Let’s stay with the word Equality. We have seen that it is not the same as Equity and Fair Play. But which is the better word to use? Let me remind you what I have already written. The words that we use do not just frame our thoughts. They can imprison them… or liberate them.
Act Two, Scene 2
JOAN ERRINGTON We certainly do know how to get it wrong. It makes me feel so sick at times, especially now. You know when terrible things like this happen – you know I’m very, very close to Margaret – you really start to think. I’ll give you a strange thought. The word ‘Equality’ is at the root of a lot of our trouble. It’s mucked up education for years. We are not all equal.
EILEEN WINTERTON No, that’s heresy. Surely there’s got to be equality of opportunity?
JOAN ERRINGTON What does that actually mean? Don’t you see? All kids are different, very different, and they need different kinds of opportunity. Fair play is what they all want, not equality. If kids are not given the opportunity that’s right for them, especially ours, they won’t be equipped to meet the challenge of the times. They won’t be included in this cut throat world that’s coming in fast. And this country needs them to be. That’s what education should be about. Above all else, giving them that opportunity.
EILEEN WINTERTON It certainly is a rat race these days and a different kind of rat race from any before.
JOAN ERRINGTON But a rat race you can’t run away from. And it has got a good side to it, if you know where to fend it. I’m sure none of this sadness would have happened to Margaret if people realised like we do that all kids have very different needs.
I am going to suggest to you that those who trumpet “Equality” live with the fairies in Never-never land.There is no such thing as Equality. There never can be. And there never should be. Equity and fair play is the thing that we should really pursue.
We have a Labour Government, and we read of salaries and pensions in Banking and the Public Service too that make any talk of Equality here quite ludicrous. Every day, shades of Animal Farm, we see more pigs at the trough.What makes people angry here is not that there are salaries not equal to theirs, but there is absolutely no fairness in them.
There is supposed to be Equality before the Law. But is there if the individual is pitched against a multi-national company or Insurance Company or, in a Tribunal, against the State itself? I am not sure that there is even fair play.
There is supposed to be gender equality, but what I suspect men and women want is not equality but fair play and parity of respect. As Emma Kirk, the music teacher, says in the play women “are wired differently even though they come from the same power source.” Total equality is not the answer. Sometimes, as a generalisation, women are better than men.They are certainly different.
Translate this into the world of health, and the question is whether taxpayers should be allowed to top up their NHS health care and you will see the difference between equality and equity/fair play.
In education the “bog-standard comprehensive school”, outlawing streaming, turning Polytechnics into Universities and the closure of special schools all resulted from the pursuit of Equality, trying to treat everyone in the same way, when they are different and have different needs.
This is how I explain this in the Prologue to my play: “Social reformers have not always grasped this. I suspect that many have looked at this simplistically, seeing it as essentially society’s diffi culty not an individual’s and, with the very best of intentions, projecting what they felt in their gut they would want for themselves for everyone else, a not uncommon mistake.” A huge one.
So when we talk about Equality of opportunity we need to remember that one person’s opportunity can be another person’s roadblock. Yes, aim to get 50% of school leavers into a University if they can get qualifications useful to them and to society. But what destiny do you offer for the other 5O%? Opportunities are different, and access to them should be based not on equality but on equity/fair play.
High flyers need to be given their chance to excel, and not just for their sake, for the country’s sake as well. They could end up employing people. Those good with their hands need as much opportunity as those good with their brains, so we shouldn’t need to import them. And those with special educational needs require the focussed support to make sure that while they may be disabled they should not be deprived of a quality to their lives. But the opportunities in each case will be different.
You may say that Equality has an impeccable provenance. It was the great cry against the institutionalised prejudice of race laws in Czarist Russia and Nazi Germany, in the fight for the right to vote and in ” Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” itself.
I must remind you however that the French Revolution spawned The Terror and the Guillotine. The French nobility who survived fled to Russia, and hardened the hearts of the Russian nobility.When the dam finally burst the Russian Revolution again invoked Equality. This heralded the confiscation of all private property, the Gulag, famine, and mass murder. Read “The Whisperers” by Orlando Figes to see the full horror of this.Not surprisingly this terrified many in Germany who saw fascism as a form of defence. Then, strange to record, a friend of mine, a teacher from Hamburg, reminded me recently that Equality actually fuelled National Socialism, many people believing that that was what Hitler was offering them.It terrified the Americans too, in the era of McCarthyism in the 40′s and 50′s.
The pendulum of history has a very long reach.
All the while in the UK it was Equity and Fair play that resonated. We should give credit where credit is due and stick with them. Yes, Equality is the right word to use in relation to voting rights, but when it comes to educational and job opportunities and to migrant and faith issues fairness may sometimes be a better arbiter than equality.As I write in my concluding words “healthy respect cannot be a one-way street.” Fairness not Equality should rule.
Overall Equality today is just part of a charade, the hypocrisy that we have allowed Western Democracy to become. Even worse than that, it leads people to knock success and excellence, a British but not an American trait, because they are so unequal.
As Emma Kirk, the music teacher says in the play “The Tenth Commandment. Thou shalt not covet. No sin in owning Just sin in coveting.” It’s high time we stopped doing that, and starting in our schools. Isn’t that the message that Michelle Obama, in London with Barack Obama for the G20 Meeting, delivered on her surprise visit to the girls of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School? “Be the best that you can be,” she said.
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PS I am just an armchair philosopher. My attention has just been drawn to an article entitled “Against Equality Again” by a real pro’, J.R.Lucas, in the Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, published by the Cambridge University Press, in July 1977, Volume 52 no 201. The Journal is called “Philosophy”. For students, I give you the full reference. For everyone, I mention that J.R.Lucas writes as a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, my old college, and the editor of the magazine was one Renford Bambrough, a much hallowed name in my old school, Bede Grammar School in Sunderland, alas no longer. Equality is even more past its sell by date than I thought, and with more good reason.