Civitas Blog

No one today writes better than Mark Steyn about the challenge facing Europe from its declining birth-rate combind with the high fertility rates of its various Muslim minorities.

An extract from his recent book America Alone is available on-line at the web-journal Macleans. Entitled ‘The future belongs to Islam', it well worth reading. Those of a nervous disposition are advised to pour a stiff drink and keep it ready to hand before opening the link.

However well or ill things in Iraq might currently be going for the US and UK, the question remains as to whether or not Bush and Blair were justified in going to war against Saddam in 2003.

They claimed Saddam posed a threat to the west and its allies because of his WMD programmes. It had to be neutralised pre-emptively. To wait until Saddam acquired them would be a disaster because of the risks of retaliation. And to allow him to acquire them would be a disaster because of his links with organised terror groups would roisk nuclear blackmail or worse.

The rest we know as history. Troops went in, but little by way of any WMD showed up. Sceptics have since never ceased to claim the invasion to have been a disaster. All it has done is destabilise Iraq, strengthen Iran as a regional power, and radicalise Muslims at home and abroad. All in all, they claim, it was a right mess that GWB had gotten the west into.

Well, it increasingly looks like Bush and Blair were absolutely right to have gone in.

On Friday, OfSTED announced that - put crudely - boring lessons and boring teachers are to blame for unruly behaviour in schools – not class size, an over-stuffed and over-prescribed curriculum and demoralised teachers. A crude synopsis of the report but not as crude as OfSTED's assessment of the situation. In light of the way in which government directives have straitjacketed teachers via OfSTED, forcing them to follow often inappropriate and un-engaging curricula and positively disallowing any room for tailoring classes to pupils, the inspectorate’s conclusion is as unpalatable as it is crude. Giving pupils ‘wider choice’ in the curriculum, say OfSTED, is the key to better behaviour. If only schools were able to. What is more, the climax of the injustice accompanies OfSTED’s observation that those schools with a high teacher-turnover are the ones with the worst behaviour. Whilst this is surely true, OfSTED seems to be blaming the wrong party. Retention survey after retention survey has shown us that it is the incessant pressure to produce reams of paperwork and fulfil endless tick-box criteria – activities enforced by OfSTED - that is driving teachers out at alarming rates. Public criticism of OfSTED’s conclusions in the report Improving Behaviour came in the form of comebacks from the teaching unions. Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers made a cutting retort: ‘It is difficult to understand how OfSTED has come to this conclusion when it does not measure the quality of teaching during inspections.’ Yet interestingly, the NUT did not point the finger at OfSTED’s straitjacketing as a contributor to poor pupil behaviour, going on only to say: ‘Bad pupil behaviour is not determined by a single factor. Frustration at the curriculum is not an excuse for disrupting lessons and OfSTED is wrong to suggest it is.’

Education, and the educational materials used to teach, should be balanced. The 1996 Education Act states this, and most people would advocate this. At present the curriculum, concerning the EU, is fairly balanced – requiring, for example, that the structure of the EU be taught in citizenship lessons. Fine. Like it or lump it, the EU is very much a part of the political landscape and probably will be for some time to come. Given this, young people should know about it.

In this regard, Geoff Hoon’s idea that ‘lessons on the EU should be part of the school curriculum’ is fine. As is the idea behind the own-initiative report by Christopher Beazley (EPP-ED), adopted as a resolution by the European Parliament on 26 September. This wants all education systems in the EU to ensure that ‘by the end of their secondary education, students are properly prepared for their role as future EU citizens’. A part of this is ensuring students are taught about ‘the EU, its institutions, methods and practices’. One might take issue with the idea of an ‘EU citizen’, but again: fine, the EU has a huge impact on politics in this country and young people should know about it. It is extraordinary that many speakers who have spoken in schools as part of the Civitas programme testify to the fact so many students do not even knowing what the EU is.

But here is the crunch. Teaching of the EU should be balanced. Whatever the achievements of the EU, the picture is certainly not all rosy – far from it. This is where initiatives such as Hoon’s and Beazley’s come a-cropper. Hoon is of the opinion that, perhaps rightly, “there is a kind of grudging acceptance that we are members [of the EU] but without anyone understanding what it does or what it means”. But this does not lead to his conclusion that “children should be required to learn about its benefits”, without a single mention of its costs or pitfalls. Hoon mentions an FCO booklet on the EU is a guide; Beazley mentions a number of EU education portals in his report. But the majority of resources readily available to students and teachers are not balanced, but pro-EU, probably from the EU Commission, European Parliament or the government. They do not mention such things as, for example, Gunter Verheugen’s recent assertion that EU regulation is costing the EU c.E600bn p.a. Students are more than capable of drawing their own conclusions, but need balanced resources from which to do it – not pro-EU or, for that matter, EU-sceptic.

This is where EU Facts comes in: compiled by Civitas researchers in conjunction with an expert panel of teachers, and refereed by those on both sides of the EU debate, EU Facts is (as much as is possible) balanced. It is also comprehensive and easy to use: a series of over seventy single-page factsheets on different EU topics, which are in turn electronically cross-linked for easy navigation. The factsheets are also regularly updated to ensure that the information is current and is accompanied by supplementary resources and statistics for reference. It is available online at http://www.civitas.org.uk/eufacts/index.php, and on CD.

This much needed resource is up-and-running; the aim must now be to promote it the best way possible. Any thoughts you have would be gratefully received.

An excellent article in the Daily Telegraph by Peter Whittle, journalist, broadcaster and director of the New Culture Forum, argues that television talent shows such as X Factor, The Apprentice, and Dragon’s Den are a good thing. The ‘fashion for ruthless competition on television represents’, he says, ‘one of the healthiest trends to emerge in broadcasting for decades, and one that shows conclusively that all mustn’t, and shouldn’t, have prizes’. He says this signifies a growing awareness that child-centred education is a destructive farce setting up self-esteem as more important than achievement. ‘Life is not about feeling good about yourself.’

All of which is worthy and true, so long as it’s balanced, but I think there are pitfalls in Peter’s panegyric.

‘I thought I was paying to be educated by leading academics, not for a library membership and a reading list’.

So complained one final-year history undergraduate at Bristol University, according to a story in today’s Times, upon learning that all he would receive by way of formal tuition this year for the £1,200 he had just been charged in tuition fees would be 2 hours a week of lectures.

When his cohort of history undergraduates first arrived at Bristol, they had reportedly been informed they would receive a minimum of six hours a week tuition in their final year.

The head of the history department invoked ‘incredible pressures on resources’ to justify that reduction.

The nineteenth century theology don the Reverend Charles Spooner used to complain of his students having hissed all his mystery lectures. Today’s undergraduates are complaining of missing all their history lectures in a quite different sense from that which dear old Spooner had had in mind.

On what are their tuition fees being spent is the question one cannot help asking on reading the story. One would like to hope on bulk purchases for the University library of
Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall's Our Island Story . From today's story, a read of it sounds likely to give far more instruction to Bristol's history undergraduates than they shall be receiving from their lecturers.

I am struck by two adjacent news-in-brief reports in today’s Times. One is entitled ‘Islamophobic bullying fears’ and reports a rise in anecdotal evidence of bullying of Muslim schoolchildren in British schools. The other which is immediately below is entitled ‘Terrorism books’. It reports that a 22-year old woman from Southall named Samina Malik has just been charged with hoarding terrorist handbooks on her computer.

However unjustified the bullying of Muslim schoolchildren undoubtedly is, its reported increase can surely not be unconnected with the reported rise in passive and active support among British Muslims for terrorism which forms the lead-story in today’s Times.

On Saturday, the BBC’s education correspondent, Mike Baker, published an article about a ‘redemptive’ literacy strategy, Reading Recovery. A New Zealand import, Reading Recovery is a ‘highly structured intervention strategy for rescuing children who are struggling to take even the first steps towards reading’. Using the scheme, children whose reading abilities are below what they should be, can, in a matter of weeks, raise their reading level enough to put them ‘back on track’. Research just out on the impact of Reading Recovery shows that children on the programme improved at a rate four times faster than those who were not. This evidence of its effectiveness, together with rising concern about the number of primary school-leavers who are unable to read properly, is sparking new debate as to whether the government should invest in the strategy. Whilst very effective, Reading Recovery is also very expensive, costing between £2,000 and £2,500 per child. Though the courses are short, the expense is incurred by the fact that they work on a one-to-one basis between the child and a specially trained teacher. As the BBC article points out, using the programme in schools is something that both the last and present government have considered – and implemented – before. However, both governments ultimately decided not to prioritise the cost of Reading Recovery in their long-term budgets. Yet, high levels of poor literacy amongst children seem to be prompting reconsideration. To not invest in early intervention programmes such as Reading Recovery, as the BBC’s Mike Baker points out, would be a false economy. Rather than waiting until secondary school with proposals such as ‘catch-up classes’, or worst still, never remedying poor literacy, the widespread introduction of Reading Recovery would be very valuable. At the same time, however, we must be careful about being satisfied in the schools system with redemptive methods. Not always, but often, poor reading skills by Year 2 (age 6/7 years old) signify flaws in the Literacy Strategy. And thus, whilst it is good investment to include Reading Recovery in the budget, the underlying need for intervention must be addressed: we need to remember that its requirement may denote a failure in methodology.

According to a report by Newsnight, which can be watched on the BBC website, and which has subsequently been covered by The Times, a senior member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir is working at the Home Office's Immigration and Nationality Directorate in Croydon.

Now, Hizb-ut-Tahrir has been recognised for some time as a militant Islamic organisation propounding extremist ideas. It seeks the reestablishment of the Caliphate, among other things, under which system all non-Muslims would be dhimmi and we would be subject to shari’a law. Hizb-ut-Tahrir has always maintained that it seeks to proselytise through peaceful intellectual channels, such as the New Civilization magazine and university campus campaigns, but Newsnight uncovered evidence of more radical, terrorist activities.

Shortly after the July 7 bombing attacks, the Prime Minister included the group in a list of those he planned to proscribe, but it has not been among those banned. Now one of his own offices is employing someone from that organisation. This is a disgraceful indictment on the selection process; but it is not that surprising. Indeed, it serves as a reminder of an even worse phenomenon in government, which is the reliance upon extremists as advisors and consultants in the policymaking process, as Martin Bright thankfully showed in a book earlier this year.

Were it not bad enough that those responsible for London's successful bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games unknowingly chose to stage them during Ramadan, when Muslim competitors would be seriously disadvantaged, today’s Times reports their estimated costs have spiralled by so much as to have caused the early resignation of the man appointed to oversee the massive construction programme of work that staging them there will make necessary. Whereas the initial bid put the estimated cost at £2.3 billion, current estimates now run at a staggering £6 billion.

Apparently at issue is how large a contingency fund needs to be built in to cover possible over-run. Ken Livingstone, among the most fervent and enthusiastic supporters of London hosting the Games, denies the need for any. The Treasury, on the other hand, he has said believes a contingency fund of 60% is needed.

Ever the astute politician, the Mayor warned Londoners that, should the Treasury’s estimate be accepted, they might have to face a further increase in Council Tax above the extra 38p per week that it has already been decided they will have to pay to help finance the Games.

Partly behind the staggering upwards revision in the estimated costs is rhe need for much tighter security in wake of the London tube bombings of July 2005.

Personally, I would not have waited a second after the appalling events of that day to announce a moratorium on all preparatory building work, pending the outcome of a special referendum of all Londoners asking whether they want the Games staged in their city. If ever an issue cried out for decision by local referendum, this is one.

While not relishing the idea of being accused of being a spoil-sport, in the event of such a referendum, I for one would be prepared to work untiringly of behalf of a no- vote. Wouldn’t you?

Clearly, with every passing day, the Islamist terror threat grows ever more grave. It is also becoming ever more widely recognised, as increasing numbers awake up from their previous comforting dream that all such talk was merely ‘Islamophobia’ or else a guise by which the authorities here seek to justify grabbing ever more power to intrude into our private lives and to curb our time-honoured civil liberties.

In a recent posting in her web-diary, the redoubtable Melanie Phillips draws her readers’ attention to a very perceptive analysis of the causes of the threat made by the Conservative MP for High Wycombe, Mr Paul Goodman, in his comment in Parliament on the Queen’s Speech.

‘Give us the freedom to teach’ was the smartly revamped Times Education Supplement front-page headline on Friday. A TES-commissioned poll of 600 teachers showed that two thirds of teachers believe the national curriculum to be overly prescriptive. Not a surprising finding – though perhaps that as many as a third of the teachers did not consider the curriculum to be too prescribed, is. Connected to this finding was that over half of the teachers polled thought that pupil behaviour would improve were schools allowed to set their own curriculum. [Again, what is surprising is the fact that nearly half didn’t think that the rigid curriculum related to the current epidemic of poor behaviour in schools.] Commenting on the poll’s findings, the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers argued that both Conservative and Labour governments had made the same mistake of not giving teachers sufficient flexibility.

Read more about the TES poll’s findings here:
http://www.tes.co.uk/2308499

One thing should be made clear from the outset about the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which now looks set to be passed by the EP in December and enter into EU law. The directive does not seek to regulate ‘linear’ audiovisual content, such as video clips and animations in news and press websites, blogs, video podcasts, picture telephony and other ‘non-commercial’ content. And thank heavens it doesn’t. For one it would simply be impossible, and cost some ridiculous amount – perhaps even more than the colossus that is CAP! But more importantly, it would be an atrocious affront on freedom of speech and thought.

Anyway, this isn’t happening, but the latter point is still very relevant on what it does seek to cover. The directive extends the scope of the previous 1989 Directive (89/552/EEC) to include some commercial services on the internet providing ‘on-demand’ content – hence it being renamed the rather boring ‘Audiovisual Media Services Directive’ instead of the Bond-film ‘esc ‘Television without Frontiers’. What exactly counts as ‘on-demand’ content is more than a bit hazy. According to the Commission’s report this is defined as “a service as defined by Articles 49 and 50 of the Treaty the principal purpose of which is the provision of moving pictures with or without sound, in order to inform, entertain or educate, to the general public by electronic communications networks”. Good, very clear. But yes, this would almost certainly include 18 Doughty Street. Conforming to the regulation in the Directive may not force this innovation to close, but it will inevitably have a cost.

And it is not just financial. The internet has been the one field that, as yet, has escaped the regulatory capture and atmosphere of political correctness that is plaguing debate is this country. There are disgusting aspects to it – child pornography is a case in point – and this is the proper subject of law. But not the internet media in general. The internet provides such a wealth of information on pretty much anything precisely because it is self-regulated. This should remain so, and not be meddled with by the EU of all institutions.

Incidentally, for those who are not convinced, it is interesting that the same Directive also seeks to reserve a quota of airtime for EU programmes, details rules of the content of television advertising and ensure free general access to events ‘of major importance to society’. This smacks of a similar grain of authoritarianism.

I guess we can only be grateful that whilst discussing ‘product placement’, the Commission is good enough to leave this decision to Member States. It also seeks to invoke a ‘country of origin’ principle, which makes national regulators responsible for broadcasters operating from within their borders. This perhaps leaves a glimmer of hope that Member State governments can find avenues to squirm out of the rest of it. But it is just a glimmer.

Extraordinarily, there has been little reaction to the news that Blair want to bring in supernannies to save parents and children from the risks of personal freedom. Fortunately there is, however, a very good article in the Daily Telegraph today, which criticises the state's constantly extending intervention into our private lives.

Courtesy of the Simpsons, we Brits are now subject on the last night of every October to the annoying ritual of being disturbed by incessant door-bell ringing by small groups of young children dressed up as ghouls who are being conducted by one of their long-suffering mums on a charmless round of ‘trick or treating’.

No old fogie or so I like to think of myself, this is one American custom I wish had not crossed the pond.

Another one that hasn’t done so but which I wish would is Thanksgiving Day. Occurring on the fourth Thursday of November, this year this American national holiday falls today.

When dusk rolls westwards across the north American continent tonight, and wherever else any of them might be temporarily domiciled, American citizens will sit down with friends and family for a traditional annual Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, sweet potatoes, corn, and cranberry sauce, followed by pumpkin pie.

Britain has no real equivalent festival, and that is a pity, but not because it could then serve as an occasion for a thousand and one tv cookery programmes.

Since, and because, the government down-graded Cannabis to a class C drug, its use among young people has substantially increased. So claimed Roger Davy, a West Yorkshire magistrate and national spokesman on youth courts, according to a a reort in today’s Times entitled ‘Cannabis is linked to rising child crime and harder drugs’.

Britain is now among the worst European nations for drug misuse. It tops the European league table for cocaine use, not only among 15 to 34-year olds (over 10% have tried it), but also among the 15-24 year olds (6% have tried it). In the last year for which figures are available (2003), Britain also topped the European league table for heroin seizures, came second after Spain for cocaine and cannabis seizures, and was top for seizures of Ecstasy.

The scale of human tragedy indicated by these figures is truly appalling. Yet what do we read in an adjacent report but that, to meet government targets to reduce the waiting times for treatment of hardened drug addicts, they are being increasingly palmed off with comparatively inexpensive but largely ineffective methadone programmes and day centres, rather than placed in more expensive but far more effective residential drug rehabilitation centres. Only 3% of addicts kick their habit after a methadone programme; nearly a third do after rehab in a residential centre.

Forget their constantly escalating estimated cost and the security nightmare of hosting them in the capital, a far more profound and compelling reason why London should not host the 2012 Olympics is that doing so seems likely to provide the perfect pretext for the construction of a giant mosque there able to hold 70,000 worshippers that those with some claim to who know about these matter claim will prove fertile breeding-ground for incipient jihadis.

It is not raving Islamopbobes who are making this allegation about the mosque, but local Muslim residents of the London Borough of Newham, where, if planning permission is granted, the mosque is to be built. So concerned are they that 2500 of them have in the last ten days signed a petition objecting to it addressed to London mayor Ken Livingstone.

On Monday 16 October, ministers from the EU’s 25 Member States agreed to provide €2bn a year in aid to developing countries to help them liberalise as per the terms of the ‘Economic Partnership Agreements’ (EPA). Dubbed ‘Aid for Trade’ by the EU Commissioner for Trade, Peter Mandelson, the money was supposed to be evidence that the new trade agreements are a development tool to help lift thousands out of poverty. A ‘stepping stone to sustainable development’ in the oracle’s words.

Today, the FT reports the following leaked letter from EU Commission officials Stefano Manservisi (head of the development directorate) and Karl Falkenburg (deputy head of trade) to the Fijian trade minister Kaliopate Tavole:

"In your draft EPA submission, detailed development co-operation provisions form an integral part of the text," the Commission officials write. "As you know, this is not acceptable to us."

Correct me if I am wrong, but there seems to be a contradiction here.

I don’t like what you wear but I will defend to the death your right to wear it? Surely anyone who believes in liberty should feel a twinge of unease when there’s talk of banning certain items of clothing. Yet today the BBC reports that a survey carried out for it by ICM has found that one in three people would support a ban on the niqab – the veil – in public places.

The debate sparked by Jack Straw, who said earlier in the year that the wearing of the veil is ‘a visible sign of separation’, has clearly moved on. It is one thing to object to the veil, or to wish that women would choose not to wear it in Britain, but to force them not to wear it? Beyond its visible divisiveness, let us recap some of the objections to the veil made by Muslim commentators and non-Muslims alike.

For a start, the wearing of the veil owes more to culture than creed, since nowhere in the Qur’an is it required as part of the female sartorial code, so encouraging Muslim women to communicate more fully with others in society can hardly be categorised as discrimination. It has also often been pointed out that the veil is an agent of repression. There have, for example, been reports of women being forced to wear the veil so hide wounds after they’ve been beaten. Another argument against it is that the veil is impractical. The most emotive of the arguments is, I think, Straw’s; namely, that the veil is frequently worn as a symbolic statement of Islamic unity in opposition to western society. What is particularly noteworthy, though hardly surprising, is that in Straw’s local constituency sales of the veil have risen significantly since he made his comments. Censorship and proscription always polarize.

So how can we avoid making this separatism worse? In a sense all of the cases made so far present us with serious causes for concern but not necessarily with absolute reasons for legislating against the niqab or jilbab or hijab.

But there are areas of social life where the wearing of the veil is potentially hazardous, where freedom of choice is not a strong enough argument. For instance, as Zareen Roohi Ahmed, chief executive of the British Muslim Forum, has said: ‘If security is at stake, such as at an airport, then yes, of course, the veil should be removed.’ The public evidently agrees, for six out of ten people believe that the veil should be prohibited in airports and at passport controls. There are also areas where being unable to see a person’s face prevents the execution of the law or contradicts common sense – such as in a court of law or academic examinations where you need to be able to verify the identity of the person sitting the exam – and a majority of the respondents in the BBC/ICM survey would support a ban in courtrooms and schools.

Banning in circumstances where it can legitimately be regarded as a threat to society should make it possible for us to permit it in circumstances where, though we may feel uncomfortable about it, we should be seen to be cooperative, discerning and fair.

Agreed?

The largest UK study ever to look at why adults develop schizophrenia has found that children born into families which split-up before they reach their 16th birthday, are two and a half times more likely to develop schizophrenia than those raised by parents who stay together.