John Marks

Professor John Marks OBE was a British nuclear physicist, educator and author. He died aged 77 in February 2012.

He has worked closely over the years with Baroness Caroline Cox. Both were described by the New York Times in 1987 as part of "a small group of radical ideologists on the right of the party" which had shaped Conservative education policy. By 2003, Diane Hofkins was suggesting in the Times Educational Supplement that many of their educational ideas had become mainstream, shaping Labour as well as Conservative policy.

Background

The son of a lorry driver, Marks was educated at Kingsbury County Grammar in North West London. He joined the fast stream which took the school certificate a year early, winning a scholarship to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1952. He subsequently became a physics lecturer at North London Polytechnic.

Marks later became a parent-governor of his old school, which became a comprehensive as Kingsbury High. Fellow Old Kingsburian Valerie Grove wrote of him in 1987:

unlike most Tories he has kept faith with state education and has displayed an uncommon loyalty to Kingsbury. He moved back into the borough of Brent specifically so that his three children could go to Kingsbury too. His eldest son is now at his old Cambridge college, one daughter is embarking on a degree course and his youngest is still at the school doing GCSE.

Education policy

Marks was a contributor to the 'Black Papers' on education, published in the 1970s.

In 1975, he published The Rape of Reason: The Corruption of the Polytechnic of North London with Caroline Cox and Keith Jacka. Bernard Levin devoted three of his columns in The Times to the book.

Marks and Caroline Cox published a survey of school standards in 1983. They later claimed they were the subject of a smear campaign, after an official briefing questioning their methods leaked to the press. Critics argued that the report was statistically unrepresentative and did not take enough account of social class.

Women and Families for Defence

In 1984, Marks produced a report for Lady Olga Maitland's Women and Families for Defence, which claimed that peace studies in schools had become the subject of a disinformation campaign on the nuclear issue.

Marks charged:

'It is not that all the items are uni-lateralist or pacifist; rather, it is that most of them are.

'It seems as if those who draw up these lists realise that a completely one-sided list would be self-defeating in its obvious imbalance. So a few token items are included to try to create the impression of balance while denying it substance.'

Fred Jarvis, the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, responded that:

'John Marks' attempts to spread smears, innuendos and half truths are a substitute for hard evidence and rational discussion which will deceive nobody. The senior inspector responsible for peace studies has said that peace education is being taught with professional integrity and academic responsibility.'

Patrick Harrington

In December 1984, members of the lecturers union sought to have Marks disciplined for praising Patrick Harrington, a National Front member who was studying at North London Polytechnic. The Guardian reported:

Dr John Marks, a lecturer at the college and associate of Baroness Cox, described the NF philosopher as an 'exemplary student' in Saturday's Daily Telegraph. Members of the higher education union, NATFHE, at the college wondered how Dr Marks should know, since Dr Marks is in the applied physics department - not a subject Mr H has hitherto shown much interest in.

The lecturers condemned Dr Marks for making comments based on 'no knowledge of Mr Harrington's academic career' - remarks, they said, that were 'without foundation.' It was 'serious professional misconduct .. to make unsubstantiated statements .. in order to score political points.' They now want the polytechnic's directorate to discipline Dr Marks and prevent him from repeating his behaviour.

Standards in English Schools

Marks published his second report on standards in English schools for the [[National Council for Educational Standards in July 1985. The Guardian reported that his findings were disputed by other educationalists because they did not consider differential ability levels in the pupil intakes of different schools:

Dr Marks himself admits that more research needs to be done - although that does not stop him from making some fairly sweeping policy recommendations based upon his conclusions so far. His academic opponents amongst educational statisticians, though, are on the whole unrepentant. Many are still highly critical of his research methods as a basis for making comparisons between the performance of different types of school, and in particular his assertion that grammar and secondary modern systems produce better examination results than completely comprehensive systems.

Hillgate Group

Marks was one of the contributors to The Wayward Curriculum: A Cause for Parents' Concern?, a pamphlet issued by the Social Affairs Unit in May 1986.

Marks was also one of the founders of the Hillgate Group, which in December 1986 issued a pamphlet, The Reform of British Education, calling for the removal of state schools from local authority control and the reintroduction of selective education. It also called for an inquiry into the Schools Inspectorate, which was criticised by Marks in an interview with The Times:

'They have failed to act as the guardians of a good system; they are the dog that didn't bark.

'What have they done about anti-racism, for instance? Now we see it exploding in Brent over the past three months, but it's been around for the past two or three years in the borough.'

In the same month, Marks was one of four people appointed to the Conservative Collegiate Forum, the body which replaced the disbanded Federation of Conservative Students.

The New York Times credited Marks with significant influence on Conservative education policy in 1987:

it is not parents' demands that have given political shape to Conservative education policy, but lobbying by a small group of radical ideologists on the right of the party. Among the most energetic campaigners have been Lady Caroline Cox, Dr. John Marks and Prof. Roger Scruton, a philosopher-journalist of Birkbeck College, London. They have appeared wearing hats as associates of the Center for Policy Studies, the National Council for Education Standards, the Hillgate Group and the Institute of Economic Affairs, whose present education consultant, Stuart Sexton, spent six single-minded years inside the Education Department as political adviser to successive ministers.

Marks wrote to Education Secretary Kenneth Baker in March 1987, asking him to block the creation of an A-Level course in peace studies.

In 1988, he called for an amendment to the Education Reform bill, ending the automatic affiliation of student unions to the National Union of Students, which he described as a 'Labour Party propaganda machine'.

Marks published Choosing a state school in 1989, with Cox and Robert Balchin. In a review for The Independent, Professor Harvey Goldstein criticised their methodology for judging schools exam results:

The authors base these 'targets' on research that two of them carried out in the early 1980s. But their suggestions for parents fail to take account of the single most important factor in a school's results: the achievement of its pupil intake. For example, schools with relatively poor exam results may nevertheless be doing a fine job with a low achieving intake. It is the progress children make between entering and leaving school which should be measured, not merely their final results.

The procedures recommended by the authors could pass very unfair judgements upon many schools, both good and bad. Moreover, their research used only the overall average results for each school. It is now widely accepted by those working in this area that school comparisons should be based on an analysis of individual children's results. Recent work in the Inner London Education Authority has shown how misleading it can be to compare schools merely on their average results.

Marks criticised proposals by the National Union of Teachers to address anti-racism in the national curriculum in 1992, saying:

'It is not a function of the Curriculum to seek out racism explicitly and attack it. Such tactics often raise such antagonisms. Black parents want their children to be engineers, nurses, doctors - they want to make their way in British society. Much of this anti-racist spouting exacerbates the problems.'

By 2003, Diane Hofkins was suggesting in the Times Educational Supplement that Marks and Cox were no longer the right-wing outsiders that they had seemed in the education debates of the 1970s:

Now, so many of their ideas have been adopted by New Labour (prescription of 3Rs teaching, devolved management, baseline assessment) that they have been neutralised. Instead of fiery, opinionated figures from the right and left, we now have worthy managerialists. How can you shake your fist at these people, when they are just tweaking the system?

Support for Muslims schools

The Guardian later reported that the Hillgate Group's proposals for education reform singled out "institutions like the Tottenham school set up by black parents and new Christian and Muslim schools as likely candidates" for direct grant status.

The Daily Mail reported in 1992 that Marks was one of a number of right-of-centre educationalists advising the Moslem Schools Trust, which had plans to take hundreds of schools out of local authority control:

'I have always been in favour of Moslem schools, providing the safeguards are there. The teachers must be qualified, the National Curriculum must be followed and the school must comply with the regulations. Parents have the right to choose a school which reflects their philosophy.'

In December 1992, Marks and Cox backed a delegation seeking state support for Muslims schools. The Independent reported:

Baroness Blatch, Minister of State for Education, is due to receive a delegation from the Muslim Education Forum which will include Baroness Cox, a Conservative peer, and John Marks, a traditionalist recently appointed to the School Examinations and Assessment Council.

They want schools to be directed to take a series of measures to meet the concerns of Muslim parents: to set aside facilities for religious education for Muslims and others between 4pm and 5pm, including teaching by local religious leaders; areas for prayer mats to be used during free time; and concessions to Muslim sensibilities over dress and school uniforms.

In January 1994, Marks attended a conference of the Moslem Education Coordinating Council in London, which heard that more than 150 Muslim groups were ready to set up their own state schools.

Faith in Education

Marks contributed to the Civitas pamphlet Faith in Education published in September 2001. He argued that standards in church schools were higher on average than those in local authority schools but that this was overshadowed by the variation between individual schools. He concluded:

Therefore, in addition to encouraging the Church of England to expand the number of its schools, and its secondary schools in particular, the Dearing committee should urge the Church not to abdicate its responsibilities for standards, as it has all too often done in the recent past, in deference to the prevailing lay educational opinion.

The Right after the fall of the Wall

In January 1990, Marks and Cox attended a Prague conference on 'The Future of the Right in East and Central Europe' organised by the Conservative Council of Eastern Europe. According to Richard Gott, Marks suggested that "that Czechoslovakia should be purged of Communists in the same way that Germany was de-Nazified after 1945."

Baroness Cox explains how 'the moral legitimacy of British society has been undermined by Marxists in key institutions, particularly educational establishments'. Universities, schools and training colleges have all suffered, she says. The social sciences and history have been 'particulary infected'. The church, too, is suspect. 'Many of our church leaders have been infected by liberation theology'. John Marks adds that the British know well 'how much wrecking power Communist parties can have, even when small'.

On Islam

In June 2003, Marks and Cox co-authored The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy? which was published by Civitas. The pamphlet's methodology was based on a distinction between Western societies on the one hand and 'ideological societies' on the other, a category which lumps together fascism, communism and Islamism.

The propaganda battles of the Cold War, as understood through the work of figures such as neoconservative propaganda theorist Roy Godson and through Cox and Marks' own earlier writing, were cited as a precedent for the struggle with Islamism.

it was the long ideological battles of the Cold War and the massive efforts by Marxists to subvert, and thus to subdue, Western societies from within that was most difficult for the citizens of these societies to understand and thus effectively to resist.

Similar tactics were attributed to Islamists by Cox and Marks, but the possibility they might be used by Western societies was not considered.

The tactics used in the current Islamist attack on Western societies resemble those used by Marxists in the last century —deceptions of many kinds together with the drip, feeder and multiplier effects which enhance the overall effectiveness of the committed ideologists even if their numbers are not large.

Centre for Social Cohesion

Marks was a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Social Cohesion as of August 2007.

He was appointed a director of the Centre on 5 January 2009.

Affiliations

• Schools Examination and Assessment Council, 1990-3
• National Curriculum Council, 1992-3
• Schools Curriculum & Assessment Authority, 1993-7
• Centre for Social Cohesion - Advisory Council
• National Council for Educational Standards - Former Administrator
• Educational Research Trust - Co-director
• Prague Society for International Cooperation - Member
• Civitas - Former education unit director

Conferences

• The Future of the Right in East and Central Europe, attendee, 1990
• Panellist at Identity Crisis: Can European civilization survive? a conference held in Rome on 13-14 March 2008, under the auspices of the European Freedom Alliance in conjunction with the European University of Rome and the Lepanto Foundation.

Publications

• Relativity: A Non-Mathematical Introduction to the Classical, Special and General Theories of Relativity, Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1972.
• Science and the Making of the Modern World, Heinemann, Oxford, 1984.
• Peace Studies in Our Schools: Propaganda For Defenceless, Women and Families for Defence, 1984.
• With Maciej Pomian-Srzednicki, Standards in English Schools - second report, Sherwood Press, 1985.
• With Caroline Cox, The Insolence of Office, Claridge Press, 1988.
• With Caroline Cox and Robert Balchin, Choosing a State School, Hutchinson, 1989.
• Fried Snowballs: Communism in Theory and Practice, Claridge Press, London, 1990.
• The Betrayed Generations: Standards in British Schools 1950-2000, Centre for Policy Studies, London, 2001.
• With Caroline Cox, Islam, Islamism and the West: The Divide Between Ideological Islam and Liberal Democracy, American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, 2005.
• With Caroline Cox, This Immoral Trade: Slavery in the 21st Century, Monarch Books, Toronto, 2006.

External resources

• John Marks Obituary, The Telegraph, 2 March 2012, acc 4 March 2012 </ref>