Roger Scruton on Correlli Barnett

“In a series of brilliant books Correlli Barnett has made the case against the English élite and its education, telling us that the ethos, curriculum and lifestyle of the public schools and the collegiate universities did little or nothing to prepare the English for the great conflicts of our time. The ideal of the gentleman, with its emphasis on fair play and honesty, left the English at a disadvantage in the struggle against calculating and cynical forces. The classical curriculum put the modern world at too remote a distance from the scholar who had absorbed it; the downgrading of science and technology meant the English were beset by a crippling nostalgia, which caused them to gothicise their industry and surround it with feudal prohibitions. The education instilled by the public schools and the old colleges was, in Barnett's words, not a preparation for the world but an inoculation against it. All such criticisms are based on a mistaken view of education. Relevance in education is a chimerical objective and the English knew this. Who is to guess what will be relevant to a student's interests in ten years' time? Even in the applied sciences, it is not relevance that forms and transforms the curriculum, but knowledge. A relevant technology is one that is relevant to us, here, now. To concentrate on teaching such a technology is to ensure that we remain locked in techniques that will soon be useless.”

“If we examine the complaints made by Barnett, we cannot fail to be struck by the fact that they contain no comparative judgement. Set beside which élite did the English élite fail so badly? In which country of the modern world do we find the educational system which compares so favourably with the English college? Which European nations, unhampered by the code of the gentleman, have shown us the way to successful empire building and retreated with credit from their colonies? All such comparisons point to the amazing success of the English. By devoting their formative years to useless things, they made themselves supremely useful. And by internalising the code of honour they did not, as Barnett supposes, make themselves defenceless in a world of chicanery and crime, but endowed themselves with the only real defence that human life can offer – the instinctive trust between strangers, which enables them in whatever dangerous circumstances to act together as a team. It was not only the battle of Waterloo that was won on the playing fields of Eton: the entire imperial adventure was settled there.”