Alas, my class background forbids me from buying hardbacks (if only I’d had more help at school) so I’ll have to wait before passing comment on his latest work.

I instinctly belive getting parents into work will improve their children’s chances at a better future. If it doesn’t, at least they’ll have had a better childhood.

Of course every child is different so making a prediction for any given child is difficult. However, it is not so hard to identify the factors that tend to make a difference to a child’s development. To take a slightly simplistic example, a child with a reasonably balanced diet will tend to be healthier than one who eats tons of junk food, so where the state does have influence over a child’s diet, such as at school, it makes sense to try to make sure s/he eats as healthily as possible.

“If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?”

None. That’s the nature of a monopoly.

I haven’t read Gladwell’s book, but my brother who read it said that he doesn’t present evidence from both sides of an argument, he just picks an opinion and cites the evidence that supports it. One example being that he claims that the reason that the Chinese do better at maths than Westerners is because the number system is more logical in Mandarin than in European languages. This is a highly disputed claim (to the point that the majority of researchers in education would say it was wrong) but there are SOME papers that do support the view (which he cites).

Anyway, I haven’t read it so I can’t add much.

Thanks. I know exactly what you mean. I got halfway through Blink and didn’t finish it, as much because I lost track of my copy. And I heard enough of Tipping Point to feel that I got that by osmosis. (So credit to my brother, who I think is a Gladwell fan, as I don’t think I would have necessarily got hold of this for quite some time if it hadn’t been a present)

Given that this takes not many hours to read. I do recommend it. As I say, I was surprised by it because you start to glimpse some political implications and then you find that a set of commitments and convictions emerge through the book – amidst the ideas conjuring – and turn out to be pretty core to Gladwell’s own biography and self-identity, in a way that you would find interesting too.

And if its a commitment that is willing to rethink itself if the data doesn’t fit or work that way, that’s a positive for me too.

(But perhaps I am reading too much US long-form journalism. I also finally got around to reading Matt Bai over christmas too – again, having felt I had got enough of the point second hand – but what a good and fun piece of reporting that is).

Tipping Point could easily have been half the size it was. Anyway, that aside, I might pick this book up if you recommend it.

Those who make the absurd claim that discussing class means ‘class war’ will say they are for ‘equal opportunities’ yet then seem to want to stick their fingers in their ears to shout ‘can’t hear you’ when anybody tries to discuss the barriers to more equal opportunities and social mobility in Britain today.

I thought this was spot on. LFAT is a prime example, especially given his last attack on Harman.

I’m not saying attempts shouldn’t be made to improve social mobility, but that it has to be acknowledged that is is deeply imprecise, and the best we can hope for are good guesses (informed ones, but nonetheless guesses) which inevitably will have unintended (and possibly very undesirable) consequences. Jumping in head first to muddy water’s never a terribly wise move

An idea: What if there was a great deal of comparative evidence about the type of social institutions which tended towards more equal opportunities, more social mobility (within the family of democratic liberal capitalist democracies) and those which did not. What if we could examine the range of features which make Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway comparatively better at this, and the United States worse?

Might it not be possible to come up with some methodologically robust findings about what was systematically important? You make it sound like guessing about new technology – but there are obvious distributional questions which determine who is more and less likely to get access and opportunities to any new technology. (For example, should schools have either books or computers at all, or should they only be in the homes which have them? Should there be a public library system?)

Some problems remain
- Strategy: How do gradual changes of the type necessary gets sustained (particularly as some path-dependency gets locked in?)
- Politics: Do enough of us prefer to have an approach which is more like the UK than something more like a hybrid between the Anglo-American and Swedish model? (This is what the ippr called the Anglo-social model. (I don’t think the UK could choose to be Sweden quickly, but Sweden had to choose to be Sweden once). There is very effective championing of high reward, high inequality, low mobility societies by those who do best in them – just as there is always very high championing of the status quo by current winners.

But that is the perennial challenge of political change, in whatever direction.

For what it’s worth, though, I’d agree with you about the disconnect between the government and elite professions and the rest of the country, and the only way we can bridge that gap is by achieving a greater measure of social mobility.

The problems with such Govt initiatives or policies is that they are produced without counsulting or without any worthwhile input from the singularly most important group of people: the working-classes. More often than not, they prefer the contributions of the patronising, hypocritical middle-class, such as Polly Toynbee.

But I also thought other people might well have read the Gladwell book and have something to say about it, in this area or more broadly.

I recently gave Harriet Harman a good shoeing for her disgraceful Equality Bill, which is a beautiful example of how legislation will increase discrimination and disadvantage rather than decrease it:

http://www.lettersfromatory.com/2009/01/06/harriet-harman-is-intent-on-destroying-fairness-in-our-society/

Back in the real World. My old primary school has no after-school facilities. It has virtually no sports teams. There are no male teachers. A high proportion of the skids are now designated special needs and many speak English as a second language. Social mobility for many people in the area means getting on your bike and getting the fuck out of there.

Then it sounds like your area’s got some problems, chavscum, though I do continue to find amusement in how often “Back in the real World” is poorly-concealed code for “my anecdotal observations prove conclusively that everything I say is right and everything you say is wrong.”

Back in the real World. My old primary school has no after-school facilities. It has virtually no sports teams. There are no male teachers. A high proportion of the skids are now designated special needs and many speak English as a second language. Social mobility for many people in the area means getting on your bike and getting the fuck out of there.

Personally, though, I’m not a fan of measuring mobility according to education, as that often doesn’t take into account the labour market, the cost of living, the inflating/deflating value of degrees or the jobs market in general. To have a true idea of what’s going on, you need to be more holistic, but that makes mobility a very difficult thing to measure.

Haven’t had chance to read the white paper yet (I’ve not even started the Narey/Lib Dem thing), but of the two most-publicised ideas I’ve heard, the teacher thing could be a waste of money if it’s not done properly. It’s not enough just to get the highest-performing teachers into inner-city schools; those teachers also need to be able to communicate effectively and relate to a completely different audience. Not everyone will be up to it.

On the other hand, the idea of subsidising internships, whilst still a relatively small and incremental step, is a great idea. It’s not enough, nowadays, to have a good degree; you also need experience, and those who can afford to gain that experience by doing an unpaid, month-long internship in London are in a significantly better position than those who can’t. Had I had that opportunity, I would’ve bitten their hands off.

“The government will create a new over-arching law creating a duty on the whole public sector ”

“Race, gender and disability injustices are all subsets of the one great inequality – class”

Its just a further extension of their Marxist political correctness within the State bureaucracy.

“One cabinet member described it with relish as “socialism in one clause”.” i.e. equality of outcome.

“Tax credits and benefits would rise to lift families over the poverty threshold”

Here we go, this is their “biggest idea for 11yrs”. Pay more benefits and entrench the welfare class in their rut.

“Public sector pay would rise”

Aah, more rewards for Labour voters.