Another day, it seems, another headline criticising China. If it’s not Chinese rule in Tibet, it’s repression in the Muslim region of Xinjiang, restrictions on workers’ rights, religious freedom, reproductive rights, frequent use of the death penalty, persecution of dissidents, censorship of the internet, piracy of intellectual property, overuse of the death penalty, their ‘guzzling’ of the world’s resources, or the pollution created by economic development. And it’s not just the media. NGOs like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch are intensely critical of China. Western governments, while often arguably moderating their criticisms for economic reasons, also feel the need to add to the criticisms.

In advance of his visit to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, George W Bush caught the Chinese by surprise by speaking out in opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists. Gordon Brown followed suit by taking the opportunity during his meeting with Hu Jintao prior to the Olympics closing ceremony to lecture the Chinese president on ‘a number of human rights issues’ during their hour long meeting.

Whether or not such criticisms are legitimate, many overseas Chinese have taken exception to Western attitudes towards China, leading to a surge of pro-China demonstrations earlier this year, reacting – in particular –to the tendency of the Western media to dwell upon the negative aspects of events involving China in the run-up to the Olympic Games. One protester described the experience of being among thousands of students travelling to London to join the procession of the Olympic torch, and then returning home to see news coverage instead obsessing on the handful of pro-Tibetan protesters who disrupted the event. ‘It was as if the torch was just struggling its way through London and it was all about how people were so resentful about it,’ she told the China Daily.

Does this resentment perceived by a Chinese student in London reflect real feeling amongst Westerners in general? An online survey conducted by the Institute of Ideas and launched at the Battle for China conference held in London in July, suggests otherwise. One respondent believed media representation of China is so negative that, ‘the minds of Western people now have this image of China that the Western media can’t risk deviating from without facing criticism’, but of the 124 respondents to the survey, over three-quarters felt the Western media was overly negative about the rise of China. This suggests a more sceptical attitude on the part of at least some of the Western public.

Elaborations on this answer broadly fell into two camps. Some believed the Western media does not single out China per se, but takes a cynical and sensationalist attitude towards ‘absolutely everything’. As one respondent claimed, ‘In China, 60-75% of news on TV or papers is positive, or at the very least non-negative. On the contrary, the West is used to negative news, so we are more accustomed to lots of stories about bad things going on in our world’. The second camp believed the negativity in the media regarding the rise of China reflects a deeper concern about the ‘loss of [the West’s] leadership role’, which manifests itself in a ‘breathtakingly arrogant and hypocritical’ way. For this reason, argued one university lecturer, ‘so many young British people do not really understand what is going on in the largest country in the world, apart from shouting human rights slogans’. She concluded that, ‘It is a shame that the Western media has failed to bridge better understanding between the two worlds and only incited hostility.’

Despite criticisms of the Western media however, a sizable majority of respondents (66%) believed the Olympic Games would serve to improve Western perceptions of China. Furthermore an overwhelming 86% of respondents believed that it was right for China to have been awarded the games. The effort involved in putting together an event on such a scale could, it was believed, not fail to impress. As one British student put it, ‘Although this may express an overly optimistic view of the media, I believe it will be difficult for it to portray the effort gone into the games in a negative light’. A school teacher elaborated further: ‘China seems to embody many of the Olympian ideals, currently lacking in many Western democracies’. This point seems particularly apt in light of the recent comments by Lord Coe that the Beijing Olympics will be the ‘last games of its scale’.

Respect for the ‘Olympian ideals’ of China extend beyond the games. Indeed, even in the face of stories in the British media about China becoming ‘one of the greatest environmental threats the earth has ever faced’, respondents were broadly optimistic about the prospects for the Chinese people. 66% of respondents said that they think it’s possible for 1.3 billion Chinese to have the standard of living currently experienced in the Western world.

Interestingly, explanations given tended to broaden out from China and muse instead upon the resourcefulness of mankind in general. In the face of challenges, people were seen to be ‘creative and industrious’ and ‘the solution, not the problem’. Those opposing the view similarly tended to generalise their responses, one local government officer claiming that, ‘the planet can’t afford for ANY of us to have that [a Western standard of living] in the long term – we’re too wasteful and destructive’.

Despite the considerable challenges China will have to face to continue on its phenomenal growth pattern, almost two thirds of respondents believed it would find ways of being able to do so. Definitions of growth varied, however, and – whilst it was pointed out that GDP growth was likely to slow in percentage terms as the economy matures, respondents often emphasised the capacity of the Chinese people to overcome major obstacles. Even those arguing the growth pattern was likely to slow didn’t appear to doubt this capacity, instead pointing to China’s current dependence on revenue from exports to stagnating Western economies.

Given Western experience of development and the global implications of the rise of China, should the West see itself as being responsible to ensure China develops sustainably? A total of 67% of respondents believed not, arguing that responsibility for the China’s development rests firmly on the shoulders of the Chinese. Indeed respondents were suspicious about those who took held this view, one claiming that sustainability is being used as ‘an excuse for the West to insinuate itself into China’s affairs’.

Respondents insisted that ‘China is not a child’, and suggested the idea that the West should hold China’s hand as it develops was both patronising and lacking in reciprocity. The West should be allowed to voice its concerns about China’s development, it was suggested, but the real responsibility should be to set an example in terms of democracy and human rights that would inspire China and the rest of the world to follow, instead of lecturing China about what it should do, or meddling in its affairs.

Opinions were divided as to whether Western countries should take every opportunity to criticise China on its human rights record. 53% disagreed with this. Attempts by Western countries to criticise China were broadly seen to be hypocritical, given both the US and Britain’s history of human rights abuses, of which many examples were given. Furthermore, numerous respondents didn’t believe such criticisms would be effective anyway, and some suggested continual Western criticism of China could well serve to fan the flames of Chinese nationalism, hindering progress on human rights as much as aiding it. Others, though, believed that because human rights were universal, they should transcend national boundaries. As a result, the West should feel ‘obliged’ to criticise China, and ‘if any party should pressurise China it can only be governments’.

Strikingly, the majority of respondents believed that China was going to have a major impact on the world order in the 21st century. 89% of respondents believed that China either already is, (42%) or would become (48%), a superpower. Those believing that China was becoming a superpower typically suggested this would take place within the next 10-20 years. Despite this threat to US hegemony, respondents on the whole believed China’s rise would be a peaceful one. 71% said that they didn’t think China’s rise would be a threat to world peace. China was seen to be a relatively peaceful nation with no track record of aggression towards, or interference with other countries (given that it claims the disputed territories Tibet and Taiwan are part of China itself) to suggest the Chinese would begin to take a bellicose approach in the future.

Respondents had less faith in the West to respond peacefully to China’s rise, and anticipated that if hostilities were to take place, it would be likely that they would be initiated by the US, threatened by the change in the balance of power. The economic dependence on the US by China was cited as a main factor as to why this is unlikely, however. Respondents pointed to the fact that China had enough difficulties to face internally, such as unemployment, rising numbers of protests and regional unrest.

These internal problems, many argued, would be the factor that led China to become a democracy. Indeed despite Chinese claims that China will defy the assumption underpinning the Washington consensus that democracy is a precondition for economically developed countries, 62% of respondents believed that China would become a democracy. Common reasons given were that open markets and greater prosperity will lead to a demand for greater individual freedom. This demand was thought likely to be a gradual one, however, and few saw the Chinese regime becoming more democratic any time soon. Others were at pains to emphasise that Chinese democracy is unlikely to resemble the democracy that currently exists in the West, with demography and differences in Chinese Confucian philosophy the key reasons cited for this. It was of fundamental importance, said one respondent, that any development towards democracy should happen organically, and it will only happen if the West gives China sufficient ‘breathing space’.

While ‘China-bashing’ is popular amongst the Western media and elites, the responses to this survey suggests that such crude views are not commonplace among the British public. Few would suggest the Chinese regime is in any way ideal at the moment. As the survey results show, however, there is a strong belief that the West should respect China’s autonomy and refrain from interfering. Indeed such interference, be it regarding human rights or sustainable development, was broadly seen to be hypocritical, or an attempt by Western powers to intrude into China’s affairs.

As one respondent put it, the Chinese ‘will look to us and see how well we do with our own efforts’. Rather than engaging in ‘China-bashing’, therefore, the West would do better to focus on getting its own house in order. Instead of preaching to the Chinese about how their country should develop, the West should focus on its own development if it is to offer anything the Chinese and other emerging economies will aspire towards.

Some of the themes discussed in this essay will be explored further at the Battle for Prosperity strand at the Battle of Ideas in London on Saturday 1 November 2008.
http://www.battleofideas.org.uk/index.php/2008/strand/1250/

Summary of findings from the Institute of Ideas survey “The rise of China: threat or opportunity?”
Institute of Ideas, 8 August 2008
http://www.battleofideas.org.uk/index.php/2008/item/1500

What is politics about? In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was sufficient to say: Left versus Right. The conflict had many dimensions. The sociological: working class versus the middle and upper classes. The philosophical: equality versus freedom (of exchange, to accumulate). Over change: radical social upheaval, reform or even revolution, versus conservatism and turning back the clock. Over our possessions: private property versus its abolition.

Within these dimensions, the banners of Left and Right denoted ‘a tradition and a project’ in Steven Lukes’ words (2003: 611) The ubiquity of Left and Right was such that the Left and Right positions on pretty much any important social issue were taken for granted: the Left was for abortion, the Right against; the Left was for gay rights, the Right thought them to be pernicious (perhaps both the rights and their holders); the Right was for custom, tradition and religious belief, while the Left wanted those things to be swept away as fetters on the free development of reason and creativity. In short, the battle lines were clearly drawn.

In an important sense, ‘politics’ and ‘Left versus Right’ were the same thing – conflict, debate, people expressing their interests and their identities, and, above all, disagreement over the fundamental questions of human nature and social organisation. Left and Right express an irreducible element of what politics is about: conflict. We must add: Left and Right also make that conflict legitimate, since they put the two (or more) alternatives on an equal footing, neither option placed higher or lower than the other.

A claim that Left versus Right ‘has ended’, then, is barely distinguishable from a claim for the ‘End of Politics’. And there are many, across the political spectrum, who have begun to doubt the old labels of Left and Right. Added to the old Right-wing cranks who have always been sceptical about Left and Right (they are ‘meaningless...they do not exist’ in the words of Anthony Kenny in the Spectator (2005)), there are now a new set of questions about the plausibility of Left and Right. Have they been exhausted, as a result of the failure of the Left in the 1980s? Is socialism ‘operationally empty’ after the fall of the Soviet Union, leaving the Left rudderless? Are Left and Right running out of steam since they have, through a period of alternation, achieved their aims? Even more grandly, has liberal capitalism triumphed over the world, and over History, to bring about the final stage of human government and the irrelevance of any and all alternatives? Finally, should we be pleased if, as some say, politics has essentially mined itself out, and we can get on with the more important business of living our lives, creating relationships, projects and art? Or it is just that we’re searching around for what comes after Left and Right and that the interim will obviously be a bit confusing?

These questions show that it is no longer taken for granted that politics just is or should be about Left versus Right. If we think it is, we now have to argue for it. There are two major political developments which we need to recognise, however: the first is the political elites themselves want to dispense with Left and Right, and the second is that the terms speak less and less to ordinary people’s attitudes towards contemporary politics. This first trend can be seen in the avowed aim of political elites across Europe and beyond to remove the conflict between Left and Right from politics, and replace it with consensus or another type of supposed forward motion. New Labour’s Third Way blazed a trail in this regard. In Tony Blair’s own words, New Labour’s aim was one of going ‘beyond the traditional boundaries of left and right, breaking new ground by escaping the sterile debates that have polarised our politics for too long’ (1996: 298).

But the emptying out of politics of the content of Left and Right has left a void. It is quite unclear what can fill it. Without Left and Right as the accepted expression of competing sets of ideas about – and interests in – how society is run, the only remaining option for the content of politics is morality. As the political philosopher Chantal Mouffe writes,

‘what we are currently witnessing is not the disappearance of the political in its adversarial dimension but something different. What is happening is that nowadays the political is played out in the moral register. In other words, it still consists in a we/they discrimination, but the we/they, instead of being defined with political categories, is now established in moral terms. In place of a struggle between “right and left” we are faced with a struggle between “right and wrong”. (2005: 5) (emphasis added)

Alain Badiou likewise points out the ‘socially inflated recourse’ to what he calls the ‘ethical’ dimension in the political domain (2001: 2). Contemporary trends attest to the colonisation by ethics of the political sphere. The rise (and rise) of ethical consumerism and environmentalism clearly substitute an ethical imperative for political debate. Interventionism and social engineering use the language of ‘right and wrong’ and moral justification. The politics of right versus wrong is very different from Left versus Right. Ethical responses to societal problems characteristically take on individualised (rather than collective) forms. It is a case of ‘what would Jesus/Al Gore do’ rather than ‘what together can we do’, as the latter requires mobilisation of interests and political principles as well as political debate and argument.

The politics of right versus wrong also reduces politics from a legitimate conflict between competing interests to a ethical puzzle in which there is essentially a ‘correct’ response. This is an important point. Debate is either pre-empted or reduced to squabbling over which option is ethically most worthy. A struggle between ‘right and wrong’ all but outlaws the expression in politics of our interests; questions of who gets what and how much are as unseemly and inappropriate to politics as a public discussion of sexual habits would have been to the Victorians. This is clearly something we must resist by continuing to put forward claims based on partisan, class, and group interests (and pointing out the hidden interests smuggled into others’ supposedly ‘neutral’ ethical claims).

‘Left’ and ‘Right’ are also becoming less useful ways of thinking about practical politics. This is a complicated development, and requires thought before responding. Political scientists point out that fewer people are willing to profess a clear ‘left’ or ‘right’ identity. The answering of ‘don’t know’ to the question of whether you are on the Left or on the Right is also disproportionately found in young people, and suggestive of the future. Old ideas of Left and Right are becoming irrelevant to how people think about themselves politically.

Moreover, the consistency of the labels Left and Right is endangered by the sprouting of new movements which use the labels in a dizzying variety of ways. If ‘Left’ refers both to the Old Left of communist parties and Stalinism and the New Left of students behaving like (and quoting from) Rimbaud, and insisting on the imperative to ‘change life’, and if these two disagree, is it a useful term? Can ‘the Right’ coherently refer both to the British Conservatives and the populist Dutch Pim Fortyn List who are anti-immigrant to protect gay rights? In short, hasn’t the breaking up of the old binary view of the world rendering Left and Right too imprecise to capture the ideological variation in modern politics?

Left and Right, then, are blurred – they try to refer to too much. Lastly, analyses of political parties based on traditional issues find convergence in the centre of the Left-Right spectrum. Like two ice-cream vendors on a seafront crowded end to end, the two parties have moved towards the centre to maximise votes. Obviously this is simplified, but, regrettably, today the process of gaining votes is not as different from that of selling ice-creams as it should be.  On this view, Left and Right have shrunk closer together. Why bother using Left and Right and the language of spatial difference if the two options available are so close together on whatever issue you can name so as to be indistinguishable?

My argument here is that we can question the meaning Left and Right today without being in favour of getting rid of Politics with a capital P. Indeed, a critique of practical politics can naturally follow from the claims that we have gone ‘beyond left and right’. As Frank Furedi puts it, ‘left and right have become words in search of meaning… because of the absence of a living left- or right-wing political tradition’ (2005: 50).

So can we still say politics is about Left and Right? The danger is not with the terms Left and Right themselves, but with the movements that take the labels. The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm was correct when he claimed in 2000 that ‘those who deny the existence of the division are generally on the Right’, since a denial of the conflict between Left and Right, and the claim politics is about something else, is strongly related to an acceptance of the status quo and the assumed redundancy of the Left’s aims of the removal of class inequality (2000: 95).

The difficulty for those who see Left and Right as indispensable to politics is that of reconciling, for example, a belief in the Left’s uncompleted legacy of the Enlightenment – equality, progress, freedom – with the realities of contemporary politics and what passes for the contemporary Left. The first step is resisting the temptation of moralising, and instead asserting the validity (and necessity) of interests in politics. The second step is harder. It is probably something like attempting to maintain the plausibility of political options that differ significantly from those available. The language and ideas of Left and Right are based on difference, alternatives, disagreement; their usage in contemporary politics is based merely on the differentiation of parties.

Maintaining an awareness of the meaning of Left and Right, and the history of their alternative and radically different ways of understanding politics, is especially important because the commonest act of bad faith in politics today is, to paraphrase Marshall Berman, to act as if we were born yesterday, and to ignore the power of the legacies of Left and Right to shape and define our politics, and how we ‘do’ it.

George Hoare is a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford, and a member of the Institute of Ideas’ Postgraduate Forum. 

Alain Badiou, 2001, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil trans. P. Hallward, London: Verso
Tony Blair, 1996, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country, London: Fourth Estate
Frank Furedi, 2005, Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right, London: Continuum
Eric Hobsbawm, 2000, The New Century: In Conversation with Antonio Polito, London: Abacus
Antony Kenny, 2005, ‘The End of Left and Right’, the Spectator, 5 February
Chantal Mouffe, 2005, On The Political, London: Routledge
Steven Lukes, 2003, ‘Epilogue: The Grand Dichotomy of the Twentieth Century’ in: Ball and Bellamy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Twentieth Century Political Thought

We are told there is a crisis of reading today. Supposedly we are reading less than ever before; there are 5 million illiterate adults in Britain, too many computer games being played, not enough novels read. We also hear, however, that Harry Potter has brought children (and adults too) back to books, there has been an explosion of book clubs; more books are being published than ever before. What can we read into these seeming contradictions?

At the Battle of Ideas this year, the Battle for the Reader session will explore many of the themes above. This ‘Battle in Print’ is designed to lay out some of the background to and dimensions of the arguments on both sides, and to stimulate debate in the run up to the event itself.

Reading critical

A headline this summer ‘Authors unite against drive for toddler literacy’ screams out to be read twice. What on Earth is being described here? Are authors fallen into despair: calling for some kind of creeping financial suicide? Are children’s writers worried that if toddlers start too early they may move on too quickly to grown-up books? Not yet. Instead the government’s latest reading plan stands accused of demanding too much too soon of children. A typically Labourite unfeeling and inflexible plan for education demands that ‘Early Years Foundation Stage’ (EYFS) toddlers collect 500 milestones on the way to 69 development goals by the time they are five. Children aged only 3 or 4 years will be expected to ‘write simple sentences using punctuation, interpret phonic methods to read complex words and use mathematical ideas to solve practical problems’ [1]. Apparently fewer than 50% of five-year-olds can meet these targets. They are also to be taught to tell right from wrong and learn to respect and understand the viewpoints of different cultures. Apparently many adults can’t do that either. Which is maybe why the government wants to catch them young.

Schools Minister Jim Knight, launching a £5 million free books scheme last month, Primary Boys into Books, shares this concern. ‘Bright children from deprived homes start to fall behind less able children from more prosperous backgrounds at the age of just twenty two months. The gap in achievement opens up at a startlingly young age. A child from a deprived home has heard on average just 13 million words by the age of four, compared to 45 million in a more affluent home.’ A recent survey conducted by the government’s National Year for Reading campaign found that less than half of children are read to by their parents every day [2]. For the government to intervene and intervene early seems an obvious solution and maybe an easier one than addressing broader social and economic inequalities in society might prove to be. If nursery teachers, childminders and extended one-on-one tutoring can fill the ‘parenting gap’ in deprived families, then maybe government can hope to move more children onto the right reading development track before it’s too late.

Janet and John

The reading crisis appears to be even worse when it comes to the sexes. The issues are said to be with children who are not read to enough at home, children whose parents don’t talk to them enough, and… boys. All are set for failure in adult life. In particular, says Ofsted, the education regulator, ‘white, working-class boys are becoming an educational underclass’. The department for children, schools and families tells us ‘statistics show that boys are ten percentage points behind girls in English at Key Stage 2’. The 2002 Office for National Statistics Omnibus survey found that 50% of males between 16 and 24 had not read a book in the previous year. Research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has found girls are much more likely than boys to read for enjoyment: 78 per cent of girls, against only 65 per cent of boys [3]. DCFS campaigns ‘focus on reluctant readers, those with low confidence, and boys and dads’ [4]. In other words problematic readers are a small subset of girls and all the boys.

Ofsted recommends ‘emotional support’, ‘rigorous monitoring’, ‘mood watch’, and choosing ‘texts that interested the boys’. It sounds like watching the lions feed from a safe distance. One school is actually bribing pupils with cakes for doing well in reading lessons [5]. The School Library Association has produced Primary Boys into Books, a list of over 200 books for the 5 to 11 age range; books ‘which have particular elements of appeal for boys’ [6]. The tactic seems to be just let them read something, anything, so long as it is early on, before their parents can turn them off reading for life by buying them computers and iPods. There is also a sense - present in the choice of language if nothing else - which suggests that the problem with boys is perceived to be one more of emotional rather than actual illiteracy. When exactly did teaching children to read become a matter of watching the mood swings of young boys and bribing them with adventure stories to keep them happy?

Playing at knowledge

The government is not alone in seeing a problem with the education of children from certain backgrounds. Dr Richard House, founder of the Open EYE campaign against the EYFS, feels that ‘parts of the learning requirements set some children up for failure, particularly those who haven’t got the necessary foundations of social learning or basic skills.’ He told The Times that children who did not come from middle-class families, or those who were less academically bright, were particularly at risk. ‘They may withdraw into themselves and stop trying. Trying for them becomes associated with fear and angst.’ The anti-EYFS campaigners agree with the government that there is a problem with some families but differ as to what the right response to the problem is. They take issue with trying to teach reading early because they feel that the very attempt to teach reading to certain children can be counter-productive. They are concerned that children may be ‘damaged’ by being pushed to read too early. It’s unclear exactly what this ‘damage’ might amount to, but House is clear that it represents a very real danger. In a letter to The Times, he speculates, strongly suspects, feels it is ‘no coincidence’, that the ‘antisocial tendencies’ of 14-15 year-olds today can be traced to ‘the introduction of quasi-formal, cognitively privileged regimes of early childhood learning from the late 1990s onwards’. With the evidence of ‘certain cultural trends’ to support his thesis, he is sure that the EYFS ‘can only exacerbate this toxic and deeply harmful trend, with incalculable long-term economic and social costs to our society’. Grave dangers indeed [7].

The Open EYE campaign also identifies a problem with emotional illiteracy. It believes that ‘an early “head-start” in literacy is now known to precipitate unforeseen difficulties later on - sometimes including unpredictable emotional and behavioural problems’ [8]. In other words, they agree with the government that some children are at risk of turning out bad but disagree on the causes: reading too late or reading too early. They argue that children will ‘learn most naturally and effectively through a subtle balance of free play, movement, rhythm, repetition and imitation’. Children will come naturally to reading if you just let them, back off, interfere less because the outcomes can be unpredictable and it’s too risky. Whatever you do, don’t presume to know what’s best for them and make them just learn it, whether they like it or not. Don’t set them targets which they may fail to measure up to because the damage could be incalculable.

Many in government are actually sympathetic to these concerns and probably feel aggrieved at being attacked. While the government is right to be defensive about its ridiculously formalised tick-the-boxes approach to education, it is actually concerns about the perceived failures of traditional classroom methods that lead it to push for reading to be taught early: then it can be done in a context as much like play as possible. The Foundation Stage of the National Curriculum prides itself on achieving goals through play and group activities, not sitting at desks. Both sides of the debate share an antipathy to the formal, the academic, and the ‘cognitively-based’ curricula of yesteryear. As well as being hostile to appearing too academic, there is also a reaction against overly challenging books for children. Fun books are OK but no one on either side of the debate is arguing for children being exposed to anything difficult or complex at almost any age.

Join the dots

On the face of it, the DCFS actually has a rather high-minded suggested reading list for Key Stage 3 learners, the 11 to 14 year-olds. Recommended authors on one of the department’s websites include playwrights from Marlowe to Pinter, novelists from Trollope and Swift to Orwell and Joyce, poets from Chaucer and Pope to Auden and Hughes. The reality is somewhat different both in terms of what children actually get through in school and in terms of what the government itself promotes and funds in the way of books. The School Library Association’s ‘Boys into Books 11-14’ suggests only two of the government recommended authors: perennial adventure story favourites Daniel Defoe and Robert Louis Stevenson. Only one poet makes it into their list: Benjamin Zephaniah. The reason given for his inclusion? He ‘cares passionately about: politics, racism, animal cruelty and the environment, as well as all-important human emotions’ [9]. I can’t recall Chaucer worrying too much about the environment, so the kids can breathe a sigh of relief there. Other writers include Lemony Snicket, Jeremy Clarkson, Andy McNab and Terry Pratchett. The boys are unlikely to object.

The compiler of Boys into Books, Chris Brown thinks that Japanese-style Manga comics are particularly appropriate. ‘There is a very fine Manga Shakespeare appearing play by play and if Macbeth turns up in this style it will be perfect for 9s to 11s’ [3]. He is not alone. Alan Johnson, the former Education Secretary, feels that ‘children should be allowed to read comics if they preferred them to serious literature… that teachers should consider giving boys different set texts from girls, as they often had completely different interests’ [10]. Ofsted agrees: ‘white boys from deprived backgrounds need action-packed stories about danger or sport to inspire them in lessons’ [5]. One might think that a lot of Shakespeare would count as ‘action-packed stories about danger’, but never mind.

Honor Wilson-Fletcher, director of the National Year of Reading says that the campaign ‘is a celebration of reading in all its forms ... be it song lyrics, magazines, film scripts or even their own written works – challenging traditional definitions of reading as being all about books. We must understand that all reading is valid, that it all counts and it must all be appreciated’ [11]. The danger here of course is that, if it’s all equally valid, if anything goes, then nothing is very much better than anything else either. Shakespeare goes out with the relativist bathwater and we are left with Richard and Judy setting the national curriculum. Why not? It’s all good.

Up with standards

It is the role of educators to push children to make the most of themselves, to introduce them to worlds they don’t yet know, to challenge and enthuse them. It is not to pander to them by telling them that whatever it is they like to do is actually as good as serious literature. Not only will they not believe it but they will have no respect for teachers that don’t try to teach. Boys (and girls) are more than capable of reading comics on their own initiative: no encouragement required. It’s the hard stuff they need the help with. They also have to work hard if they are to become independent readers, writers and thinkers.

In the face of this abdication of responsibility by government and teaching professionals, parents - blamed for the reading crisis in the first place - have no definite idea about how to respond. Some retreat into their homes to teach their children themselves, fearing too much discipline at school. Some keep them at home because they fear a lack of discipline at school. Others try and help out after school. All suffer under the kind of patronising attitudes that ask Dad to read just one book with the kids this holiday. Just one, whatever book you like, whatever you can manage.

Education relies on standards to be effective. If we as a society do not have a shared vision of what constitutes good literature - and what bad - then we can have no hope of exciting a love of reading in the young. We might keep them quiet, pander to them with whatever the vagaries of popular taste may place on the curriculum this year, but let’s not pretend that we played them fair when, in later life, they stay silent in a room full of adults discussing Milton, Molière and Mann. What answer will we have for young men who see no value in human universals when we were complicit in giving them a different set of books than the girls? In saying that Japanese Manga Macbeth means about as much to anyone as Macbeth Macbeth? We should remember the lesson of the 19th century autodidacts and mutual improvement societies as they struggled to educate themselves: great books are ‘the common property of mankind’.

We need to be less concerned about when is the right age for children to start reading, and how, and much more worried about what counts as being great literature, in having real standards that children can aim at. Children do develop at different rates, there are arguments too that the myelination of brain cell’s axons - important for speed of connections between sights, sounds and words - may develop more slowly in some boys. Or maybe it’s that boys are still allowed relatively more freedoms than girls, more time outside playing, and less time safe inside reading. Whatever the differences are between individual children, the one important thing to keep hold of in this discussion is that all children would benefit immeasurably from being challenged, from being exposed to the best in literature. Not all will respond in the same way. Yes, some may not understand all the words to start with. They may even cry and say that’s too hard. And it’s there that you need good teachers who can lead them through the difficulties and make reading come alive. And, yes, some may fail. But if we don’t try then we all fail.

Angus Kennedy is the webmaster for the Battle of Ideas and Culture War websites. He writes for spiked-online and Culture Wars and is producing three sessions at this year’s Battle of Ideas: The Battle for the Reader; What is it to be Educated?; and Learning Jargonese.

(1) Authors unite against drive for toddler literacy, 24 July 2008, The Times

(2) Press notice 2008/0112, DCSF, Dads and sons ‘Bond’ over spy novels - New £5 million Government scheme to get primary boys reading more

(3) Comic books ‘can get boys into the habit of reading’, 14 June 2008, The Times

(4) Press notice 2008/0002, DCSF, MAKE 2008 YOUR NATIONAL YEAR OF READING

(5) Deprived white boys inspired by ripping yarns, Ofsted says, 23 July 2008, The Times

(6) Welcome to Boys into Books 5-11, School Library Association

(7) There are hazards in early learning, 29 July 2008, The Times

(8) Open EYE Campaign, Open Letter

(9) Boys into Books 11-14, School Library Association

(10) Parents ‘hold key to child literacy’, 12 February 2007, The Times

(11) The cover is blown on teen reading, National Year for Reading, 27 March 2008

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, Jonathan Rose, Yale University Press 2002

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, Icon Books 2008

Let’s turn a new page in the world of reading, Frank Furedi, 12 May 2008, spiked

In the city’s melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched
With faces hidden while the walls were tightening
As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin’ rain
Dissolved into the bells of the lightning
Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an’ forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin’ constantly at stake
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing’.
Bob Dylan

I’d like to say the popular song’s potential to create social change first struck me on hearing those wandering hobo minstrels Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan for the first time but no! The truth is far less credible. It was Lonnie Donegan on the telly in 1957, who was introduced by the even less credible (or sincere) Pete Murray, a TV ‘host’ for whom the description oleaginous became almost onomatopoeic!

I was a stunned 8-year-old, hearing verses like;

In the misty crystal glitter of that wild and windward spray,
Men have fought the pounding waters and met many a watery grave,
Well, she tore their boats to splinters but she gave men dreams to dream
Of the day the Coulee Dam would cross that wild and wasted stream.

This was definitely not Donald Peers, the crooner my parents named me after. A revelation had occurred. I started buying 78s a year or two later to play on my second-hand Dansette, which I was pleased not to have to wind up like my granny’s record player. I bought more of Lonnie (‘My old man’s a dustman’ too – very embarrassing now) as well as Little Richard, Elvis and the Everly Brothers, but old Lonnie had set something ticking and by the time I hit my teens (1963), something much, much bigger was ticking – civil rights, set against the backdrop of the Cold War and the keenly felt threat of my personal nuclear annihilation… These were interesting times, indeed.

My first mentor, Johnny Robinson, the coolest guy in my hometown, Rugby (a place from where people hitch-hiked with signs saying ‘anywhere but here’) introduced me to Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac, blues, jazz, Chablis, reefer (as it was then called) and folk, particularly in its more strident form à la Pete Seeger. He informed me that Lonnie did not write ‘Grand Coulee Dam’ (I was not surprised) and told me all about Woody and Pete and their ardent quest for justice for all Then he played me ‘Plane Wreck at Los Gatos’ after which I had definitely got the picture of how music could foster dissent, encourage profound questioning and genuinely effect change. I wept at this verse.

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott’ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They’re flying ‘em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be ‘deportees’.

Something had shifted forever, and my schoolwork suffered as I saw through the subterfuges of control. Johnny told me about Martin Luther King and the terrible apartheid that existed in America, as well as South Africa, and how the folk musicians, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were singing prior to King’s speeches, powerful songs like ‘The times they are a’changing’ and ‘God on our side’. He also played me ‘Blowing in the Wind’, which I had thought the somewhat saccharine Peter, Paul and Mary had written.

Many years later, I heard the story of how the late, great Sam Cooke had heard this song and flipped. He stated that in those dark days, this great song, particularly with its phrase ‘How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man?’, could not possibly have been written by a white man. (This was at a time when black men were only ever called ‘boy’). He was finally convinced, and after recording ‘Blowing in the Wind’ and making it a top–ten hit, his riposte was to write (arguably) the greatest soul song ever, ‘A change is gonna’ come’ . By now, Dylan’s lyric had become more complex and metaphoric but definitely not less powerful.

The kingdoms of Experience
In the precious wind they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what’s real and what is not
It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden

As well as the now-deceased Woody Guthrie - Dylan, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Tim Rose and many others, including our own Ralph McTell and Ian Campbell, spearheaded the protest movement around the world, bringing vital issues into a wider social consciousness through song. ‘Masters of War’, ‘Morning Dew’, ‘Streets of London’, ‘I ain’t marching anymore’ are great examples of the form but the song ‘Now that the buffalo’s gone’, written and sung by the Cree Indian, Buffy Sainte Marie, about the terrible treatment of the dispossessed natives of America, is one of the finest. Here are two of the verses:

When a war between nations is lost
The loser, we know, pays the cost
But even when Germany fell to your hands
consider, dear lady, consider, dear man
You left them their pride and you left them their land
And what have you done to these ones

Has a change come about Uncle Sam
Or are you still taking our lands
A treaty forever George Washington signed
He did, dear lady, he did, dear man
And the treaty’s being broken by Kinzua Dam
And what will you do for these ones

So, in our current times, where is the dissent, the protest or the profound questioning in the form of song, or any other form for that matter? Did Maggie’s student loan strategy (to end the dissent of the young through crippling debt) put paid to social revolution once and forever? I do hope not!  In my lifetime, I have seen what I considered the impossible, to occur – the end of apartheid in America and South Africa, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, women’s rights, the legalisation of homosexuality and many other, lower profile changes. But I am now witnessing the rise of fundamentalism in all of the atavistic Abrahamic religions, the swift and persistent erosion of human rights throughout the world (more and more laws applied inappropriately and none repealed) along with a terrible disenfranchisement of the young and a bizarre reticence for social development. So where are the voices of challenge and dissent today? Are they enclosed within the rusting Gates of Eden? What will we do for these ones? Pass me the oilcan!

Don Eales is the curator of Vibe Live in London and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He pioneered many of the communication technologies that are now taken for granted, including Videoconferencing, Content Delivery and IPTV. He is currently introducing stereoscopic 3D into live events, particularly sport and music, whilst also creating exciting new applications for Augmented Reality. He has acted as Curator for both The Brickhouse restaurant and the new Vibe Live and Gallery, both on Brick Lane, London. He was recently responsible for facilitating ‘402 – The Death Row Show’, an acclaimed art exhibition which is a powerful polemic against the death penalty in America. Don also acts as an investment advisor for companies and projects (particularly film) seeking friendly funding. First and foremost though, he is a Storyteller of considerable renown, having spun his yarns at major festivals in the UK (and country pubs in Cork on many a rainy night).