Blogging teacher Shuggy is unimpressed by the case for faith schools. Grumpy puts up his hand and begs to differ with Sir...
Shuggy
As a liberal Christian I'm torn on the faith schools thing. But your position smacks too much of 'one size fits all - just make sure it's my size' for my liking.
At the state schools I went to in the 60s and 70s the standard pattern for assembly was effectively a short act of Christian worship. Is that still acceptable today? Or should religion be kept out of schools? If the latter, why do you think religious parents should be obliged to accept a school ethos based on the assumption that God is an irrelevance?
I think it's fair to say that Christians, Jews, Muslims and Sikhs (at least) have in common the belief that a right relationship with God involves (a) a commitment to moral behaviour understood as, at least ultimately, the keeping of God's commandments (as opposed to seeing moral codes as just arbitrary, or the product of human reason, or a matter of social convenience), and (b) worship. A school where these things don't happen is not just some kind of neutral forum for cultural exchange, it is functionally speaking atheistic. Religion becomes a private interest with essentially the same status as stamp collecting - and that simply doesn't do justice to the place it occupies in religious people's lives - and which they would wish it to occupy in their children's lives.
It's very easy and very unfair to argue from the worst case scenarios - schools teaching creationist mumbo-jumbo, schools turning out little Rangers supporters and little Celtic supporters, schools teaching kids to despise infidel 'filth'. But it's simply nonsense to imply that the average British church school turns its pupils into crazed, intolerant fanatics. And in any case it's poor reasoning to decide the issue of principle on these grounds. Where it can be done without entrenching dangerous divisions, why shouldn't parents have the option of sending their children to a school which takes their beliefs seriously?
Best,
Grumpy
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Robert Mugabe, world-beater
Who would have imagined, when Zimbabwe gained its independence in 1980, that it would win the melancholy distinction of becoming the country with the world’s shortest life expectancy? Yes, Comrade Bob has managed to outdo even Sierra Leone. I don’t suppose for a moment that the people who assure us they know how to Make Poverty History will have much to say about this almost entirely home-made African tragedy – apart from demanding that the rest of the world picks up the tab.
In contrast, neighbouring Mozambique seems to be sub-Saharan Africa’s big success story at the moment. This, too, is not likely to be of great interest to the MPHers, since the secret of the country’s success is the embrace of the free market by its one-time Marxist rulers. And to be honest, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg. Growth is running at an impressive 8%, but corruption remains rampant, the state is dependent on aid for half of its budget, and only the southernmost corner of the country, where the capital Maputo is located, is really feeling the benefits of the boom. Even so, where Africa is concerned a readiness to be grateful for small mercies is mandatory. [facts from a recent article in the print edition of the Berlin Tagesspiegel]
Why so cynical about Making Poverty History, Grumpy? For a start, it’s the simplistic programme that’s presented as a panacea for Africa’s ills. It’s the feeling that for the big aid charities the whole thing is basically a marketing campaign. It’s the way it gives aging rock stars and sundry other oversized egos the opportunity to proclaim ‘what a wonderful world this would be if only everybody was as caring as me’. It’s the bullying insinuation that anyone who dares disagree with the programme is pro-poverty. It’s the way Africa and its tragedies are turned into the arena for a Manichaean battle between good and evil in which the participants on both sides are rich westerners, whilst the poor buggers who actually live in the continent are turned into passive spectators.
I’m all for free trade. Well, now you mention it, I’m not thrilled about my best client offshoring work to Sri Lanka. But so long as it’s a question of letting in cheap food from Africa I’m delighted as a non-farmer to be able to occupy the moral high ground at no cost to myself whatsoever. But free trade won’t work magic.
Why not? If Europe and America were to stop protecting their farmers, African farmers could undercut them simply because their labour is dirt cheap. And then what? Three scenarios:-
Or consider the Ivory Coast, once the economic powerhouse of French-speaking West Africa, now pauperized by civil strife.
So, you ask, what are you going to do about it, Grumpy? My programme is modest at present, I must admit. I plan to carry on drinking fairly traded Tanzanian tea. I'll also continue listening to African music, which needs absolutely no PC special pleading. I'll back political initiatives that are tailored to the realities on the ground rather than to my own desire to enjoy a nice warm glow of self-righteousness. And, pathetic as it may sound to some, I'll try to keep remembering the peoples of Africa in my prayers.
[PS Since writing this, I've read this from Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, putting Mozambique's achievements in an even more sobering perspective.]
[PPS And Bob Geldof, no less, has been saying much the same thing - of course in rather more colourful language.]
In contrast, neighbouring Mozambique seems to be sub-Saharan Africa’s big success story at the moment. This, too, is not likely to be of great interest to the MPHers, since the secret of the country’s success is the embrace of the free market by its one-time Marxist rulers. And to be honest, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg. Growth is running at an impressive 8%, but corruption remains rampant, the state is dependent on aid for half of its budget, and only the southernmost corner of the country, where the capital Maputo is located, is really feeling the benefits of the boom. Even so, where Africa is concerned a readiness to be grateful for small mercies is mandatory. [facts from a recent article in the print edition of the Berlin Tagesspiegel]
Why so cynical about Making Poverty History, Grumpy? For a start, it’s the simplistic programme that’s presented as a panacea for Africa’s ills. It’s the feeling that for the big aid charities the whole thing is basically a marketing campaign. It’s the way it gives aging rock stars and sundry other oversized egos the opportunity to proclaim ‘what a wonderful world this would be if only everybody was as caring as me’. It’s the bullying insinuation that anyone who dares disagree with the programme is pro-poverty. It’s the way Africa and its tragedies are turned into the arena for a Manichaean battle between good and evil in which the participants on both sides are rich westerners, whilst the poor buggers who actually live in the continent are turned into passive spectators.
I’m all for free trade. Well, now you mention it, I’m not thrilled about my best client offshoring work to Sri Lanka. But so long as it’s a question of letting in cheap food from Africa I’m delighted as a non-farmer to be able to occupy the moral high ground at no cost to myself whatsoever. But free trade won’t work magic.
Why not? If Europe and America were to stop protecting their farmers, African farmers could undercut them simply because their labour is dirt cheap. And then what? Three scenarios:-
- Their labour stays dirt cheap, ergo they stay poor.
- Labour costs increase and the competitive advantage conferred by cheap labour disappears. Farmers can’t export their produce, ergo they stay poor.
- African countries build on their export successes to invest in things that will consolidate their competitive advantage and start moving away from reliance on cheap labour. People have a chance to start getting less poor.
Or consider the Ivory Coast, once the economic powerhouse of French-speaking West Africa, now pauperized by civil strife.
So, you ask, what are you going to do about it, Grumpy? My programme is modest at present, I must admit. I plan to carry on drinking fairly traded Tanzanian tea. I'll also continue listening to African music, which needs absolutely no PC special pleading. I'll back political initiatives that are tailored to the realities on the ground rather than to my own desire to enjoy a nice warm glow of self-righteousness. And, pathetic as it may sound to some, I'll try to keep remembering the peoples of Africa in my prayers.
[PS Since writing this, I've read this from Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, putting Mozambique's achievements in an even more sobering perspective.]
[PPS And Bob Geldof, no less, has been saying much the same thing - of course in rather more colourful language.]
Monday, April 17, 2006
Secular Bigots of the Independent
Introducing an occasional series - a gem from Friday's Indie:-
'Sir: Ah, the quiet arrogant sanctimonious ignorance that comes from being a "person of faith". "People of faith remain more likely to give, volunteer, cook a meal for a neighbour, lead a charity, be happy, adjust successfully to ageing and vote", says Francis Davis (Letters, 10 April), with pious assurance. I know many atheists who do all of those things, me amongst them. And we do it not because we are "people of faith" but because we like our fellow men. And we don't need the promise of eternal bliss or 72 virgins or whatever to motivate us, just common humanity.
'"Cook a meal for a neighbour"? Ask the "people of faith" in Ireland, India, Iraq, Israel, Nigeria, the Sudan etc when they last did that.'
Touching to know that someone out there is capable of liking even a quietly arrogant, sanctimonious ignoramus like Mr Grumpy. Happy Easter!
'Sir: Ah, the quiet arrogant sanctimonious ignorance that comes from being a "person of faith". "People of faith remain more likely to give, volunteer, cook a meal for a neighbour, lead a charity, be happy, adjust successfully to ageing and vote", says Francis Davis (Letters, 10 April), with pious assurance. I know many atheists who do all of those things, me amongst them. And we do it not because we are "people of faith" but because we like our fellow men. And we don't need the promise of eternal bliss or 72 virgins or whatever to motivate us, just common humanity.
'"Cook a meal for a neighbour"? Ask the "people of faith" in Ireland, India, Iraq, Israel, Nigeria, the Sudan etc when they last did that.'
Touching to know that someone out there is capable of liking even a quietly arrogant, sanctimonious ignoramus like Mr Grumpy. Happy Easter!
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
What is racism?
Normblog has a debate between Eve Garrard and Shalom Lappin on Leeds University's suspension of Frank Ellis (see my past posts on the subject here and, more substantially, here).
I esteem both protagonists highly in other contexts, but in this case I think both of them make a crucial omission by not unpacking the concept 'racism'. We have become so used to this being the deadliest of modern sins that we have stopped noticing that it conflates two concepts which are fundamentally different in nature - a moral one and a factual one.
The moral component (let's call it racism A for convenience) is, obviously, the principle that Dr Ellis should not give different marks to two equally able students because one is black and the other white. 'Odious' is a description rightly applied to such behaviour, and if Dr Ellis has been guilty of it he should be sacked forthwith. But in fact this is not what he has been charged with.
The factual component of 'racism' (call it racism B) is the assertion of differences between populations which correlate with racial identity - especially if such differences are alleged to be innate. Dr Ellis believes there is a biologically determined difference between the average intelligences of black and white people. Clearly this is a factual assertion which may be right or wrong. Its truth value is a matter for scientific enquiry, and it is not the case that there is no evidence whatsoever which supports it. That being so, applying the word 'odious' to Dr Ellis's opinion is, strictly speaking, meaningless.
And note that the morally odious behaviour implied by the word 'racist' is not logically entailed by Dr Ellis's opinion about a matter of fact. For he is certainly not committed to the view that every white person is more intelligent than every black person. To take an analogy which exaggerates the point, I think it is reasonable to believe that on average adults are better at composing music than children, but it does not follow that I think I could compose better music than the infant Mozart.
Note also that the question whether Dr Ellis would be fit to serve as a juror in a case involving a black defendant is, logically speaking, a red herring - unless he has also expressed views about innate racial differences in morality and criminality. It is quite conceivable that he is an unusually fair-minded person.
I'm not suggesting that the conflation of racism A and racism B into a single concept is simply arbitrary. Empirically it is obvious that they frequently go together in the sense that beliefs about racial difference are invoked to justify racial discrimination. In reaction to this liberals typically refuse to consider the possibility that the claims of racism B may have any truth to them because they assume that this would legitimate the morally intolerable racism A.
But there is no logical necessity about the connection. It is possible for a white person to hate and despise black people (or vice versa) without having any illusion that there are rational grounds for doing so. Equally it is possible that a white person holding Dr Ellis's views would invariably treat individual black people with faultless courtesy, respect and fairness.
Indeed, where racism A and racism B are conflated into an ideology, it is always illogical and irrational. Factual propositions about racial groups can never supply a moral justification for treating an individual human being as something other than what he or she is. Under apartheid in South Africa you could win a Nobel Prize and still be a second-class citizen because of the colour of your skin. No amount of scientific evidence about racial differences could ever have made this morally tolerable.
Given the lack of a necessary logical connection between racism A and racism B, those who assume that if Dr Ellis holds racist opinions he must be guilty of racial discrimination become guilty of prejudice. The only kind of evidence that would prove him guilty of discrimination is evidence that he does in fact practise discrimination.
PS I wrote in my first post on this topic about the special status of Holocaust denial, and it is worth reiterating the point briefly. Here the factual claim has an inbuilt moral component, for its plain implication is that all Jews, or the vast majority, are morally deficient, being involved in a vast conspiracy to defraud and manipulate the rest of the human race. The historical evidence for the Holocaust is dismissed on the basis of a prior assumption that Jews are congenital liars. Nobody holding this belief can possibly be relied on to treat an individual Jew with the respect due to a fellow human being - whereas this, mutatis mutandis, is precisely not the case with Dr Ellis and his black students.
I esteem both protagonists highly in other contexts, but in this case I think both of them make a crucial omission by not unpacking the concept 'racism'. We have become so used to this being the deadliest of modern sins that we have stopped noticing that it conflates two concepts which are fundamentally different in nature - a moral one and a factual one.
The moral component (let's call it racism A for convenience) is, obviously, the principle that Dr Ellis should not give different marks to two equally able students because one is black and the other white. 'Odious' is a description rightly applied to such behaviour, and if Dr Ellis has been guilty of it he should be sacked forthwith. But in fact this is not what he has been charged with.
The factual component of 'racism' (call it racism B) is the assertion of differences between populations which correlate with racial identity - especially if such differences are alleged to be innate. Dr Ellis believes there is a biologically determined difference between the average intelligences of black and white people. Clearly this is a factual assertion which may be right or wrong. Its truth value is a matter for scientific enquiry, and it is not the case that there is no evidence whatsoever which supports it. That being so, applying the word 'odious' to Dr Ellis's opinion is, strictly speaking, meaningless.
And note that the morally odious behaviour implied by the word 'racist' is not logically entailed by Dr Ellis's opinion about a matter of fact. For he is certainly not committed to the view that every white person is more intelligent than every black person. To take an analogy which exaggerates the point, I think it is reasonable to believe that on average adults are better at composing music than children, but it does not follow that I think I could compose better music than the infant Mozart.
Note also that the question whether Dr Ellis would be fit to serve as a juror in a case involving a black defendant is, logically speaking, a red herring - unless he has also expressed views about innate racial differences in morality and criminality. It is quite conceivable that he is an unusually fair-minded person.
I'm not suggesting that the conflation of racism A and racism B into a single concept is simply arbitrary. Empirically it is obvious that they frequently go together in the sense that beliefs about racial difference are invoked to justify racial discrimination. In reaction to this liberals typically refuse to consider the possibility that the claims of racism B may have any truth to them because they assume that this would legitimate the morally intolerable racism A.
But there is no logical necessity about the connection. It is possible for a white person to hate and despise black people (or vice versa) without having any illusion that there are rational grounds for doing so. Equally it is possible that a white person holding Dr Ellis's views would invariably treat individual black people with faultless courtesy, respect and fairness.
Indeed, where racism A and racism B are conflated into an ideology, it is always illogical and irrational. Factual propositions about racial groups can never supply a moral justification for treating an individual human being as something other than what he or she is. Under apartheid in South Africa you could win a Nobel Prize and still be a second-class citizen because of the colour of your skin. No amount of scientific evidence about racial differences could ever have made this morally tolerable.
Given the lack of a necessary logical connection between racism A and racism B, those who assume that if Dr Ellis holds racist opinions he must be guilty of racial discrimination become guilty of prejudice. The only kind of evidence that would prove him guilty of discrimination is evidence that he does in fact practise discrimination.
PS I wrote in my first post on this topic about the special status of Holocaust denial, and it is worth reiterating the point briefly. Here the factual claim has an inbuilt moral component, for its plain implication is that all Jews, or the vast majority, are morally deficient, being involved in a vast conspiracy to defraud and manipulate the rest of the human race. The historical evidence for the Holocaust is dismissed on the basis of a prior assumption that Jews are congenital liars. Nobody holding this belief can possibly be relied on to treat an individual Jew with the respect due to a fellow human being - whereas this, mutatis mutandis, is precisely not the case with Dr Ellis and his black students.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Greenham grannies
From the Indie: two grandmothers arrested for trying to break into a military base. Predictable outcry from the civil libertarians.
Who seem to me to be overlooking a fairly elementary distinction between protest, which is a basic democratic right, and sabotage, which isn’t. Either we need these bases for our defence or we don’t. If we don’t, let’s close them down and spend the money on schools and hospitals. If we do, they need to be secure, and it is perfectly reasonable for their security to have legal backup. There are, after all, threats which didn’t exist in their present form when Mrs John and Mrs Boyes were camping at Greenham 25 years ago. Of course these women are not ‘the new face of terrorism’, but the law is the law. Or would the Indie rather have laws specifically targetting young men with brown faces?
And who is to decide whether we need the bases? Mrs John makes it quite clear that she wants to physically close them down, given half a chance. I’d prefer it to be our elected representatives who do the deciding rather than a bunch of activists, however many grandchildren they have. When she becomes Prime Minister Mrs John can scrap the lot. But not before.
Who seem to me to be overlooking a fairly elementary distinction between protest, which is a basic democratic right, and sabotage, which isn’t. Either we need these bases for our defence or we don’t. If we don’t, let’s close them down and spend the money on schools and hospitals. If we do, they need to be secure, and it is perfectly reasonable for their security to have legal backup. There are, after all, threats which didn’t exist in their present form when Mrs John and Mrs Boyes were camping at Greenham 25 years ago. Of course these women are not ‘the new face of terrorism’, but the law is the law. Or would the Indie rather have laws specifically targetting young men with brown faces?
And who is to decide whether we need the bases? Mrs John makes it quite clear that she wants to physically close them down, given half a chance. I’d prefer it to be our elected representatives who do the deciding rather than a bunch of activists, however many grandchildren they have. When she becomes Prime Minister Mrs John can scrap the lot. But not before.
Friday, March 31, 2006
I disagree with what you say...
So Leeds University have suspended lecturer Frank Ellis for saying that he believes there are innate racial differences in intelligence. If you’re looking for somebody willing to stand up for academic freedom, don’t bother asking a university administrator.
Happily, though, the voice of reason is not so easy to suppress altogether, and it can sometimes be heard from the most surprising source. This is from a BBC item on Dr Ellis a couple of weeks ago:-
Dr Munira Mirza, a tutor in multiculturalism and community relations at the University of Kent, told 5 Live she believed IQ differences could be explained by social and historical factors and did not exist for biological reasons.
But she said: "I don't agree with his views but do defend his right to express them. That is the lifeblood of the campus - people can express views and be held to account for them.
"He's not calling all black people stupid - that is a caricature.
"Academics and students are resorting to lazy, blame-game discussion and not engaging in the debate," she continued.
"I would rather disagree with him openly and explain why his theories do not stand up."
There’s really nothing to add to that. It seems too much to hope that there are many more like Dr Mirza, but the existence of even one tutor in multiculturalism and community relations who thinks like this gives a salutary jolt to my prejudices.
Happily, though, the voice of reason is not so easy to suppress altogether, and it can sometimes be heard from the most surprising source. This is from a BBC item on Dr Ellis a couple of weeks ago:-
Dr Munira Mirza, a tutor in multiculturalism and community relations at the University of Kent, told 5 Live she believed IQ differences could be explained by social and historical factors and did not exist for biological reasons.
But she said: "I don't agree with his views but do defend his right to express them. That is the lifeblood of the campus - people can express views and be held to account for them.
"He's not calling all black people stupid - that is a caricature.
"Academics and students are resorting to lazy, blame-game discussion and not engaging in the debate," she continued.
"I would rather disagree with him openly and explain why his theories do not stand up."
There’s really nothing to add to that. It seems too much to hope that there are many more like Dr Mirza, but the existence of even one tutor in multiculturalism and community relations who thinks like this gives a salutary jolt to my prejudices.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Arrêtez le monde, la France veut descendre
Imagine you are a boss considering giving a graduate her first job. Are you more or less likely to take the risk if you know that, however lazy and incompetent she turns out to be, the only way you can sack her is via a time-consuming, costly and stressful legal process in which you have no guarantee of winning?
A no-brainer, you think? For the students who took to the streets of France on Saturday, merely posing the question evdiently betrays a hopelessly Anglo-Saxon cast of mind.
I saw a man with a greying ponytail interviewed on TV; he said he was proud that his children were showing their generation was not apolitical after all. And which old lefty could resist a pang of nostalgia, seeing the streets of Paris packed with marching students and trade unionists? Sadly, appearances are deceptive.
Le mouvement de mai was a central political reference point for me for a long time. However many illusions I may now think I had, its exuberance, creativity and utopian idealism still hold a certain fascination.
The fear-driven conservatism of Saturday’s demonstrators could hardly be more different. And if the government caves in, as seems highly likely, France will have taken one more step towards the alternative to global capitalism tried and tested in North Korea. It is a sad spectacle for admirers of French culture and, as Will Hutton of the Observer points out, a big worry for Europe as a whole:-
'British Eurosceptics will delight, but a stagnant, angry, drifting Europe is not in Britain's interests. France and the French have lost the plot. This is not just a crisis for them, but for us. If France goes absent, the EU will lose its drive and purpose. And that is exactly what is happening.'
A no-brainer, you think? For the students who took to the streets of France on Saturday, merely posing the question evdiently betrays a hopelessly Anglo-Saxon cast of mind.
I saw a man with a greying ponytail interviewed on TV; he said he was proud that his children were showing their generation was not apolitical after all. And which old lefty could resist a pang of nostalgia, seeing the streets of Paris packed with marching students and trade unionists? Sadly, appearances are deceptive.
Le mouvement de mai was a central political reference point for me for a long time. However many illusions I may now think I had, its exuberance, creativity and utopian idealism still hold a certain fascination.
The fear-driven conservatism of Saturday’s demonstrators could hardly be more different. And if the government caves in, as seems highly likely, France will have taken one more step towards the alternative to global capitalism tried and tested in North Korea. It is a sad spectacle for admirers of French culture and, as Will Hutton of the Observer points out, a big worry for Europe as a whole:-
'British Eurosceptics will delight, but a stagnant, angry, drifting Europe is not in Britain's interests. France and the French have lost the plot. This is not just a crisis for them, but for us. If France goes absent, the EU will lose its drive and purpose. And that is exactly what is happening.'
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Top blogger confesses: 'I think Grumpy's job is interesting'
From normblog:-
From the back page of the Bookseller for 10 March:
How boring is this? If you take the ISBN number of any book and multiply the first digit by 10, the second by nine, the third by eight and so on, and then add all the answers together, the total is always divisible by 11.
I didn't find it boring. I tried it with several books, and it was true for all of them. It's no accident.
Any time you'd like to hear some of my best purchase ledger anecdotes, Norm...
From the back page of the Bookseller for 10 March:
How boring is this? If you take the ISBN number of any book and multiply the first digit by 10, the second by nine, the third by eight and so on, and then add all the answers together, the total is always divisible by 11.
I didn't find it boring. I tried it with several books, and it was true for all of them. It's no accident.
Any time you'd like to hear some of my best purchase ledger anecdotes, Norm...
Monday, March 13, 2006
Frank Ellis, David Irving and the limits of free speech
Reading the Observer’s Mary Riddell is a pleasure I permit myself only rarely. It simply takes up too much of my time. In her latest offering she examines the case of Frank Ellis, the Leeds University academic who believes there are genetically determined racial differences in IQ, and isn’t afraid to say so. This, we discover to our astonishment, turns out to be the perfect peg on which to hang a manifesto for the priority of political correctness over academic freedom.
Let me give a flavour of her argument by a quote concerning an academic in a different league from Dr Ellis:-
‘Larry Summers recently resigned as president of Harvard after a tenure in which he argued that women were genetically unsuited to the top echelons of science.’
No, Mary, he did not argue anything of the sort. If he had said anything so preposterous he would not be fit to be the Vice-Chancellor of the University of North Basingstoke. But he didn’t. What he did was to suggest that men are more likely on average than women to be genetically equipped to work in the ‘top echelons of science’. It does not mean that no women are so endowed. It does not tell us anything about whether Ms Riddell or I would make the better scientist. Since the numbers of people involved are tiny as a proportion to the human race as a whole, the implied genetic differences between the average man and the average woman are marginal at most.
If Ms Riddell thinks he did argue this – or, worse, if she doesn’t really care whether she has represented his views accurately or not – one is entitled to inquire whether she is suited to a job in the top echelons of journalism. And a fortiori, whether she has any qualifications whatsoever to pronounce on what restrictions ought to be placed on the views that may be expressed on a university campus.
It is bad enough that a heavyweight intellectual has been hounded out of the top job in the world’s most prestigious university for committing thought crimes – the Closing of the American Mind, indeed. It adds insult to injury when the favourite Sunday paper of Britain’s eggheads uncritically relays the myth that has, I strongly suspect, been carefully propagated in order to discredit him.
But we should not, in any case, look to Ms Riddell for an understanding of the value of academic freedom. One of the more bizarre of the article’s many non sequiturs is this:-
‘Why should universities, a crucible of diversity, put up with behaviour that would not be tolerated for a moment in a City boardroom?’
George Orwell would have savoured this sentence. We promote ‘diversity’, that most fashionable of values, by silencing an oddball with unpopular views as soon as the bien pensants take offence. In other words by reducing diversity.
So what of the arguments about intelligence and race? Ms Riddell names one well-known scientist (Arthur Jensen) who claims there is a link and another (Stephen Jay Gould) who rejects the claim. Gould and others are said to have ‘demolished’ it. But what am I to make of this assertion? Her misrepresentation of Summers’ views does not encourage confidence that she is qualified to assess the evidence herself, nor that she has any understanding of what is involved in ‘demolishing’ a scientific theory. I tend rather to understand her as meaning that Gould tells her what she wants to hear. It is, of course, what People Like Us all want to hear – the self-evident truth that all men and women are created equal (even if there is nobody to do the creating) and that all inequalities are social constructions which we can and should deconstruct. This is the golden thread that connects us via postmodernism, anti-racism, feminism, liberation theology, social democracy, Marxism, the French Revolution, Rousseau, etc. etc. etc. to the intellectual earthquake which we call the Enlightenment.
And yet, we may all be wrong. We may be wrong even though that would mean that the way we understand our world and the assumptions that guide our action in it really were reduced to rubble.
Allow me to get a little autobiographical. The question of the heritability of IQ has niggled at me for a long time. Circa 1979, when I was a practising Trotskyist, I read a book called The Science and Politics of IQ. The author, psychologist Leon J. Kamin, argued that the alleged evidence for heritability extracted from separated identical twin studies was actually a politically motivated mirage conjured up by sloppy statistics. Though I was almost entirely incompetent to evaluate Kamin’s statistical arguments, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Egalitarianism lived to fight another day – even if the book’s optimistic conclusions did prompt me to wonder how one could arrange for all the world’s children to get the professional middle-class upbringing which was apparently the key to unlock their full intellectual potential.
Around the same time the case of Sir Cyril Burt, the IQ specialist who was discovered to have fabricated an imaginary research assistant and fiddled some of his research, gave us the evidence we needed to dismiss the entire field as the province of arch-reactionary charlatans.
Fast forward to the last couple of years. Very few msm journos will touch the subject at all. But there are occasional exceptions. An article in the Spectator, admittedly a right of centre magazine but a reasonably reputable one, tells me that studies consistently show a correlation between IQ and race. The writer gives no intimations of being animated by racial bigotry, indeed he goes out of his way to establish that he is not, but of course he might just be clever enough to disguise it. In any case, white supremacist pride is somewhat dented here by the suggestion that the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans are the brainiest of all.
And even the Holy of Holies has been penetrated. An article in the Guardian suggests that the progressive orthodoxy claiming race to be an ideological construct with no genetic basis is no longer tenable. ‘You’re going to have to deal with this sooner or later, so you may as well put your thinking caps on now’ is in effect the message to the left. By the by, this piece contains the charming insinuation that American Jews are quite happy to lap up racist pseudo-science so long as it is telling them they are the true Master Race. This is the kind of thing that plays well with Guardian readers these days.
Back to Mary Riddell. She wants to convey the impression of dismissively sweeping Frank Ellis’s views into the scientific dustbin where creationism, aromatherapy and the like repose. But methinks she is not quite as confident of her case as she would have us believe. So it is not enough for her to inform us that these views have been demolished; she must immediately add that they are ‘hateful’. They are a cause for ‘fear’ among black students, even though there is no evidence that Ellis has practised academic discrimination (if he has, let the book be thrown at him), and indeed no logical reason why his views should necessarily lead him to do so. It is the same elementary misunderstanding that Ms Riddell betrays in her comment on Larry Summers: Ellis is plainly not claiming that no black people are intelligent enough to study at a university – and it is no compliment to black students to imply that they lack the intelligence to understand this. That’s not the way Ms Riddell sees it, though: ‘[y]oung people are robust and independent thinkers’, she says, but inevitably the next word is ‘but’ – not so robust as not to need shielding from inappropriate exposure to opinions that may unsettle them.
Furthermore, Ms Riddell feels the need to bring additional charges against Dr Ellis to ensure the central allegation that he is an Evil Fascist Bastard is properly substantiated. He ‘blames Africans for getting Aids’. Now I am aware of the huge numbers of individuals tragically infected by cheating spouses, parents, rapists and so on. I also know that progressive orthodoxy forbids us to hold Africans responsible for anything that goes wrong on their continent. But taking the continent’s population as a whole, one must surely concur with the blogger who asks ‘Does she think there is a huge worldwide army of whites holding blacks down and forcibly injecting them with AIDS?’
Dr Ellis also ‘thinks the BNP “a bit too socialist” for his liking’. You follow the innuendo: if he thinks the BNP ‘too socialist’ he is even further to the right than it is, and the further right you are the more racist you must be. QED.
In fact this doesn’t follow at all. Whether the BNP is ‘socialist’ has to do with its economic policies. Now I haven’t studied these myself, as I’m not planning to vote BNP any time soon. But I do know that the party’s ideological mentors did not call themselves National Socialists for nothing, and that many German democrats stood to the conservative side of the Nazis in matters of economics. So the insinuation that Dr Ellis is too racist for the BNP is simply a smear.
Yet another charge against Ellis is that ‘he refers approvingly to “research” claiming an average IQ of 70 for sub-Saharan Africans, a figure “close to, or within the range of mental retardation”.’ This is certainly a shocking figure. But, as Tim Worstall points out, ‘To claim that the current population of the area has a lower IQ than it could (possibly by as much as claimed) most certainly is not [controversial].’ At least some of this is certainly attributable to malnutrition and other environmental causes associated with extreme poverty. The controversial bit is whether such a huge IQ gap can be accounted for by environmental factors alone.
So I see precious little evidence of Dr Ellis having said anything that would justify a curtailment of academic freedom. But now you may well ask, OK Grumpy, so you’re the great defender of free speech, what about David Irving? If you reckon Leeds University should let Ellis keep his job, should they also award Irving the chair of Modern European History as soon as he’s done his time? Mary Riddell invokes his case, disapproving of his imprisonment without telling us whether she would let him teach. But I think there is a crucial difference between the two cases.
The Holocaust is as well attested as any event in history. The volume of eyewitness testimony is immense. The Holocaust denier does not seek to deny that this testimony exists. He (or she I should add in principle, though I’ve yet to come across a female of the species) claims that it is all lies, that all those who claim to have been victims are pathological liars involved in history’s most massive conspiracy. It is a claim that arises out of anti-Semitism and has no other function than to promote anti-Semitism. You don’t have to love Jews collectively to accept that the Holocaust really happened. You just have to not hate them or believe they are subhuman.
When it comes to IQ and race, the jury is out. There are serious scientists on both sides of the argument. The truth is contingent on the findings of a complex and rapidly evolving science. There are reasons why somebody might in good faith, without any racist motivation, find the case for innate racial differences compelling – although it is very hard for such a person to be rightly understood if they go public. Note that I make no judgement as to whether Dr Ellis actually is such a person.
What this means is that, although in both cases there is a taboo in operation, they are opposites in terms of the relation of the taboo to the truth claims involved. The taboo against Holocaust denial arises from respect for a truth whose denial is simultaneously and inextricably both intellectually absurd and morally intolerable. It represents, if you will, an entirely well-founded secular sense of the sacred – and where there is a sense of the sacred, there is an instinctive abhorrence of the blasphemous.
In the case of IQ and race, on the other hand, progressive opinion came to a tacit agreement that a certain view must be intellectually absurd because it was morally – or at least politically - intolerable. It lionized the scientists who supported this consensus and rubbished those who didn’t. It is the pre-existent taboo that shapes Mary Riddell’s (for instance) perceptions of what truth claims may be made. That same secular sense of the sacred is invoked, but here it is fatally flawed because it ultimately rests on political expediency in the place of truth. And truth will out. Galileo was terrorized into retraction, but there was no unthinking what he had thought.
It is this distinction which means there is an arguable case for locking up a Holocaust denier which does not extend to an arguable case for locking up – or even sacking – someone who says there are innate racial differences in IQ. I am well placed to understand the horror evoked in Germany (and doubtless in Austria too) by opinions whose inner logic threatens to drag the country back towards its darkest hour. But if the distinction makes a theoretical case, it also tells us that it is extremely dangerous to proceed in this way in practice. For if Holocaust deniers are locked up as a substitute for refuting their lies, what is to stop those who know no better from inferring that the relationship between taboo and truth is the same as in the case of IQ and race – that the taboo is primary, and the truth claims are shaky? Once that starts happening Irving and friends are really in business. It must not be allowed to happen.
And finally, what if we do find ourselves faced with incontrovertible evidence that Africa trails in the development stakes because its people are innately less intelligent than others? The egalitarian project based on ‘equal by accident of biology’ will have hit the buffers. A revival of Social Darwinism will beckon. Those who wish to reject it will need to abandon the attempt to derive values from scientific facts. ‘Equal in the sight of God’ is ultimately the only watchword which can be relied on to uphold our shared humanity.
Let me give a flavour of her argument by a quote concerning an academic in a different league from Dr Ellis:-
‘Larry Summers recently resigned as president of Harvard after a tenure in which he argued that women were genetically unsuited to the top echelons of science.’
No, Mary, he did not argue anything of the sort. If he had said anything so preposterous he would not be fit to be the Vice-Chancellor of the University of North Basingstoke. But he didn’t. What he did was to suggest that men are more likely on average than women to be genetically equipped to work in the ‘top echelons of science’. It does not mean that no women are so endowed. It does not tell us anything about whether Ms Riddell or I would make the better scientist. Since the numbers of people involved are tiny as a proportion to the human race as a whole, the implied genetic differences between the average man and the average woman are marginal at most.
If Ms Riddell thinks he did argue this – or, worse, if she doesn’t really care whether she has represented his views accurately or not – one is entitled to inquire whether she is suited to a job in the top echelons of journalism. And a fortiori, whether she has any qualifications whatsoever to pronounce on what restrictions ought to be placed on the views that may be expressed on a university campus.
It is bad enough that a heavyweight intellectual has been hounded out of the top job in the world’s most prestigious university for committing thought crimes – the Closing of the American Mind, indeed. It adds insult to injury when the favourite Sunday paper of Britain’s eggheads uncritically relays the myth that has, I strongly suspect, been carefully propagated in order to discredit him.
But we should not, in any case, look to Ms Riddell for an understanding of the value of academic freedom. One of the more bizarre of the article’s many non sequiturs is this:-
‘Why should universities, a crucible of diversity, put up with behaviour that would not be tolerated for a moment in a City boardroom?’
George Orwell would have savoured this sentence. We promote ‘diversity’, that most fashionable of values, by silencing an oddball with unpopular views as soon as the bien pensants take offence. In other words by reducing diversity.
So what of the arguments about intelligence and race? Ms Riddell names one well-known scientist (Arthur Jensen) who claims there is a link and another (Stephen Jay Gould) who rejects the claim. Gould and others are said to have ‘demolished’ it. But what am I to make of this assertion? Her misrepresentation of Summers’ views does not encourage confidence that she is qualified to assess the evidence herself, nor that she has any understanding of what is involved in ‘demolishing’ a scientific theory. I tend rather to understand her as meaning that Gould tells her what she wants to hear. It is, of course, what People Like Us all want to hear – the self-evident truth that all men and women are created equal (even if there is nobody to do the creating) and that all inequalities are social constructions which we can and should deconstruct. This is the golden thread that connects us via postmodernism, anti-racism, feminism, liberation theology, social democracy, Marxism, the French Revolution, Rousseau, etc. etc. etc. to the intellectual earthquake which we call the Enlightenment.
And yet, we may all be wrong. We may be wrong even though that would mean that the way we understand our world and the assumptions that guide our action in it really were reduced to rubble.
Allow me to get a little autobiographical. The question of the heritability of IQ has niggled at me for a long time. Circa 1979, when I was a practising Trotskyist, I read a book called The Science and Politics of IQ. The author, psychologist Leon J. Kamin, argued that the alleged evidence for heritability extracted from separated identical twin studies was actually a politically motivated mirage conjured up by sloppy statistics. Though I was almost entirely incompetent to evaluate Kamin’s statistical arguments, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Egalitarianism lived to fight another day – even if the book’s optimistic conclusions did prompt me to wonder how one could arrange for all the world’s children to get the professional middle-class upbringing which was apparently the key to unlock their full intellectual potential.
Around the same time the case of Sir Cyril Burt, the IQ specialist who was discovered to have fabricated an imaginary research assistant and fiddled some of his research, gave us the evidence we needed to dismiss the entire field as the province of arch-reactionary charlatans.
Fast forward to the last couple of years. Very few msm journos will touch the subject at all. But there are occasional exceptions. An article in the Spectator, admittedly a right of centre magazine but a reasonably reputable one, tells me that studies consistently show a correlation between IQ and race. The writer gives no intimations of being animated by racial bigotry, indeed he goes out of his way to establish that he is not, but of course he might just be clever enough to disguise it. In any case, white supremacist pride is somewhat dented here by the suggestion that the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans are the brainiest of all.
And even the Holy of Holies has been penetrated. An article in the Guardian suggests that the progressive orthodoxy claiming race to be an ideological construct with no genetic basis is no longer tenable. ‘You’re going to have to deal with this sooner or later, so you may as well put your thinking caps on now’ is in effect the message to the left. By the by, this piece contains the charming insinuation that American Jews are quite happy to lap up racist pseudo-science so long as it is telling them they are the true Master Race. This is the kind of thing that plays well with Guardian readers these days.
Back to Mary Riddell. She wants to convey the impression of dismissively sweeping Frank Ellis’s views into the scientific dustbin where creationism, aromatherapy and the like repose. But methinks she is not quite as confident of her case as she would have us believe. So it is not enough for her to inform us that these views have been demolished; she must immediately add that they are ‘hateful’. They are a cause for ‘fear’ among black students, even though there is no evidence that Ellis has practised academic discrimination (if he has, let the book be thrown at him), and indeed no logical reason why his views should necessarily lead him to do so. It is the same elementary misunderstanding that Ms Riddell betrays in her comment on Larry Summers: Ellis is plainly not claiming that no black people are intelligent enough to study at a university – and it is no compliment to black students to imply that they lack the intelligence to understand this. That’s not the way Ms Riddell sees it, though: ‘[y]oung people are robust and independent thinkers’, she says, but inevitably the next word is ‘but’ – not so robust as not to need shielding from inappropriate exposure to opinions that may unsettle them.
Furthermore, Ms Riddell feels the need to bring additional charges against Dr Ellis to ensure the central allegation that he is an Evil Fascist Bastard is properly substantiated. He ‘blames Africans for getting Aids’. Now I am aware of the huge numbers of individuals tragically infected by cheating spouses, parents, rapists and so on. I also know that progressive orthodoxy forbids us to hold Africans responsible for anything that goes wrong on their continent. But taking the continent’s population as a whole, one must surely concur with the blogger who asks ‘Does she think there is a huge worldwide army of whites holding blacks down and forcibly injecting them with AIDS?’
Dr Ellis also ‘thinks the BNP “a bit too socialist” for his liking’. You follow the innuendo: if he thinks the BNP ‘too socialist’ he is even further to the right than it is, and the further right you are the more racist you must be. QED.
In fact this doesn’t follow at all. Whether the BNP is ‘socialist’ has to do with its economic policies. Now I haven’t studied these myself, as I’m not planning to vote BNP any time soon. But I do know that the party’s ideological mentors did not call themselves National Socialists for nothing, and that many German democrats stood to the conservative side of the Nazis in matters of economics. So the insinuation that Dr Ellis is too racist for the BNP is simply a smear.
Yet another charge against Ellis is that ‘he refers approvingly to “research” claiming an average IQ of 70 for sub-Saharan Africans, a figure “close to, or within the range of mental retardation”.’ This is certainly a shocking figure. But, as Tim Worstall points out, ‘To claim that the current population of the area has a lower IQ than it could (possibly by as much as claimed) most certainly is not [controversial].’ At least some of this is certainly attributable to malnutrition and other environmental causes associated with extreme poverty. The controversial bit is whether such a huge IQ gap can be accounted for by environmental factors alone.
So I see precious little evidence of Dr Ellis having said anything that would justify a curtailment of academic freedom. But now you may well ask, OK Grumpy, so you’re the great defender of free speech, what about David Irving? If you reckon Leeds University should let Ellis keep his job, should they also award Irving the chair of Modern European History as soon as he’s done his time? Mary Riddell invokes his case, disapproving of his imprisonment without telling us whether she would let him teach. But I think there is a crucial difference between the two cases.
The Holocaust is as well attested as any event in history. The volume of eyewitness testimony is immense. The Holocaust denier does not seek to deny that this testimony exists. He (or she I should add in principle, though I’ve yet to come across a female of the species) claims that it is all lies, that all those who claim to have been victims are pathological liars involved in history’s most massive conspiracy. It is a claim that arises out of anti-Semitism and has no other function than to promote anti-Semitism. You don’t have to love Jews collectively to accept that the Holocaust really happened. You just have to not hate them or believe they are subhuman.
When it comes to IQ and race, the jury is out. There are serious scientists on both sides of the argument. The truth is contingent on the findings of a complex and rapidly evolving science. There are reasons why somebody might in good faith, without any racist motivation, find the case for innate racial differences compelling – although it is very hard for such a person to be rightly understood if they go public. Note that I make no judgement as to whether Dr Ellis actually is such a person.
What this means is that, although in both cases there is a taboo in operation, they are opposites in terms of the relation of the taboo to the truth claims involved. The taboo against Holocaust denial arises from respect for a truth whose denial is simultaneously and inextricably both intellectually absurd and morally intolerable. It represents, if you will, an entirely well-founded secular sense of the sacred – and where there is a sense of the sacred, there is an instinctive abhorrence of the blasphemous.
In the case of IQ and race, on the other hand, progressive opinion came to a tacit agreement that a certain view must be intellectually absurd because it was morally – or at least politically - intolerable. It lionized the scientists who supported this consensus and rubbished those who didn’t. It is the pre-existent taboo that shapes Mary Riddell’s (for instance) perceptions of what truth claims may be made. That same secular sense of the sacred is invoked, but here it is fatally flawed because it ultimately rests on political expediency in the place of truth. And truth will out. Galileo was terrorized into retraction, but there was no unthinking what he had thought.
It is this distinction which means there is an arguable case for locking up a Holocaust denier which does not extend to an arguable case for locking up – or even sacking – someone who says there are innate racial differences in IQ. I am well placed to understand the horror evoked in Germany (and doubtless in Austria too) by opinions whose inner logic threatens to drag the country back towards its darkest hour. But if the distinction makes a theoretical case, it also tells us that it is extremely dangerous to proceed in this way in practice. For if Holocaust deniers are locked up as a substitute for refuting their lies, what is to stop those who know no better from inferring that the relationship between taboo and truth is the same as in the case of IQ and race – that the taboo is primary, and the truth claims are shaky? Once that starts happening Irving and friends are really in business. It must not be allowed to happen.
And finally, what if we do find ourselves faced with incontrovertible evidence that Africa trails in the development stakes because its people are innately less intelligent than others? The egalitarian project based on ‘equal by accident of biology’ will have hit the buffers. A revival of Social Darwinism will beckon. Those who wish to reject it will need to abandon the attempt to derive values from scientific facts. ‘Equal in the sight of God’ is ultimately the only watchword which can be relied on to uphold our shared humanity.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Quality of life
Gosh, that long since I last posted here?
Nothing special from me this time, just a pointer to two letters in today's Indie which are in their different ways worth reading. The fact that they appear on the same page of the paper is my only defence to the charge of appalling taste in linking them - apart from a suspicion that the writer of the first one enjoys a laugh as much as the next woman.
'I am severely disabled by spina bifida, hydrocephalus, emphysema and osteoporosis. I use a wheelchair full time, and need morphine on a daily basis for severe spinal pain. Even that doesn't always work, and when the pain is bad I cannot move, speak or think. What does Mr Hari think of my "quality of life"? Should I be subjected to the lethal injection he sees as the solution to suffering?'
'He may respond that as I want to live, I should be allowed to do so. The problem is that I didn't always want to live. Twenty years ago, when doctors wrongly thought I was terminally ill, I wanted to die, a settled wish that lasted about ten years. Had lethal injection been an option then I would have requested it. And if I had died then I would have missed the best years of my life. I really was "screaming in agony" then and often I still am. I can only hope that when I am in great pain, Mr Hari is not around waiting in the wings to "put me out of my misery".'
- from an incredibly moving letter by Alison Davis. Whilst Peter Coghlan has a job for a Good Samaritan...
'Scientific solution to a weight problem
'Sir: Guy Adams (Pandora, 9 March) asks how Geri Halliwell would know that her breasts weigh around three pounds each.
'Theoretically it is not such a difficult problem to solve. Human breast tissue is mostly water and by using a suitably sized receptacle filled with water, she could lower her breast into it and measure the amount of water displaced.
'As 1 litre of water weighs 1 Kg she can calculate the approximate weight of each one and convert to imperial units, where 1Kg equals 2.2lb.
'No doubt there will be more than a few good Samaritans out there willing to volunteer their services to help Ms Halliwell verify the theory.'
Nothing special from me this time, just a pointer to two letters in today's Indie which are in their different ways worth reading. The fact that they appear on the same page of the paper is my only defence to the charge of appalling taste in linking them - apart from a suspicion that the writer of the first one enjoys a laugh as much as the next woman.
'I am severely disabled by spina bifida, hydrocephalus, emphysema and osteoporosis. I use a wheelchair full time, and need morphine on a daily basis for severe spinal pain. Even that doesn't always work, and when the pain is bad I cannot move, speak or think. What does Mr Hari think of my "quality of life"? Should I be subjected to the lethal injection he sees as the solution to suffering?'
'He may respond that as I want to live, I should be allowed to do so. The problem is that I didn't always want to live. Twenty years ago, when doctors wrongly thought I was terminally ill, I wanted to die, a settled wish that lasted about ten years. Had lethal injection been an option then I would have requested it. And if I had died then I would have missed the best years of my life. I really was "screaming in agony" then and often I still am. I can only hope that when I am in great pain, Mr Hari is not around waiting in the wings to "put me out of my misery".'
- from an incredibly moving letter by Alison Davis. Whilst Peter Coghlan has a job for a Good Samaritan...
'Scientific solution to a weight problem
'Sir: Guy Adams (Pandora, 9 March) asks how Geri Halliwell would know that her breasts weigh around three pounds each.
'Theoretically it is not such a difficult problem to solve. Human breast tissue is mostly water and by using a suitably sized receptacle filled with water, she could lower her breast into it and measure the amount of water displaced.
'As 1 litre of water weighs 1 Kg she can calculate the approximate weight of each one and convert to imperial units, where 1Kg equals 2.2lb.
'No doubt there will be more than a few good Samaritans out there willing to volunteer their services to help Ms Halliwell verify the theory.'
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