Academy of Ideas

Recorded on Saturday 19 October, 2013. as part of the School Fights strand at the Battle of Ideas festival

The place of independent schools in Britain’s education landscape has never been so intensely debated. According to Martin Stephen, former high master of St Paul’s School, two of the three main political parties hate independent schools ‘to the core of their being’, while the Conservatives are run by so many public schoolboys that they cannot afford to extend ‘the merest hand of friendship’ to such schools without being caricatured by the media. But do private schools protest too much about ‘posh prejudice’? The 7% of pupils who attend fee-paying schools go on to dominate Oxbridge places and elite professions such as law, the media and science. Are those who defend private schools prepared to defend the perpetuation of such inequality on the grounds of individual freedom?

Or is it not true that independent schools are full of ‘toffs’ when a third of pupils in schools in the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (of independent schools) have bursary support? Might the growing popularity of private schools be an indictment of failing comprehensive schools? Is it right that parents who make sacrifices for their children’s education are made to feel such an outlay is morally questionable? Is it necessarily wrong to pay for education? And when so many politicians across the political divide have enjoyed the benefits of a private education, from Eton boys David Cameron, Oliver Letwin and Boris Johnson to supposed class warriors Ed Balls, Harriett Harman and Chuka Umunna, it is hypocritical of them to distance themselves from the independent sector and seek to undermine it? Is opposition to private schools motivated as much by a stale left-wing prejudice against aspiration as a real commitment to public provision?

What if one values both equality and choice? Are these ideals hopelessly incompatible when it comes to the debate about private education? And where do new models of schooling that combine private and public provisions, such as Free Schools and Academies, fit into the debate? Is opposition to private schools just part of a more general hostility to private institutions? Or is it essential to forging a fair education system that benefits all pupils?

Speakers Professor James Conroy Dean for European Engagement and professor of philosophical and religious education, University of Glasgow Fiona Millar columnist, Guardian, co-founder, Local Schools Network David Perks principal, East London Science School; author, What is science education for?; co-author, Sir Richard Sykes Review of school examinations and A defence of subject-based education Dr Martin Stephen director of education, GEMS UK; former high Master, St Paul's School Chair Kevin Rooney Politics teacher and head of social science, Queen's School, Bushey; blogger at Fans for Freedom

Recorded on Sunday 21 October, 2012

For many years, the only hybrid human/animal embryos that could be legally created in the UK were those resulting from fertilising a hamster’s egg with a man’s sperm, as a means of testing male fertility. In 2008, it became legal to create all manner of hybrid human/animal embryos for research purposes, provided that such embryos were destroyed within two weeks of their creation. 2012 saw the establishment of a new £5.8million Centre for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle University, to develop techniques for preventing the transmission of debilitating mitochondrial disease. But these techniques cannot be tested in clinical trials without a change in the law, and the government has commissioned a ‘public dialogue’ on the issue. Some object that mitochondrial-exchange techniques involve the creation of children with ‘three parents’, while others claim that this objection misunderstands the relevant science.

Those involved in such debates are familiar with the ‘yuck factor’ - the instinctive revulsion said to be felt by many, whenever the natural order of things is interfered with. The yuck factor is an obstacle often negotiated by appeal to scientific evidence, with tensions defused by incorporating ethics committees and ethical considerations into the practice and regulation of biomedicine. But while such procedures address the feelings prompted by scientific advances, they also result in substantive moral objections being either condescendingly dismissed as the irrational ‘yuck’ reaction, or subordinated to the scientistic framework of ‘evidence’. There seems to be scant room for more moral or political arguments, either in favour of, or in opposition to, biomedical progress.

This raises the question of how developments in biomedicine are understood and debated by the public, and whether the public has any meaningful input. By definition, there is no direct public input into scientific research (which is specialised work evaluated by means of peer review), but biomedical policy is supposedly developed under the auspices of the broader democratic process. Such policy affects not only the application of research once it has been conducted, but – if research techniques are contentious, for example if they involve the use of human embryos – whether the research is permitted to proceed at all, much less receive public funds. How are these decisions arrived at? What role do democracy, morality and a grasp of the actual science play in the process?

Speakers:

Professor David Jones director, Anscombe Bioethics Centre; co-editor, Chimera's Children: Ethical, Philosophical and Religious Perspectives on Human-Nonhuman Experimentation Professor Robin Lovell-Badge head, stem cell biology and developmental genetics, National Institute for Medical Research Ken MacLeod award-winning science fiction writer; author, Descent, The Restoration Game and Intrusion; writer-in-residence, MA Creative Writing, Edinburgh Napier University 2013-2014 Güneş Taylor researcher, University of Oxford; MSci, Human Genetics Chair: Sandy Starr communications officer, Progress Educational Trust; webmaster, BioNews

Recorded on Sunday 21 October 2013 at the Battle of Ideas festival at the Barbican in London

‘Ideas are the cogs that drive history, and understanding them is half way to being aboard that powerful juggernaut rather than under its wheels’. AC Grayling

Society seems woefully lacking in Big Ideas, and we seem to crave new thinking. In Britain, great hopes rest on the legacy of the Olympics, but however inspiring the sporting excellence we all witnessed, is it realistic that a summer of feel-good spectacle can resolve deep-rooted cultural problems, from widespread disdain for competitition to community fragmentation? In America, Mitt Romney has pledged to pit substantial ideas against the empty ‘yes, we can’ sloganeering of Barack Obama, with his running mate Paul Ryan dubbed the ‘intellectual’ saviour of the Republican Party, but can they really deliver? Europe, once the home of Enlightenment salons, is now associated more with EU technocrats than philosophes. Looking to the intellectual legacy of the past is considered out of pace with an ever-changing world. We seem estranged from ideas associated with important moments in history - the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the American and French Revolutions. Can even a basic idea like free will survive the challenges of neuroscience and genetics? When the internet offers information at the click of a mouse, what’s the point of pedagogy?

Some contend intellectual life has rarely been healthier; after all today’s governments appoint economists, philosophers and scientific advisers to positions of influence, and the fashion for evidence-based policy puts a premium on academic research. Nevertheless, the emphasis is on ‘what works’ utility and short-term impact rather than open-ended, risky ideas. Often data is passed off as Truth, and Socratic dialogue replaced by rows over conflicting evidence. The scramble for the next Big Idea seems to have replaced the creative and painstaking development of ideas. It’s as though serious ideas can be conjured up in brainstorming sessions or critical-thinking classes. But think-tanks kite-flying the latest outside-of-the-box, blue-skies-thinking speak more to pragmatism and opportunism than following in the tradition of Plato. Ideas become free-floating, divorced from their origins, and take on any meaning one cares to ascribe to them. Hence freedom can mean protection, its defence leading to illiberal regulations; equality can mean conformity and sameness; tolerance becomes a coda for indifference, and individualism denotes little more than selfishness.

Where apparently novel concepts catch on, from sustainability to fairness, identity to offence, they are often little more than fashionable sound-bites. Other ideas are even described as dangerous; those who espouse the ‘wrong’ ideas branded as modern-day heretics. But can we ever hope to approach the truth if we stifle dissent? Is intellectual life on the wane? Is it conservative to cling to old ideas, or if we don’t stand on the shoulders of giants, are we doomed to stand still ? Might truth seeking be more important than the Truth?

Speakers:

Andrew Keen entrepreneur; founder, Audiocafe.com; author, Digital Vertigo: how today's online social revolution is dividing, diminishing, and disorienting us Professor Ivan Krastev Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia; permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna Dr Ellie Lee reader in social policy, University of Kent, Canterbury; director, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies Rob Riemen writer and cultural philosopher; founder & president, Netherlands-based Nexus Institute; author, Nobility of Sprit: a forgotten ideal and The Eternal Return of Fascism Chair: Claire Fox director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze

Free will is at the root of our notions of moral responsibility, choice and judgment. It is at the heart of our conception of the human individual as an autonomous end in himself. Nevertheless, free will is notoriously hard to pin down. Philosophers have denied its existence on the basis that we are determined by the laws of nature, society or history, insisting there is no evidence of free will in the iron chain of cause and effect. Theologians have argued everything happens according to the will of God, not man. And yet, when we decide we want something and act on that, it certainly seems as if we are choosing freely. Are we just kidding ourselves?

Some of the most profound contemporary challenges to the idea of free will come from neuroscientists, evolutionary psychologists and biologists. They argue we are effectively programmed to act in certain ways, and only feel as if we make choices. Some argue, for example, that we can easily be nudged into certain types of behaviour if only the right stimuli are applied. It is widely believed that advertising can make us buy things we don’t need or even want. Stronger forms of this reasoning can be found in the idea that early intervention, usually before the age of three, can determine the sort of adult a child will grow up to be. Without such intervention, we are told, their future will be determined by genetics, by their environment, by the way their parents treat them.

Nevertheless, common sense still gives strong support to the idea that we have free will. We understand there are relatively large areas of our lives in which it makes sense to say we could have acted differently, with correspondingly different results. The law recognises this too: it is no defence to say you stole because your parents were cruel to you. We feel remorse at opportunities we could have taken but did not. And we do sometimes choose to do the right thing even against our own interests: in extreme cases some even lay down their lives for others and for ideals. Jean-Paul Sartre argued, ‘the coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero’. Is the idea that we might be born cowards, or heroes, an excuse for not facing up to our moral responsibilities? Or is free will really an illusion, the by-product of a vain belief that we are all special?

Speakers:

Joe Friggieri professor of philosophy and former head of department, University of Malta; poet; playwright; theatre director; three-times winner, National Literary Prize

Dr Daniel Glaser head, special projects, public engagement, Wellcome Trust; honorary senior research fellow, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London Neal Lawson chair, Compass; author, All Consuming; former adviser to Gordon Brown; co-editor, Progressive Century Dr Ellie Lee reader in social policy, University of Kent, Canterbury; director, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies Chair: Angus Kennedy convenor, The Academy ; author, Being Cultured: in defence of discrimination Recorded on Sunday 21 October 2012 at the Battle of Ideas Festival at the Barbican in London.