Letters to the Editor
We Must Abolish Private Education
For all its eloquent turns of phrase and broad, literate vocabulary, Ed Cummings’ article on admissions (An Unsurprising Elite, 28th September) was intellectually lazy and contradictory. As such, the article’s mismatch between form and content serves to undermine its own argument: it proves that you can polish a turd, especially with the help of a private education.
For Cummings fatally conflates the ‘best schools’ with ‘the best students’. The mere fact of going to a very expensive school does not in itself confer merit. With sufficient help and coaching, even a mediocre student can achieve five As at A-level and summon sufficient brio to blag their way through an interview. Again, this isn’t an indicator of their intelligence: merely a function of their class background. Meanwhile, highly able students from rough schools routinely fail to
get As because of the obstacles that low-income life and disruptive school environments throw in their way.
Crucially, the defining feature of private schools is not only that they are ‘better’ than state schools, but also that one has to pay. Although he bleats about “meritocracy”, Cummings admits that these schools are there for those “either able to foot the fees or bright enough to secure a scholarship”. Because scholarships are necessarily a minority, Cummings finds himself defending a system under which one can pay to cheat the meritocratic system by buying success. That’s unjust. A good education should be a right, not a very expensive privilege. We must abolish private education.
Edward Maltby
St John’s College
An Incomplete Argument
The visit by Bjorn Lomborg, author of the ‘Sceptical Environmentalist’ to the Union was interesting, though controversial.
One member of the audience asked why he had not mention the effect of global warming on agriculture and water supplies in his talk. Lomborg replied to this by saying he did not have time to address everything. He added that the growing population of the world would cause a water shortage anyway. Yet surely climate change will only make this worse?
Lomborg seemed pessimistic about ever preventing climate change. He stated that the Kyoto Protocol costs $180 Billion per year and will only delay the warming by 5 years. I found his use of economic figures confusing. How can you put a price on a human life in the future?
However, as well as his pessimism about