Call Me Old-fashioned or What … But What Did the Prince Say Wrong?
Civitas, 19 November 2004
Outraged attacks on the Prince of Wales filled today’s airwaves and press. What occasioned the wrath of so many was his having had the apparent effrontery to remark in a private email that far too many of his younger compatriots today consider themselves qualified for jobs far beyond their talents and aptitudes.
The burden of the attacks on the Prince are two-fold. First, it is no bad thing so many young people today harbour high personal ambitions. Second, the Prince has no business to criticise others for wanting to better themselves, when he is able to lead the life of Riley without enjoying any conspicuously greater talents or natural abilities than they.
Neither criticism seems at all justified.
As regards the first, what the Prince said seems spot on. In no way was what he said inconsistent with recognising the desirability of young people setting themselves demanding and ambitious personal targets and life-goals. What the Prince was complaining about was not young people having high personal ambitions, but the frequency with which all too many of them today have formed hopelessly unrealistic ones, based upon vastly inflated estimates of their own abilities.
The Prince went to speculate why so many young people did, linking their so doing to our current education system which discourages them from ever having to confront and recognise their own limitations through making severe demands on them.
It was this conjecture of the Prince that provoked the especial ire of Charles Clarke, Secretary of State for Education. ‘Everybody has a field marshal’s baton in their knapsack’, he remarked, implying it wrong of the Prince not to want people to harbour the very highest personal aspirations whose successful realisation would require them to have correspondingly exceptional abilities.
It is truly tragic the country’s education system today lies in the hands of a man who seems genuinely to be of this view. That he does, perhaps, explains the Secretary of State’s determination to increase the participation of school leavers in higher education until it reaches the government’s target of 50%, in face of all the evidence that simply not enough of them are up-to-the-mark and that our Universities only succeed in absorbing ever-increasing numbers by admitting far too many manifestly unsuitable and then keeping them by lowering standards to ensure they do not fail.
On the very same day as the Secretary of State expostulated against the Prince, the Daily Mail carried a report on the results of a survey conducted by the Times Higher Educational Supplement of almost 400 UK academics. The survey revealed that over 70% of them believed their institution to have admitted students manifestly incapable of benefiting from a place, and 50% admitting to having felt obliged to pass students not deserving to.
When, under pressure from government, our higher education system encourages young people to form unrealistically high expectations of themselves, small wonder is it we find ourselves with the culture of which the Prince complained.
The reason it is tragic for our country’s education system to lie in the hands of a man glad it has such a culture is that it is bound to produce only frustration and disappointment in large swathes of the population. To see why, we need to recall the words of a truly great and gifted man, the liberal philosopher, John Stuart Mill.
In his famous work of 1861, Utilitarianism, Mill declared the ultimate criterion of morality to be what is conducive to human happiness. Responding to the objection that happiness cannot be the object of morality, since it lies beyond the capacity of humankind to attain it, Mill conceded happiness to be such if, by it, was meant a life of rapture. He then went on to observe in words on which our Secretary of State should be made to dwell daily:
‘The philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of life…meant … not a life of rapture; but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, … and having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing.’[emphasis added]
It is the last clause of Mill’s quoted statement on which the Secretary of State would do well to dwell. If Mill is correct, the education system over which he presides is busy helping to form a culture that condemns the mass of population to permanent frustration, disappointment, rancour and envy.
As regards the second criticism to which the Prince has been subjected, the one denying him the right to condemn others no less gifted than he for wanting to live as well as he, two things may be said on behalf of the Prince.
First, he did not choose to apply for the post he currently holds. He found it thrust on him by birth.
Second, although not requiring any exceptional talents or gifts, the position of heir apparent certainly does demand a heck of a lot of job-training from a very early age. It also probably condemns whoever is made to undergo it to far less parental care and attention as a young child than can possibly be in their best interest.
Few would wish to claim the Prince flawless. Doubtless, the Prince would not be one who did. However, to malign him for having privately expressed an undoubtedly sound opinion about a deep fault in our present culture is to demand from him a degree of restraint that is as unwarranted as it would be impossibly onerous for anyone to attempt to exhibit.
All this is founded on a completely unjustified assertion: that a large and increasing number of young people hold unreasonably inflated views of their own abilities and potential. There’s no evidence to support this claim, only Prince Charles’s harrumphing outburst, which seems to have struck a chord in some unreflective listeners.
In the absence of evidence, I find the contrary view more persuasive: that generally young people are inclined to underestimate their own abilities and display uncertainty about their prospects for achievement. In this case it is evidently the responsibility of the education system to bolster their self-confidence and to encourage them to have the highest aspirations so that a lack of self-belief doesn’t lead to a sense of hopelessness and the reality of under-achievement.
In recent years school-age children have repeatedly heard that academic standards in their schools are declining, and that their examination results are less indicative of ability and hard work that those of previous generations. The people making these claims have generally been members of those previous generations, and some of them have been responsible for designing the educational system of today. The young people have a right to ask “if your generation is so clever and well-educated, how come you designed a system for us in which you have so little confidence?”
The fact is that young people today have much the same spread of talents and abilities as any other generation. Some of them will become the high-fliers of tomorrow, some won’t. But if in the past some people were prevented from reaching their full potential by a lack of opportunity and self-belief, and we can succeed in overcoming this obstacle for the present generation, then that’s good for those individuals and it’s good for society as a whole.
And Prince Charles, who appears increasingly foolish and irrelevant every time he opens his mouth, should reflect on the fact that in a few years today’s young people are the ones who will be considering whether a monarchical system is really appropriate for a 21st century democracy, and choose his words more carefully when discussing their abilities and aspirations.
Charles Clarke is absurd, although the fact that he can hold the opinions that he seemed to claim suggests that he is himself a beneficiary of the principle the one should be able to achieve whatever one wants irrespective of talent or ability.
There seems to be a kind of conspiracy in public life to hide the fact that some people are cleverer than other people. Nobody would deny that, say, David Beckham has considerably more footballing talent than most of the rest of us. We would consider it absurd to suggest to the stereotypical “fat kid” at the back of the class in PE that he, too, could play football for England.
I agree entirely with Henry. Whilst a piece of paper is an indication that a person might be worth considering, it doesn’t guarantee anything. I have a few people with apparently identical qualifications working for me. Some of them are exceptionally able, and will no doubt become leaders in the field in the years to come. Others are of limited ability, and would be better advised to seek a different career.
I, too, felt some measure of agreement with Prince Charles’ observations. It’s a difficult concept to express and I can only speak from my own experiences. I was one of those who, apparently, had some natural ability since I possessd neither ‘A’ levels nor a university degree but was able to pursue a career as an accountant to a reasonably high level.
However, on the way up, I encountered many who, because they had achieved a ‘piece of paper’ thought that they had the right to a higher place in the commercial and social world. That ‘piece of paper’ is now quite readily achieved but is no substitute for the natural ability to which the Prince referred.
Today’s political policies seem to be to ensure that everyone receives their ‘piece of paper’ thereby creating artificial expectations among a great many young people. In my young days (fifty years ago) a degree or professional qualification was thought to be only an indication that you might have potential – not that you had a right to an elevated position in any hierarchy.