'The best that has been said and thought'.

There is a superb piece by Howard Jacobson in the Independent. He argues, briefly, that we have ended up with an unrepresentative government due to the failure of our state schools to educate their students. Now what is the evidence for this? I think the following 'facts' are instructive: 75% of this ConDem Government were privately educated and our new 'lords and masters' are the first generation, predominantly born in the 1960's, who will have had Comprehensive Schools as the main public sector 'choice'. 

The damage occurred when the 'liberal arts' approach to learning stopped. A crisis in modernity and the western tradition, caused educationalists to jump into the arms of cultural relativism and the idea of equity instead of excellence. This is the broken society: the broken brains of the masses devoid of the knowledge that would have enabled them to 'stand on the shoulders of giants '. Let us hope Gove will lead us back to the future, though I am not entirely sure he will as the schism that ruptures his policy pronouncements between accountability and freedom has yet to be worked out.