On a day when Prince Charles spoke for us all and Charles Clarke spoke for the rest, I was pleased to find that John Ray had got there ahead of them.

He reported this article by English lecturer Joanna Williams.  She has come to the realisation that this government’s great drive for social inclusion is counter-educational.

Inclusion is, of course, code for equality.  But it’s code that we, as nice, decent, high-minded people are not meant to quibble with.  After all, who would protest at something so soft-focus, so clearly well-intentioned and humane as inclusion, whereas an awful lot of us will bitterly contest the harder, politically divisive issue of “equality” – be it of opportunity or outcome.  No, inclusion is a useful word, a real asset for the left.  We need to unpick the meaning of it ruthlessly because the meaning of it is that classic dictatorship of the proletariat: the lowest common denominator.

Here’s how Joanna Williams puts it.

“Teachers are not expected to teach and include as separate activities but to turn teaching itself into an exercise in social inclusion. Yet because including and teaching are fundamentally contradictory aims, it is just not possible to fulfil the requirement of the National Curriculum and teach in an inclusive manner.  I cannot include everyone in my mixed ability class and create an environment that is stimulating and challenging to all.  It is impossible to boost the self-esteem of my pupils while simultaneously making them feel uncomfortable as they are pushed to the limits of their understanding.  It is impossible to inculcate a prescribed list of values while undertaking a rigorous analysis of academic content.  To include everyone means no one gets challenged and lessons are reduced to the lowest intellectual common denominator.”

It’s not as if we haven’t been here before.  A war of words has been rolling back and forth over this territory since 1945.  The ending of selection at eleven by Crossland and Williams in the 1960’s was the first great blow struck for anti-excellence.  Then as now the left was guided by its faith that intellectual ability resides at all levels in society and among all races in equal proportions.  It isn’t true.  The alternative – that intelligence is heritable – has been denied beyond all that is reasonable so as to keep the precious faith pure.  For the sake of this faith millions of British children have been fed through the brain grinder of comprehensive education.

Charles (Windsor, not Clarke) is an astute observer of the machinations of government.  In response to Clarke’s angry outburst at his speech in Buxton yesterday, he is reported today as saying, “old-fashioned views are coming round again.”  They have, of course, never gone away.

Labour governments of the past, though, have never set themselves the target of uplifting university intake to 50% and access regulation to shoe-in students from deprived inner-city areas (code for blacks).  Surveying all this the Prince observes, “… there is a belief that, according to some schools of thought, obtaining a degree is the only way to succeed in the world, whereas we would probably all benefit from a greater emphasis on practical, vocational skills provision.”  Just so.

I don’t suppose that a qualification in plumbing will be deemed appropriate by the Blairs and their colleagues in the Labour elite.  They have already demonstrated an effortless incapacity to apply their convictions to the education of their own children.  Their wise choices are reported here and here and here and here and here.

Of course, Lenin didn’t transport himself around Moscow in a donkey cart.