The slippery pole

These days I no longer spend much of my time pondering upon the great mysteries of life, a fact that I tend to put down to the fact that – in my mid-sixties – if I haven’t worked them out by now, and were suddenly to find the ‘key’ to everything this time tomorrow, it wouldn’t matter a whole hill of beans because I very much doubt I’d have enough time left on this Earth to do anything about it anyway.

There’s something to be said for the phrase “I blog, therefore I am” (it’s partly the reason I contribute to this website from time to time) which probably needs to be filed under the heading “The bottom line is that Life is what you choose to make of it”.

In some respects I feel that this is a comforting thought because, when you’re a kid on the cusp of adulthood, it’s good to be told “There’s a whole world out there and – provided you work hard enough at it (and perhaps get a bit of luck here and there as well) – you can do whatever you want and make of it whatever you will”.

However, even in that particular scheme of things – if it is a scheme, of course – there are one or two roadblocks along the way.

Suppose you just happen to be one of those humans born devoid of any ambitions at all, or even the capacity to develop them. If you think about it, hearing “Look – there’s a whole wide world out there, you can do literally anything you want” when (genetically or instinctively) there’s nothing in particular that you want to do doesn’t seem to take things forward a great deal.

This is where I find difficulty in rowing in behind some of the campaigns that get mounted to change the world or the way that society is structured and/or apparently works.

For example, take fox-hunting.

Personally, I have zero interest in horses, horse-riding, jumping fences after drinking lashings of sherry, brandy or whisky, foxes, packs of hounds, country pursuits, animal welfare, animal cruelty, animal rights, pest control, farming, wearing expensive fancy riding gear, whips, upper class twits, protection of the countryside, preservation of ancient practices and pastimes … or indeed pissing off either animal rights campaigners and/or indeed fans of fox-hunting and the people who do it.

Therefore I don’t mind about the fact some people would choose to defend fox-hunting to the death – and yet others would seek to banish it from the face of the Earth. I just don’t care.

Today as I tripped around the news media websites, I came across reports about the fact that Oxbridge is now being criticised for being ‘classist’ in its selection of those who it admits through its hallowed portals as students – this simply the latest of a long line of misdemeanours against equal opportunity and the way some people think society ought to be, such as the previous ‘anti-women’, ‘anti-racial diversity’, ‘anti-poor background’ crimes of which Oxbridge has already been apparently tried and convicted in the past.

You cannot win, can you? By which I mean, not everyone can go to Oxbridge [oh, hang on a minute – perhaps that’s exactly what some educational campaigners are saying!] and so the Oxbridge authorities are going to have to establish some means of weeding out the wheat from the chaff. Or choosing the best candidates. (Or should that be ‘the most deserving candidates’?).

In the ‘good old, bad old’ days, of course, presumably those concerned with the annual Oxbridge intake adopted what they regarded as the simplest and fairest yardstick, viz. the results produced in examinations that they’d deliberately set and designed to identify the most brilliantly academic applicants in any particular year.

I don’t know, but I’d hazard a guess that in those times the examiners did not care whether any particular student was (for example) so brilliant that they’d pass the exam with flying colours having done little or no work … or, being of a lesser IQ, had nevertheless worked their socks off to achieve a pass … or had been wealthy enough to pay for private tutoring which gave them a certain advantage … or even was as thick as two short planks but on the day had been lucky in that all three topics that they’d managed to master half-decently had just happened come up as the subject of key exam questions.

At the end of the day, the exam markings were the exam markings – and that was that.

In these ‘enlightened’ days, however, it’s almost as if society (or is it just socially-concerned educational campaigners?) want quotas imposed on Oxbridge intakes – so many BAME applicants, so many women, perhaps so many transgender, so many disabled, so many poor [and how ‘poor’ would that be? – somebody would have to decide that thorny issue, of course] … ad infinitum.

To return to – or extemporise upon – my original point. The world out there is a jungle. Not everyone can get to ‘the top’ (however that is defined). Therefore some means of deciding who gets opportunities and who does not has to be worked out.

I hope I’m not being academically biased in saying this, but surely human society as a whole has an interest in ensuring that the most able people get to the top?

In the world of academia, therefore, some means of identifying the most able potential students has to be devised. Exams seem to me about as good a way as any. And if there are 10 places available and 100 candidates, 90% of them are going to end up disappointed. It’s a fact of life.

But (and this is the crux of it) if you end up among the 90% disappointed, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’re later entitled to say “I didn’t get in, therefore nobody should”.

This would be akin to someone who claims to be a 100 metre sprinter and fails to get selected for Team GB at the next Olympics claiming that, since he wasn’t selected, nobody else was entitled to be either!

To return to my fox-hunting analogy and make a jump from it – if I’m a passable athlete but am best at (or most interested in) say badminton … and have no interest at all in football … then it ill-behoves me to complain that, because I cannot make a decent living playing badminton … therefore Premier League footballers shouldn’t be allowed to earn £100,000 per week.

I’d hesitate to suggest that the same applies when someone working on a minimum living wage contract in a factory – and who has no interest at all in money, finance or working excessive hours every week – begins complaining about bankers’ salaries.

It seems to me that the key things are the principles of meritocracy and ‘equal of opportunity’. Even if all men (and women) are born equal – and they patently aren’t – it is always going to be the case that some rise to the top and some don’t.

[And I write all the above as someone who took the entrance exam to Oxford University and failed to get in].