Bernard Ingham: Ed Miliband must learn that we are all only equal in our need for each other

WHY does Ed Miliband remind me of Marlene Dietrich? Because at the end of that poignant song "Where have all the flowers gone?" she wants to know "When will they ever learn?"

I want to know when Ed the Younger will ever learn after his recent performance on the subject of education. While not committing himself, the Shadow Climate Change Secretary – and Labour leadership contender – is threatening to make it easier for parents to get rid of our remaining 164 grammar schools.

The Doncaster North MP said: "I think that an issue has been raised

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about the system of polls for grammar schools and whether the right people get the chance to vote in the polls. I am not giving you a definitive answer. I am saying this is an issue to be looked at."

We get the drift, especially the reference to "the right people". Having, in the name of equality, committed his own children to a state education, he is damn well determined that everybody else's child will have one, too – regardless.

In practice, it will be amazing if the little Milibands experience any educational deprivation, given the splendid record of champagne socialists for getting their children into the best comprehensives, however distant from their catchment area. But that is by the way.

Let us return to the question of the hour: when will they ever learn?

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I am not pure on this matter. My grammar school – Hebden Bridge – was one of the first to go comprehensive when it was converted into Calder High in 1950. While I regretted the demise of HBGS, I was, in my egalitarian way, a long-time champion of comprehensives. They appealed to my idealistic enthusiasm for "equality of opportunity".

The lengthening honours board at Calder High also seemed to justify my faith.

The problem arises when fact and faith diverge. Tolstoy had a word – in fact rather a lot of words – for it: "I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and obvious truth if it be such as would

oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."

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This explains exactly the comprehensive school problem confronting politicians and I fully expect global warming will be the next one to test them.

I am far from convinced that comprehensives do much damage to the brightest, though whether they really stretch them is another matter. But what is clear is that they ill serve the less academic. Things have got so bad that the political dumbing down of exams means the sharp knives in the tool box cut ever more As and A* while the blunter boys wallow in mediocre results, if any.

At the same time, universities say A* is no longer a reliable guide to ability, while socially engineering their standards to let in

youngsters from deprived backgrounds. They also contemplate saddling them with ever higher debts through extortionate tuition fees. Our education system has become a monstrous con.

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It becomes even more monstrous when you realise that this drive to impose higher tuition fees stems from a ludicrous determination to educate 50 per cent of our youth at university, regardless of whether they can benefit from it or from the non-subjects concocted to occupy them.

But that is not the end of it. The greatest disservice we have done to our children is to deprive those with a practical bent – notably in engineering – of a sound technical education.

Let us not kid ourselves: we have sacrificed a couple of generations on the altar of snobbery dressed up as equality. If Ed Miliband wins the Labour leadership he will, God forbid, ensure the nonsense continues.

All this because he and his purblind ilk cannot accept that we are equal only at the moment of birth. From then on parental quality and our individual nature, health, intellect, aptitude, interest and social position or pressure take over – along with huge dollops of luck.

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In these circumstances, logic surely suggests we do two things:

recognise that it takes all kinds to make the world go round and educate and train the next generation to the best of their ability to serve society. We are equal in only one thing: our need for each other.

This is why Ed Miliband reminds me of Marlene Dietrich. When will he ever learn?

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