Anthony Horowitz’s notebook: Have our schools lost all faith in culture?

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Master of the Queen’s Music, recently wrote about the almost total ignorance of young people when it comes to classical music, but I think he was wrong when he worried that Mozart and Beethoven were becoming ‘the preserve of the better off’. The truth is that if there’s a lack of interest in the classics, it crosses all classes and income brackets. Not so long ago, I had dinner with the sixth form of one of our leading public schools. I asked them if they could name one opera by Verdi. This was met by total silence. All right, I said, who can name any opera at all? Another long silence — until, at last, the head boy put up his hand. ‘How about Phantom of the Opera?’

The problem is not one of elitism, I think, but of too much pragmatism. The catastrophe of university fees was that they made a direct correlation between education and employment — graduates shouldn’t mind paying for their education because it will make them ‘worth more’ in the market.