'British Values according to the gospel of St.Michael Gove', a subject that stirs so many thoughts and comments that I shall resist studying that gospel, for the time being anyway.

Instilling values is always most effectively done by subliminal means.  I would doubt that any private school pupils are told in plain terms that they are members of a powerful, superior elite.  It is assumed that they take on that message by the very values that need not speak their names.

Ivan Illich talks about the 'hidden curriculum' of schools, in his brilliant little book Deschooling Society.  He dismissed the idea that we go to school to learn subjects like Maths, Languages, Science etc. and maintained that we go to school to learn the values of obedience, conformity and subservience - all taught subliminally by the very system itself, put into place by authoritarians, mainly for the misuse of authority.

A friend of mine, an Englishman, once remarked that he believed that Hitler and Al Capone would probably be admitted to the exclusive clubs of St.James's, because they were well dressed, but that Gandhi and Jesus would be refused as a couple of scruffs!  He's probably right, but what does that say about British values?

I am only interested in civic and human values - those of tolerance, equality of opportunity, and justice. Any society that practices those, I approve of, and those that don't, I despise.  I'm sounding sanctimonious, so I'd better go.  Speak to you next weekend.