To the point - Serve the common good
Nick Pearce, director of the Institute of Public Policy Research
Friday, March 2, 2012
Politicians of all parties sign up to the goal of social mobility. John Major wanted a classless society. Tony Blair aspired to a meritocracy. Today Nick Clegg declares that increasing social mobility is the overriding ambition of the UK Coalition Government.
But rather than enabling individuals to compete on fair terms for access to elite jobs, what if we asked instead how those who hold positions of leadership in our society can serve everyone else? What if early learning, schooling and entry to the professions were guided by the injunction that elites in a democratic society should serve the common good and not just their individual aspirations?
Elites drawn from a narrow gene pool - the privately educated and socially segregated who marry and mix with each other - will often possess limited understanding of those they represent or serve in their professional lives. They will have little first-hand knowledge of the conditions in which others live, still less of their concerns. At worst, they will be entirely ignorant, prejudiced or disrespectful of them. In professions such as politics, the civil service or law, these deficiencies spill directly over into democratic inequalities that injure the interests of the least advantaged.
In deeply unequal societies, charity alone cannot educate elites. Public policy must play the leading role. We can learn from the experience of Teach First, which places graduates from leading universities into schools in disadvantaged communities. Its success rests not simply on the impact it has on education, but on the lessons it teaches the teachers. Its graduates develop a commitment to state education, an ethos of public service and an awareness of the educational needs and ambitions of low-income students.
The Teach First model should be expanded into new areas such as early years learning. Bringing graduates from leading universities into children's centres would not just strengthen standards of learning and development; it would help embed social norms of living together in a community. Children's centres and nurseries are already places where our common life is formed: children develop together, parents meet and a myriad of connections are made between staff and those around them. They should be considered a key means by which we break down social segregation.
