Pop is too posh: Billy Bragg

I've blogged on this theme before - research which shows an extraordinary narrowing of the social range reflected in the pop charts, which has gone from mainly state educated (80%) in the 1990s to dominated by a public school elite today. Billy Bragg took up this theme at the annual John Peel Lecture; if you've never heard of John Peel but are interested in exposure to a wide range of eclectic music, the late DJ is a legendary figure whose annual 'festive fifty' is still something you can find as downloadable torrents many years later.

Billy Bragg: 'education reforms risk stifling creativity'

The singer and left-wing activist used a lecture in memory of John Peel to criticise Michael Gove's plans to scrap GCSEs

John Plunkett, guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 November 2012 20.51 GMT

Billy Bragg also turned his ire on 'culture-clogging shows' like Simon Cowell’s The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. Photograph: Andrew Stuart/Radio Festival/PR

Singer Billy Bragg has warned that the government's education reforms risk stifling creativity and leaving the pop charts the preserve of a well-off public school elite.
Bragg used a lecture in memory of broadcaster John Peel to criticise education secretary Michael Gove's plans to scrap GCSEs in favour of an English baccalaureate. He also turned his ire on "culture-clogging shows" like Simon Cowell's The X Factor on ITV1.
The singer and left-wing activist said the government's proposed new education system threatened to exclude creative subjects from the core qualifications expected of 16-year-olds.
"At a time of cuts to the education budget, the pressure on schools to dump subjects like music and drama in favour of those that offer high marks in performances tables will only grow," said Bragg.
He criticised the "insistence that knowledge is more important than creativity", adding: "As Albert Einstein said, imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the whole world".
Bragg, delivering the second annual John Peel Lecture at the Radio Festival on Monday, said: "Under the English baccalaureate, with its reliance on a single end of course exam, the child with the creative imagination will always lose out to the child with the ability to recall knowledge learned by rote.
"And it's not just the creatively talented kids who will suffer. Evidence shows that pupils from low-income families who take part in arts activities at school are three times more likely to go on to higher education.