Do we deserve a good start?

Graham Brady complains about the lack of grammar schools:

Thousands of young people are being deprived of the start in life that they deserve. Politicians owe it to the public to get angry about this appalling state of affairs.

But why is it appalling that talented people don’t get opportunities? Two separate lines of thinking suggest it isn’t.
Line one is the utilitarian objection. This says that most people adapt to their circumstances, with the result that differences in well-being are small.
This paper (pdf) explains. It shows that people with high education and high income are happier than others. But the difference is small. It’s only around one point on the 36-point Likert scale. To put that in perspective, three-quarters of the population fall between a score of 20 and 30.
The loss of happiness caused by depriving people of opportunities is therefore small – as is the gain from giving them opportunities.
My biography corroborates this. I’m exactly the sort of person Graham thinks benefited from a grammar school; mine took me from a poor single-parent family to Oxford and thence to a highish income. But this came at the price of social isolation. Grammar school certainly raised my income, but I’m not sure it raised my well-being; the happiness literature suggests that marriage and friends (pdf)  matter more for well-being than quite large incomes.
You might object here that adaptation is an argument against many policy reforms; if people adapt to their circumstances, these will have low pay-offs. True – but this is an argument Conservatives have used for centuries. It’s ironic that they’ve begun to abandon it just when empirical social science has produced evidence for it.
The second line is the libertarian one. Why should tax-payers be coerced to pay for what a talented youngster deserves? We could add the Rawlsian argument – that as people don’t deserve their natural talents, they don’t deserve what flows from them, such as a grammar school education.
Put it this way. Say my innate talent at age 11 entitles me to a chance of good education and the great wealth that possibly flows from it. Why, then, shouldn’t my talents entitle me to the full fruits of my labour thereafter. Why should I have a right to an opportunity – paid for by coercing others –but not a right to an income paid by voluntarily by my employer? There’s an inconsistent attitude towards self-ownership here.
So, to support Graham’s position you must be neither a Rawlsian, nor a libertarian, nor a utilitarian. So what must you be?

Comments

[Katie]

Surely now you have a book published and are a member of the times commentariat you suddenly have lots of friends? I'm sure they're lovely people too.

[Marcin Tustin]

I think that you're being a little unfair here: the argument is in the context of a system where 'you' will be sent to a government provided school whatever happens, so the public will always be taxed to provide your education.

Now, given that, and that the argument is about how we spend the same amount of money, arguably 'you', as a child who cannot choose how to be educated deserve to receive what is better rather than what is worse, given that the cost to others is the same. To choose to confer a worse thing at the same cost as the better seems like spite.

[Shuggy]

"So, to support Graham’s position you must be neither a Rawlsian, nor a libertarian, nor a utilitarian. So what must you be?"

He says he went into politics to give equal opportunities. If we are to assume he really means this, he would have to be a communist - or so Hayek argued (sort of). But he doesn't mean it, of course.

[Richard]

"you must be neither a Rawlsian, nor a libertarian, nor a utilitarian. So what must you be?"

Perhaps an Aristotelian, who values 'flourishing' and human excellence?

Alternatively, one could be a non-hedonistic utilitarian, who holds that well-being is more of an objective than purely subjective quality, so that you might be better off being brilliant than happy. I believe this, in fact.

[Mark Wadsworth]

Exactly what Marcin says. Roll on vouchers for schools!

[Tim Worstall]

"So what must you be?"

Sensible perhaps?

1) Talent is rare.

2) Exercise of that talent has positive externalities.*

Thus, talent where it is found should be nurtured.

*(Blindingly obvious in the case of some talents, arguable in others).

[Blar]

But the happiness research cuts both ways. If changes in circumstances (such as income) have small effects on happiness, then presumably that applies to the people who would have to give up resources to improve the kids' opportunities. Providing talented people with opportunities may have smaller happiness benefits than one might expect, but it also has smaller happiness costs than one might expect.

In general, if the stability of happiness is an argument against policy reforms, it is also an argument against opposition to reforms. A reform may not help much, but it also won't hurt much.

And as Tim points out, investing in human capital has significant benefits for the rest of society. Realizing these diffuse benefits involves a collective action problem, and government funding seems like a natural solution.

[Heraklites]

Is there a causation problem in your happiness data? Rather as in supposed proofs that higher education is the cause of higher income, on the basis of a correlation?

The fact that those who have higher income and higher education (under current conditions) are x utils happier than the average does not mean that they would be x utils less happy if they did not have those advantages. They might be a lot less happy than the average, if you allow that people are not identical.

[Mark]

"Exercise of that talent has positive externalities"

Crumbs - and negative...look at how Scaramanga employed his genius...although admittedly he did not go to school - he was raised in a travelling circus.

At a heterodox level, doesn't going to grammar school enhance income potential? And is income not strongly associated (at the very least) with happiness?

What the policy debates seem to miss is that efficient policy and moral worthiness go out the window when it comes to your children's education.

As I cannot afford private education for my children as my business just cratered, I will resolutely, steadfastly vote for the party that gives them a shot at what I (and Chris apparently) received - a decent education - and the chance to create a loss-making business.

[dearieme]

Titanic, deck-chairs. Rome aflame, fiddling. State-provided education has failed. Bin it.

[Alex]

I think you'd have to be a very strange Rawlsian to agree with Chris here. Isn't the point about a good start that it's a start: a bad one forecloses a lot of options for the future.

More formally, back in the Original Position, say Chris could choose between schooling systems A (the one he went to in reality) and B (the alternative he implies). Now, under choice A, he runs a better chance of not being poor, but risks not having as many friends.

Under choice B, though, all other things being equal, there's no guarantee that he would have more friends if he was poorer. He might just be poor and unpopular, which sucks. Now, I don't agree with Graham Brady that selective schools are a good way of delivering this, but I think the Rawlsian framework answers Chris's title pretty definitively "yes".

The implication that there's a necessary, robust trade-off in both directions is really just another way of saying that they're happy down on the plantation. It's worth pointing out that when given the choice between "poor and supposedly happy" and "less poor and putatively less happy", very few poor people choose the second. Revealed preference, eh.

[Chris Williams]

Why does everyone refer to the 11+ as creating 'grammar schools'? The majority of schools it's going to create are secondary moderns: so it's better described as a 'secondary modern system'.

How does the perception of being held back educationally influence the happiness scale? Since 75+% of kids are going to fail the 11+, then this negative need only be a third the size of the grammar-related positive in order to show a net loss.

The problem with debates on education is that even otherwise sensible people like Chris D tend to argue from their own experience. Me, I went to Oxford in the mid 1980s from a comprehensive. Does this mean that all comprehensives are good? Clearly not: it doesn't mean very much at all.

[Alex]

Eh, Freudian slip. Very few poor people choose the FIRST option.

Chris Williams: Nail, head, BANG. Anyway I went to London in the 90s from a comprehensive that called itself a grammar school and didn't even contemplate going to Oxbridge. Does this mean that comps should pretend to be grammars? Or vice versa? Or that I ought to stuff my inverse snobbery up my arse? Possibly the last, but not very much else.

[Chris Williams]

Nahh to the last - S&M is the place that I come to to be Chippy, and long may it stay that way.

[Roger Thornhill]

As Marcin (Mark seconding) and Tim Worstall says.

To NOT check out who can excel and then place them where they can do so is madness and an utter waste. It is the classic lowest common denominator lumpen illitariat "man as clay" mindset.

India and China are roaring ahead with selective and highly competitive education facilities. They put their U238's in one reactor and have intellectual chain reactions as it were.

We should be doing the same.

[Chris Williams]

Roger T, are you in favour of the French system whereby everyone who's going to run the country goes to the same small college together? That seems to be what you're advocating.

[dsquared]

I would be much more impressed with the whole proposal if one person, just one, were to write an article saying "I went to a secondary modern and I think they were great". It's *always* the grammar school boys who write articles as if they were representative of what happened, when as Chris W says, they definitionally aren't.

[To NOT check out who can excel and then place them where they can do so is madness and an utter waste. It is the classic lowest common denominator lumpen illitariat "man as clay" mindset.]

in industrial policy, this is known as "picking winners" and is pretty comprehensively discredited. Who does the "checking out" and "placing", and why do you trust them to do so (particularly given that in general, grammar school nutters don't trust the government to do *anything* else).

[Roger Thornhill]

Chris Williams, certainly not in implementation - I was just using that as an example of how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

I propose no central direction, but just allow schools who want to select to select and allow new schools to be formed to give the established providers competition and permit the creation of spare capacity so it can sink to the lowest levels and result in the worst schools closing if necessary, or reforming and improving. Unless you have spare capacity, how on earth will a voucher system work to force up standards, as any crap school will still get hapless kids.

[dearieme]

A cousin went to a secondary modern and thinks it was great.

[PooterGeek]

dsquared:

"I would be much more impressed with the whole proposal if one person, just one, were to write an article saying "I went to a secondary modern and I think they were great".

dsquared being dsquared, he wheels out this "argument" every single time the subject comes up; and, dsquared being dsquared, he's wrong every single time.

In Northern Ireland, pupils at secondary moderns outperform their socially matched peers at mainland comprehensives. I don't want a return to the old grammar school / secondary modern divide, but it's one of the most depressing indictments of the comprehensive system that even that would be an improvement over what we have now.

(I should also add that *The Times*'/*Spectator*'s Clive Davis---another member of the chippy brigade, though an agnostic on this issue---*has* written at least one piece pointing out that his brothers went to secondary moderns and now both earn more than he does.)

[Igor Belanov]

Now that Roger Thornhill has stated that 'spare capacity' is necessary in the education system, I hope he will refrain from talking about public sector 'waste' in future.

[Roger Thornhill]

Igor,

You can have extensive waste without a single space place. Your hope will be in vain.

[dsquared]

[In Northern Ireland, pupils at secondary moderns outperform their socially matched peers at mainland comprehensives]

What's your source for this? On the brute numbers, "Other schools" (Northern Ireland apparently doesn't specifically tabulate secondary moderns, but I doubt the average is brought down by other kinds of non-grammar schools) got 38% of kids with five A*-C GCSEs in 2004.

source">http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo060209/text/60209w23.htm">source

For England as a whole, "White British" pupils were more like 50% with five A*-Cs

(http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=461 )

There isn't a cross-sectional breakdown by ethnic group and type, but overall, 52% of comprehensive school pupils got 5 A*Cs in England & Wales in 2006 (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000702/SFR01-2007.pdf, I suppose things could have changed between 2004 and 2006 but not by 14 points).

I suppose "socially matched" could be doing a lot of work here, but the raw data doesn't really agree. http://www.hackney.gov.uk/text/xc-news-aug06-gcse Hackney managed to get 51% from its LEA schools

http://www.hackney.gov.uk/text/xc-news-aug06-gcse

, and I think it would be pretty hard to argue that Northern Ireland had worse sociodemographics than Hackney.

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000442/MapA.pdf

This map shows that LEAs where fewer than 38% of kids meet the 5-GCSE standard are really quite few and far between in England and Wales, and that is apparently the average for Northern Ireland non-grammar schools. I'm not dismissing this claim out of hand so I'd love to see your source, but I am not accepting it uncritically either. It pays to check up on this sort of politically convenient factoid because it is easy to remember things wrong.

[dsquared]

[In Northern Ireland, pupils at secondary moderns outperform their socially matched peers at mainland comprehensives]

What's your source for this? On the brute numbers, "Other schools" (Northern Ireland apparently doesn't specifically tabulate secondary moderns, but I doubt the average is brought down by other kinds of non-grammar schools) got 38% of kids with five A*-C GCSEs in 2004.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo060209/text/60209w23.htm"

For England as a whole, "White British" pupils were more like 50% with five A*-Cs

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=461

There isn't a cross-sectional breakdown by ethnic group and type, but overall, 52% of comprehensive school pupils got 5 A*Cs in England & Wales in 2006

(http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000702/SFR01-2007.pdf, I suppose things could have changed between 2004 and 2006 but not by 14 points).

I suppose "socially matched" could be doing a lot of work here, given that average incomes are much higher in England than in NI, but the raw data doesn't really agree. In any case, even some quite deprived LEAs appear to do better than Northern Ireland non-grammar schools. Hackney managed to get 51% from its LEA schools for example,

http://www.hackney.gov.uk/text/xc-news-aug06-gcse

, and I think it would be pretty hard to argue that Northern Ireland had much worse sociodemographics than Hackney.

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000442/MapA.pdf

This map shows that LEAs where fewer than 38% of kids meet the 5-GCSE standard are really quite few and far between in England and Wales, and that is apparently the average for Northern Ireland non-grammar schools. I'm not dismissing this claim out of hand so I'd love to see your source, but I am not accepting it uncritically either. It pays to check up on this sort of politically convenient factoid because it is easy to remember things wrong.

[dsquared]

gosh a double post, sorry; because of all the links and such that comment needed quite a lot of previewing. Anyway, in summary, I think Pootergeek's wrong.

[Roger Thornhill]

Before ANYONE talks of 5 A-C's, can they differentiate between true GCSEs or the 5 a GNVQ is allowed to represent. Some might call use of GNVQs in such a way as fraud, but I couldn't possibly comment.

[dsquared]

I don't agree that ad hoc and subjective adjustments ought to be made to the data like this, which would surely and unfairly penalise either England or Northern Ireland for investing in vocational rather than academic education (and anyone arguing in favour of grammar schools can surely have no objection to this).

I do wish Damian would get back to us on this one.