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Demos Quarterly

Issue 1/Winter 1993 Demos Quarterly is published by

Demos 9 Bridewell Place London EC4V 6AP

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© Demos 1993 All rights reserved

Editorial team: Geoff Mulgan Martin Bartle Liz Bailey Karen Poley Emily Russell Duncan McKechnie Laura Wilkinson

Printed in Great Britain by East End Offset, London E3 3LT

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Special thanks to: Adrian Taylor, VNU Publications Mwiza Munthali, TransAfrica Forum Commonwealth Party Mark Perryman Simon Esterson Contents

Editorial vii Howard Gardner

FEATURES Opening minds 1 Howard Gardner Theory into Practice: five examples Education 2000 13 The Phoenix Centre 17 Optimum Schooling 19 The Open School 20 Education Extra 22 Learning Right from Wrong 25 Amitai Etzioni

REGULARS UK Politics Reinventing Accountability 41 John Stewart Demos/Winter 1993

Big Ideas – Selling Bad Things in a Good Society 57 Tim Pendry Archives Throwing Bread on the Waters 61 Andrew Carey 1963 – “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time” 65 Global Spotlight: Trans Africa – America’s 69 First Black Think-Tank Media Watch 71 Demos Forum 75

NEWS Projects Report – The Seven Million Project 81 Projects Report – Voluntary, Charitable and 85 Not For Profit Projects Report – Constitutions: What Have we 87 Learned in 200 years? Projects Report – The Future of the Public Park 91 Projects Report – The Millennium Project 93

vi Demos Editorial Geoff Mulgan

This is the first Demos Quarterly. It is neither an academic journal nor a political magazine. Instead it is designed to be a serious, lively and acces- sible forum for the leading edge of social, economic and political ideas, both from the UK and around the world. Six months after Demos’ launch, and with a climate of far greater openness to ideas across the political spectrum than anyone can remember, the time seemed propi- tious. For although at the time of the launch many criticised us for having exaggerated the pace of political change, and for being too dismissive of the viability of existing institutions, now, if anything, it looks as if our assessment may have been over cautious. The political systems of both Italy and Japan are in turmoil. Confidence in the parties and parliament here has fallen even further. And all over the world a great unravelling seems to be underway. Increasingly people are talking in terms of an historic shift towards new ideas, frameworks and institutions.As yet little of what will replace the old forms is clearly visible. But with societies and economies ever more oriented to knowledge and understanding, questions of learning seem destined to be at the top of the emerging agenda. This is why we have chosen to focus this issue on Howard Gardner’s work. Gardner’s willingness to mix theory, practice and advocacy gives his ideas a freshness and relevance which has been missing from the British educational debate.

Demos vii Demos/Winter 1993

But his ideas also throw surprising light on the larger question of political failure. In the preface to the latest edition of his book ‘Frames of Mind’,Gardner points out that:

‘we have a plentiful supply of men and women who can supply leadership for scholarly disciplines, for the arts, business and other technical areas. But we desperately lack leadership for the wider society: people who are able to speak and be heard across interest groups and separate areas of technical expertise and address the broad concerns of society and even of humanity as a whole. I … have identified one reason for this apparent asynchrony. To provide leadership in a domain that highlights a certain intelligence the principal requirement is that a person excels in that intelligence. In the wider society however a would-be leader must be able to create a story about that society, a persuasive narrative that accounts for his or her place within it and one that can link individuals of different intelligences, domains and allegiances in a more incorporative enterprise…’

At present no one is doing that. Our politicians are too narrow in their experiences and concerns, as are most of our business leaders, writers and managers. Our prime focus in this issue is with learning, and with the many projects which are trying to put Gardner’s ideas into practice. But we have also highlighted other themes which will be central to Demos’ work in the years ahead. John Stewart, the UK’s leading authority on local government, pro- vides a comprehensive rebuttal of the UK government’s recent argu- ments on local accountability. Amitai Etzioni explains how morals and values can be learned. Our section of subscriber ideas includes Tim Pendry’s innovative solution for reconciling public moralities and indi- vidual freedom in retailing. And our section on Demos projects

viii Demos Editorial includes Helen Wilkinson’s exposition of the argument behind the ‘Seven Million Project’ on the politics of younger women. In the year ahead we plan more themed issues of the Quarterly: on unemployment, the future of democracy and the politics of technol- ogy and science. In the meantime we welcome any feedback on the topics you think we should be addressing, and on the contents and style of what has already been published. Anyone reading this issue will discover that Demos has been very active during its first six months. we have published four booklets each of which has helped to shift the debate. Seminars and events have been held on everything from creative cities and auditing to the future of the British national identity. Our ideas have rapidly found an audience: in particular the tax proposals have been quickly taken up by both oppsition parties as well as generating great interest within govern- ment. Other initiatives include the Millennium Project (which makes Demos the first think-tank in Europe to use computer conferencing), a major lecture series in 1994 and several large-scale research projects. But it will also be immediately clear that our primary concern is not with the level of the PSBR or the pound, but rather with the fundamen- tal principles that lie behind everyday policies. This is the great vacuum in Western public life today – and it is to these fundamentals, and to the positive ideas that come from rethinking them with clarity – that we will be devoting our energies.

Demos ix

Opening minds Howard Gardner

Over the last ten years the United States, like the UK, has been through two waves of concern about education. The first wave of reform focused on the need to raise standards and to make sure that all stu- dents had basic skills. The second wave focused on the need to dis- mantle parts of the overblown bureaucracy and to return more of the schools’ decision making to the site of the school itself. What is striking is that both of these waves were silent about pur- pose. Dozens of articles appeared on educational reform without any discussion ofthe purposes ofan education.It was easier to agree about the problems that existed – poorly performing students, bloated bureaucracy – than to agree about the kind of education they wanted. The purpose of education is to produce understanding, both of var- ious disciplines and of the world we live in. But how do we define understanding, and how do we know that we have achieved it? I shall define understanding simply as the capacity to apply knowledge, facts, concepts and skills in new situations where they are appropriate. Unless students can apply what they have learned in school to new sit- uations, there is no evidence that they have understood.

Howard Gardner is Co-director of Project Zero at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Adjunct Professor of Neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine. © Howard Gardner 1993.

Demos 1 Demos/Winter 1993

For example, the United States did not display much understanding during the Gulf War. If a person understands something about the Middle East, he or she will know that problems cannot be solved sim- ply by assassinating a dictator, no matter how loathsome he might be. If a person understands something about physics, he or she will be able to aim a Patriot missile so that it will intersect a Scud. If people under- stand something about economics, they will appreciate that a country cannot suddenly spend billions of dollars without some negative fall- out resulting. Except for the smart computers, few have demonstrated much understanding in any of these areas. Having defined the goal of understanding, we must face the bitter truth that most students in schools all over the world do not under- stand. In other words, given situations in which they must apply their “school knowledge,”they do not know what to do. They may have been able to regurgitate a learned response in the ‘text–test’context: they may be able to give a ‘correct answer compromise’,or the response which the teacher has agreed to count as correct. But they fail to display sufficient understanding necessary to appreciate that the US cannot eradicate Middle Eastern conflicts simply by eliminating Saddam Hussein or Muramar Qaddafi. A particularly telling example can be found in physics. Even stu- dents who excel in physics at the best universities do not understand. The very students who receive distinctions answer very much like five year olds once they are tested outside the school context. They believe, much as a young child does, in mysterious forces. When asked about what happens when a coin is tossed, they speak of forces being trans- ferred from the flipping finger to the coin, slowly petering out as the coin rises, and then, when the coin has lost the transferred energy, it collapses to the ground. In truth, once the coin is released the only force acting on it is the downward pull of gravity. But it takes years of physics thinking to understand this deeply. Thus the undergraduate and the five year old both readily revert to Aristotelian if not pre- Socratic thinking. But this lack of understanding is not limited to a difficult subject such as physics; it occurs across the curriculum. Even biology students

2 Demos Opening minds

‘we must face the bitter truth that most students in schools all over the world do not understand’. who have taken two or three years of courses continue to regard evolu- tion as an inexorable trend toward perfection, with each species being guided by an unseen hand to be more perfect than its predecessors. Mathamatics students may master algorithms perfectly; they may know how to plug numbers into an equation when the numbers are given in

Demos 3 Demos/Winter 1993 a certain order. But that is not understanding. Once the problem is posed in an unfamiliar way, the students do not know what to do. They have mastered the syntax or the algorithm – the set of rules – but unless they understand what the formula refers to, they cannot use it in a generative way. Students are not alone in this respect. Many of us sense deep down that even when we give the desired answer, we do not really understand; if the question were phrased just a bit differently, we would fail. Those in history and the arts are not immune to this prob- lem. A student will take a test about the causes of the First World War, brilliantly regurgitating the many factors that he or she has been taught. But asked about the causes of the troubles in the Middle East, however, this same student is likely to give the same stereotyping answer as a five year old – that bad guy called Saddam Hussein. And those in the arts have known for 70 years how elusive is under- standing. I. A. Richards asked Cambridge undergraduates to analyze poems and to judge their merit. He performed only one manipulation – he remove the authors’ names. Under these conditions. England’s “best and the brightest” spurned the great works and displayed the same aes- thetic as a young school child. If it rhymed and the topic was pleasant, the poem was good; if not, it was cast upon the literary junkheap. If we provisionally accept that even our best students rarely display understanding, can we explain why this is the case? Is it because our students are so stupid, or our schools so poor? Rather the answer is that we have far underestimated the strength of ideas that children develop when they are very young. In the first several years of life, without direct tutelage, young children develop very powerful theories about how the world works – the physical world, the world of living things, the mental and psychological world of oneself and others. In some ways these ideas are serviceable – the world does look flat, heavy objects do seem to fall more quickly than lighter ones, people who look the way you do are nicer than those who look different – but each of these ideas, and thousands like them, are wrong. School is meant to teach us better, deeper ways of thinking about the world. And our curricula do contain the kernel of such ideas. However, schools and teachers have far underestimated the strength

4 Demos Opening minds of children’s theories, scripts, stereotypes and misconceptions. They have failed to engage these early misleading ideas. The result is that students – especially good students – learn to regurgitate what they have been taught but never actually change their underlying beliefs. Once removed from school, they revert immediately to these older, more robust ideas. In short, within all of us is the mind of the five year old struggling to get out. Early in life, a set of ideas is deeply sketched onto the surface of the mind. The only way to replace these early engravings is to sand them off and painstakingly construct new ones. Instead, we ignore the early engravings and simply pour dust upon them. As soon as the dust of school has settled, the engravings re-emerge. This seems a discourag- ing state of affairs: students – even good students – who do not under- stand, and a set of very powerful ideas, formed early in life, which prove virtually unremovable.

‘the belief that all the answers to a given problem lie in one certain approach, such as logical-mathematical thinking, can be very dangerous’.

Demos 5 Demos/Winter 1993

But some students do come to understand. Some individuals – we call them experts – are able to think about the world in new, more veridical ways, and to explain new things that occur. What can we do to help our students become more expert, to enhance their understanding? The first clues come from two institutions, one very old and the other very new. In the first, apprenticeships, the young person works in the presence of an older expert, who exemplifies use of knowledge every day. Under such conditions, the learner comes to see the mean- ings of the procedures in his or her field, and is far less likely simply to ‘go through the motions.’ In the new institution, hands-on museums, youngsters have the chance to try out their skills in a veareity of situations. They can conduct experiments and relate the formal terminology and equations of schools to the domains where these are applied. Individuals who live in an envi- ronment like that of a children’s museum are much more likely to understand the concepts and principles to which they are introduced. But though apprenticeships and children’s museums may have their appeal, they would seem impractical and impracticable. We cannot return to the middle ages nor convert each school into a children’s museum. However, it is possible to reflect the ideas about learning and understanding that these institutions embody in new educational practices. We can fashion an education for understanding. To do so we must recognise the reasons for, and the power of, early forms of understand- ing.We must respect them. And we must work constantly to question them. In the sciences, we need challenging encounters, where students confront their early conceptions each day and see where these are ade- quate and where they are deficient. In maths, we must explore the domains to which the formalisms apply and understand how they operate. In social sciences and the arts, we must learn to take multiple perspectives – to look at historical events or at works of art from a variety of perspectives. But I think we also need to go further. I have previously argued that people have multiple forms of intelligence. Our existing curricula heavily emphasise just two of these, what I call logical-mathematical

6 Demos Opening minds intelligence, and linguistic intelligence. But there are also other forms: there is the spatial linguistic intelligence and musical intelligence; there is the spatial intelligence which is displayed by sailors, engineers, sur- geons and painters, and the bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence exhibited by dancers, athletes and craftspeople. There are also two other forms of personal intelligence: the interpersonal intelligence that recognises how to understand other people, shown by politicians, teachers and salespeople, and the intrapersonal intelligence of self-understanding. To foster these kinds of intelligence we need a far-reaching change in our understanding of learning and schooling. And we need, I believe, to develop the notion of an individual-centred school, one geared to optimal understanding and development of each student’s cognitive profile, their mix of the different forms of intelligence. The design of the ideal school of the future is based upon two assumptions. The first is that not all people have the same interests and abilities; not all of us learn in the same way. The second assumption is the one that hurts; that nowadays no one person can learn everything there is to learn. We would all like, as Renaissance men and women, to know everything, or at least to believe in the potential of knowing everything, but that ideal clearly is not possible any more. Choice is therefore inevitable, and the choices that we make for ourselves, and for the people who are under our charge, might as well be informed choices. An individual-centred school would be rich in assessment of individual abilities and proclivities. I would seek to match individuals not only to curricular areas, but also to particular ways of teaching those subjects. And after the first few grades, the school would also seek to match individuals with the various kinds of life and work options that are available in their culture. I want to propose a new set of roles for educators that might make this vision a reality. First of all, we might have what I will call “assess- ment specialists.”The job of these people would be to try to understand as sensitively and comprehensively as possible the abilities and interest of the students in a school. It would be very important, however, that the assessment specialists use “intelligence-fair” instruments. We want to be able to look specifically and directly at spatial abilities, at personal

Demos 7 Demos/Winter 1993

‘There are strong pressures now to compare students, to compare teachers, states, even entire countries using one dimension or criterion, a kind of a crypto-IQ assessment’. abilities, and the like, and not through the usual lenses of the linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences. Up until now nearly all assess- ment has depended indirectly on measurement of those abilities; if stu- dents are not strong in those two areas, their abilities in other areas may be obscured. Once we begin to try to assess other kinds of intelli- gences directly, I am confident that particular students will reveal strengths in quite different areas, and the notion of general brightness will disappear or become greatly attenuated. In addition to the assessment specialist, the school of the future might have the ‘student-curriculum broker’.It would be his or her job to help match students’ profiles, goals and interests to particular cur- ricula and to particular styles of learning. Incidentally, I think that the new interactive technologies offer considerable promise in this area: it will probably be much easier in the future for ‘brokers’ to match individual students to ways of learning that prove comfortable for them.

8 Demos Opening minds

There should also be, I think, a ‘school-community broker’, who would match students to learning opportunities in the wider commu- nity. It would be this person’s job to find situations in the community, particularly options not available in the school, for children who exhibit the usual cognitive profiles. I have in mind apprenticeships, mentor- ships, internships in organisations ‘big brother’,‘big sisters’ – individuals and organisations with whom these students might work to secure a feeling for different kinds of vocational and avocational roles in the society. I am not worried about those occasional youngsters who are good in everything. They will succeed in any case. I am concerned about those who don’t shine in the standardised tests, and who, therefore, tend to be written off as not having gifts of any kind. It seems to me that the school-community broker could spot these youngsters and find place- ments in the community that provide chances for them to shine. There is ample room in this vision for teachers, as well, and also for master teachers. In my view, teachers would be freed to do what they are supposed to do, which is to teach their subject matter, in their preferred style of teaching. The job of master teacher would be very demanding. It would involve, first of all, supervising the novice teachers and guiding them; but the master teacher would also seek to ensure that the com- plex student-assessment–curriculum-community equation is balanced appropriately. If the equation is seriously unbalanced, master teachers would intervene and suggest ways to make things better. Clearly,what I am describing is a tall order; it might even be called utopian.And there is a major risk to this programme, of which I am well aware. That is the risk of premature billeting. There is, however, nothing inherent in the approach that I have described that demands this early over determination – quite the contrary. It seems to me that early iden- tification of strengths can be very helpful in indicating what kinds of experiences children might profit from; but early identification of weaknesses can be equally important. If a weakness is identified early, there is a chance to attend to it before it is too late, and to come up with alternative ways of teaching or of covering and important skill area. We now have the technological and the human resources to imple- ment such an individual-centred school. Achieving it is a question of

Demos 9 Demos/Winter 1993 will, including the will to withstand the current enormous pressures toward uniformity and unidimensional assessments. There are strong pressures now, which you read about every day in the newspapers, to compare students, to compare teachers, states, even entire countries using one dimension or criterion, a kind of a crypto-IQ assessment. Clearly, everything I have described stands in direct opposition to that particular view of the world. Indeed that is my intent – to provide a ringing indictment of such one-track thinking. I believe that in our society we suffer from three biases, which I have nicknamed ‘Westist’,‘Testist’ and ‘Bestist’.‘Westist’ involves putting cer- tain Western cultural values, which date back to Socrates, on a pedestal. Logical thinking, for example, is important; rationality is important; but they are not the only virtues. ‘Testist’ suggests a bias towards focusing upon those human abilities or approaches that are readily testable. If it can’t be tested, it sometimes seems, it is not worth paying attention to. My feeling is that assessment can be much broader,much more humane than it is now,and that psychologists should spend less time ranking people and more time trying to help them. ‘Bestist’,the belief that all the answers to a given problem lie in one certain approach, such as logical-mathematical thinking, can be very dangerous. Current views of intellect need to be leavened with other more comprehensive points of view. It is of the utmost importance that we recognise and nurture all of the varied human intelligences, and all of the combinations of intel- ligences. We are all so different largely because we all have different combinations of intelligences. If we recognise this, I think we will have at least a better chance of dealing appropriately with the many problems that we face in the world. If we can mobilise the spectrum of human abilities, not only will people feel better about themselves and more competent; it is even possible that they will also feel more engaged and better able to join the rest of the world community in working for the broader good. Perhaps if we can mobilise the full range of human intelligences and ally them to an ethical sense, we can even help to increase the likelihood of our survival on this planet.

10 Demos Opening minds

Note 1. See also Frames of Mind (1983) and The Unschooled Mind (1991), published by Harper Collins.

Demos 11

Theory into Practice: Five Examples

Education 20001 Education 2000 is a charitable trust founded in 1982 by a group of people, well-known in their various business and professional spheres, who shared a common concern: that the education system was inade- quately prepared to respond to the unprecedented range and speed of social, economic and technological change which was already evident and accelerating. The Trust identified five elements on which to base its future projects:

ensure that every programme should serve the identified needs of young people.
enlist the support and professional commitment of teachers whose involvement is crucial to the achievements of real change.
shift the balance from teaching to learning.
exploit the use of information technologies as a catalyst for change.
create local learning communities in which education and learning in the community are mutually supportive.

Howard Gardner’s work at Harvard, already known to cognitive scientists, burst upon the educational world in 1983 with the publica- tion of Frames of Mind with its fully fashioned alternative account of the nature and operation of human intelligence, or, more properly,

Demos 13 Demos/Winter 1993 intelligences. This offered not only revelation but liberation from the dead hand of previous theories of intelligence, which, within the gen- eral frame of behaviourist paychology, had so limited and distorted our understanding and practice in the past. Gardner’s more recent work, concerning the failure of the ‘disciplined’ curriculum to enable young people to transfer their educational experience to their lives beyond the school, directly addresses our own concerns. Moreover, the insight he provides on the nature of cognition and concept develop- ment in young children confirms the critical importance of our pre- school and early-learning programmes. Education 2000 projects are not, strictly, ‘curriculum projects’. They promote a much broader agenda, while at the same time seeking to reflect local priorities. For example, while all the schools are ‘curriculum brokers’with the community, in order to expedite the use of human and physical resources, each will choose to interpret change in learning strategies to suit its own programme. In Leeds and Calderdale the role of the parent is seen as crucial to the early development of mind. Swindon is establishing learning resource centres to support individual learning. Bury and Coventry seek to estab- lish business awareness, one through work-shadowing, the other by simulating the small business environment. Loughborough and Tring are concerned to develop the whole network of relationships which identifies a learning community. In Ipswich the use of new technologies to foster and support learning is being fully explored. Letchworth, estab- lished in 1985 as the first 2000 project, has developed its programme more extensively across all aspects of the Trust’s proposals. Some measure of the Letchworth achievement can be appreciated from these extracts written by a variety of participants in its work. Ben was one of the very first secondary school students to progress through the Education 2000 approach:

‘Knowing no better I assumed that everyone had a secondary education like mine. It was only later I realised it was so diverse, and outward looking in the tasks I did.

14 Demos Theory into Practice: five examples

Independence of mind and real problem solving were the main features, I would say. The willingness of teachers to give us creative freedom has been vital. It must have been hard for them to come down from the blackboard. Now that I am going to University it feels rather as if I have already come from one, transcending the boundaries of that strangely limited word ‘school’.’

Mrs C is the mother of children in Education 2000 Project schools. She runs training courses for people from many different backgrounds:

‘The Education 2000 approach, now in its embryo, has shown how the extended family of the community can offer far more resources and quality of experience than any one individual family or school. When my older son came to the end of the GCSE’s I felt both envy and pride. I was proud of our efforts to achieve a good range of qualifications. The envy arose from seeing how much more stimulating, demanding and wide-ranging his education had been than my own. His education had been enormously enriched by contact with people from all walks of life, active learning tasks, using the computer networks, visiting industry, meeting people with knowledge and life experience from our community – all added up to an invigorating start in the real world.’

Mrs M became the Headteacher of an Education 2000 Project school. She came from a very different educational background and has been struck by the different expectations she found in the school and the local community:

Demos 15 Demos/Winter 1993

‘Innovation in schools is usually a difficult business. The agenda at my new school struck me as dramatic in its openness in welcoming the outside world and in the way resources from the community came into the school. We believe in the same policies and practice at all levels so we try to be a learning organisation for students and for the development of teaching and support staff. We aim to have at any one time 10% of our staff working on training: a continuing programme of professional training to help us cope with the management of change and developing closer links with the community. Visitors are impressed at how much apparently unsupervised work is going on as part of our mission to move from teaching to learning. This has meant radical changes in resources, organisation and learning programmes. Our ideas about what learning resources are have changed: people, problems, places and practicals tend to replace lecturing, listening and memorising. The traditional resources such as books are then liberated to become tools of enquiry – not the vessels of learning themselves.’

Mr J is a local businessman who runs a small but flourishing graphic design company:

‘I was first persuaded to become involved in Education 2000 over a pint in my local. We set up a partnership with the teacher who ran the Art, Design and Technology courses. He came into my firm for a week and looked at what we did and how we could help his youngsters. Then I repaid the compliment by going into school to see what was happening. I joined in the work on Graphic and Product Design and helped with ideas, situations and resources for his curriculum.

16 Demos Theorey into practice: five examples

There’s clearly no direct profit in it in the conventional sense and I wasn’t really sure why I did it except that after a while I realised I saw the kinds of learning going on I wish I had experienced at school. I am always impressed by the inquisitiveness of the students and the way they’ll suggest all kinds of solutions to a problem.’

These remarks demonstrate an educative process in the spirit of what Gardner proposes; a multi-dimensional approach to individual learning, ample opportunity to transfer understandings back and forth between learning and living and a concern for both quality and enjoy- ment which will encourage learning to continue into the future.

The Phoenix Centre2 Another example of educational innovation comes from Birmingham, where the Phoenix Centre was recently launched. The Centre acts as the hub of a network of 25 schools, 3 local authorities, and dozens of community organisations, sharing advice and ideas. Founded in April 1993, the centre is a strong advocate of self-governing schools ‘from a radical perspective’.It argues that a devolved system of education gives children a better education because it allows schools to be more effi- ciently managed, empowers local communities and revitalises local government. In the past state control over education disconnected people from their communities. Conversely autonomy tended simply to mean better education for elites provided in private schools. Compared to either of these alternatives, argues founder Dick Atkinson, independ- ent status of the kind that is now becoming possible is a far better alternative. Precise educational needs can be assessed by the schools them- selves; performance can be made accountable to parents and to the

Demos 17 Demos/Winter 1993 communities in which they belong, and the community can be involved directly in the school. The self-respect and pride which involvement in local schools brings to communities can then also act as a catalyst for involving people elsewhere in the community. The Phoenix Centre draws on two Birmingham schools, Baverstock and Small Heath, to illustrate how inner city schools can benefit from grant-maintained status. Since the schools went independent four years ago the number of parents who make them the first choice for their children has increased dramatically; exam results have improved two-fold; attendance has improved and staff levels have gone up. Those involved acknowledge that it is easier for large schools with sec- retarial and administrative back up to opt out. But smaller secondary and primary schools can also benefit from independence if they group together and share facilities. For example they could fund a ‘Cluster Development Officer’ from within the existing LEA budget to help them move together towards independent status. Once independent they could share a finance officer, specialist subject teachers, resources and special needs provision. Groups of schools could work together by setting up new agencies which the Phoenix Centre calls Schools Education Association Trusts. These would act as think-tanks, advise on good practice, and advocate schools’ needs to local and central government. They could be con- trolled by teachers and parents elected from local schools and funded by a very small proportion (perhaps 0.25%) of each schools budget. The Phoenix Centre sees no role for LEAs once schools become self- governing. Instead it argues that town halls should wind them down, and concentrate more on ‘steering’, or formulating overall strategic policies, while leaving smaller units to take responsibility for manag- ing provision. The Phoenix Centre contrasts the pyramid model of organisation with the maypole model where the organisation is bro- ken down into independent parts, allowing for closer interaction with consumers or parents. Their thesis is succinctly argued in their Bulletin, while a Self-Governing Schools DIY Tool Kit explains in detail what independence entails and how to achieve it.

18 Demos Theory into Practice: five examples

Optimum Schooling3 Based in Manchester, the ‘Optimum Schooling’ group aim to open their own primary school in 1995. They argue that most modern forms of schooling present a non-negotiable curriculum that positions teachers in an authoritarian stance, and reflects schools’ evolution in an undemocratic, socially stratified and discriminatory era. Early the- oreticians of human mental development thought the mind a blank slate, and modelled schools on factories. But in a modern democracy this model is inappropriate. It produces the wrong kinds of children. Instead schools should teach democracy’s conceptual rather than technical elements; conceptual democracy means recognising other viewpoints, learning to cooperate, being free to explore the phenome- nal world, and adopting rational and sensitive approaches to life and living. The Optimum Primary School (OPS) promises to build on how human beings naturally learn. It will eschew factory models, the basis of many educational difficulties. Instead it will be founded on three tenets: first that children are motivated to explore and understand their world and that they must be allowed to explore their world both with freedom and discipline. Second that parents and society at large must be involved in children’s education. And third that the curricu- lum must be flexible and continuously reviewable, differentiating between but not compartmentalising intellectual, social, moral, physi- cal and spiritual education. Based on these three tenets the school’s goal is to provide a power- ful learning, rather than teaching, environment. Teaching days will be longer and all year round. Children will do work suited to them with- out the discontinuity of timetables and fixed breaks; rather than in fixed groups or classes, they will sometimes work on their own and sometimes with others. Children will identify their own activities as they see others who are clearly motivated by and interested in their own tasks. Teachers will have consistent involvement, but children will retain the initiative and responsibility for their activities; they will per- sonally manage and organise activities. Teachers and older children

Demos 19 Demos/Winter 1993 will provide models whose behaviour younger children can emulate. As they do in the real world, children will learn through participation. The teachers’ role will be to understand how children see their tasks, and to work with them in a constructive and participatory way; they will be encouraged to help children see connections, make judge- ments, acquire skills and evaluate results. The aim is that the teacher– child relationship should be made relevant to each child. Moreover teachers will not have administrative responsibilities, so that each child will always have access to someone whose specific skills meet their particular needs. Parents will be able to watch their children work and to work with them at school, or with others if they have special skills. They will be encouraged to discuss any aspect of their child’s work with the teacher, so that they can support their children more effectively at home. Each child will experience the full range of primary school subjects, achiev- ing a balance while taking into account his or her abilities, interests, and parents’ views. The freedom OPS proposes to give children will alarm many. But they argue that children will not necessarily select the easy and the trivial. Often they will choose the difficult activity, much as infants climb the whole flight of stairs, not just three. Moreover, they will always be able to see others working at various levels of complex- ity, stimulating their thinking and raising their own expectations of themselves.

The Open School4 Almost everyone agrees that the basic models of education that were developed in the 19th century are no longer appropriate to the needs of the 21st. Open School believes that the most promising develop- ments towards a new paradigm for education are concerned with new relationships between information and communication technology, new styles of learning and enhanced professional support. Like its sister organisations, the Open University and the Open College, the Open School has a natural interest in distance support for

20 Demos Theory into Practice: five examples students. It is a national organisation, unconstrained by the normal boundaries in the educational system, such as physical distance, catchment areas, timetabling and the curriculum. It can respond to those gaps in students’ learning which a school has difficulty in addressing on its own (especially minority subjects such as Latin or Psychology), or it can address specific student needs, such as a gifted pupil’s need for more demanding activities, which often go unad- dressed in a busy classroom. Until now, no organisation has managed to challenge the economics of traditional classroom provision where the resources available per student are lower than in further and higher education. Open School, for example, has made use of a relatively cheap and very user friendly technology, the fax, to offer high quality support to small numbers of students. The Tutafax Service has produced impressive results and the Open School’s recent award for Open Learning Excellence was based in part on its success. However, it still looks expensive when compared with traditional whole class provision. Open School is now researching the mix of technologies that might enable the delivery of cheap and high quality learning support. CD ROM is falling in price and gaining in sophistication. Satellite (and cable) also offer great potential, when integrated with links by elec- tronic mail and telephone. However IT cannot solve everything: the human dimension of professional support and encouragement will continue to be necessary to sustain students’ faltering progress. A central part of Open School’s agenda is therefore to boost teachers’ skills, as well as examining the potential for greater use of teaching assistants, student team working arrangements and volunteer distance mentors. There is already evidence that schools’ expenditure on IT has lev- elled off.As the costs of IT fall further over the next three to five years, and performance increases, a movement towards more personalised learning will gather pace. We might expect 30% of a secondary school student’s learning time to be delivered by IT related flexible learning at the end of the century. But when that happens, rather than being dis- placed, the teacher will be more important than ever.

Demos 21 Demos/Winter 1993

Education Extra5 Education Extra was established in 1992 by Michael Young to extend children’s opportunities for learning and leisure, after school, at lunch- times, and in holidays. The aim was to make extended use of educa- tional buildings,at no additional cost,and to recruit volunteers to supplement the commitment of professional teachers. After-school activity has always been an important feature of good schools. They have discovered that if extra opportunities are attractive enough they will encourage a child’s voluntary commitment. Students will be more motivated, the positive influence of per pressure will be greater, and their work will be more practical and relevant. Many of the skills and attitudes desired by employers, such as team work, or a thirst for life long learning, are best developed in this environment. Education extra activity can extend students’ existing skills, for example their ability in acting or motor maintenance (and indeed in all the areas of intelligence defined by Howard Gardner). It can offer completely new experiences, for example in helping the community or performing a dance. It can also help students to catch up with their peers – homework clubs using undergraduate tutors as well as more mature students from the school will be one of the areas that Education Extra will promote. Education extra activity also has a social purpose. There are an estimated 800,000 latch key children in Britain who are at particular risk, besides a much wider group who could fall victim to drug abuse or petty crime. There are many children with an unhappy home life, who are much less mobile than their parents’ generation, and so have restricted opportunities to build up friendships with their peers. For these, and many others, after school clubs are an important safe haven. Education Extra’s role is to enhance the quality and scale of after school activity throughout the UK. To this end it has begun to collate and disseminate examples of good practice, to offer advice and consul- tancy, and to set up exemplary projects around the country. It is beg- ingning to attract interest from corporate sponsors, who feel unhappy

22 Demos Theorey into practice: five examples at being asked to fund more mainstream activities in schools and who appreciate the great benefits and the low cost. With wider government backing, Education Extra goal is that every child should have at least one after school activity each week.

Demos 23 Notes

1. Further information is available Avenue, Sale, Manchester M33 3PP. from: Education 2000, The Garden Telephone 061 962 6494. City Corporation Offices, 4. Further information is available The Broadway, Letchworth, Herts from: Lynette Gribble, Open School, SG6 3AB. Park Road, Dartington Hall, Totnes, 2. Further information is available Devonshire TQ9 6EQ. from: Dr Dick Atkinson, Director, telephone 0803 86 542. The Phoenix Centre, 5. Kay Andrews, 18 Victoria Park 18 Mayfield Road, Moseley, Square, Bethnal Green, London E2 Birmingham B13 9HJ. 9PF.Telephone 081 983 1061. 3. John R. Pearce, Optimum Primary School Co-ordinator, 5 Verdure

24 Demos Learning Right from Wrong* Amitai Etzioni†

Although there are long lists of what our children require, two require- ments loom over all others: to develop the basic personality traits that characterise effective individuals and to acquire core values. In the siz- able educational literature on the subject, both are sometimes referred to as ‘developing character’. We mean by Character the psychological muscles that allow a person to control impulses and defer gratification, which is essential for achievement, performance and moral conduct. The core values, which need to be transmitted from generation to gen- eration, contain moral substances that those with the proper basic per- sonality can learn to appreciate, adapt and integrate into their lives: hard work pays, even in an unfair world; treat others with the same basic dignity with which you wish to be treated (or face the conse- quences); you feel better when you do what is right than when you evade your moral precepts. There is little mystery as to what proper character development entails. In essence, it is acquiring the capacity to control one’s impulses and to mobilise oneself for acts other than the satisfaction of biological

*The article “Learning Right from Wrong”is an edited and adapted version of “The Spirit of Community” © (1993) Amitai Etzioni. Published by arrange- ment with Crown Publishers Inc., New York. All rights reserved. †Amitai Etzioni is Professor of Sociology at George Washington University. He has previously worked at Harvard Business School, the Brookings Institution and The White House.

Demos 25 Demos/Winter 1993 needs and immediate desires.Workers need such self-control so that they can stick to their tasks rather than saunter into work late and turn out slapdash products, becoming able to observe a work routine that is often not very satisfying by itself. Citizens and community members need self- control so that they will not demand ever more services and handouts while being unwilling to pay taxes and make contributions to the com- mons, a form of citizen infantilism. And self-control – together with a growing sense of commitment to values – makes people more tolerant of those from different ethnic, racial and political backgrounds. Such toler- ance is a major foundation of democratic societies and polities. Certainly education can draw too much of the ego’s energies into the inner mechanisms of self-control. The term ‘uptight’ refers to people who are obsessed with their careers or achievements and are unable to relax or show affection. Such excessive self-control has concerned social scientists in the past, especially in the sixties, and has led to a call for less education and more unbounded expression for the ego. Excessive self- control, however, is uncommon in contemporary society; indeed, many children come to school with a rather deficient capacity to guide them- selves. The fact that a larger proportion of the young find it very difficult to be punctual, get up in the morning, do homework on their own and complete tasks in an orderly and timely fashion – these are but the most visible indications of a deeper deficiency: insufficient self-control. As a result, schools are left with the task of making up for undered- ucation in the family and laying the psychic foundation for character and moral conduct. This is where the various commissions that have studied educational deficits missed a major point. By and large they argued for loading students with more hours of science, foreign lan- guage, maths and other skills and bodies of knowledge. But you cannot fill a vessel that has yet to be cast. School administrators, elected officials and numerous commissions that have studied why children can’t read have found it easier and less controversial to focus on matters that can be measured, such as maths and vocabulary tests, and have shunned those that raise moral issues. They have, for example, largely ignored such matters as the state of the character of our children and the effects of permissive practices.

26 Demos Learning right from wrong

How do we educate for character? Parents and educators often stress the importance of discipline in character formation and in the moral education of the next generation. In several public opinion surveys, teachers, school administrators and parents rank a lack of discipline as the number one problem in our schools. They correctly perceive that in a classroom where students are restless, impatient, disorderly and disrespectful, where rules and routines cannot be developed and main- tained, learning is not possible. Unfortunately discipline, as many people understand it, takes on an authoritarian meaning. A well-disciplined environment is often con- sidered one in which teachers and headmasters ‘lay down the law’ and will brook no talking back from students, who ‘show respect’ by rising when the teacher enters the room and speak only when spoken to. If discipline is achieved by such authoritarian means, children will behave as long as they are closely supervised and fear punishment. But as soon as the authorities turn their backs, they will misbehave. More- over, their resentment at being coerced will express itself in some form of antisocial behaviour. This is because the discipline is linked to punish- ment rather than to a commitment to doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong. What the pupil – and the future adult – requires is self-discipline, the inner ability to mobilise and commit to a task he or she believes in and to feel positive – self-rewarded – for having done so. Internalisation occurs in structured environments, but not under authoritarian conditions. Close, continuous, external supervision and punitive environments are counterproductive. What is required is a school structure made up of educating figures, rules and organisation of tasks that motivate students by providing clear guidelines. These must be firmly upheld, reasonable and justified, so that students can understand and accept the need to abide by them. There is some social science evidence to support my thesis, although it is relatively scarce and somewhat indirect. The following findings are drawn from a study by James S. Coleman and his associates, one of the largest and most systematic studies in the field. Coleman and his col- leagues studied 58,728 15- and 17-year-olds in 1,016 state and public

Demos 27 Demos/Winter 1993 schools. They found that the single factor that separated effective from ineffective schools was the existence of discipline – and that the disci- pline had to be perceived by the students as legitimate rather than capriciously imposed. The latter point is of great importance: without a sense that the requirements introduced are sound and proper, students will not internalise discipline and hence their character will not benefit. Educational requirements, in turn, must be clearly stated and the link between requirements and goals be fully explained. Curricula can be neither arbitrary nor subject to the whim of an individual teacher. To foster self-discipline, assignments need to be ‘doable’,appropriately checked, and properly rewarded. When they are excessive and mechanical (such as the time one of my sons was required in second- ary school to memorise the names of all the native American tribes), or when rewards are allocated according to irrelevant criteria (such as teacher favouritism, social status or undue parental influence), require- ments become dictates and not sources of involvement and ways to internalise commitments, to build self-discipline.

‘Citizens and community members need self-control so that they will not demand ever more services and handouts while being unwilling to pay taxes and make contributions to the commons, a form of citizen infantilism’

Character formation lays the psychic foundation for the ability both to mobilise to a task and to behave morally by being able to control impulses and defer gratification. However, character formation per se does not educate one to a specific set of virtues or values; it is without specific moral content. It provides the rectitude to tell the truth even if the consequences are unpleasant, but it does not teach the value of being truthful. It enables a person to refrain from imposing his sexual impulse on an unwilling partner, but it does not teach him that it is morally unacceptable to rape. Trying to develop character without attention to sharing of values with the young is like trying to develop the muscles of

28 Demos Learning right from wrong

an athlete without having a particular sport in mind. It follows that if those who are being educated are to become committed to moral values, children must acquire not only the capacity to commit – the psycholog- ical muscle that moral conduct requires – but also the values that direct the exercise, the application of the moral capacity. To the extent that the family no longer provides these values, the community turns to schools to teach the young to tell right from wrong. Such moral education should be integral part of all teaching. Unfortunately, schools, especially state ones, have been extremely reluctant to engage openly in moral education. School administrators

Demos 29 Demos/Winter 1993 claim that they are overloaded as it is. The public demands that they cover ever more subjects, in more depth. They are saddled with many problems the family and community are unable to cope with, such as teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse and violence; and they are understaffed and underfunded. Moreover, moral education is very controversial. Educational author- ities find it is much safer politically not to include moral education in their agenda.‘Whose morals are you going to teach?’ is a kind of trump question that is often raised to stop all further exploration of the sub- ject. Opponents of moral education frequently depict its advocates as authoritarians who would impose their values on one and all. To bolster their argument, critics often cite cases of the banning of books. They call attention to instances such as one in Dallas, Texas, where school administrators had teachers rip out an offending page from a school textbook that referred to male genitals and bodily functions. Opponents of moral education also alarm us by bringing up instances in which authoritarians tried to promote moral education by fostering Christian dogma in schools. But this provides no more assur- ance that those in the classroom pews will be morally upright than singing the national anthem will make students true patriots. Although such instances do pertain to the transmission of values in the schools, they most certainly do not concern the kind of value educa- tion I am referring to.Reference here is to numerous values we share as a community – such as the inappropriateness of racial and gender discrimination, the rejection of violence and the desirability of treating others with love, respect and dignity. If we would transmit to school chil- dren only these shared values, our world would be radically improved.

‘Trying to develop character without attention to sharing of values with the young is like trying to develop the muscles of an athlete without having a particular sport in mind’.

Among those schools that have overcome the opposition and turned to moral education, there are quite a few that teach ethics in

30 Demos Learning right from wrong

ways that, sadly, leave much to be desired. They have sought refuge in something called ‘moral reasoning’, a highly cognitive approach built on the works of psychologists Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, who were largely interested in developing moral reasoning, but not value internalisation. In these classes children learn, at best, to argue about moral issues, but no attempt is made to enhance their moral commitments. Moral commitment requires helping young people feel more strongly about those values they already have (or acquire in schools), which can be achieved by using stories, drama, role-playing, videotapes, mock courts, visiting places where homeless people live or a polluted lake, and other such educational devices that are evocative and not merely informative.

Demos 31 Demos/Winter 1993

A typical course on moral reasoning starts with something called ‘values clarification’.In a typical lesson, students are asked to list what is dear to them – money, reputation and power – and then to rank these pursuits in terms of which they hold most important. They fail – and are thus considered in need of moral tutoring – only if they have diffi- culty in deciding what is up and what is down their scale of interests. They are further helped to clarify their preferences through exercises such as the lifeboat drill. In this exercise students are told to imagine that they are in a lifeboat with a group of people that includes a scien- tist, an artist, a teacher and a general (the list may vary). The boat is overloaded, and they must decide whom they would cast overboard first, second and so on. In this way the students’ values are revealed. For instance, do they rank art higher than arms? (Usually the teachers are cast off first and the children themselves last). As long as the pupils are clear on their preferred tossing order, and hence by implication their values, their moral education is considered properly advanced. Under moral reasoning per se, nobody is supposed to discuss the question whom they should have cast overboard first or ask why there aren’t enough lifeboats to begin with. More deeply, I question whether such extreme examples (what ethical theorists call ‘limit situations’) really prepare one for real-life moral choices. In more advanced classes (and some that are taught at university), students learn to argue at even more elevated levels. They are taught about various ethical theories like utilitarianism and deontology, about autonomy and beneficence, and so on. Students are expected to sort out from many conflicting claims which course to follow. Thus, in one case, prepared by the University of Minnesota and used in a discussion of ethics, a social worker visits the home of an ill person. The patient tells her visitor that if her condition deteriorates further, she will take her own life ‘long before anyone puts me into a nursing home’. The question is, should the social worker report the suicide threat to the authorities and have the means of suicide removed? It is then suggested that because of ‘the principle of autonomy, the client’s wishes are to be respected’ and the social worker is not to intervene. But if someone put more weight on beneficence, dangerous objects would be removed.

32 Demos Learning right from wrong

The challenge ‘Whose values will you teach?’ can be readily answered by starting with the myriad values we all share. (Many of these are shared not only in one community, but much more widely). Nobody considers it moral to abuse children, rape, steal (not to mention commit murder), be disrespectful of others, discriminate and so on. We must ask,‘What are we going to teach about abortion?’ The pro- choice, pro-life debate is an exception that does not disprove the rule. Some values, a small subset of the total in well-functioning communi- ties, are contested. These exceptions can be dealt with either by letting the students learn about both sides of the issue or by openly omitting them. Moreover, these issues are helpful in showing the pain of moral conflicts and the merit of genuine consensus building, a consensus we do have on most value. Of course, say the opponents, but people agree only on vague gener- alities, which amount almost to banalities. They argue: When you come down to specifics, disagreements will dominate, and then whose specifics will you teach? But even when it comes to specifics, there is more consensus than at first seems to be the case. Take date rape. Let’s assume that we can all agree that students must realise that using force to impose themselves on others is morally unac- ceptable. In teaching it, we run into a ‘specific’, the belief that surpris- ingly many young males hold that when a woman says ‘no’ she means ‘yes’,and hence it is all right to proceed despite her protests. An educa- tor should be able to build on the student’s value that ‘real no’s’ are to be heeded, to show that when a woman says ‘no’, a decent person holds back; and that if he has any doubt about a ‘yes’ he should seek further clarification from her before proceeding. That is, a position on specifics can often be worked out when the basic value commitments are in place, a position that almost everyone will find morally compelling. The same holds for the value we put on life when it comes to ques- tions such as when to terminate medical treatment. There is broad consensus that we should not terminate people who are conscious or able to regain consciousness. There is a strong and widening consen- sus that we should not continue medical services to people who are brain dead, with no chance of returning to human life. Many also agree

Demos 33 Demos/Winter 1993 that we should allow people to refuse what are called heroic measures (such as resuscitating their hearts when they fail), but fewer agree that it is all right for them to refuse feeding – again, a rather specific, worked-out consensus. True, some specific questions are contested, but there is more than enough here for anyone to teach the high value that our society puts on individual life. But we need not worry that educators will ‘brainwash’ students who are captive audiences in their classrooms or indoctrinate them with their moral viewpoints. Students are exposed to a large variety of voices, coming to them from television, radio, magazines, porn shops, peers and many others. That is, there are natural checks and balances built into the social environment. If somewhere one teacher were to advance a moral concept that was outside the community consensus – perhaps that we must all become vegetarians, pacifists or Zen Buddhists – the students would have plenty of other sources to draw on to counter such teaching. Indeed, the opposite is true: if typical educators, whose values tend to be well within the communtiy range, refrain from adding their moral voice to the cacophony of voices the students hear anyhow,the students would miss one perspective and remain exposed only to all the other voices, many of which are less committed to values the educators and let every- one else spout their messages without inhibition. How do we teach moral values, as opposed to merely building up the capacity for moral reasoning and disputations? How do we build up moral commitments? There is one way that far surpasses all others. The most important social science observation here is that experiences are more effective teachers than lectures. This is particularly evident in extracurricular activities, especially sports. True, these can be abused, such as when coaches focus on winning as the only object and neglect to instill learning to play by the rules, teamwork and camaraderie. ‘Graduates’ of such activities will tend to be people who are aggressive, maladjusted members of the community. However, if coaches, and the message they impart, are well integrated into the values education of a school, and if parents see the importance of using sports to educate rather than to win, sports can be a most effective way to enhance values education.

34 Demos Learning right from wrong

Why are extracurricular activities credited with such extraordinary power? Because they generate experiences that are powerful educa- tional tools. Thus, if one team plays as a group of individuals and loses because its adversary played as a well-functioning team, the losing players learn – in a way that no pep talk or slide show can teach – the merit of playing as a team. The same holds for other activities that take place at school. They provide experiences that tend to have deep educational effects, either positive or negative. One US teacher decided that it would be inappro- priate to hold a conventional discussion of the plight of black Americans shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Instead she decided to try to teach discrimination to her third-graders by affecting their experiences. Her students understood discrimina- tion in a neutral, distant sense – what she termed ‘sympathetic indiffer- ence’ – but they didn’t comprehend its true impact. So she divided her class into two groups by eye colour – the blue- eyed students in one group and the brown-eyed in the other. ‘Today,’ she said one Friday, ‘the blue-eyed people will be on the bottom and the brown-eyed people on the top.’She continued:‘What I mean is that brown-eyed people are better than blue-eyed people. They are cleaner than blue-eyed people. They are more civilised than blue-eyed people. And they are smarter than blue-eyed people.’ Rules, and the teacher’s attitude, were geared specifically to benefit the brown-eyed children. The experiment’s effects were swift and severe.‘Long before noon, I was sick,’ she recalls. ‘I wished I had never started it … By the lunch hour, there was no need to think before identifying a child as blue-or brown-eyed. I could tell simply by looking at them. The brown-eyed children were happy, alert, having the times of their lives … The blue- eyed children were miserable. ‘In short, the children had learned through experience what discrimination is like. The children were clearly affected by the exercise. Brown-eyed Debbie Anderson said: ‘I felt mad (on blue-eye-preferred Monday) … I felt dirty. And I did not feel as smart as I did on Friday.’ Student Theodore Perzynski wrote in part: ‘I do not like discrimination. It makes me sad. I would not like to be angry all my life.’

Demos 35 Demos/Winter 1993

Such experiences leave strong and lasting impressions. At a 1984 reunion, students still vividly recalled the lesson. Some students reported that their career choices were influenced by the discrimination experi- ence. Several chose as a result to join the Peace Corps for work with other cultures overseas. Ideally, the teachers and headmasters of each school should at least once every three years engage in an extensive ‘retreat’.Here they would spend a weekend, in some secluded place, drawing on professional facilitators, to examine the experiences their school generates. They would agree to set aside cognitive questions about the curriculum – such as whether to teach new or old maths or which method of teach- ing English is the best – and focus on one question: What experiences do we fashion? (If possible, a social scientist would first interview students on this matter and then make the report available at the retreat). Once a school has analyzed itself in terms of the experiences it gen- erates, those experiences need to be compared to the moral and social lessons the school intends to impart. If the lesson imparted and the intentions agreed upon are in conflict, the school should consider changing its conduct. Changes may need to encompass the way shared spaces are supervised, the role of competitive sports, the criteria for providing marks and so on – to bring actual experiences in line with those the school believes will prove more educational. For example, if a school seeks to impart the message that blacks and whites should treat one another respectfully and develop relations across racial lines, lectures on racial harmony alone will not do the trick. The school would do well to examine seating patterns in the cafe- teria. If it finds that students are segregating themselves along racial lines, it may wish to meet with students of all racial groups and explore the reason for this self-imposed ghetto like behaviour. The school may then work with the students to encourage interracial lunches (twice a week?), one-on-one interracial contacts, group meetings on tolerance and so on.Whatever the school tries, it should be aware that its actions, and the experiences they generate, further affect students’ moral con- duct than most lectures and exhortations.

36 Demos Learning right from wrong

A year of national service after secondary school could be the cap- stone of a student’s educational experiences. More and more policy makers are supporting the idea of a year spent serving the country, interrupting the ‘lockstep’ march from form to form and into and through university (or directly into the adult world of full-time work). It is a major way to build up the moral tenor and sense of social respon- sibility among the young. Although the suggested programmes vary in detail, many favour a year of voluntary service, either in the armed forces or in organisations such as Volunteers in Service to America (a domestic peace corps that runs literacy programmes around the US). Some would make it the sixth form: I prefer for it to follow secondary school, providing a year between school and university or between school and work for those who are not university-bound. The merits of a year of national service range from primarily prag- matic to the more encompassing matter of character building. To begin with the pragmatic: unemployment is an especially demoralis- ing experience for many young people. It also undermines the rest of society, because young unemployed persons make up a sizable part of the criminal population. A year of national service would remove many unemployed youths from the streets; it would provide them, often for the first time, with legitimate and meaningful work; and it would help protect them from being enticed into crime. Above all, such service would provide a way to develop the character of those who serve, aside from whatever skills they might acquire. Indeed, much of the potential impact of national service lies in psychic devel- opment, in enhancing the individual’s self-respect, sense of worth and outlook on the future. More important, national service would also provide a strong anti- dote to the ego-centred mentality as youth serve shared needs. An important criterion for including a particular service in the programme should be its usefulness to the community. This could encompass myr- iad possibilities, from improving the environment and beautifying the land to tutoring young people having difficulty in school or helping the infirm in nursing homes.At the same time, forms of service that infringe on the rights of others would be excluded; for example, volunteers

Demos 37 Demos/Winter 1993 would not be given responsibility that would, in effect, take away jobs by providing a pool of cheap labour. Finally, a year of national service could serve as an important commu- nity builder because it would act as a grand sociological mixer. At pres- ent, the US and Britain provide few opportunities for shared experience and for developing shared values and bonds among people from differ- ent racial, class and regional backgrounds. A year of national service, especially if it was designed to enable people from different geographical and sociological backgrounds to work and live together, could be an effective way for boys and girls, whites and nonwhites, people from state and public schools, north and south, the city and the country, to come together constructively while working together at a common task. A 1989 poll found that many American young people who have participated in community service have positive feelings about their experiences. 57% of the respondents said it felt good to help someone, while 40% called it a good learning experience. Only 1% stated that they didn’t like giving up their free time,and only 2% felt they had gained nothing from their volunteer experience. What is missing is opportunities to serve. 42% of the students said no one had asked them to help or showed them how; 45% said that the fact that there was not parental encouragement to perform commu- nity service was a strong reason for their not being more involved. Despite the formidable cost of such a programme, national service could become competitive with other national priorities if the social and economic dividends proved substantial. By encouraging and developing the virtues of hard work, responsibility and co-operation – to name a few – national service would help to restore a climate of basic civility and improve economic productivity. For instance, national service would probably provide young people with greater maturity and skills than they would normally have upon entering university or vocational training. To state the obvious, that the first duty of schools is education, turns out not to be self-evident. First, there is a strong tendency to equate education with teaching – transmitting skills and knowledge – which it is not. Second, there is a lack of understanding of the ways character

38 Demos Learning right from wrong formation enables effective teaching and allows for moral education. Character formation is equally essential if we are to graduate young adults who can be upstanding members of the community and employ- ees able to hold their own in today’s competitive world. The single most important factor that affects education from within the schools is neither the curriculum nor the teaching style, at least not as these terms are normally used, but the experiences the school generates. In many British and American schools, perhaps as many as one-half, these experiences do not support sound character formation or moral education. Many factors combine to account for the weakened condition of many schools, but the self-centred mentality is probably easiest to reverse. It is almost certainly a good place to start the reconstruction of the schools as educational institutions if they are to become places where self-discipline is evolved. Otherwise schools will not only fail their graduates, they will also be unable to serve as a major foundation of the moral infrastructure of our communities.

Demos 39

UK Politics Reinventing Accountability John Stewart

With the tide turning against overcentralisation, local accountability is set to be one of the great issues of the 1990s. The government claims to be providing accountability through a new public sector consumerism (while in fact giving power to unelected quangos). The opposition, meanwhile, sometimes seems to believe that all that is needed is to return powers to local councils, John Stewart, who coined the phrase ‘the new magistracy’suggests that neither approach is adequate, and sets out a new agenda for matching consumer rights with greater local accountability based not only on elections but also on referenda, citizen panels, ‘juries’and public hearings.

In a recent lecture William Waldegrave replied to arguments put forward by myself and others that the growth in appointed boards at local level had created a crisis in public accountability. Their only accountability is that long and tenuous line through Ministers to Parliament. In his reply William Waldegrave made four main points:

1. Public accountability has not been weakened because accountability to Parliament remains unchanged.‘We have not in any way altered or undermined the basic structure of

Demos 41 Demos/Winter 1993

public service accountability to Parliament and hence to individual citizens (p15).’ 2. Accountability in practice has been weak, and the task for the Government was to strengthen it. For example in health ‘as in education, accountability to the citizen, clear enough in theory, was dissipated between too many half-responsible interests (p12).’ 3. Accountability has been strengthened – and this is the heart of the argument – by making the services responsive to consumers. He quotes with approval Dr Madsen Pirie’s argument that the key point ‘is not whether those who run our public services are elected, but whether they are producer-responsive or consumer-responsive. Services are not necessarily made to respond to the public simply by giving citizens a democratic voice, and a distant and diffuse one at that, in their make-up. They can be made responsive by giving the public choice or by instituting mechanisms which build in publicly approved standards and redress when they are not attained (p13).’In effect William Waldegrave claims that they have strengthened public accountability by ‘making public services directly accountable to the customers (p15).’ 4. Accountability would not be strengthened by the remedies that critics proposed. Mr Waldegrave does not address my arguments that local government should be strengthened, but only proposals for legal changes that would strengthen citizen’s rights. He questions whether this would ‘be more likely to lead to better public services, or a legal strait-jacket which would put paid to further public service reform (p14).’

The lecture does not however deal directly with concerns about appointed boards taking over the responsibility of local authorities. The lecture touches on this issue only once: ‘When there are problems in an individual hospital, it is now the Chief Executive of the Trust Board who answers. Not surprisingly, this encourages the feeling of local ownership, of ‘our hospital’. My own experience in Bristol suggests that the

42 Demos UK Politics – Reinventing accountability

Chairman of a local Trust is now infinitely more likely to be known and respected locally than the melee of bureaucratic interests which he or she has replaced. The commitment and involvement of the mostly local figures who serve as Board non-executives is a most promising sign for our similar, recently announced, proposals for police authority (p12).’ What this passage does not explain is why it is the Secretary of State for Health, and will be the Home Secretary, who appoints Trust Board members, rather than local people themselves; the latter are more likely to be aware who is known and respected locally than a Cabinet Minister. At no point does the paper justify the existence of ‘the new magistracy’, that lay elite which now governs so much of local public services and which are taking over the responsibilities of local elected councils. If, as Waldegrave contends, what matters is responsiveness to the consumer, he never explains why these appointees are necessary to that develop- ment and why the consumer should have no say in who they are.At local level there is a democratic deficit – which Mr Waldegrave never justifies. Mr Waldegrave first argues that the basic structure of public account- ability has not been altered because accountability to Parliament remains. That he finds it necessary to make this point is significant, because it indicates that he does not regard responsiveness to the customer as in itself sufficient to meet the requirements of public accountability. In arguing that the basic structure of public accounta- bility remains unchanged, he ignores the changes that have taken place in the role of local authorities. Yet it is those changes that have high- lighted the issue of public accountability. Local authority representatives were removed from district health authorities and from family health service authorities (which replaced the Family Practitioners committees) on which they were represented. Appointed boards have been set up to run health service Trusts. Training and Enterprise Councils exercise functions at local level many of which were previously exercised by local authorities. Self appointing Boards of Governors have taken over responsibility from local authorities for fur- ther education colleges and sixth-form colleges and are subject to the requirements of funding councils, themselves nationally appointed boards.

Demos 43 Demos/Winter 1993

The Government policy is to encourage schools to opt out of local authority control, to become grant-maintained schools which additional, nationally appointed funding Councils will finance. Housing Action Trusts and Urban Development Corporations have been appointed to take over certain local authority responsibilities in particular parts of their areas. The Government now propose to remove the responsibility of local authorities for the police service and transfer them to newly appointed police authorities. The Home Secretary will appoint the chairmen and five of the 16 members of these new police authorities, with local authorities appointing only half and magistrates the remainder, as now. Clearly the claim that ‘the basic structure of public service accountabil- ity’ has not been altered at local level is unfeasible. William Waldegrave’s argument is presumably that local authorities were not part of the basic structure of public service accountability. Yet traditionally public accountability has been achieved either through the accountability of public services to Ministers who were in turn accountable to parliament, or through their accountability at local level to councils and committees. In each case accountability was ensured at least in theory – by the accountability of elected bodies to citizens. Accountability at local level is appropriate where services are deliv- ered locally and where choices are made locally about the nature and level of services. The traditional division of accountability between national and local level ensured that the burden of accountability was spread, preventing an overload at national level. Even so, the burden of public accountability at national level was enormous and the doctrine of ministerial responsibility was widely recognised as being under strain. Ministers – of any party – have not readily accepted responsi- bility for failures in policy or action even when directly under their control. They are hardly likely to accept more readily real accountabil- ity for all that is done by the growing panoply of appointed boards. Nor is that the end of the story. Increasingly ministers have taken effective control over decisions made at local level, although sometimes in ways that obscure responsibility and therefore confuse accountabil- ity. The Secretary of State for the Environment has taken powers to cap

44 Demos UK Politics – Reinventing accountability the level of local taxation and hence of expenditure at a figure deter- mined nationally for each local authority. The power does not have to be widely used because the Secretary of State announces the capping levels in advance. The result is that local authorities choose to cap them- selves rather than go through the uncertainties of the capping process which requires that budgets have to be cut back well into the financial year to which they apply. In these circumstances the only role played by the local tax, except in the declining group of authorities spending below an increasingly severe capping level, is to confuse the electorate as to where responsi- bility lies. This is because responsibility for decisions on local taxation and expenditure now lies with ministers and not with local authorities. In this and through other increased controls the burden of ministerial responsibility grows because of the weakening of local accountability. The basic structure of public service accountability is far from unchanged. Instead there has been a fundamental shift away from a structure in which public accountability was divided between minis- ters accountable through Parliament to the national electorate and councils accountable to their local electorate. This has shifted to one in which it is increasingly concentrated at one point – on accountability to Parliament, raising deep issues about the concentration of power. The argument that accountability needed strengthening is not one that needs to be contested. It is certainly no part of my argument that all was well with the system of government at local or national level when the Conservative Government came to power in 1979. Just as there are arguments now about the role of appointed boards in local and commu- nity government, some of those also applied to existing government structures. Thus although area health authorities, as they were then, con- tained representatives of local authorities, they were in an unsatisfactory position as a minority on the board. The greater part of the board were appointed by the Regional Health Authority, itself appointed by the Minister. These various methods or appointment confused rather than sustained accountability. Nor can it be argued that all was well, or is well now,with public accountability at local or indeed national level. Reliance on a periodic

Demos 45 Demos/Winter 1993 election may provide the basis for public accountability but is not an adequate expression of what could be a continuing relationship. Nor can turnouts at local level – between 40% and 45% on average – be regarded as indicating the strength of public accountability at local level. The challenge is not to by-pass the requirements of public account- ability by removing responsibilities from elected authorities, but to strengthen accountability. That William Waldegrave claimed to have been done.As we have seen he describes the position in both education and health as confused. He claims that in both areas accountability has been clarified. ‘In health,’ he argued ‘we have established a firm division between purchaser and provider, which has been absolutely fundamental in clarifying responsi- bility.And we have delegated that responsibility down to individual units. As a result management accountability has actually never been clearer (p12).’Management accountability can assist public accountability but is not itself public accountability. In fact the development of contracts which the purchaser provider split requires is not problem free. The statement when something goes wrong I have carried out the contract, so I am not to blame’ can be an evasion of accountability rather than its achievement. Leaving that on one side, however, the purchaser provider split only highlights the real issue, that of accountability for the contract expressing a choice on local priorities as it does in the health service. In education the position is no simpler, even for the five to 16 age range. There are grant-maintained schools, locally managed schools, the local education authority, the Funding Council for Schools (which at certain points may share or eventually take over responsibility for planning the supply of places from the local education authority); and there is of course the growing role of the Minister and the Department for Education.Again it could be argued that far from clarifying respon- sibility in the new structure, accountability is, to use William Waldegrave’s words about the alleged weaknesses of the previous structures, ‘dissi- pated between too many half-responsible interests.’ So, while it is correct to see problems in the previous structure, the new structure has greater problems due to the limited concept of accountability on which it is based.

46 Demos UK politics – Reinventing accountability

The central point of the argument put forward by William Waldegrave, then, is that what matters is not the basic structure of public accountability. Rather it is responsiveness to the public, which is being achieved through the Citizens Charter and other reform initia- tives. He describes this as ‘making our public services directly account- able to their customers’ with the result that there has been ‘a democratic gain (p15).’ He quotes a MORI survey carried out for the Local Government Commission, which showed that 68% rated ‘responding to local peo- ple’s wishes’ as important, whereas only 28% rated ‘accountability’; he cites this as important evidence that ‘the public are far more interested in outcomes than we often remember.’Few would doubt the interest of the public in outcomes. But it is worth noting that though the question was posed abstractly, as ‘accountability’ rather than ‘accountability to local people’, over a quarter of people rated it as important. Perhaps this question would be more relevant in a survey about local govern- ment. Indeed, the question about ‘responding to local people’s wishes’ could be interpreted as a commitment to accountability, without it being clear whether what is sought is responding to local people as customers or to local people as members of the community. Waldegrave’s argument thus contains this fallacy: he appears to see responsiveness to the public as an alternative to accountability through elections, as though they are in some ways opposed to each other. But there is no need for a choice. There is no evidence that appointed boards have responded better to the Citizens Charter or provided more responsive services than local authorities. Indeed many of the approaches set out in the Citizens Charter were pioneered by local authorities.Thus York,Islington and Lewisham,among others,had already developed service contracts specifying the standard of service to be provided and outlining procedures for redress should those stan- dards not be attained. It has certainly been the case that many local authorities tended to become enclosed organisations providing serv- ices to people, rather than for or with the local community, but in this they did not differ from public services run by appointed boards. There is no reason why accountability to local people through elections, and

Demos 47 Demos/Winter 1993 responsiveness to customers, should be regarded as alternatives. The reverse is true – both are required. The reason is simple. Responsiveness to the customer is not the same as accountability to the customer, as William Waldegrave implies. Accountability to the customer would imply that the customer could hold those providing the service to account if they did not provide the service they want. That cannot be the case for many public services. Public services cannot provide what each and every individual cus- tomer wants – indeed for some public services there is no individual customer. The mistake is to assume to readily that public services should fol- low a private sector model. The word ‘customer’ is inappropriate if it suggests that individual choice in the market place can be replicated in public services generally. William Waldegrave himself has recognised in a previous lecture the danger of using business language unthink- ingly in public services. Our ‘customers’ do not come because the price of beans is less or because of the pretty girl in the advertisement; they come because they are ill, not seldom frightened, and they want help and expert care … Without remitting for one moment the pressure to get a better manage- ment system borrowing what is useful from business, let us watch our language a bit … It just bears saying straight out: the NHS is not a busi- ness: it is a public service and a great one (Waldegrave, 1991, p12). The word customer was wisely put in quotation marks by William Waldegrave because it can easily mislead. For many services there is more than one customer. Who is the customer of the school? The child, the parent, the future employer? They do not necessarily all want the same from the school. Public services should take account of dif- ferent customers’ demands, but cannot necessarily meet them all – a balance has to be struck for which accountability must be not to an individual customer, but to the wider community. In addition, for many public services demand exceeds supply. The task for the public service is rationing the service, which means denying some potential customers whose need for the service is less urgent. The public service cannot then be accountable to each individual customer

48 Demos UK politics – Reinventing accountability for the decisions it makes, but it should be accountable to the wider community for the criteria it uses and the priorities it lays down. In some instances, as with a planning application, decisions have to be made between the arguments put forward by different individuals and organisations. In other instances the ‘customers’ will be ordered to take certain action, refused permission to take other actions, prose- cuted or even taken into custody. It is meaningless in such instances to speak of accountability to the individual customer.Action is being taken on behalf of the wider community to whom accountability should accrue. Because public services are provided for public purposes meaning that they cannot necessarily meet the wishes of every individual cus- tomer, the Government has laid down a national curriculum to be taught in schools. This restricts the choice of individual customers, be they parents or children. One can argue about whether there should be a national curriculum or its content. But this is merely one example of where the wider public interest determines the nature of the service provided, and for which accountability to the individual customer is impossible. It is instead to the wider community. This also applies to local appointed boards making collective choices. The Audit Commission has written about the commissioning role of the District Health Authority which is its central responsibility: The ultimate aim of Commissioning is to improve the health of the population while increasing users’ satisfaction with health services. Put fashionably, it is to achieve ‘health gain’.Such a broad aim encom- passes many specific outcomes, both for individuals and populations. Examples are: increased life expectancy for 70-year olds, reduction in avoidable deaths in those aged under 60, or improvement in the qual- ity of life for sufferers from chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Such objectives are unlikely to conflict with each other directly, but they will always be in competition for limited resources. It is therefore desirable that each DHA debate and clarify its underlying values so that its purchasing plans … reflect agreed strategic priorities. This process will be contentious and difficult, and it is doubtful whether the NHS is professionally, managerially or politically ready

Demos 49 Demos/Winter 1993 for it. But in the long run such clarity will be essential if real headway is to be made with the broad aims. Audit Commission, 1993, p6. Each district health authority has to make choices about its priori- ties. These are collective choices for which responsiveness to individ- ual customers is no substitute for public accountability. It is not sufficient to identify a crisis in public accountability or a democratic deficit; those who stress the importance of these issues have an obligation to propose how they should be handled. William Waldegrave concentrates his attack on Vernon Bogdanor’s proposals, which advocate constitutional change expressed in a legal framework designed to enforce public accountability. William Waldegrave’s reply is, first, that this will not necessarily lead to better service for ‘commuters stranded on a wet railway service.’ These changes would neither improve nor worsen service. But then they are not designed to. They are designed to ensure public accounta- bility for collective choice on policies, priorities and action. As I have argued, both responsive service and public accountability should be aimed at. It is no answer to proposals to improve the latter to argue it does not improve the former, any more than to improve the former will improve the latter. William Waldegrave’s only other argument is that it will lead to litiga- tion and judiciary-led systems rather than Parliament-led systems. This ignores the fact that the terms of the provisions he is attacking for a Civil Service Act, a Freedom of Information Act and even a Bill of Rights will be laid down by Parliament. The result will not necessarily be a judiciary- led rather than a Parliament-led system any more than from any other legislation. In all cases Parliament determines the legislation. William Waldegrave has however largely ignored those proposals directed at the problems created by ‘the new magistracy’.The proposals are designed to strengthen public accountability by making the serv- ices for which these boards are responsible subject to accountability through local elections. A number of alternative approaches could be adopted. District health authorities, for example, could be directly elected. But there are arguments for basing accountability on local authorities, since

50 Demos UK politics – Reinventing accountability the activities of district health authorities and other appointed boards are closely related to those of local authorities. Together these activities constitute the government of our towns and cities and indeed our rural areas, and local authorities can provide the basis for accountability. To argue for accountability based on local authorities is not neces- sarily to argue for direct control. A variety of approaches are possible. An organisation’s contractual accountability to the local authority can play a role. Local authorities could appoint the boards, ensuring by their closeness the boards’ accountability. In other instances direct responsibility might be appropriate. Each case would need to be exam- ined separately. But it is not enough to assume that merely transferring responsibil- ity in whatever form would ensure adequate public accountability. That would be to assume that all was well with local government, and that public accountability was fully developed. I have already stressed low turnouts, but periodic elections cannot in any event fully meet the requirements of public accountability. What is required is for us to reconsider the nature of public accountability, forming a base for any proposals to strengthen it. Those who exercise substantive public power or spend public resources should be accountable to those on whose behalf they exer- cise their powers. Public institution are justified by their basis in pub- lic accountability. Without this they have no rationale in a democratic society. Seen from this perspective, public accountability is no mere formal- ity fulfilled by a periodic election. Instead it expresses the principle of stewardship which requires those who exercise power:

to account for their exercise of that power to those on whose behalf they exercise it; and
to be held to account by those on whose behalf they exercise it.

Both elements are contained in public accountability; both are nec- essary to its full development. Giving an account is not sufficient unless there is a means of holding to account. Holding to account has

Demos 51 Demos/Winter 1993 no basis for judgement unless an account is given and that account is based on open government, so that all can study the account given. Public accountability should be seen not as a periodic event, but as a continuing relationship expressing what should be regarded as a moral principle. Margaret Simey expresses this point in her book Democracy Rediscovered, in which she describes her struggle as Chair of the Merseyside Police Authority to secure the accountability of the Chief Constable. It records her reflection on the Toxteth riots, when she came to see that there were also issues about the accountability of herself and her colleagues to the people on whose behalf they acted. They had assumed too readily that the fact of election met the require- ments of public accountability: The unexpected outcome of our search for control was thus what amounted to a completely new understanding of what we meant by accountability. It was because we had been aiming at the wrong target that we felt that we had failed but in fact, almost by accident, we had hit the bull’s eye. From interpreting accountability far too narrowly we had moved forward to the realisation that control is a by-product of account- ability and not its real purpose. Accountability is not about control but about responsibility for the way in which control is exercised. The dis- tinction is a fine one but it is of fundamental importance. In other words, accountability is not an administrative tool but a moral principle Of those to whom responsibility is given, an account of their stewardship shall be required. It is a principle whose purpose is to govern the rela- tionship between those who delegate authority and those who exercise it. That went for us as much as it did for the Chief. And, we began to think, for those who in turn delegated authority to us and to whom we ourselves must be accountable. They too carried a particular responsi- bility for the way they played their part, a responsibility which was theirs by right of citizenship and of which they must not be deprived. With a flash of insight. I realised that just as we on the Authority had so bitterly resented what we believed to be the unjust deprivation of our right to responsibility at the hands of the police, so too the people of Toxteth had rebelled against their own deprivation of all that goes to make up self-respect (Simey, 1988, p118).

52 Demos UK politics – Reinventing accountability

Seen as a continuing relationship, expressing the stewardship prin- ciple forces us to recognise that existing forms of public accountability are inadequate. It shows the danger of assuming that the requirements of public accountability are met by this basic structure: ‘public service accountability to Parliament and hence to individual citizens.’ This is too remote to establish a meaningful relationship over the wide range of actions taken by public bodies. And as I have argued, it is inappro- priate where local public bodies are involved. Strengthening public accountability requires strengthening local government. But it also requires making it give expression to public accountability as a contin- uing relationship, while recognising that relationship has its basis in local election. It should be part of local authorities’ role to build the active citizenship implied by that relationship, but that requires the same innovation and attention that has in recent years been given to changes in public management. A programme for rebuilding public accountability through local government would involve the following:

a reconsideration of the electoral process. The case for proportional representation is stronger in local authorities than in parliament. Local authorities have had much more experience of hung councils than Parliament, and they have shown a capacity for adapting to the situation. And because local authorities are socially homogeneous, the danger arises – as in the House of Commons – of nearly permanent one-party control. Electoral methods should also be considered, if turnout is seen as a problem. In New Zealand, changing to postal voting substantially turnout.
the development of other forms of democratic control. Local referenda on council proposals or on citizens initiatives are important not merely in themselves but to stimulate debate and discussion as part of the continuing relationship. Other democratic mechanisms could be developed, such as the right of recall, in which a certain percentage of the electorate could require a new election or could challenge

Demos 53 Demos/Winter 1993

the continuance of any board appointed by the local authority;
the jury principle. This could be developed as it has been in Germany and America. It allows panels of citizens to examine particular policy issues in depth;
the creation of citizen panels. These could be used as sounding boards for the council on policy areas. They could be formed to be socially representative, but with a gradually changing membership to extend active involvement;
the formation of community forums in neighbourhoods. These would discuss council activities and local issues and could take over responsibility for decision related to the neighbourhood;
the extension of empowerment.Wherever possible the local authority would seek to pass power to users, local community groups, and tenants where they were directly concerned, so that accountability was direct;
public hearings. The local authority would provide forums to explore and to hear evidence on issues of local public concern;
a citizens charter. This would be a statement not of service standards but of citizen rights. The rights to know, to vote, to question, to receive an explanation, to be heard, to be listened to, to be responded to would be expressed in local authorities actions.

These are merely examples of possibilities. The guiding principle should be to recognise public accountability as a continuing relation- ship, in which giving an account and being held to account are inextri- cably bound together. The real challenge is to provide better service for the customer and to have a relationship of public accountability based on stewardship for the citizen. William Waldegrave has settled for the former. But I argue that we can, and must, have both.

54 Demos References

Audit Commission (1993) Their Health, Waldegrave,William (1993) The Your Business: The New Role of the Reality of Reform and Accountability District Health Authority, London: in Today’s Public Service,London: HMSO. Public Finance Foundation. Simey, Margaret (1988) Democracy Waldegrave,William (1991) Trafford Rediscovered, London: Pluto Press. Memorial Lecture, transcript. Stewart, John (1992) Rebuilding Public Accountability,European Policy Forum.

Demos 55

Big Ideas Selling Bads in a Good Society Tim Pendry

How can consumer choice be reconciled with the need to protect children? Tim Pendry suggests that categorising newsagents that sell 'bad' items – cigarettes and alcohol, pornography, and so on as 'red' would make consumers aware that the shop in question has chosen to sell this type of item. Supermarkets, news-agents and grocers which do not sell such 'bads' would conversely be 'green'. The aim would be to protect children (and adults) from cultural intrusion while preserving the principle of free choice. Conceivably, this distinction could also be applied to other vendors: video shops, bookshops satellite channels, sex shops and possibly even prostitution and drugs.

Although we live in a society of very diverse values most people today would agree on two broad principles: first that every person should be free to act as they will so long as they do not harm others: second that it is wrong to expose children to drugs (including tobacco), and to pornography. These do not have to be incompatible. Governments ban the sale of otherwise legal drugs, and sexual services to children and make it a criminal offense for an adult to give these ‘bads’ to children. In this way they reconcile (adult) freedom with child protection.

Demos 57 Demos/Winter 1993

But is it really as simple as that? As a consenting adult, I can go out and buy ‘goods’ that I would recognise as ‘bads’ for children.According to our libertarian consensus, any damage to me is irrelevant if I freely choose the ‘bad’ and I do not give or sell it to a child. Legislation and regulation can set the boundaries to any possible abuse of other peoples’ rights without limiting peoples’ right to use ‘bads’.For example, it might be a criminal offence to pass on a sexually- transmitted disease knowingly and without informing the other party. Or drinking (which is not intrinsically a “bad”) and driving might be regarded ever more rigorously by the criminal law on the basis of the effects of an accident on a victim and their family. These shifts in the balance of the law away from the users of bads and towards those indirectly affected might be worthwhile. But they do not address how the presence or promotion of the sale of ‘bads’ impacts on others. A woman is faced by pornographic representations of her gender every time she enters a newsagent. A child is faced by the easy avail- ability of ‘bads’ – such as cigarettes – when shopping with parents. Free market choice for adults has introduced ‘bads’ into the community as if they were neutral. To some extent we should not get too exercised by this. Only a minority of theoretically-driven fanatics would seek to ban pictures of beautiful women on magazine covers or the pleasures of occasional social drinking amongst consenting adults. Children will not be ‘per- verted’ by the sight of scantily-clad women, while the cultural rules surrounding civilised drinking are better learnt than not. Violent comics, toys, videos and television may be a greater ‘bads’ for children than the presence of adult ‘bads’ existing openly and passively. Nevertheless there is a world of difference between the cover of Vogue and the cover of Mayfair, and the row of cigarette cartons next to the chocolates. Respect for women (and for men who also dislike women being presented as exploitable objects) and concern about the normalisation of drugs and sex as mass consumable products circulat- ing around children and teenagers suggest that we have here a conflict between values.

58 Demos Big Ideas – Selling bads in a good society

Can we find a solution that permits free and open access to ‘bads’ for adult consumers yet reduces their day to day presence for those who would be insulted, diminished or threatened by their open avail- ability? We can – but it will mean taking on the most powerful vested interest in national family life: the retailer. The means would be to separate the retailing of ‘bads’ from the sale of ‘normals’ and ‘goods’. This could be managed at a stroke if tobacco (and marijuana if ever it is decriminalised) and pornography were banned from supermarkets, family grocers and newsagents. I would, in fact, advocate this, despite the probable bleat of proprietors that sales of ‘bads’ help keep down prices on the basics. But this would not deal with the other part of our equation securing the supply of ‘bads’ to those who want them. Outright banning of ‘bads’ not only goes against freedom of choice but is bad public policy. Banning does not reduce demand – it criminalises supply. We have enough law and order prob- lems without providing an area of expansion for the organised crime. A new form of regulated retailer would solve the dilemma. A retailer might apply for a ‘red licence’ enabling them to sell a range of specified ‘bads’ freely, subject to certain regulations. The ‘red’ shops would have an oligopoly over ‘bads’, although their number might be as many as the market will bear. The conditions of sale might be these: the shops (which are likely to have the character of wholly enclosed kiosks) would be red-painted (hence ‘red licence’),clearly marked and with no window display; it would be a criminal offence to have any child or teenager under 18 on the prem- ises at any time; no owner or manager might have a criminal record and a licence could be refused on grounds of criminal association; the product range would be wholly restricted to tobacco products and legalised drugs and pornographic videos and magazines within the meaning of the Obscence Publication Act; any other product (including snacks, choco- late and soft drinks) would beunavailable for sale; each product would include a brief warning about the effects of abuse; “red shops” would be banned from high streets, shopping malls and supermarkets. Licences might, in fact, be a better form of government income than duties. It might be argued, in fact, that once the ‘bads’ were taken out of

Demos 59 Demos/Winter 1993 public view and yet remained freely available, punitive taxation would be regarded as inappropriate except as a hypothecated taxation on effects i.e. tobacco taxes to be diverted into the NHS. Supermarkets, grocers and ‘green’ newsagents would know that ‘red’ shops, in return for their monopoly, could not sell competing goods, while adults could rest easy knowing their rights to access had not been infringed.

60 Demos Archives Throwing Bread on the Waters Andrew Carey

One of the more interesting reviews of our mission statement ‘Why Demos?’ was published in the final issue of a small publication called ‘Common Wealth Journal’. The review pointed out interesting similarities between Common Wealth, which had been founded in the 1940s, and Demos.

In March 1945, two months before the end of the war in Europe, a by- election was held in Chelmsford. The Tory candidate, defending a majority of 16,000 was defeated in a swing of 26% by a self-proclaimed democratic socialist by the name of Ernest Millington. But this was not a victory for Labour. Under the conditions of the wartime electoral truce, by-elections were contested by only one of the coalition parties – that party which had previously held the seat. Thus at Chelmsford each Tory teller had a copy of a telegram from Attlee inviting everyone to vote Conservative. The party which Millington represented was called Common Wealth. Common Wealth was born in the summer of 1942 following a merger between two avowedly progressive movements, Forward March and the 1941 Committee. Led by Richard Acland, a former Liberal MP, it had a pretty remarkable first three years, boasting a membership of over 10,000 spread across 300 branches throughout Britain. Chelmsford

Demos 61 Demos/Winter 1993 was the thirteenth by-election they contested and the third in which they were successful. It was also by far the most significant. Unlike the first two victories it came at a time when earlier public scepticism about the conduct of the war had largely dissipated and showed instead, as Millington recalls, that their socio-political ideal- ism had become acceptable to many who were not traditional support- ers of the Labour party.Aneurin Bevan later told Millington that it was this factor which ultimately convinced Labours national executive against maintaining the coalition for six months after VE day, against the wishes of both Churchill and Attlee. The General Election was disastrous for Common Wealth. 26 con- stituencies were contested but only Millington made it back to Westminster. Richard Acland, whose dynamic leadership had been so crucial to Common Wealth, argued that their role of providing a focus for socialist opposition during the war was finished and that they should now join Labour. The vast majority of Common Wealth fol- lowed him, and for many the story ended there. By 1948 Millington was taking the Labour Whip. But a rump of Common Wealth remained to argue against bureau- cracy and the ‘managerialist’ ethos of post-war state and society. Throughout its fifty year history Common Wealth believed that ethical considerations should determine political decisions. Concomitant to this was a heavy emphasis on the nature of democracy.‘Politics’Acland wrote in 1945,‘is too often treated as [another way of] promoting self- interest. Common Wealth attacks the essentially capitalist idea that politics is a kind of bargain, in which parties offer some material reward in return for a journey to the polling station’. Throughout the Acland era Common Wealth had seen itself as socialist. In the early 1940s, just what form socialism in Britain was going to take after the war was, intellectually speaking, up for grabs. By the end of the decade however, socialism in Britain was to all intents and purposes, ‘what the Labour government does’ and socialism in Britain, as in the Soviet Union, became synonymous with centralisation. Through the course of the 1950s and 1960s, whilst the emphasis on democracy remained paramount, Common Wealth gave up on the

62 Demos Archives – Throwing bread on the waters word socialist, preferring to see itself as libertarian. Intellecutally it increasingly drew its inspiration from the theory and practice of anar- chism – writers such as Proudhon and Kropotkin and the experience of the syndicalist trade unions in prewar France and Spain. As Common Wealth made clear in one of its publications, it would not become a government of the type we know today:‘Common Wealth would suggest methods whereby men and women throughout the whole structure of society can experiment with democratic ideas and so change the quality of their society from the bottom upwards … Politics should mean that each one thinks out his ideas clearly and then tries to make them work in his immediate surroundings, gradually linking with others of like mind’. Forty years on there is a surprising overlap with some of Demos’ themes: a similar scepticism about the Left–Right polarity; a sense that politics is too narrowly defined; a view of democracy as a continuously evolving process and a shared belief in the need for a responsible citi- zenship that is derived from an individual’s action toward others rather than inferred by one’s relationship with the state. And in both, finally, there is a sense of optimism – change is not something to be feared, but rather to be welcomed. Common Wealth it had a negligible direct impact on politics.Yet the breakdown of the postwar consensus and the widespread rejection of much of the New Right project gives Common Wealth a remarkably contemporary tone. It may have taken longer than he imagined when addressing the First Annual Conference in 1943, but Tom Wintringham might just have been right when he said,‘We are not seeking by this or that manoeuvre to obtain power for ourselves, but are content to throw bread upon the waters, certain that it will not be so many days before it comes back to us’.

Demos 63

1963 It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Columnists and think-tanks are rarely held to account for their ideas and arguments. In this section we look at the past outputs of the think-tanks and examine how they stand up several decades on.

For politics watchers 1963 was a particularly exciting year. Kennedy was assassinated and MacMillan resigned. Britain’s application for EC membership was rejected and the Superpowers signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It was also a good year for radical thinking. Harold Wilson was talking about the ‘white heat’ of change and the spirit of the 60s was beginning to make itself felt. Little of that spirit was found in the think-tanks, which were still rather fusty institutions. But read- ing their arguments its remarkable just how little political debate has moved forwards in the last three decades.

Relief for Ratepayers (A. R. Kersic, Hobart Paper #20, Institute of Economic Affairs, 1963) In 1963 as in 1993 local government finance was coming under scrutiny as the cost of public service provision seemed to be expanding beyond the fund-raising capacity of local taxes. Kersic examined some of the alternatives to the rates, such as assigned revenues from entertainment

Demos 65 Demos/Winter 1993 duties, gun and dog licences etc, and local income taxes. But he con- cluded that all would yield insufficient revenue, incur unnecessary administrative costs or threaten local democracy. He also looked at more far-reaching alternatives: increasing income tax could pay for service provision to be transferred to Whitehall; charges and fees could pay directly for the community to provide serv- ices; services could be transferred out of the public sector and bought in an open market (all three of which have subsequently been imple- mented).In his conclusion Kersic argued that in an increasingly wealthy and egalitarian society,‘the community might consider it desir- able to re-examine the raison d’etre of providing education and other services without charge.’

Ahead of its time and still unresolved.

Freedom for Fuel (Georg Tugendhat, Hobart Paper 21, Institute of Economic Affairs, 1963) Long-term predictions of national requirements determined Britain’s fuel production in the post-war years. But despite their confident deliv- ery these were often ‘widely inaccurate’ and helped to maintain artifi- cially high costs and prices. Tugendhat noted that politics (and the fear of shortages) rather than markets were shaping fuel policies so that fuel prices did not reflect relative costs or efficiency. He advocated introduc- ing free competition between fuels and ending existing producers’ monopoly by allowing industrial consumers to buy from any source and to generate their own electricity.

Largely implemented.

Education in a Class Society (John Vaizey, Fabian Society, 1963) Vaizey, one of the leading left intellectuals of the period, argued in this pamphlet that education had become the main determinant of a nation’s

66 Demos 1963 – It seemed like a good Idea at the time long-term global position, prosperity and quality of life. Growth depended not on raw materials but rather on the range of skills and number of skilled workers available. Compared to other countries the British workforces’ skills were often inappropriate and inadequate, mak- ing it hard to adapt to likely technological changes. Rigid class divisions in British education had become a barrier to progress. To end these divi- sions Vaizey argued that exclusive grammar and private schools should be brought into the public sector.An apprenticeship system for 16 to 17- year olds, linked closely to the education system, would provide indus- trial training, and greatly expanded higher education would provide sufficient numbers of teachers and further reduce the skills deficit. Problem still unresolved after 30 years of tinkering.

The Future of Public Ownership, (A Fabian Group, Fabian Society, June 1963) In the 1940’s there was widespread support for public ownership of many industries. But by 1963 nationalisation had become a dirty word even in parts of the Labour Party. The Fabian group examined the criti- cisms levelled at nationalised industries and concluded that in many areas problems resulted from particular problems rather than any fun- damental flaws. In particular, dependence on government policy, stop/ go in the economy, lack of financial independence and statutory prohi- bition from competition and development of export markets left indus- try rigid, stagnant and demoralised. The group nevertheless noted that some public enterprises played important roles in developing technolo- gies – notably in telegraphy, broadcasting, nuclear energy, and telephone and electricity networks. The group’s proposals for improving the per- formance of public enterprises included legal changes so that they would become ‘publically owned productive agencies,’ or public corpo- rations (like the BBC), internal changes (such as setting up smaller sub- units) and the development of producer or consumer cooperatives as an alternative to the traditional nationalised industry. Overtaken by the worldwide swing to privatisation.

Demos 67

Global Spotlight TransAfrica: America’s First Black Think-Tank

Think-tanks are proliferating around the world. In each issue of the Quarterly we will focus on one interesting think-tank elsewhere in the world. Our first example is taken from the USA where TransAfrica, a nonprofit foreign policy lobby group, launched its think-tank, the Foreign Policy Institute, earlier this year with a glamourous reception attended by athlete Carl Lewis, Doug Wilder, Governor of Virginia and Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

TransAfrica originally began collecting, analysing and disseminating information about US foreign policy toward Africa and the Caribbean in the early 1980s.According to its executive director Randall Robinson, the think-tank has three main research areas: increasing minority par- ticipation in US Foreign policy through educational programmes; research in human rights and economic conditions in Africa and the Caribbean nations, studying how US aid can be optimised to bring about sustained economic health in these countries; providing research and educating policymakers to make US aid contingent upon examin- ing recipient nations’ human rights and economic conditions. Research is also combined with advocacy and campaigning-notably on policies towards Haitian refugees which Robinson described during

Demos 69 Demos/Winter 1993 a march to the White House as sealing ‘these people into the death chambers of their own island’. TransAfrica Forum has a full-time staff of 15. Its funders include CocaCola ($150,000), Reebok ($375,000) and Phillip Morris ($200,000). It has managed to combine gravitas with glitz: Bill Cosby has raised $430,000 at two dinners and Sugar Ray Leonard wrote a personal cheque for $250,000. These substantial resources contribute to a wide pro- gramme of activities including: an Annual Foreign Policy Conference; an Education in Careers in International Affairs Programme that pre- pares minority students for the US State Department’s Foreign Service exam (40–50 annually) and other international employment opportuni- ties; The TransAfrica Forum Journal, is published quarterly and has 1500 subscribers; the Arthur Ashe Library and Resource Centre acts as a pub- lic repository for publications, audio and video materials on Africa and the Caribbean and US Foreign Policy. The Forum has also organised overseas tours such as a fact-finding mission for African Americans to South Africa at the invitation of Nelson Mandela, and, earlier this year, an American Forum on Haiti with the Congressional Black Caucus. For further information please contact Mwiza Munthali, 1744 R Street, NW Washington, DC 20009, USA.

70 Demos Media Watch

Demos’ launch was greeted with extensive coverage, including a three- page cover feature in the Independent on Sunday, news stories in all the broadsheet press and several items on television and radio.Articles by Demos participants were carried in The Guardian, The Observer and The Independent. The response was overwhelmingly positive, summed up by a Times leader according to which:

‘Demos is a welcome addition to the world of think-tanks … its birth is a clear symptom of the new flexibility in political debate … once parties thought up their own ideas … now ideas are being thrown from the touchlines by thinkers with no obvious party cause. The rewards go to the politicians swift enough to catch and run with them … organisations such as Demos can offer to any receptive politician the ideas that have been taking fruit outside politics, in the worlds of science or management or the voluntary sector – ideas that government could usefully harness. They deserve a fair wind.’ (Leader, 23.3.93)

The only caveats were suggestions that the mission statement was too long, there was a lack of concern for ethical values (Financial

Demos 71 Demos/Winter 1993

Times), and that the Thatcherite think-tanks of the 1980s were still the key source of radical thinking (Daily Telegraph). The first three books have also received extensive coverage:

Reconnecting Taxation, was excerpted in The Times, and covered through leaders and articles in The Independent, Guardian, Financial Times and on radio and television. The London Evening Standard ran a full page article on its implications for London Transport.A leader in the Financial Times (14.6.93) commented that the pamphlet ‘provokes exactly the sort of longer-term thinking which is missing from the current political debate.’Coverage has continued through the summer and autumn, including an article in the Independent in July (which argued that ‘the main diagnosis of the authors … is surely correct’), the Times in August and in the Guardian in October. The major criticism was summed up by Peter Riddell: ‘Hypothecation is essentially a cop out … politicians themselves have to take responsibility for decisions on the overall level of spending and its allocation’. The media have also reported the increased political interest in our pamphlet’s arguments. Paddy Ashdown made Reconnecting Taxation a central part of his Charter 88 lecture in July. At the party conference he reemphasised the theme:‘Here is a motto for the 1990s. No taxation without explanation. That means making clearer the connection between what we pay in tax and the services we receive in return. That means telling people on their tax demands what their money will be spent on … that means finding new ways of involving people more directly in determining the levels of local tax, consulting people and using local referenda … and it means investigating what further scope there is for earmarked – or hypothecated – taxes …’23.9.93. Several Labour politicians have also expressed interest. Tony Blair has called for new approaches ‘to connect the axes we pay with the services we receive’,David Blunkett has proposed using earmarked taxes to fund the NHS in a consultative paper to be published soon. According to one newspaper ‘the policy option – a radical break with past thinking – could herald a change in Labour’s tax thinking. Earmarked taxes would

72 Demos Media watch be levied and used for a specific purpose rather than going into the Treasury’s general coffers.’Neil Kinnock has also argued for earmarking of taxes to the NHS. And in a recent interview, for the first time John Smith too has signalled an openness to the virtues of hypothecation, questioning the Treasury opposition to it. This growing political interest has been strengthened by a widely has been strengthened by a widely reported NOP poll on public sup- port for hypothecation. They found that 59% would support one of the main parties if it proposed a 1p income tax increase earmarked for the NHS, and 76% agreed that the idea of hypothecation ‘could be a real boost to public services like education and the NHS’.

An End to Illusions achieved coverage in both broadsheets and tabloids. The argument was covered in the Daily Mirror, Sunday Express, The Times. The Financial Times, The Guardian, and the Daily Express. George Walden MP wrote in The Daily Telegraph, (29.6.93) that it ‘provides three things in scant supply: a disinterested assessment of what went wrong with the British economic miracle in the 1980s; thoughts on how we can avoid making the same mistakes again, and a lucid style to expound his ideas.’ According to the Guardian it offers ‘the sort of agenda Labour might have proposed at the last election had it not been paralysed by timidity’.The Times forecast that its proposal for demerging the banks is ‘quite likely to happen’.The major criticism was made by a representative of the British Bankers Association who described it in the Sunday Express as ‘utter, utter nonsense’.

Transforming the Dinosaurs: how organisations learn,was excerpted in articles by Douglas Hague in both The Times (in July) and the Independent (in September). It also achieved tabloid coverage in the Daily Express, as well as being discussed in the business pages and news sections of all the broadsheets. Both the Times Educational and Higher Educational Supplements picked up on the proposals for changes in the structure of our educational institutions. Radio 4 held a debate on many of the issues raised and Oxford local tv and radio examined Hague’s

Demos 73 Demos/Winter 1993 recommendation that Oxbridge colleges be closed periodically to encourage rejuvenation. Apart from comments on the ‘irrtatingly trendy title’ the main criticism was that Hague’s argument, that people should spend only 5 years in a job and 10 years in an organisation, should have been applied to his former employer, Margaret Thatcher.

74 Demos Demos Forum

The following short articles are a selection of ideas sent in by Demos subscribers over the last few months. We intend to keep this as an open forum: the only criteria for inclusion being that ideas should address a real problem, in a clear and comprehensible way.

Research Creadits for MPs With at least two major parties virtually bankrupt financially, the debate about providing state funding has come back onto the agenda. But instead of paying taxpayers money directly into political parties, where it is liable to spent on buying advertising hoardings rather than improving the democratic process, there is another alternative. MPs would be paid an annual credit which they could use to purchase research services either from the House of Commons Library, or from outside consultants, universities or research institutes. These would ensure a better quality of policy making and long-term thinking. MPs could if they choose pool their credits, for example to fund a party research service. But this system would be far preferable to earmarking funds direct to the parties, or the alternative of creating a Parliamentary Research Service which would tend to be bland and risk averse.

Demos 75 Demos/Winter 1993

Unemployed Jurors Jury service is the only form of compulsory national service in mod- ern Britain. For those called, normal life is disrupted, perhaps for weeks and often at great expense. Given some mechanisms to ensure a fair age and class balance, it might make sense to pay a minimal fee to those with time on their hands, such as pensioners and the unem- ployed, to fulfill this role.

The Prime Minister’s Workload Peter Drucker points out that if two or three previously successful people fail at a job then the job should be abolished; the Prime Minister provides a prime example. The work load is impossible for any one person to carry out effectively. The Prime Minister is expected to coordinate the various ministries; play a leading role in foreign affairs; lead the party; and take part in PM’s questions. Dealing with day to day crises leaves no time for thinking through complex policy options. The job now needs to be restructured: perhaps to separate off the ‘chairperson’s’ role from the Chief Executive who is responsible for answering for the details of government’s actions.

Education on Feelings Young people would benefit from regular discussion groups on subjects such as careers, the environment, crime, sexual relationships and drugs. The vast majority of school children receive only ineffective personal and social education at school. It is usually only available to 4th and 5th formers, or for the less academic, giving facts rather than generating discussion, and taught by untrained teachers rather than counsellors or other trained staff. In Dorset between 1971 and 1986, personal develop- ment education courses were run in a large comprehensive school. There were weekly meetings with mixed, unstreamed discussion groups of 16 youngsters. They shared their experiences and explored personal and social issues. The youngsters benefitted from talking on a personal level in relaxed yet structured conditions provided by the teacher.

76 Demos Demos forum

Ex-pupils have said that these lessons were the most important in the curriculum, and that it should include more such lessons.

A Progressive Flat Tax ‘Fairness’ in the tax system has traditionally been synonymous with steeply progressive rates – greater income equality means increased fair- ness. But today ‘fairness’ no longer means cutting the prosperous down to size, but making sure that everyone’s basic needs are met.A progressive flat tax might accomplish this more simply and effectively than our cur- rent system. Significantly, this position incorporates the views both of those who believe in an egalitarian society, and those who believe that inequality is a necessary source of productivity and individual excellence. Under a flat tax, everyone would be taxed at exactly the same rate, over and above a personal exemption that would allow all to meet their basic needs before contributing a penny in taxes. The flat rate would be based on current income tax rates, and that portion of corporate tax that is passed on as VAT. The tax would be ‘flat’,but it would have a progressive impact, thanks to the sizeable personal exemption. For example, the sin- gle rate might be 40% and the personal earning £10,000. Thus a person earning £15,000 would have a taxable income of £5,000 and would pay £2,000, or 13.3%, while a person earning £20,000 would pay 20% in taxes. Only those earning £100,000 or more would pay as much as 40%. Such a generous personal exemption could substitute for all other exemptions, deductions, credits and so on, which only multiply once granted. Thus the tax system would not only be flat and fair, but also simple. A flat tax system would have a further advantage: it would reduce taxpayers’expen- diture on advisors, and government’s expenditure on review and audit. It would also prevent political substitution of indirect tax increases for direct ones, and eliminate loopholes for different socio-economic groups. The electorate would better understand the costs and workings of gov- ernment, and might increasingly monitor and participate in government.

Job Sharing and Job Rotation Encouraging those in work to take a year of leave at intervals that are proportional to the basic unemployment level would make jobs

Demos 77 Demos/Winter 1993 available for the long-term unemployed. At the same time it would ensure an adequate job supply for those on sabbatical upon their return. This would maintain the nation’s wealth generation, and allow all to share in and contribute to that process. A taxation scheme could encourage such sabbatical leave-taking. It would replace the basic fixed 20 and 25% tax rates with a variable, incremental rate taxing peo- ple in proportion to the number of years they have been continuously fully employed. This could start at levels as low as 10% for those who have been unemployed for over a year, increasing in fixed increments for each employed year. The rate would reach an upper limit of around 50% levied on those continuously employed for a specific period of years (about eight years, based on current unemployment levels). Government would determine upper and lower rates and increments so that the mean tax collected over this eight year period would not exceed that paid under the current system. If, after reaching the upper limit, a taxpayer took a one year sabbatical, then his or her tax rate would decline to the lowest level upon return to work, and the cycle could repeat. Taking a sabbatical would not be compulsory; however, those wishing to remain continuously employed rather than allowing others the chance to do their job, would pay more tax, thus contribut- ing to those unemployed.

Transparent Budgets At the first unified budget this autumn, the Chancellor should set out the whole of public revenues and expenditure by linking tax receipts to relevant areas of spending. On paper at least tax would be reconnected to spending, improving public understanding of public finance. Such transparent budgets would complement more transparent explanation of public budgets: unit costs, investments and returns and so on.

MPs Voting with PIN Numbers At the moment MPs still have to walk through the lobbies to vote, often into the small hours. This keeps 650 men and women in London, and in

78 Demos Demos forum a small building for much of their lives. It keeps them out of touch with their constituents; prevents them from doing other useful things; and it fosters a dangerous clubbiness and predilections for intrigue. It makes politics a particularly difficult profession for women.A far better system would give MPs PIN numbers, as with banks ATMs, to allow them to call in their votes each day to the House. Since few actually listen to most debates, and since the great majority of votes are controlled by the whips, this would have little material effect on the quality of participa- tion in parliament.

Reconnecting Graduation Since we already have a clearing system for undergraduates to enter uni- versity, why not create a recruitment clearing house to place graduates in employment. In principle a computer network linking Career Advice centres on campus to employers would be all that is required. Under- graduates could enter their details on to a central database, outlining their experience, qualifications and area of job interest. Any prospective employer could then in theory have access to all graduates in the job market. The potential savings in terms of the time, money and effort that is presently expended on both job hunting and recruitment are massive.

Contributors to Demos Forum include: Brian Phillips, Robert McKechnie, Mark Satin, John Brown and Martin Bartle.

Demos 79 Signs of the Times

Out In Cold War Hot peace Quantity Quality Parties Movements Economics Culture Teaching Learning Ideology Ethics Passive ownership Active ownership Representative democracy Direct democracy New world order Chaos of nations Struggles between blocs Struggles between civilisations Imperial overstretch Global overstretch (UN) Consumer choice Consumer overload Government and market failure Systems failure Evil empire Everyday evil Culture of contentment Culture of insecurity Rights Responsibilities

80 Demos Projects Report The Seven Million Project Helen Wilkinson

The thinking behind a major research project into the political concerns and aspirations of women between the ages of 18 and 34.

There are seven million women in Britain between the ages of 18 and 34. They are the first generation to come of age after the great battles of the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s and the first to benefit on paper from the new legal rights of equal opportunities and from a culture which appears to have turned decisively against discrimination. But as a group they remain remarkably silent. They have few peers on the parliamentary stage (there are only two women MPs in that age group), few national icons and unlike the previous generation they have no obvious advocates. Their silence is reciprocated. Only a year ago women were crucial in securing John Major’s victory at the polls, with a 9% Tory lead com- pared to only 1% among men. Yet both during the election and since, only a handful of politicians have shown any inclination to adapt their policies and outlook to women’s interests. Some might have expected the women’s movement to fill the gap. But it has failed to turn women’s electoral importance into political power, and gender remains a marginal issue in British politics – in sharp contrast to other countries, especially the USA where gender politics is crucial.

Demos 81 Demos/Winter 1993

It is not just their distance from the women’s movement which is problematic. The 75th anniversary of women’s suffrage has been cele- brated this year against the back-drop of depoliticisation. A MORI poll recently found that 75% of women are not involved in any form of political activity and the figure increased to 82% for women aged between 18–24. Four out of ten of these young women said that they had absolutely no interest in politics. Depoliticisation, a characteristic of the 90s, is particularly widespread among young women. In the economy, by contrast, change is taking place at a much faster rate. The most significant trend is the continuing casualisation of the labour market and the impact this has on the gender composition of the labour market. Recent research by Incomes Data Services found that part time women workers are already the main breadwinners in many parts of the country; with economists predicting that much of the upturn in the economy is likely to be in part time jobs for women, this trend is likely to continue. The Henley Centre for Forecasting recently estimated that women will take 80% of newly created jobs in the next few years. It is as yet unclear how the long term decline of the male as primary breadwinner will transform attitudes. But research published last year by the National Council for Women shows that attitudes are already changing. Their report,‘Superwoman Keeps Going’ found that women who think that they can find equal fulfilment in their work, family and homelife are experiencing a crisis – caught between the rhetoric of equal opportunities and the practice. Those struggling to live up to the ideal are often left feeling trapped and resigned to an everyday slog of juggling responsibilities. At the same time the report found that only 21% of these women wanted to spend more time with their families; only 13% of women of child-bearing age thought that children were necessary to feel fulfilled and 32% wanted more time for education. The survey also found a good deal of resignation among women – a sense that little has changed in society at large whilst on a personal level their lives have been revolutionised. Surprisingly, perhaps, the country’s most edu- cated women were the least satisfied both at home and at work and the

82 Demos Projects report – The seven million project

16–24 year old age group were especially dissatisfied with their pro- motion and career opportunities. A recently published report from the Institute of Management, ‘The Key To the Mens’Club’confirmed that women still perceive the existence of the ‘mens’ club network’ as the main barrier to women pursuing suc- cessful management careers. And a recent Industrial Society survey also indicated that training in equal opportunities within major companies remains very much a paper rather than a practical commitment. Whilst women now form almost half of the workforce, they still occupy only 2% of management jobs, and have little faith that this will have been trans- formed for the younger generation to benefit from it in the near future. One US report has estimated that it will take nearly 500 years at current rates of change before women achieve parity in management jobs. In the absence of cultural change many women are turning to other ways of enhancing their own work position.A ‘DIY culture’ of self pro- motion is on the increase. The number of women running their own business has almost trebled over the last decade; three out of ten new businesses are now being started by women. The number of women entering self-employment now far exceeds the number of men. These trends are more a response to the glass ceiling than a sign that it has been broken. Nevertheless each success story in this area confirms that women can succeed in breaking through traditional barriers. But not all women are opting out of the dominant corporate culture and going it alone. There is some evidence that women are seeking to remedy the dominant cultural barriers by setting up alternative sup- port systems from within. Embryonic networks such as the Pepperel network which was launched last year and grew out of the Industrial Society are likely to proliferate as the limited success of PR driven, top- down initiatives such as Opportunity 2000 become self evident. But these alternative work networks will only solve part of the problem. Many are concerned that change needs to come from the top as well as the bottom. The problem is that when this happens there tends to be resentment. The Institute of Management survey found that where companies have acted in women’s interests with energy – through targets for women managers, schemes for flexi-time and maternity

Demos 83 Demos/Winter 1993 leave – there are growing signs that men either resent positive discrim- ination or would themselves wish to benefit from this new flexible approach to working patterns. The immediate problem is political paralysis: despite some steps for- ward, the parties, still overwhelmingly dominated by men, appear unin- terested or unwilling to respond to evidence of women’s widespread dissatisfaction. Whilst there is little sign that the dominant political institutions are responding to women’s needs and harnessing their tal- ents there is also an unease with the associations promoting change. The women’s movement, which has traditionally dominated this debate, appears unable to push the debate forward. They are finding it harder to speak to the concerns of younger women in a language that they under- stand. They also face an additional problem: younger men may need to be co-opted if tensions between the sexes are to be avoided, a political task which is particularly hard for women’s organisations whose identity is still predicated on a separate movement and a separate agenda. The starting point for the ‘Seven Million Project’ is the evidence that, where younger women are concerned, social trends have outgrown the old institutions. The project aims to draw out the core concerns and aspirations of the 18–34 age group: the voters and leaders of the future. It will be based on quantitative and qualitative research, focus group dis- cussions, seminars and commissioned working papers. It will include some work with men in the 18–34 year old age group. The project’s goal is not to create a new institution to compete with an already crowded field, but rather to provide a clearly independent post-feminist view, which can contribute to the understanding and work of existing institu- tions and pass on lessons to the next generation. If you are interested in making a donation, or have suggestions about the research areas, people to contact and potential sources of sponsorship please contact Clare Pettitt or Laura Wilkinson.

84 Demos Projects Report Voluntary, Charitable and Not For Profit

The voluntary or not-for-profit sector has dramatically changed in recent years. It has become ever more a contractor for national and local government in fields like housing or community care. Some charities have become big business, with huge fund-raising arms involved in direct mail, big fund-raising events and telethons. Moreover the sector has become politically fashionable. Both left and right now see the vol- untary sector playing an ever more important role in public provision. With these changes have come new demands: pressures on the sec- tor to help solve unemployment, to humanise public services at a time of fiscal pressures and to bind together communities that are falling apart. But many fear that the sector is not ready to meet these demands. It is lacking in a coherent strategic direction. Many organisations are not well run or managed, and have blurred lines of accountability. The public is already experiencing ‘charity fatigue’ and a degree of cynicism about how effective many charities are at delivering their promises. Legally the situation is not helped by the fact that the status of charity encompasses everything from vast foundations to service providers, from educational institutes to campaigning organisations. Forcing the pace is the fact that the government has just published a report calling for the removal of charitable status from many service providers. The Demos project is therefore taking a thorough look at the volun- tary sector and its future direction. What should its functions be and

Demos 85 Demos/Winter 1993 how should it do them? How should the law better reflect the huge dif- ferences between genuinely voluntary organisations and the big chari- ties or state contractors? How far should charities go in copying the management styles of the private sector? What should be the primary lines of accountability of different types of charity? How much is there a danger of a backlash against charities, just as there was in the 1940s when much of the voluntary sector was replaced by the state? The aim is to produce a series of working papers examining differ- ent aspects of the sector, such as tax and finance, campaigning and free speech, legal reform and ethos, prior to producing a far-reaching final report. The project is being financed by a group of backers including the Charities Aid Foundation. It is being jointly coordinated by Charles Landry and GeoffMulgan.

86 Demos Projects Report Constitutions: What Have we Learned in 200 Years?

200 years ago Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and their colleagues turned to the available philosophies most appropriate and in tune with their beliefs and aspirations to design a democracy. The result was a very sturdy con- stitution, well suited for white, landed men, and based on the then dom- inant Newtonian ideas of balance, mechanism and equilibrium. Since then much of the constitutional reform debate has remained within these now very antiquated paradigms. Reformers in the UK often talk as if the best the UK can aspire to is a version of what was appropriate for the USA in the 1770s or Germany in the 1940s. But if the constitution of the United States was being framed today, it seems unlikely that its framers would have drawn on 200 year old ideas. Instead they would have drawn on the leading ideas of their time, and moulded them into a political model. Such a task is particularly difficult for Britain, because the philo- sophical underpinnings of the system have rarely been made explicit. Whereas many other constitutions begin with a clear statement about human nature and purpose. Britain’s unwritten constitution is silent. Instead, there is an implicit Hobbesian argument that the polity is divided between a sovereign parliament on high, and a mass of sub- jects below. Because of this legacy, even the most radical reformers still sound old-fashioned, and British constitutional debate is still trapped in the

Demos 87 Demos/Winter 1993 rhetoric and mental models of the 18th and 19th centuries. Even as sophisticated thinker as a Ferdinant Mount could write an entire book about the reform of the British Constitution without once acknowl- edging that there has been any intellectual advance over the last 100 years, no new knowledge of biology or systems thinking, the new physics or organisation which might be relevant. By contrast in some other countries there are the beginnings of a very fertile debate about the sources for new constitutional thinking. In the US the work of James Dator, Ted Becker and others has shown how new scientific thinking can be applied to models of democracy. Their models are much more realistic than those underpinning classic liberalism: they view people as contradictory, and see their demands as incommensurable. They have looked at the new communications mechanisms which are more appropriate than the pre-industrial ballot box and parliament chamber. Others have drawn on ecological meta- phors and thinking, making the case for much simpler and more flexi- ble constitutions than the lengthy and legalistic products of much of the recent debate in the UK. This process of rethinking is still in its infancy.We therefore thought it would be useful to ask some basic questions. If we were to start afresh and write a constitution today, which truths would we hold to be self- evident? On which philosophies might a constitution be founded? Which philosophies would we call upon to give it legitimacy and the authority of public justification? With which inalienable rights are we endowed? What would we choose to make explicit in the text? Against which philosophies, models and metaphors would we test its integrity and robustness? What exemplars would we choose to illustrate the ideas? What mechanisms would we build into a constitution to allow the subsequent inclusion of new philosophies? What metaphors would we use to describe and communicate it? Asking and attempting to answer these questions will open out the space for the constitutional debate. It would raise our sights and might better guarantee a constitution with a longevity to match the Americans.

88 Demos Project reports – Constitutions: What have we learned in 200 years?

If you have any suggestions, answers or points of view please send them to Steb Fisher c/o Demos. During the next months and years we hope to publish the best ideas and fertilise a debate that is still wrest- ling with Bagehot and Dicey in the era of supercomputers and genetic engineering.

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Projects Reports The Future of the Public Park

Parks are part of that everyday, even mundane fabric of life that tends to be forgotten in politics. But like many other familiar institutions – libraries, town halls, schools – parks are important parts of the public realm that are now experiencing profound changes without the benefit of much public debate or long-term thought. The joint Demos/Comedia research project aims to fill this gap by analysing how parks can evolve to meet the needs of the next century. Most of the familiar features of public parks were established in the mid-19th century, when there were clear ideas about who should use them and how (primarily families promenading and on show) and clear assumptions about who should own and run them (primarily municipal authorities). More than 100 years later they have quite different demands and pressures put on them, whether from the unemployed and homeless, or from people wanting rock festivals or sports venues. In many ways the problems of parks mirror those of a more complex society with differ- ent wants and needs, a changing balance between work and leisure, and a shifting demography. The project will therefore look at parks from a range of angles. It will study best practices from around the world. It will look at how to accommodate new sports like American football or Tai Ch’i (and a world in which popular sports continually change); at how to rethink parks as places for pleasure (for example by fostering night time parks,

Demos 91 Demos/Winter 1993 allowing alcohol to be sold, licensing food vendors, food parks or sec- ond hand book fairs). It will look at the very different uses of parks by ethnic minorities from Asia, Turkey or the Caribbean; at how to adapt them better to a user base of pensioners, joggers and unemployed dur- ing the week as well as families at weekends; how to conceive their ‘green’ role, as centres of biodiversity and cultivated wilderness; how to make them safe. There is also an underlying economic question about whether we should specialist parks or private, paying parks, or for that matter parks which fall between the purely private and the public, such as the parks being created in new housing developments. Above all the study aims to use the park as a way of thinking more broadly about the future of public institution and public space, as a follow-up to the suc- cessful Comedia study of public libraries (Borrowed Time, published July 1993). The project is bringing together parks organisations, local authorities and commercial sponsors. Initial finance was provided by the Corporation of London. The project is being led by Ken Worpole and Liz Greenhalgh who can be contacted through the Demos office.

92 Demos Project Reports The Millennium Project Martin Bartle

In the old days think-tanks, like political parties, used to operate through committees, meetings and conferences. But just as firms and governments are being transformed by applications of IT, so is politics being revolutionised by new means of communication. One of the most innovative examples of this has been the “Reform of Heisei” movement set up in Japan by Kenichi Ohmae, the Tokyo head of the management consultancy, McKinsey and well-known author of books like ‘The Art of Management’. The group connects its members using both tele and computer conferencing. Mr Ohmae awards “hero-grams” (via E-mail, of course) to worthy contributors, and the organisation gives politicians ratings (on their integrity and honesty) in much the same way as a bank gives someone a credit-rating: an interesting first step towards consumerism in politics. Inspired by the Japanese lead, and by similar initiatives in the USA, Demos has collaborated with the Open Business School (OBS) to pro- vide a forum for Demos subscribers via the Open University’s com- puter conferencing network. We have joined the OBS’s “Millennium Project” which in their own words will be using computer conferenc- ing progressively to “develop a body of expert opinion on the future of mankind over the next decade”.The OBS network has been in opera- tion for a year now and is part of their commitment to increased par- ticipation and exchange of ideas between long distance learners. In what we believe is the first venture of its kind for a European think-tank

Demos 93 Demos/Winter 1993 our subscribers have access to both Demos and OBS topics via the conferencing network. Topics will be initiated through a statement of the main issues and relevant solutions on a subject which might range from the national curriculum to the future of multinational corporations. Subscribers will be able to comment, either briefly or at length, and then discuss each others comments. When the resulting material is particularly good we will publish it. We will also use the system to try out and pol- ish up innovative ideas. Any participants who wish to remain anony- mous can send their comments/ideas via the E-mail system on the network direct to Demos. The initial topics for discussion include:

reinventing democracy; the future of political parties and parliament
the future of the voluntary sector
will full employment ever be possible again?

All that is needed to join is basic computer literacy, access to a PC with a modem attached, and the motivation and time to get involved. The software, personal ID and instructions are available, free of charge,direct from David Mercer,Open Business School,The OU, Walton Hall.

94 Demos Publications to date

Reconnecting Taxation by Geoff Mulgan and Murray Geoff Mulgan is Director of Demos. Robin Murray is a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University. ISBN 1 898309 00 0 An End to Illusions by Alan Duncan Alan Duncan is Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton. He entered the House of Commons in 1992. ISBN 1 898309 05 1 Transforming the Dinosaurs by Sir Douglas Hague Sir Douglas Hague is an Associate Fellow of Templeton College, Oxford, non-executive director of CRT Group plc and President of Corporate Positioning Services. ISBN 1 898309 10 8 The Parenting Deficit by Amitai Etzioni Amitai Etzioni is Professor of Sociology at George Washington University. He has previously worked at Harvard Business School, the Brookings Institute and the White House. ISBN 1 898309 20 5

Demos’ publications, and the contents of the Demos quarterly, do not in any way represent Demos’ institutional or corporate viewpoint.

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