Quote Of The Day

"Many on the left of the Labour Party tell us of the danger of turning education into a market place, where those with the cultural capital and resources find the better schools and those with little means or access end up in the bog standard comprehensive. They argue that giving schools more power will inevitably lead to black children being excluded from the best schools. Yet there can be nothing more characteristic of the market place in education than the private school. The school of thought is based on a Caribbean tradition that happily draws on very Victorian and Conservative values but is also revolutionary and anarchic. I have no problems with contradictions and tensions; it’s what makes us interesting people.....So how are our children doing in their very English private schools? From all reports, very well and all of this without a black teacher in sight. These are places where black history month might be thought of as something to do with the great plague during the Middle Ages. This is where you study the works of Martin Luther, the white one. Where Bach is preferred to Beanie Man. Are these children less black, have they become white on the inside and black on the outer? Not so. Parents would argue that they have maintained their cultural traditions, by visits to the Caribbean, by going to Supplementary schools, By attending black churches and also reminding them of the Caribbean and African tradition of strict discipline in the home. It is no different than the way middle-class Indian families have related to mainstream English culture.'" — Tony Sewell, British moderate-conservative educator