity students, but also the parents. And in some cases schools are picking up the pieces uh of of families that are are struggling or failing to do that. To what extent do you find in your experience that that's what education has become, picking up the pieces uh of failed family life?

I think we need to be extremely careful to uh not be too judgmental towards the uh the parents who are honestly st uh struggling to uh fight for the uh uh the children's well in some cases literal legal uh rights. Uh my part for uh for example has spent the last seventeen years f uh fighting for uh her daughter to get s uh uh what she is legally entitled to against a system that's uh Frankly believes it's cheaper if we don't provide accommodations for uh for such students. and whereas

you are going to get the widest possible range of parents, uh as much as you'll get the widest possible re uh range of learners. I think it's uh quite problematic and um leans it uh leans into the uh current d uh discussion where I don't know uh why at some point last year um the media woke up and decided we hate send children to their families now but i the uh these days barely a day passes that uh where it

I don't see a a headline uh that blames the the sheer cost of children, especially educational needs and disabilities and blames the parents for being entitled for daring to fight for what their children are legally entitled to and legally entitled to for good reasons. Um it's very moving. Uh very moving to hear that. Thank you. I I also used to be a teacher. Can we talk about p practicalities again for a minute? So you standing in front of a classroom filled with thirty children.

Every one of them has a different brain, some of them might be classed as neurodiversion, but they all have different brains. Realistically, in the given time of your lesson, the fifty five minutes that you have or whatever, how is it at all possible to make accommodations for thirty different brains? A lot of that will be done in advance through the planning of your lesson, through discussions with other staff members or uh or with the uh the students' parents or w with the student themselves.

I'm thinking right now of two different primary school jobs that I had. One as a teacher where I had three teaching assistants in a class of 34 students and one where it was literally just me with 28 students. in a school which I would argue had a much more di uh diverse set of needs, but uh the teaching assistants uh were occupied with an even greater level of need in in other classrooms.

I remember being struck with quite a feeling of guilt in that uh second example where I knew f uh full well that I, as w uh one human, uh helping twenty eight humans found it so much more difficult than I uh than I did in the previous school. And then we need more bodies on the ground really. really I really relate to that. I I had smaller classes than that but I I really struggled to make provision for every individual student and I I guess everybody

listening surely will be massively in favour of what you're advocating in principle that every child needs should be met in the way that is appropriate to the child. But people I think are probably struggle to conceive of how feasible it actually is to meet children's needs on that kind of individual basis given the sort of educational system that we have.

I'm being devil's advocate, but is it not just very utopian to think that every child can have their own learning plan in the room and the 30 students and you as the solitary teacher facing that massive hill to climb and feeling guilty because you can't? I don't think it's um I don't think it's wrong to be utopian about uh about uh trying to uh meet the needs of uh of all students. I think uh

What we need to do is look at the ba uh barriers that prevents these accommodations from being t uh put in place and address them. Some of them will be financial, some of them will uh can be addressed completely uh completely for free. And I'm th uh thinking f uh for example

It sounds like I'm go uh going off on a bit of a tangent, but bear with me. Um in the village where I I used uh used to live, there's a supermarket that every Sunday morning does a sensory friendly shopping hour. They turn down uh down the lights and they uh

And so they stop the music from playing and that's for uh so that um uh shoppers with sensory uh difficulties or different sensory profile, uh or parents of uh of s uh such children uh can uh access the uh shop as uh as much as anyone else can.

Now, this may only happen between nine o'clock and ten o'clock on a Sunday morning, but um uh guess what's uh all all of the neotypical shop uh shoppers' responses to that? It's why can't we just uh do this all uh all the time? No one's missing the bright lights and the uh the loud music.

I think w uh when you uh change an environment uh in order to accommodate those, for example, with different uh sensory profiles, what you're actually doing is accommodating everyone. And uh uh the unfortunate tr uh uh truth is I'm just gonna I'm just gonna interrupt you slightly because I I wanna ask you another question on a different level about you just sink between practicalities and principles. This is a question about about principles and educational philosophy.

Neurodiversity in the very in the very name is about the differences between students. Mm and we live we're we're in it now in an education environment which is very focused on the differences between students, um and child centred approaches and so on. Do you think that there's a risk if we overemphasise difference between students that we lose the focus on what the students have in common and on the guiding uh a kind of overall guiding vision for education itself?

On the one hand, I can see an argument for talking more about what we have in common, and yes, I believe we should do that,

The other angle to that is in what way are we talking about about the differences? I think it's completely fine to uh keep enthusiastically and to positively keep talking about the differences if we are talk about neodiversity as uh something that benefits us as a species, qu uh quite frankly, rather than uh something that uh oh it exists and it's a bit of a shame but uh w uh I suppose we can accommodate it if we talk about uh

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Chris Bonello. Excuse me. Thank you very much indeed for joining us this evening. Uh well Power, I don't know about you. I think uh there seemed to be a clearer division over uh what's education for than than who's it for in this sort of uh two part discussion this evening. Uh Maxwell Marlowe, our first uh our first uh witness, Mona, was absolutely clear it wasn't. It was uh and should be measured by its economic return and the tangible benefits it brings to society.

He didn't convince you though, did he? I think he sees very much that university, especially higher education. Sad about it, Mine. He was no no he was. They're kind of expensive gatekeepers to the job markets. And I understand everyone needs to be able to work. Everybody wants to have a job and all the rest of it. But that's not the primary purpose of higher education. I s I'm still not convinced that about that. Because if we are driven purely by economic output,

Then what do we do with all the things that give meaning in our lives? Well how do we quantify that? Where does that go? We have beautiful art galleries, museums and cinemas and all the rest of it. How do we train young people to think about all that? Tim, you had more sympathy for that argument. Well, a great deal of that art was not produced by uh the university system. Uh I d I don't like things being judged on that cost basis. I'm idealistic about education.

Uh, because I enjoyed the fruits of a scholarship which I was so academic and disconnected I sometimes forgot even to cash the check. Um but I I enjoyed that and I the most productive years of my life were when I was like some aristocrat, just paid to think. And I didn't waste them at all.

I published books, I ran for parliament, believe it or not. I had loads of things on the public's dime. Thank you very much. And I genuinely think they were to the greater use of society. I think the problem is is that in a democracy, as I said at the very beginning, where everyone has the right to access such goods, we have a choice.

Everyone can access it, in which case we're gonna have to pay more. Or we ration it, in which case it only goes to the very, very brightest. That to me seems the simple and difficult choice we have to face. Charles very clear uh uh uh distinction between the t first two witnesses. The the first witness uh talking about the need to measure things because it's on the basis of that measurement that resources can be allocated. You talk like an economist, but you know you know what he meant.

Uh whereas uh Julian Bergini, the um uh the second witness, where he he uh he was almost uh the other end of all that. Uh even trying to measure benefit was was a problem because the most valuable aspects of it can't be measured. Some things can be measured, some things can't. So you see, where I have some sympathy with Mr. Marlowe is that there are some degrees which are basically ways into a certain sort of job market. Is this Mona's distinction between education and training?

Yeah, it is. So if you're doing computer science or engineering or some sort of things like that, I actually think he might have a point. Charge quadruple what it is, because you're gonna get bring that back in the lifetime. Uh uh in in your lifetime you're gonna earn more. That the m my problem and actually his problem too, Mr. Marlowe's problem, was actually how do you fund this stuff that doesn't have

that extrinsic value that doesn't bring the m the money in. Now you can actually say, as Tim has said, you know, I spent my time as an aristocrat, but actually it was very valuable in the long run. But actually I still think we want to talk about intrinsic goods without any reference to anything any other benefit. And that intrinsic good which I think the university should be a repository of Mr Marlowe wasn't really able to talk about how you fund that.

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.: But people will go to Oxford on the back of a history degree and they'll use the connections it gives them to get into a job, a very well-paid in job in law. Let's not imagine that all intrinsic education ends at the BA. It's then turned into something. Some people want to do it and some people want to do computer science because they want to teach computer science, not because they want to make a million.

Even if we stuck with the monetary aspects of it, what you've just said that yes, okay, let's charge somebody who's doing an engineering degree quadruple the fee. That's going to actually the unintended consequence of that is it's going to exclude a lot of people who can't afford to do an engineering degree. That's going to create a whole new set of problems. Uh and then we're going to have another kind of Well Mr Molly would say you get loans. You get loans for that. Mm-hmm.

We've already got students who can't pay off their loans because they're from underprivileged backgrounds. So all we're going to do is, on the hypothesis that you will earn ten times more than somebody with a philosophy degree, you're going to pay a huge fortune for that. I don't think that's gonna work.

I I think one of the arguments, Carmody, was that we we're currently uh I I imagine uh Maxwell's uh view of this was we're currently overproducing uh graduates on cheap to provide courses or cheaper to provide courses, uh like indeed history and so on, uh and underproducing high cost graduates of things we need, like engineers and doctors. That seems to be true, and I think there are quite a lot of things. I mean isn't there a case for saying it doesn't work very well at the moment?

Yes, I think that absolutely is a case and I think we should really be thinking more along the lines of what happens in many European countries, which is that there are actually different institutions for these different kinds of um education in Switzerland. Um I'm married to a Swiss man. Uh as far as i i it I can I can tell, it works extremely well. There are technical and vocational training institutions which are

very, very highly regarded and turn out very capable people and then there are universities where people go when they want to study the humanities and I don't see anything wrong with that. I do think um on the contrary, it seems like we should be thinking about something like that in this country. But I I do want to say that I think everyone's gone quite easy on

on Maxwell Marlowe. I think that the uh he but the who seems like a totally delightful human being. Um but I think that the the the th school of thought he was advancing is actually not just wrong but quite dangerous. Th this is the this is the kind of thinking that you find in in um a sort of totalitarian regime that doesn't see space for anything, that doesn't have an immediate I think it's not a good thing. It's not it's n it's not even

I I find it really, really shocking that that we're in a situation where we're not really think we're so busy worrying about the economy, we're not thinking about what the economy's even for anyway, which is allowing us to actually live human lives and to be fuller versions of ourselves. And I find it Extremely depressing. Uh Tim, I found uh uh what was interesting was just the difficulty in defining what education's purpose actually was. Clearly more than just merely becoming a learned

person, but things like um uh leading your best life, a good and meaningful life, um intellectual cultural development. It's all very wishy washy, ill defined sort of stuff.

Not at all. It's very important. Not at all. If you read that wonderful book, The Uh Intellectual History of the Working Class, it's a brilliant book. Uh the upper class really didn't want the workers to learn. They didn't understand why they had to. It gave them ideas above their station. Well damn them. I feel very passionately about this.

Uh the problem is is we we in the same way we might judge the value of a degree by its monetary value, we sometimes judge an education by what marks you got or how far you've progressed within the system. Well some people might only go so far or go in a certain direction, but it's a devel about developing the potential of the individual and developing the whole person. And indeed part of the problem with the argument about university is I I think we forget that that

the role there that schools play in that. A and so often when you then teach in universities, y the tragedy is you find a lot of people have not been prepared well by the school. And I don't just mean they come in and they can't write an essay. I mean that there's certain personality problems there. Th there's certain building blocks in their life which have not been developed.

Than just the individual, isn't it? Isn't isn't part of the purpose, or certainly historically part of the purpose of education, is that it inculcates in us a sense of some sort of shared values. It's not about bringing out the potential of the individual, it is about having some shared But that's implicit to educating people, isn't it? Because it's a shared value that that everyone should have the right to education.

I'm assuming drawing out that you were defining it in terms of the individual. I think there's a much more communitarian framework for education. Correct. Mona but the who's it for argument. That we're failing to engage a large proportion of the population in subjects that she would regard as essential for the future. But I I couldn't help in the back of my mind thinking that uh many girls and women who who who don't go into these particular subjects are actually making a choice.

Well this is what I tried to challenge her on th you know, that actually if you dismiss all of this, you know, like we're trying to inspire young people but they're still not coming. Well actually you're kind of infantilizing and and saying that people have not made that choice willingly. Yes, of course there might be family precious. There are some background issues.

But, you know, we've been talking about this for twenty, thirty years now. And it reminded me a little bit of the time, you know, we've had just had the space the moon mission. It's when the Olympics come or some great big games and everybody talks about oh, we're going to inspire people to do more sports.

Well we've just had, you know, the the moon voyage or more girls are going to come into STEM. It doesn't work like that. People are making choices that feel right for them. And yes, there may be some that we're excluding because of the wrong reasons basically. But I don't think it's just about ethnicity and gender. There's a reason why certain backgrounds encourage certain professions. And they don't think that a just a an an abstract degree in physics is worth anything.

A common, it's worth saying, isn't it, that 60% of medical students are girls, women, now. So, I mean, that's a stem subject by any... By any standards I would have thought. Uh I mean it raises this very tricky thing that's quite difficult to talk about even these days, about even whether th is uh there is a difference in in sort of male and female brains, aptitudes, tendencies. It's Get out of life.

Highly sensitive territory. And it seems to me that as far as the difference in the brains are concerned, we need to be rel relatively as agnostic as agnostic as we can be and create as level a playing field as possible, which seemed to me what Jess Wade was saying. But I wouldn't want to Just c coming back to what Monan was saying on this, I wouldn't want to underestimate the way in which a whole social and cultural milieu shapes what people choose to do.

I don't think and I think we we can't be too too searching about that, that people make the choices that they do, not because they're that kind of person or this kind of person, but because they they live in the environment. Just very quickly. When I was growing up, um, it was a state school, I never even questioned one second that I wouldn't be going to university. And when I asked my white middle class friends, oh

They said, Oh, we're gonna go for a job, we're gonna do this. For them there was a whole plethora of choice, not for people from my background. Everyone was gonna go to university. I d I I don't want this programme to finish without talking about Chris Bonello, who I found, you know, very impressive and very difficult to disagree with, but I wondered whether there wasn't an argument for uh standardization in in education. I can uh I c absolutely appreciate where he's coming from.

Are we talking intellectual or emotional? Because I I identified what he was saying because I'm not saying I was n neurodivergent at school, but I went to a grammar school which was obsessed with tests and and grades and for much of my time there I thought I was thick.

And they treated me as though I was thick. No, it's just I was more interested in other things that they didn't value. But also I now realize that even though I left there and went to Cambridge, I emerged a philosopher king intellectually, but a child emotionally, because the school didn't care about it.

It didn't teach it. And maybe it can't replace the family and it shouldn't try. But I do fear that in uh the s new marketing marketed, high discipline kind of education system we're building, I think something is being lost in terms of compassion and developing the individual's soul. Jar's last word with you, very short.

Yeah, Tim Stanley. That's absolutely right. That's I I think that's the one of the things that we've had here is we've had this this marketisation of education leaves a lot of people out. Okay, that's it uh for this week and uh actually f for this series. Uh from our panel tonight anyway, Tim Stanley, Giles Fraser, Comedy Grey and Mona Sidiki. And from me until the next series, which uh starts in June, I think. Goodbye.

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