Tag: education

LOW-VALUE DEGREES OR LOW-VALUE PEOPLE?

June 5, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the argument against “low value degrees”, was published in the Observer on 2 June 2024, under the headline “The affluent can have their souls enriched at university, so why not the poor as well?”. “We must crack down on low-value university degrees.” Who claimed that and when? It might have been Rishi Sunak last October. Or Sunak last July. Or Sunak the previous August. Or Nadhim Zahawi five months earlier. Or Michelle Donelan in November 2020. Or Gavin Williamson in May 2020. Or Damian Hinds the previous year. […]

Categories: Academia, Britain • Tags: apprenticeships, education, humanities, low-value degrees, poverty, rishi sunak, stem, universities

THE ENDS OF EDUCATION

August 4, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the working class and the meaning of education, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 31 July 2022, under the headline “If education is all about getting a job, the humanities are left just to the rich”. “We rented a garret, for which we paid (I think) 25s a year, bought a few second-hand forms and desks, borrowed a few chairs from the people in the house, bought a shilling’s worth of coals… and started our […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Culture & Books • Tags: browne report, david runciman, diversity, education, education cuts, humanities, jonathan rose, robbins report, universities, working class

TO LIVE IN A PLURAL SOCIETY

March 30, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on the meaning of a plural society in the context of the furore surrounding Batley Grammar School, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the lessons of the Shrewsbury 24.) It was published on 28 March 2021, under the headline “To live in a diverse society means to live with debate. Bring it on”. No one has a right not to be offended. All of us have a duty to challenge bigotry. These […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Multiculturalism • Tags: batley grammar school, blasphemy, charlie hebdo, depicting muhammad, diversity, education, islam, islamophobia, muhammad, muslims, racism, samuel paty, sayeeda warsi

ON BEING WHITE AND ON BEING WORKING CLASS

October 20, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate about the “white working class”, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 18 October 2020, under the headline “Being white won’t hold boys back. Being working class just might”. White, working-class boys fare badly at school. About that, almost everyone is agreed. More contested is the reason why. Last week, the first witnesses gave evidence to the commons select committee on education’s investigation into “Left Behind White Pupils From Disadvantaged Backgrounds”. The hearing made […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Race & Immigration • Tags: brexit, education, identity politics, inequality, left behind, racism, schools, white privilege, white working class, working class

FAIRNESS IS A POLITICAL JUDGMENT, NOT A THING IN ITSELF

August 25, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on algorithms, political judgments and fairness, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 23 August 2020, under the headline ‘The cruel exams algorithm has laid bare the unfairness at the heart of our schools’. . What children know and too many politicians seem not to: a few years ago, the psychologists Alex Shaw and Kristina Olson ran an experiment in which they told young children about two boys, Dan and Mark, who had cleaned up their […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: algorithms, boris johnson, british politics, education, fairness, michael gove, ofqual, scottish qualifications authority

WHITENESS, CLASS AND THE WHITE WORKING CLASS

January 6, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the controversy over the funding of scholarship for white working class boys, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece onthe happiness industry.) It was published on 5 January 2020, under the headline‘Bursaries don’t help when it’s not their colour that thwarts these boys’. There is a scene in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in which one of the central characters, Saladin, finds himself incarcerated in a detention centre for illegal immigrants. Saladin […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: british politics, education, race, racism, white identity, white privilege, white working class

HAS THE RETWEET RUINED THE WORLD?

July 29, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Twitter, engagement ad democracy, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Bryan Magee.) It was published on 7 July 2019, under the headline ‘Twitter won’t ruin the world. But constraining democracy would’. Has the retweet ruined the world? Chris Wetherell, the software developer who built Twitter’s retweet button, thinks so. Introduced in 2009, retweeting transformed the social media landscape, he suggests, by allowing people to pass on information without having bothered to […]

Categories: Politics, Science & Technology • Tags: brexit, democracy, donald trump, education, fake news, social media, social polarisation, technology, twitter

POSH MAY BE PASSÉ BUT CONTEMPT IS NOT

December 31, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on changing attitudes to class, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on cookery books.) It was published in the Observer, 30 December 2018, under the headline ‘Posh is so passé – today’s elite prefers the myth of the meritocracy’. I’m not posh,’ an irate David Dimbleby told the Today presenter John Humphrys. ‘I come from Wales, as you do.’ Dimbleby, who this month stepped down as host of BBC’s Question Time, was being interviewed by Humphrys, […]

Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: brexit, Class, david dimbleby, david runciman, democracy, donald trump, education, elite, elitism, meritocracy, michael young, populism, poshness, privilege, richard dawkins, technocracy, upper class, working class

WHAT IS EDUCATION FOR?

March 19, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on barring racists from Britain.) It was published in the Observer, 18 March 2018, under the headline ‘Let’s not give up on the idea that a good education is a search for truth‘. Sam Gyimah is very taken by Moneysupermarket.com. Seven years ago, the newly elected Tory MP for East Surrey wrote an article for Conservative Home, bemoaning the fact that there […]

Categories: Academia, Britain • Tags: education, universities, utilitarianism

BACK TO SCHOOL ON RACE AND CLASS

January 7, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 7 January 2018, under the headline ‘In British education, the central issue is class, not ethnicity’. The white working class. It’s a phrase that has become so commonplace that few recognise the sheer oddness, and indeed odiousness, of the concept. It denotes both pity and contempt. On the one hand, it is a description of the ‘left behind’, sections of the population that have lost out through globalisation and deindustrialisation. On the other, […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Race & Immigration • Tags: angela rayner, british politics, Class, education, race, racism, white culture, white working class, working class

ON THE GRAMMAR SCHOOLS DEBATE

October 20, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article I wrote last month for the International New York Times on the grammar schools debate in Britain. (I cannot publish my INYT articles on Pandaemonium until a month after it is published in the newspaper.) It was originally published under the headline ‘Why Britain Fails in Class’. Few people could have predicted the first policy on which Britain’s new prime minister would take a stand. It is none of the issues that have […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: britain, british politics, conservatives, education, equality, grammar schools, inequality, left, social mobility, theresa may, ukip, working class

WHY BRITAIN FAILS IN CLASS

October 1, 2016 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times on the grammar schools debate in Britain: The fact that neither selective nor nonselective school systems have improved social mobility in Britain might suggest that the problem lies in the very idea of using schools to engineer a more equal society. A decent education system can help a few individuals progress beyond the circumstances of their birth, but it is unlikely to change fundamentally the social and economic […]

Categories: Britain • Tags: british politics, Class, education, grammar schools, social mobility

SACRED COWS AND A TROJAN HORSE

July 20, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my essay on the so-called ‘ Trojan Horse’ controversy, first published in the New York Times last month under the headline ‘Education should be beyond belief’. Last year, the council in Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city, received an anonymous document that supposedly advised militant Muslims on how to take over the governing bodies of state schools and impose upon them Islamist values. Since the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ plot was reported in March, it has […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain • Tags: britain, education, faith schools, islam, islamism, religion

UNPACKING A TROJAN HORSE

June 23, 2014 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is about the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal in Britain. Here are the opening paragraphs; the full version is in the INYT, where it was published under the headline ‘Education should be beyond belief’. Last year, the council in Birmingham, Britain’s second city, received an anonymous document that supposedly advised militant Muslims on how to take over the governing bodies of state-run schools and impose Islamist values on them. Since the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Multiculturalism • Tags: britain, education, faith schools, islam, islamism, religion