Head, Hand and Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century

Author: David Goodhart 
Publisher: Allen Lane
Details: 368pp, £20.00
ISBN: 978-0241391570

This would have been a timely and important book even if there had been no coronavirus and no exams controversy. But, given the events of the past few weeks, its arrival could not be more welcome for those who want an education and skills system that is genuinely more responsive to everyone’s needs. 

Whoever is writing the further education White Paper, due this autumn, would do well to preface the whole thing with a summary of the key argument of this book: we have come to place far too much unmerited value in cognitive skills, to the detriment of other “hand” and “heart” qualities - and this impacts negatively on us all. 

This thesis is an extension of David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere, which analysed the divisions underpinning the Brexit vote. What divided leavers from remainers, he argued, was superficially their levels of educational attainment. But what this masked was people spread between two ends of a spectrum, with different world views and different values. 

One pole privileged mobility, fluidity, and change, for which they were prepared by the acquisition of generic, graduate skills. These were the “Anywheres”. He contrasted them with the “Somewheres”, who tended to value family, people, place and community, and tended to have more particular skills, less protected from labour-market change. 

Brexit was the trigger for these differences to come to a head, but underneath them were long-term social, economic and political processes, with the Anywheres dominating. 

The cognitive takeover

Head, Hand and Heart takes the argument a stage further, by exploring how cognitive skills came to acquire the position they have. This is a hard challenge to accept for those who assume that individual merit and social progress are intimately tied up with the acquisition of knowledge and high-level skills. 

We all agree that we need scientists, mathematicians, and technologists, along with people who have the intellectual and cultural skills, to shape political and democratic debate. And arguably the need to educate such people has become even more important as the economy has become more sophisticated. 

Goodhart’s point is that this may be the case, but something new has happened. The world has been remade in the image of the brightest and the cleverest, to the exclusion of other human qualities - ones that are needed socially and economically. 

The detail of Goodhart’s argument is important. He sets out his case for “Peak Head”, exploring the increased role of graduates in politics and the economy, and the link between this and the rise of mass educational selection. 

He looks at the difficult association between this and the contradictions of meritocracy. He suggests there may be a link between high-skilled work, IQ and ability, but there is also quite a lot of doubt about it. And, even if it were the case, it is unhealthy. When the whole system is focused on eligibility to enter the elite, where does that leave everyone else? 

Goodhart explores the role of university expansion in the “cognitive takeover”. A system of residential three-year degrees, designed to use academic learning to manage entry to elite professions, has been expanded to cover 50 per cent of the population. He questions how far mass higher education fosters universally high cognitive skills or knowledge and examines the false hopes invested in the “knowledge economy”, which predicted so many more high-skilled jobs than it has delivered. 

A narrow set of criteria

When the labour-market value of a degree is not given by the actual knowledge acquired in getting it, its value is in signalling to employers that the individual has elite potential. But the signalling is of limited value when so many people have the same generic skills. 

This is, Goodhart suggests, a source of disappointment, disillusionment and possibly resentment, for many on that route. 

One of the problems, Goodhart points out, is if we are going to use intelligence to select the best, and are intent on using academic achievement as the proxy for it, the vast majority of us are somewhere bunched together in the middle of the ability spectrum. And we are all being measured by a very narrow set of criteria that has come to exclude many of the other qualities we may have and that our society needs. 

Goodhart also turns his attention to the neglected skills and qualities of “hand” and “heart”, pushed aside as the graduate route became established as the only real option for ambitious young people. He maps the decline of skilled trades and the low status of non-graduate work, particularly in areas such as nursing and social care. 

Finally, Goodhart turns his attention to an alternative future, where greater status and dignity is attributed to all the human qualities and values needed for the economy, and society, to do better. The argument is not that we all have the same talents and abilities, or even the same economic outcomes, but it is about “levelling up”. And educational reform, in particular a rebalancing of the role of higher education as the raison d’être of the entire system, is central to the achievement of this objective.

This, of course, is the terrain that was being explored by policymakers before the pandemic, and a series of reforms has sought to establish stronger technical and work-based alternatives to the academic A-level route to a three-year residential degree. The Augar Review proposed to reset the relationship between higher and further education in a new skills system. 

Vision for the renaissance of technical education

In many respects, Goodhart has written the metanarrative that shows why this reform must remain central to the priorities of this government (and of any other). It is a reminder that education and skills policy does not exist in isolation from wider economic policy and has the power to frustrate as much as create opportunity. We have an expensive system that produces too much of the same thing and needs reform. 

The fear, of course, is that the radical reforming vision for the renaissance of technical education will be diluted. There are many factors driving policy in this direction anyway, but recent events do seem to have given impetus to the status quo. While the role of key workers shone a light on the kind of practical, useful, valuable skills we need, results day reasserted the prejudices of the nation with a vengeance. 

How many commentators did Radio 4 produce to opine that “lives were ruined” if university was not an option? How many of those commentators gave a thought for the 50 per cent who did not go anyway? How many criticised the application of the algorithm (flawed as it may have been) but failed to mention that such algorithms are used every year to exclude 50 per cent of 16-year-olds from the race for selected places? 

This is an ambitious book, tackling some complex and difficult material, with lots to debate and discuss, but on its own, it cannot guarantee that the radical version of educational reform gets delivered. 

There are some big policy obstacles to be addressed. Universities will need to be stabilised and their research and teaching functions crafted out in new ways. Higher technical education needs sorting out. The wrong kind of competition in post-16 education is needed to prevent T levels being taught by some as “alternative A levels”, instead of an alternative to A levels. 

And if we are to move to a more German-style model, then much more attention needs to be given to the institutional arrangements between employers, educationalists and unions that design and protect skilled work in their system. And ours needs to become less tense about the option of using labour market regulation to level up (hairdressing has no protection, accountancy has quite a lot - there is at least a case for looking at it with fresh eyes). 

However, Head, Hand and Heart is the kind of book further education needs. FE is the natural home of the Somewheres, whose concrete skills, values and qualities are undervalued and neglected. 

And if the slogan “further education, further education” is to get back to the centre of the agenda, it needs to be underpinned by the mission implied by this book: which is not just to deliver qualifications, but to restore dignity and status. 

Alun Francis is principal and chief executive, Oldham College