What is education for?

Pipsy podcast on suomalaiset jääntä. Pätelyä. Poveria. Palkintona X-Peng-G-kuu sähköauto. Täysin omaksi. Kymmällön viikkoa aika ratkaista kodi osoitteessa poverpistefi kautta X. Älä jää kyristää. Good evening. More than 4000 university courses have been closed down and what amounts to a startlingly, sudden redefinition of what education should be about. Most of those being cut are in the humanities, arts, history, philosophy, languages. Subjects long considered not just to be essential to a well-rounded education but as socrates would have put it to human flourishing. Instead, the emphasis now is on the economic value of what you're studying. With the average graduate in England racking up 53,000 pounds in student debt, it's a hard-headed calculation of what return you can get on that investment. Or as one, Midlands University promises in its ads, degrees that get you hired. So is education an intrinsic public good valuable in itself, producing rounded thoughtful citizens, or an extrinsic one to be measured by the future salary the individual can command and his or her contribution to economic growth? Either way, does everybody get a fair crack at it? Or does wealth and class still dictate elite access? Gender play a part in the employable STEM subject, science, technology, engineering maths. Are they man things? What is education for? Who is it for? Does it still have a moral purpose? That's our moral maistannight, the panel Menysodiki, Professor of Religion and Society at King's College London. The philosopher and theologian comedy Grey, the historian Tim Stanley, and the priest and polemissist Jiles Fraser, I've just done some totting up. There are 14 doctrines between us on this panel. So it shouldn't be too much of a challenge, should it? Jiles, do you consider yourself as the embodiment of what education is for? Oh, I'm good with your three doctrines. Do you know what? I remember sitting at a high table in Oxford and seeing someone is doing a writing PhD on the history of the semi-colon. And it was absolutely fascinating. I believe in knowledge for its own sake. And I don't think universities should be glorified job centres. Tim, Tim Stanley. That's all very well. But if we insist on being a democracy, and if we insist on taxing people to pay for welfare, citizens are entitled to ask what we're spending the money on and why. And that includes education, which cannot solve everything. And it cannot fill the gaps left by the collapse of the church, the family, or increasingly, capitalism. Mona, Mona is a geeky. So universities are now becoming businesses. And I feel that education is still primarily not about what we produce, but who we become. And it should, and settlers, issue to stay by certainties, question our assumptions. And it should allow us to grow as moral citizens. Comedy, comedy, grain. I think the core moral purpose of education is to preserve and enlarge our humanity. Skills and employability are important, but they're only ancillary to that fundamental purpose. And if our schools and universities become just another tool in the market economy, we really have sold our souls. Panel, thanks very much indeed. Our first witness is Maxwell Marlow, who's director of public affairs at the Adam Smith Institute. Simple question, what's education for and how should we measure its value? Fantastic. Well, thank you, Hone. I think education is fundamentally extrinsic. I think it benefits the Polish society fundamentally through who those people become and what they contribute after. But it's an external thing. And my big thing is applying price signals to this. And so that we can then allocate the resources properly so that we can produce, you know, more scientists, as well as history grounds of which I think and essentially have a better society from that a healthy, flourishing, prosperous society. No, no. So if the primary purpose of education is, as you say, economic output, why not be honest and call it training? I think that's a very good question. And I would call it training. I would. I mean, I will say, you know, the job I do now, which is policy research from over else I did learn at university. It helped. It was training, but I've had to learn so much more in the world outside of it. I think university could never have taught me and I work with people who have delayed doing degrees, who found they found much more value for themselves and for society working on a builder's yard, for example. I mean, do you need an institution to do that? No, but all of us learn things after we leave higher education. You know, higher education doesn't equip us for the job market all the time. And even when it does, we still learn things. I suppose in a way, we're living at a time when so much of education is monetised and everything's about matrices. What about contributions that can't be monetised? That are really about human development, human thought processes, enriching society simply by learning something for the sake of it. Well, I think, if I may, can you give me some examples of that? Well, what would, do you think that a STEM degree holds the same value as a arts and humanities degree? I think it holds much more value. Well, why is that? Quite easy to demonstrate. For example, a doctor was going to save a lot more lives than I'm going to do, you know, doing my policy research and speaking to politicians and stakeholders, like why is engine is? I was just talking in the green room to one of the other guests who was talking about the Artemis rocket launch. Not many history grads were working on that and I think that is much more interesting. Why do you think people do arts and humanities subjects? And why do you think universities are still offering them? Well, a lot of them aren't. That's the thing. I think the demand's going down quite significantly. And we're not losing anything as a result of that. I don't think as a society, we really are because what is a lot of the education? It's looking at books that already published, you know, hearing people, things like this program, for example, which are produced outside of university. So I really do think they should be training centers for these things. And I can learn, you know, by myself, working on that stuff. I may be a bit of a grin-gad, you know, to quote Dickens, but at the end of the day, I think that's how best to allocate those resources. But isn't that precisely the problem that you're looking at education as something if you can't measure it, if you can't quantify it, if it's not useful in the public sphere like a doctor? I'm not denying that these are not useful jobs, of course they are. But maybe the whole purpose of education is that we still learn something that isn't measurable. But I think this is the fundamental problem. I think, you know, speaking before this to the producer, this isn't an economic show. But in many ways, you know, we need to work at how best to resource these universities in order to provide, you know, provide them with the funding, the skills, whoever else to go and teach those humanities degrees. The problem is, is that if we're not actually working at what that price mechanism looks like, we can't allocate the capital, we can't allocate the skills, and we can't provide that education at the end of the day. I agree with you that the whole funding structure needs to be assessed. I do agree with that, and I think that for me personally, I think as soon as we said that every student, every young person should go to university, that was a mistake. I think education is by its very nature, the latest, and not everyone is academically equipped to learn in universities. But I do think that by making universities into businesses as training centres, all we're doing is producing students who are customers now, who want satisfaction, and universities are bending over backwards, not to necessarily provide a holistic education. This is a question. Yes, but he's listening, he's listening. Yes, we're all listening. That's not the point. But to actually produce students that may not need to use their degree, but use their degree for something that's well beyond what they learned at the age of 21. I think that's very often, and we can look at the stats for this, 63% of people between the age of 21 and 35, and you can go on to university. We compare that to the constant where it's about 40%. I'd rate higher universities much more, but I do think you do have a very good point, which is, is the education they're receiving a very good value that can't be measured. And I think that's where that relies, I think we need more marketisation, rather than less in order to solve that problem. I don't know if I can say this, but I agree with you on quite a lot of this, actually. And in terms of the extrinsic value, if a degree or has an extrinsic value, if it's something to do with computer science or something, let them fund it. Yes. However, what about the intrinsic value? You said at the beginning that some of it has intrinsic value, not just extrinsic value. How do you fund the history of the semi-colon PhD? It's a great question. In fact, I'd like to meet that person and see where they got their funding from. And I think a lot of it comes down to philanthropy. I think that's really important, and we can't forget the role of philanthropy where people have applied their extrinsic skills to create large wealth and put that into the funding of this sort of stuff. And I'd like to get rich and fund today. I ask you the wrong question, because I've sucked into this economic idea and so forth. But can you see, let's just start with the principle. The basic principle of the idea of knowledge done for its own sake, learning done for its own sake. Can you get on board with that? I can. I can get on board that. And I do believe it is a good thing. But at the point where we are now, where there's no money left, you know, we're struggling. struggling for economic growth, it's making us all a little bit more miserable, a bit poorer. We need to find it somewhere. That's the pipe. When we're better society, when we have people who just sit in rooms with books and time and develop learning where it goes, and there's something to be proud of about living in society where that sort of activity happens. Well, I hate to use this sort of Marxist-March's term. It's quite bourgeois, isn't it? Very bourgeois. And nonetheless, just. No, no, no, no, Marx did it too. I mean, the church used to fund it, but I mean, they did, yeah, yeah. And I think, I look where that's gone. It's got made of some absolutely brilliant institutions, Oxford, Cambridge, some of the town universities, absolute ancient. I think that's fantastic. I really do. But here's the, again, back to that. Don't you want to put everything into your problem? No, hang on a second. Let him develop his own. I know, yeah. I know. Please. I think fundamentally, though, when it comes to looking at what is that critic? I think it's a bit of an indulgence at the end of the day. When so many people are struggling, we have a lot of sickness in society. We have a lot of people on the breadline who are really struggling, who need that support, which I don't think. I do get it. But it's a bit of a whole new. I mean, you're a sort of one argument, chap in this regard, which is like allocation of resources. Allocation of resources. I sort of get that. But don't we want a more diverse society, where that's not the only marker of value. I would love that. It's not just money that's the marker of value. I would love to live in that world, Charles. I really want it. I have a check on afterwards, but I think at the end of the day, you're right, maybe I'm one argument. Guns and butter. You've got to make a decision at the end of the day. It's very smart, but at the moment, you're advocating for a lot of butter here, Charles, and we'll be left with a musket. I think that's the big issue at the end of the day. I just want books. I mean, you know, it's. Do you have books? No, no, no, no. And the time and the encouragement to actually engage with Plato and Eastgloss and St. Augustine. And you can fund the computer science people in whatever way you want. But that sort of a thing seems to be the soul of a society. And if we just grad-grind that away, that we're losing something. And I think you agree with me somewhere. I do agree with you. I do. I think we're speaking maybe across each other here, fundamentally. I would love to live in that society. I did a history and government degree. I really loved my time with my books. It was during COVID, so I was locked away for a lot of it, unfortunately, it was a great shame. And I loved my degree. I had such a good time. I even stayed and did an abortive masters afterwards. Don't get me wrong. But now I've entered the real world and I look at a lot of spreadsheets now. It's difficult. But I want to get to the point in society where we can have that academic utopia. But unfortunately, we're not there and I'm just looking at what the facts on the ground. OK. Well, I mean. I'm glad we sort of semi-agree on this. And if there was unlimited resource you're saying, you'd love people to be doing that. But it can't be economics that determines every value in society. That would be. I mean, I understand that that has an important power, bread and butter and guns. I understand that. But there are other values. And we need to have a society which is more variegated than that. I think that's. I agree quite a lot with that. But at the end of the day, I'm actually going to use a non-economics point here. It's about letting people choose what's best for them, fundamentally. And I think, at the end of the day, our university system doesn't do that because it's resource constrained. And that's the big problem. So I want more philanthropy, I want more growth. I want people to enjoy education for what it brings them. We don't live in that world. The moment is going to take a lot of reform, a lot of money, and then maybe we'll reach that utopia. And I want to avoid the atmosphere problem where I went to Oxford and called them torturers in robes. And I think at the end of the day, we all want to avoid that. (LAUGHS) Maxwell Marlow, thanks very much indeed. Our next witness is Julian Bajini, who's a philosopher and author and on the line now. What do you think education should be for? And how should its value be measured? Or actually, is the very idea of trying to quantify its value missing the point in your view? Yes indeed. Well, thanks so much. Well, I think if you're thinking about the purpose of education, you do have to think about the compulsory education and further and higher education. They're a little bit different. In the broadest terms, what we're doing is we're preparing people to enter society and so they can contribute and live the best lives for themselves. And to your second point, I entirely agree. I think measurement is the wrong thing here. We need to make a judgment. We need to make judgments about what is good, what's better for society, et cetera, et cetera. We can't always quantify that. And the obsession with quantification is I think a huge mistake. Comedy. Hi Julian. Hi. So can you just say in a very brief and neat nutshell, what is the moral purpose of education? Well, the moral purpose, but it's not the only purpose. I just want to say that, right? I think you do have to prepare people for the practical things, the practical skills they need to have. And certain education is about training for jobs. But does it also have a moral purpose? Well, yes. I think that we're losing sight here. I mean, our former guest Maxwell was talking about enabling people to choose what is best for them. But we are social animals, as Aristotle famously said. And we need to be good members of society. So the moral purpose of education is partly to make sure that we can do that. We can take our place in the adult world in a way that is best for us and for other people. These things go together. But doesn't that kind of reproduce the very logic that Maxwell was using, which is it gives a fundamentally instrumental justification for education? What would be your position on what Giles was talking about? What Giles were referring to as the kind of intrinsic goods of education? Is it really just the case that education is to make us good citizens? Isn't there something deeper and richer about it than that? Well, I think the way I put it is not just intrinsic goods. I mean, I think it's both again. I mean, the extrinsic intrinsic choice, it's not a choice, it's both things. But I think it is intrinsically good to have a society in which we live our best lives, and we live as best instance with other people. That is one of the ultimate goods. It's not to serve any other purpose than for society being the best kind of society it can be. You can describe that in a way which might make it sound instrumental, I don't think it is. But we're talking about the ultimate good, which is flourishing. Yeah. I guess the-- well, there's a couple of things there. I guess the point I wanted to draw out there is that there's something about our capacity in your language about our capacity to fulfill a particular social function that leaves me with a lingering sense that your account remains quite utilitarian. And what I'm looking for and reaching for is something more like the old-style humanistic understanding. The education is about enlarging and preserving, indeed, in tough circumstances, our actual humanity, not because that's good for anything. Politics or anything else, but just because that's good. Like that's what life is for. That's what our humanness is for. Yeah, I do agree with that. I'm not sure that what I said was at a theoretical to that. I mean, maybe it didn't stress it. But in terms of taking our place in society, it's not just being useful in an instrumental way for society. That's not what it's about. I think that's the point about social life. How do we think about social life? It's not just about usefulness. It is we are our best selves when we are in a good society in which everyone else is their best selves too. It's not about just being useful to other people, right? It's an ecosystem of society. I think this is another reason why, to be honest, the emphasis on training is wrong. Because society is a kind of an ecosystem in which the flourishing of society depends on lots of things. Some of which don't have any obvious immediate benefits whatsoever, and some of which you do. And you need to have that full sort of ecosystem of education. And if you just turn it into training, you're just taking out what is most important in life. And I totally agree with you. But it seems to me that in the current setting, we have an extreme emphasis on the extrinsic value of education. And here's the core issue. No functioning language to identify and articulate the intrinsic value of education. This value that is to do with our humanness. And so although you say that there are lots of purposes of education, that's of course true, sort of banally true. But in the current setting, it seems to be much more important that we emphasize the intrinsic goods, don't you think? I think so. I think it's totally out of balance. For example, my background is philosophy. I work with academic philosophers. And they're under great pressure to talk about how philosophy degrees are not useless because, actually, statistic shows that people with philosophy degrees are highly employable. And some of them have gone on to work in engineering and computing and had practical inputs. So everyone's being sucked into this discourse of utility. But all these people in their heart of hearts at home, that's not what they think you do philosophy for. And they're trying to get that message out at the same time is really difficult. They're trying to do it. But it's not landing because we're not talking enough about it. So I entirely agree we need to emphasize that much, much more, yes. Great. So final brief question. We talk a lot about the role of the state in education. And what do you think about the role of the family? Is that not an neglected theme in our public conversation? Well, I think the family role in education is important. But I don't think we're wrong to talk about the state because the fact is when it comes to family, it ends up with accidents of family. If you have the right-- the kind of family which will give you that rich environment at home where there are lots of books and the kind of conversations you benefit if you don't, you suffer. So I think we're right to think more about what the state. can do because the state's job is to pick up because not all families can provide the same environment for their kids and it's not their fault. And I think it's so I think what the state does is more important. Tim. I want to ask the Philistine question to go back to you, saying earlier about the employability of philosophers, which is a question I think a lot of people will want to have properly answered, which is in this age of limits when we're all hard pressed by the tax man and when prices are going up and there's only a limited number of resources. Why should we in principle finance as many people starting philosophy as there are people who wish to do it? Well, I'm not sure about the exact balance, but I mean there has to be limits. I think that's right. You know, but it's the same for everything. Also, I have to say I'm in great favour of funding higher education and I think it's a great good. But I think there's probably all sorts of things that benefit more, lower social groups with less education, which also need a lot more funding. And given that things are limited, it may well be that we, the exact amount may not be correct. So I think that's true. So we have to think about how to fund it. And I think things like graduate taxes for that reason are a very good thing. And graduate taxes that kick in once you pay a certain amount. So you're not penalising people who do a degree and don't earn very much. So absolutely. I think the funding system at the moment is a complete mess. And I don't think the answer is just to chuck millions of more public money at it. We've got to think more carefully about how to design it in such a way that it funds itself. I would suggest it's not just the funding which is a bit of a mess, but the education system itself. Now, you write beautifully for a popular audience. Your average philosopher, and I'd apply this to many humanities as well, cannot and do not. And they write really for each other in totally impenetrable language. And there is a sense that much of academia is people being paid to have a conversation with each other. What is the social utility of that? Well, I think it's changing a bit. I think it's about balance, to be honest. I'm perfectly okay with there being some academics who, you know, no one understands what they're doing apart from three other people. That's famously true of, you know, Russell and Whitehead's great, we keep you in Mathematical and all that kind of stuff. So I think that, you know, as long as we shouldn't expect everyone to be a public communicator, et cetera, et cetera. But the balance historically hasn't been right. But you know, I don't know what you think, Tim, but surely this is changing because with the research assessment exercise and everything, that's true. They have made, they're with the emphasis on, you know, you get rewarded for doing that. And I'm finding that in philosophy, they're extremely many, many brilliant communicators, many, many more. When I was an undergraduate, there was virtually none. Now people are good at it. So I think we're already going the direction you want to go. This is the public impact requirement. And I will just say that when I publish my PhD, I could tell you literally everyone who read it, right? That's one reason why I joined journalism and left history is because I've been read by no one that might be about me, not the people. But I did say this because it's the same as true of my PhD, but I went on to write things which people did read. Yes. And as I said, I want to repeat your right, you read right beautifully as well. What I'm suggesting here is that that's the education system, perhaps acknowledging that it can be something of a straight jacket. Now, a lot of many intellectual goods are now being produced outside of the education system. They're being done online. They're being done in the world of business. I'll give you an example. Res of Thunberg actually pulled out of school. And I can't think of anyone produced by academia in the last few years. It's had as much impact upon our thinking about environmentalism. Well, I think a lot of people who have an impact on environmentalism did go to university education and tracing the causes of change of course. Change in society. Yeah. Yeah. I think that most people, a lot of people change society have been through higher education. So I think you can always pick the examples that didn't. But you're right. There are lots of different channels. And again, it's about going to the idea of there's an ecosystem. There's an intellectual and creative ecosystem. And everything has to sort of fulfill its role. And does is that could you know, we can have a long conversation about academia. For example, I think the biggest problem with academia is that it rewards almost entirely people for the narrowness of their work. And it should we should have synthesizers. We should have people who work across departments bringing things together. And the academia doesn't do that. So academia has got lots and lots of faults. But the fault it doesn't have is providing space for intellectual curiosity for its own sake without a thought of its immediate impact. Very quickly, if we agree that we want people to flourish intellectually, does it have to be 50% of people going to university or can they do that outside of university? Well, quickly, I think that question, yes, I think there's a proportion is almost certainly too high because different people have different needs and interests and university wasn't really intended for that kind of mass appeal. I think it should be also different other kinds of training, equally good, equally valued by society. The pointy society has got to value it. And the point is that there's still a bit of snobbery that degrees valued more than the apprenticeship or the trade. And it shouldn't be the case. Julian Bajini, thanks very much indeed. And next witness is Dr. Jess Wade, who's a system professor in functional materials at Imperial College London. Well, me neither, of course. Her research, I'm just reading here. Her research considers new materials for optoelectronic, spintronic and quantum devices with a focus on chiral molecular materials. Well, that's clear. You campaign to get more women and ethnic minorities into science. From your point of view, then ask the question, who is education for, with STEM subjects at least, we're not getting it right, is that your view? No, we're not getting it right. And we definitely need to do more to get young people and older people inspired and excited about science. I think it's important to make passionate people. It's important to make people who generate huge discoveries and breakthroughs that contribute to society, but also kind of open their eyes so they make better informed decisions in their everyday life. So we're not doing enough to encourage everyone to realize they could become a scientist or an engineer. Jess? I have to confess, I find all STEM subjects so incredibly dull. I have no idea why anybody wants to do them, but my daughter, but my daughter was encouraged and went to did a PhD and did a degree in physics. And I thought she was encouraged by loads of people to do that. I couldn't, I mean, I thought people were falling over themselves to encourage her. So where is this stuff about women not being encouraged? What type of school did she go to? Sorry? She went to normal state school. So 50% of state schools in the UK don't send a single girl to do a level physics, which is pretty shocking. So the majority of young women in this country aren't getting a proper introduction to physics. And you're two and a half times more likely to study physics if you go to an independent or girls school to if you go to a general school. So there's a huge inequality of access from when you're really, really young. And that comes from lots of influences. It might come from fathers who say they think STEM subjects are so extraordinarily boring. She still did it. She managed to do it, but it could come from not having experiences to go to museums or visit kind of science festivals or something like that. It could come from things on television or radio. So there are a lot of kind of external influences that impact the stereotypes we create about scientists. And then we have a really big problem in that most of our teachers who teach physics in schools in the UK don't have a background in physics. So we have a very small number of skills specialist teachers. So we're just not inspiring, captivating and keeping young people motivated to know. So the problem is in the pathway into university, is it? The problem is the pathway into university, but if you start with small numbers, you end up with even smaller numbers when you get to professorial levels. So if we look at the demographics of who's a physics professor, there's very, very few women and next to no black physics professors. And how would you remedy that? I would remedy it in lots of different ways. I think we have to really think about how we teach. We have to probably reform and refresh our curricula. So they're not so overwhelmingly boring or however you described it before. But we talk about things like the moon mission or quantum technologies or how we'll create technologies that support climate and help us out of this climate catastrophe. So we have to teach with more relevant contemporary examples to help young people see the types of careers they could do if they go and study those subjects and then have some kind of movement around subject equity. I think there's a big misconception that subjects like physics and maths are really, really hard. And but actually for someone like me who really loves physics and maths, I found the writing subjects really, really hard or kind of thinking in a philosophy or history, I really hard. And so something around subject equity, something around improving access, modernizing curricula. And do you think subjects are gendered in people's head? I think subjects are gendered in some people's heads, in the kind of historical stereotypes and bias. But actually when you look at it, when you look at who the kinds of grades girls get when they do choose to study physics, they level girls systematically get higher grades than boys. So it's not a biological thing. It's just that the numbers are. My wife teaches at university, is university. Electro and in her subjects is 90% women in her subject. Okay, so you teach in the arts and humanities, but it's like 90% women. So I'm just interested in whether we've actually, this is a societal problem, rather than a problem at university. Oh no, it's a massive societal problem. And I think many of it, most of it starts at school and probably not even secondary school, it starts at primary school in the way that we inspire and support girls and boys to find the subjects that they're interested in. No, thank you. Well, no. I'd like to follow on that discussion, but before I do that, I hope you don't mind me asking, but you're at Imperial and I'm just wondering that Imperial is very proudly stem-focused. Can a university that includes the humanities really claim to offer a complete education? We try and get as much humanities as possible to our students. 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Mae'r i Ól arryd ac extremelyu f Faster ernau ddynnych anulid亚 i ein bod Oование a 1900 am heb a'r cyfnir y ffyrddio, o'r cyfnir yna, o'r cyfnir yna, o'r cyfnir yna, o'r cyfnir yna, o'r cyfnir yna. O'r cyfnir yna, o'r cyfnir yna, o'r cyfnir yna, o'r cyfnir yna, o'r cyfnir yna, o'r cyfnir yna, á'r dreidgan a'r llis o'r ddernau i creihaur i gwennafi wna'r def gallwch mod ran��ann. Ond einawnaeth ydym, fwy y gallwn gwboda��听 difntucholaw narhun cyffodol gyfer difntuchol au sydd yneddfa'n gondr updwyrnへ concir flexibilityll ynlt a'r chef Mae perhedraun ac pasan a rifle myna iawn o leedau sermalddegys�αgoeth. Ofisticalaeth yn gallwch maen nhw mwol hyrdowneg hwynd y ffyr наши oedd cani dda mewn mewn exact o'r muzzleadol hisb camdiornewith hollain queau byddwn eich nodd gan seemdown. Gael ddim yn y Clars havingass mewn dadys. Ydy gwell yn arall cael ool cytatiaeth new Contentham ni. Mae 連adec capteli laydal ondy. Mae комуrmo eich nodd hwn datum hynny a fod yn lici hynny. Mae'r prasioedd yn prasioedd yn prasioedd yn prasioedd sy'n sy'n felly ydyd. Mae'r ffordd yn ymddwn y cyflwynnau mewn dadys. Mae'n ddechrau'r ffordd y cyflwynnau mewn dadys. Mae'r eit wedi'r adresu'r ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn y cyflwynnau. Mae'r cyflwynnau mewn darwch yn ymwch yn y cyflwynnau. 緊 y trybl south gylo unrhyw, anicinu ' Cyfteb ysgol oboxetl ar gyfer unrhyw, fy m� yn gwawn i an expect micr fans apprehlovil. Shr Wheel Iawer y gyfer sefyn bod yn neu chi talfysat detwydd gorodd yn edaf 그렇지追alition, ffysigoliad hynny, hefydod yr yng Nghymnoliaid Whoalydd yn deall fel yr unrhywn unrhywns ag softerain, 50 % yn rhafedau yro, ffysigol arreu神 i ran. Ond, ywa preservant yn yr gyfer iawn jefyd tyffwydd sy'n gefil ei werro toyn llyw Yongos y yr rymiddorol er ar hynnyst� cymmer. That'n baylu i'n maethio'r fafnid iawn gyda'r effeileg bod ydy hynny oedd pethau. Weith 명u no yn yr fer, yng Nghymwys gereiwn odg Amuniad neu wedi sef does sy'n ysgithio a pethau eithau dew ungyddiadau gan ynder precipitation optinciyn ni soed eich gwirorm, i maeth â amser hyun yn y kfarw islandi eu dod i deticbolenlol cwest Harry, 'n ddol gy bronio gw poundsir ei gyda. 2017 ymwy, gygestarwó pat ro эта ni'n bombu datryd ac hwn u Gleத yo gynydd faintlyn unadarly wastai flurd yn fel freg omethan yn ameg pfarir ac arall fi gyffred naturalut o gyn złynudad a'r fy rheth cyfle, mae gallai chi wedi gyffred fhai o ffrain bod o gynnwchus, da fy ny sang mammals,wydd ei'r Vitol dayg dim llwysremio'r Ioversong Baby MOND synthesis. Mae wasad a maelיטwnелut, acod o ddarf wedi cwestau gyffred recoveringor a gwyr erklant iseản yr Roebpa abonor amod oiad symud fethol sydd wedifardd dy'n eioreg, a'u fwy'r tref ym yma gyda'r bod a'r gydol y gallu'r ysgol a fwy'r gydol yn ymwydig. Mae'r gydol yna, mae'r ydwydig yma a'u ymwydig yma ydw'r ysgol yma. Mae'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r yma a'u yma. Mae'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r yma. Mae'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol a'u fwy'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r yma. No yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma. Mae'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma. Mae'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma a'u fwy'r gydol yma. Dyn Reland yn Pyrof variosig idioelse? Might be y maln i Makes Queadeau i Rthóm'r Tir�эdau anir i twineu cy염 ar ydydglom tro'n byddai ar sylaen'i febbarystalio gwanno caren iechod Calling David. 目che dysgu rhywerynd am analó drin gofo mewn ol arón dewedd ar DidDavid Ar Sarth bigol gwllau wedyn gwneestonesotар! Mae adaptau'r realiz ddross TIM hachydad ddigyn біль regio gw mappedau gwneud y pyrgymen ddwy yw iaill. Mae ' dydw jyn chords với Worodau i'n gwasanaeth yw'r gweld i'n gwasanaeth. Mae'n gwasanaeth yw'r gwasanaeth yw'r gwasanaeth yw'r gwasanaeth. Mae'n gwasanaeth yw'r gwasanaeth. o bah Potato Alex wrth gynillolioedd yn ei dod hynny ar gy alegaruaeth i adde Sue, ei fill 'eto fy yma settledy Launchless offspring genid yn y �ld yn gw00, hun edryd. Mae'n ei usen felly a'r Messie a'r fŵr dda בiennye wedi gw buymy쳤 am clowoói at yna peàu fel hynny ydy, y sy'n ffothă fika i considerお oeddach gan hwydyn y llygu e'n ei d Pvlwn yn fy y mynd grade bodân yn mhyfn rippedus o whelios i nad d free Beat yn ey bo Priest & Butt, yw e bye. Chof implications o dodети hun sUwla mastering y metallic. heart un ei sy brobel fas niabout i dod o'r porp it. Mae rodol— Aquíauw yn y widerec yn gfilwcario fel gwrs, navigating amd ar oedd yn ei godym ys gyflonor. Laidioeddol y coffelio hab ثfir ysg사 його atwol a medi'u cwisell waill. Mae roedd cael cynn no rys basedu bod ffilingol eu i'w The these days barely a day passes where I don't see a headline that blames the sheer cost of children especially education needs and disabilities and blames the parents for being entitled for daring to fight for what their children are legal in tartitude and legal in tartitude for good reasons. Come on, Marie. It's very moving. Very moving to hear that. Thank you. I also used to be a teacher. Can we talk about practicalities again for a minute? So you standing in front of a classroom filled with 30 children. Every one of them has a different brain. Some of them might be classed as neurodiversion but they all have different brains realistically in the given time of your lesson the 55 minutes that you have whatever. How is it at all possible to make accommodations for 30 different brains? A lot of that will be done in advance through the planning of your lesson through discussions with other staff members or with the students parents or with the student themselves. I'm thinking about now two different primary school jobs there had. One is a teacher where had three teaching assistants in a class of 34 students and one where it was literally just me with I believe it was 28 eight students in a school which I would argue had a much more diverse set of needs but the teaching assistants were occupied with any even greater level of need in other classrooms. And I remember being struck with quite a feeling of guilt in that second example where I knew full well that I as one human helping 28 humans found it so much more difficult than I did in the previous school. I think we need more bodies on the ground really. I really relate to that. I have smaller classes than that but I really struggled to make provision for every individual student and I guess everybody listening surely will be massively in favour of what you're advocating in principle that every child needs should be met in the way that is appropriate to the child but people I think have probably struggled to conceive of how feasible it actually is to meet children's needs on that kind of individual basis given the sort of educational system that we have. Is it not I'm being devil's advocate but is it not just very utopian to think that every child can have their own learning plan in the room and the 30 students and you as the solitary teacher facing that massive hill to climb and feeling guilty because you can't. I don't think it's I don't think it's wrong to be utopian about trying to meet the needs of all students. I think what we need to do is look at the barriers that prevents these accommodations from being put in place and address them. Some of them will be financial. Some of them will be addressed completely for free. And I'm thinking for example it sounds like I can go off on a beer the tangent but bear with me. In the village where I used to live there's a supermarket that every Sunday morning does a sensory friendly shopping hour. They turn down the lights since they and so they stop the music from playing and that's so that some shoppers with sensory difficulties or different sensory profile or parents of such children can access the shop as much as anyone else can. Now this may only happen between nine o'clock and ten o'clock on a Sunday morning but guess what's all of the neurotypical shoppers responses to that is why can't we just do this all the time. No one's missing the bright lights and the loud music. I think when you change an environment in order to accommodate those for example with different sensory profiles what you're actually doing is accommodating everyone and so the unfortunate truth is. I'm just going to interrupt you slightly because I want to ask you another question on a different level about you just in interpreting practicalities and principles. This is a question about principles and educational philosophy. Neurodiversity in the very name is about the differences between students and we live where we're in an now an education environment which is very focused on the differences between students and child-centered approaches and so on. Do you think that there's a risk if we overemphasise different students that we lose the focus on what the students have in common and on the guiding a kind of overall guiding vision for education itself. On the one hand I can see in arguments for for talking more about what we have in common and yes, I believe we should do that. But the other angle to that is in what way are we talking about the differences. I think it's completely fine to keep enthusiastically and to positively keep talking about the differences if we are talking about new universities. Something that benefits us as a species quite frankly rather than something that oh it exists and it's a bit of a shame but I suppose we can accommodate it. If we talk about new diversity in the same way that we should be talking about all the other ways that humans are different then I think that's a very healthy discussion to have. But yes, talk about what we have in common is also something that we should lose sight of. Chris Benello, thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed for joining us this evening. Well, part I don't know about you. I think there seem to be a clearer division over what's education for than who's it for in this sort of two-part discussion this evening. Maxwell Marlowe, our first witness, Mona, was absolutely clear it wasn't. It was and should be measured by its economic return and the tangible benefits it brings to society. He didn't convince you though, did he? I think he sees very much that university, especially higher education. It was about it, mind. No, no, he was. I think he was the kind of expensive gate he puts to the job markets and I understand everyone needs to be able to work. Everybody wants to have a job and all the rest of it. But that's not the primary purpose of higher education. I was still not convinced about that because if we are driven purely by economic output then what do we do with all the things that give meaning in our lives? Well, how do we quantify that? Where does that go? We have beautiful art galleries, museums and cinemas and all the rest of it. How do we train young people to think about all that? Tim, you had more sympathy for that argument. Well, a great deal of that art was not produced by the university system. I don't like things being judged on that cost basis. I'm idyllistic about education because I enjoyed the fruits of a scholarship which I was so academic and disconnected. I sometimes forgot even to cash the check. But I enjoyed that and I think the most productive years of my life when I was like some aristocrat just paid to think. And I didn't waste them at all. I published books. I ran for Parliament, believe it or not. I'd lose the things on the public's dime. Thank you very much. And I genuinely think they were to the greater use of society. I think the problem is is that inner democracy, as I said at the very beginning, where everyone has the right to access such goods. We have a choice. Everyone can access it. In which case we're going to have to pay more or we ration it. In which case it only goes to the very very brightest. That to me seems the simple and difficult choice we have to face. It's very clear distinction in the first two witnesses. The first witness talking about the need to measure things because it's on the basis of that measurement that resources can be allocated. You don't like an economist but you know what he meant. Whereas Julian Virginia, the second witness, where he was almost the other end of all that even trying to measure benefit was a problem because the most valuable aspects of it can't be measured. Something's going to be measured, something's can't. So you see where I have some sympathy with Mr Marlow is that there are some degrees which are basically ways into a certain sort of job market. And if you're doing- Is this Mona's distinction between education and training? Yeah it is. So if you're doing computer science or engineering or some sort of things like that, I actually think he might have a point. Charge quadruple what it is because you're going to get bring that back in the lifetime. In your lifetime you're going to earn more. That my problem and actually his problem too Mr Marlow's problem was actually how do you fund this stuff that doesn't have that extrinsic value that doesn't bring the money in. Now you can actually say, as Tim has said, you know I spent my time as an aristocrat but actually it was very valuable in the long run. But actually I still think we want to talk about intrinsic goods without any reference to anything, any other benefit. And that intrinsic goods which I think the university should be a repository of Mr Marlow wasn't really able to talk about how you fund that. So people go to Oxford on the back of a history degree and they'll use the connections it gives them to get into a job, a very well paid in job in law. Let's not imagine that all intrinsic education ends at the BA. It's then turning to something- You are right, it's actually difficult to judge. Some people want to do it and some people want to do computer science because they want to teach computer science, not because they want to make a million in that. But even if we start with the monetary aspect of it, what you've just said that yes, okay let's charge somebody who's doing an engineering and doing quadruple the fee. That's going to actually add intended consequence of that is it's going to exclude a lot of people who quite afford to do an engineering degree. That's going to create a whole new set of problems and then we're going to have another kind of an aspect. Well Mr Marlow say you get loans. You get loans for that. We've already got students who can't pay off their loans because they're from underprivileged backgrounds. So all we're going to do is on the hypothesis that you will learn ten times more than somebody with a philosophy degree, you're going to pay a huge fortune for that. I don't think that's going to work. I think one of the arguments comedy was that we currently- I imagine Maxwell's view of this was we're currently over producing graduates on cheap to provide courses or cheaper to provide courses like online. I can deed history and so on, and under producing high cost graduates of things we need, like engineers and doctors and so on. That seems to be true, and I think there are quite a few. I mean, isn't there a case for saying it doesn't work very well at the moment? Yes, I think there absolutely is a case, and I think we should really be thinking more on lines of what happens in many European countries, which is that there are actually different institutions for these different kinds of education in Switzerland, I'm married to a first man, as far as I can tell, it works extremely well. There are technical and vocational training institutions which are very, very highly regarded and turn out very capable people, and then there are universities where people go and they want to study humanities, and I don't see anything wrong with that. I do think, on the contrary, it seems like we should be thinking about something like that in this country, but I do want to say that I think everyone's gone quite easy on Maxwell Marlow. I think that the. he seems like a totally delightful human being. But I think that the school of thought he was advancing is actually not just wrong, but quite dangerous. This is the kind of thinking that you find in a sort of totalitarian regime that doesn't see space for anything, that doesn't have an immediate economic benefit to the state. I find it really shocking that we're in a situation where we're not really thinking with that so busy worrying about the economy, we're not thinking about what the economy is even for anyway, which is allowing us to actually live human lives and to be full of versions of ourselves, and I find it extremely depressing. Tim, I found what was interesting was just the difficulty in defining what education purpose actually was, clearly more than just merely becoming a learned person, but things like leading your best life, a good and meaningful life, intellectual cultural development is all very wishy, washy, ill-defined sort of stuff. Not at all, it's a very important tool. If you read that wonderful book, the intellectual history of the working class is brilliant book. The upper class really didn't want the workers to learn, they didn't understand why they had to, they gave them ideas above their station. They were damn them, I feel very passionately about this. The problem is in the same way we might judge the value of a degree by its monetary value, we sometimes judge an education by what marks you got or how far you've progressed within the system. Well some people might only go so far or go in a certain direction, but it's about developing the potential of the individual and developing the whole person. And indeed part of the problem with the argument about university is I think we forget that the role there that schools play in that. And so often when you then teach in universities, the tragedy as you find a lot of people have not been prepared well by the school. And I don't just mean they come in and they can't write an essay, I mean there's certain personality problems there, there's certain building blocks in their life which have not been developed. It's more than just individualism, isn't part of the purpose, or certainly historically part of the purpose of education, is that it inculcates in us a sense of some sort of shared values, is not about bringing out the potential of the individual. It is about having some shared, that's implicit to educating people, isn't it? Because it's a shared value that everyone should have the right to be an education. I'm assuming drawing that you would define it in terms of the individual. I think there's a much more communitarian framework for education. Which is very endangered by and over focus on STEM. Correct. The who's it for argument? I'm very impressed by Jess Wade who has this argument that we're failing to engage in a large proportion of the population in subjects that she would regard as essential for the future. But I couldn't help in the back of my mind thinking that many girls and women who don't go into these particular subjects are actually making a choice. Well, this is what I tried to challenge her on, that actually if you dismiss all of this, you know, like we're trying to inspire young people but they're still not coming. Well, actually you're kind of infantilising and saying that people have not made that choice willingly. Of course they might be family pressures, there are some background issues. But you know, we've been talking about this for 20-30 years now. And it reminded me a little bit of the time, you know, we've just had the space, the moon mission. It's when their limb picks come off some great big games and everybody talks about all we're going to inspire people to do more sports. Well, we've just had, you know, their moon voyage or more girls are going to come into STEM. It doesn't work like that. People are making choices that feel right for them. And yes, there may be some that we're excluding because of the wrong reasons, basically. But I don't think it's just about ethnicity and gender. There's a reason why certain backgrounds encourage certain professions. And they don't think that an abstract degree in physics is worth anything. A comedy is worth saying, isn't it? That 60% of medical students are girls, women, now. So I mean, that's a STEM subject by any standards I would have thought. I mean, it raises this very tricky thing that's quite difficult to talk about even these days about, you know, whether there is a difference in sort of male and female brains, aptitudes, tendencies. Yeah, it's highly sensitive territory. Highly sensitive territory. And it seems to me that as far as difference in the brains are concerned, we need to be relatively as agnostic as we can be and create as level of playing field as possible, which seemed to me what Jess Wade was saying. But I wouldn't want to, just coming back to what Mona was saying on this, I wouldn't want to underestimate the way in which a whole social and cultural milieu shapes what people choose to do. And I don't think, and I think we can't be too searching about that. That people make the choices that they do, not because they're that kind of person or this kind of person, but because they live in a environment that tells them. Can I just tell you what you're just very quickly? When I was growing up, it was a state school. I never even questioned one second that I wouldn't be going to university. And when I asked my white middle class friends, oh, they said, oh, we're going to go for a job, we're going to do this. For them, there was a whole plethora of choice, not for people from my background. Everyone was going to go to university. I don't want this programme to finish without talking about Chris Pinello, who I found, you know, very impressive and very difficult to disagree with. But I wondered whether there wasn't an argument for standardisation in education. I can absolutely appreciate where he's coming from. But we're talking intellectual or emotional because I identify what he was saying, because I'm not saying I was not new at a graduate school, but I went to a grammar school which was obsessed with tests and grades. And for much of my time there, I thought it was thick. And they treated me as though I was thick. No, it's just I was more interested in other things that they didn't value. But also, I now realise that even though I left there and went to Cambridge, I merged a philosopher king intellectually, but a child emotionally, because the school didn't care about it. It didn't teach it, and maybe it can't replace the family and it shouldn't try. But I do fear that in the new marketing, marketed high discipline kind of education system we're building, I think something is being lost in terms of compassion and developing the individual's soul. John's last word would be very short, please. It is, it is, it is. Stanley, that's absolutely right. I think that's one of the things that we've had here is we've had this, this marketisation of education leaves a lot of people out. Okay, that's it for this week and actually for this series from our panel tonight. Anyway, Tim Stanley, Charles Fraser, comedy Grey and Mona Sadecki. And for me, until the next series which starts in June, I think. Goodbye. Hello, I'm Johnny Diamond and I'm the presenter of the Radio 4 series. How did we get here? Israel and the Palestinians. We explore the complicated backstory of that Middle East conflict as the region endures another wider war. Through conversations with experts with a variety of perspectives, we travel back through the centuries to examine the history of the land that's now so contested between Arabs and Israelis. And we try and understand the past that's brought us to such a present. How did we get here? Listen on BBC Sounds.