As always Roger Scruton is a voice of reason amongst a babble of chaotic clammerances:
"We should reject the view that high culture, as the possession of an elite, is of no use to those who don’t possess it. This is as false as the view that science or higher mathematics are useless to those who don’t understand them. Scientific knowledge exists because a few talented people are prepared to devote their energy to pursuing it. That is what a university is for: and since you cannot pass on difficult knowledge without discriminating between the students who can absorb it and those who cannot, discrimination is a social good. The same is true of high culture. Those able to acquire it will be a minority and the process of cultural transmission will be critically impeded if that teacher must teach Mozart and Lady Gaga side by side to satisfy some egalitarian agenda."
He also articulates the sometimes agonising path that those who agree with such a worldview must walk, seemingly against great odds:
"It is hard to persuade someone who has grown up without culture that culture is a thing of value, and argument with egalitarians is pointless, since it presupposes that good reasons are superior to bad, and that is an elitist opinion. All we can do is to go on making a space for culture in a world of noise and inviting students to enter. Often it might seem as though the task is hopeless. But I am convinced that it is not hopeless and that the rewards, both for the teacher and the student, outweigh the costs.
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