When Inclusivity' is an excuse for intolerance

Education Anthony Sutch
When you have applied for a job, but have failed to get it, do you feel excluded? If you are a person of a fairly normal temperament, suffering the normal dose of paranoia, but no more, you would probably assume that a better, or more suitable person, had been chosen. If you gain a 'B grade at a GCSE subject, do you react as having been excluded from an 'A' grade, or do you accept the examiner's verdict? If you want to play rugby for England but are not chosen, do you feel excluded, or accept the selector's authority? An honest answer to these questions would be something like "I failed because I was the wrong person", or "I was of insufficient talent".
I spoke recently to a group of people who wished to abolish independent school education in England. Concerning such education they used the emotive language of exclusivity. Their comment was hostile, ideological, fractious and political. No school, they said, should be single sex, of a specific religious denomination, nor open only to those who have a certain financial standing. I wondered if the principle behind these beliefs was such that somehow we
should all have been born equal. How do we persuade God to apportion talents equally? Are we into the world of designer test tube automotons? Indeed, are we to exclude variety?
They seemed focused on education, although private medicine also attracted some of their ire. There seemed to be no talk of exclusivity over the affordability of certain types of holiday, computer equipment , designer clothing, recreational activities or cars and such like. Yet I suspected that the ultimate consequence of their thinking is Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World. Today them is an ever-growing resort to legislation and down this road lies dictatorship.
I recalled a sermon by Dom Augustine Clark, a housemaster at Downside, given on Prize Day 2002. His main text was " 1 did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners". He believed all should find the word "exclusive" as applied to Downside objectionable. He stated that our school cannot be exclusive. It is. and must be, inclusive, because that is the way set out for us by Jesus Christ.
Dom Augustine made the essential point that inclusion or acceptance into a community, into Downside, meant taking on the responsibility of following Christ. "Jesus welcomed sinners, but with the purpose of forgiving them, healing them and helping them to grow in righteousness." So any boy joining must recognise "it also poses on them a challenge: to take strength from this place in order to grow intellectually, morally and spiritually, to live generously".
If you wish to be included in a particular society, you have no right to demand that it must change its character or entrance qualifications to suit you. So Downside has its principles, priorities, aims and code of conduct. You either accept them, or you don't. To be included, acceptance is obligatory. If you later break the codes of conduct or printiples then you exclude yourself.
Is this naïve'? What of the financial exclusion? The latter could be removed if all schools became state-funded, yet independent from government control. Yet. surely in justice a school, like any other society that needs to (saver and pay for services, has a right to charge. Also, people have a right to pay.
The whingeing and wrangling that goes on misses the point. We are all included in Christ. We are all included in the body of Christ, although different parts of it. There is one Lord. Exclusion in worldly terms is irrelevant. We should be celebrating our differences, our peculiarities, our individual talents. We should be working for a united, inclusive and cohesive society. Education should be working to that end. Ultimately it is about giving us the tools to respond to God's love.