The other day I was walking down Green Lanes when I passed a young woman pushing a buggy, a mobile phone held to her ear. She was speaking so loudly into it that it was impossible not to overhear the following:
Woman (into phone): I don't care what he says. I'm not dropping the charges.
she puts the phone away into her handbag and, looking around, speaks to no one in particular
Fucking bitch.
She bends over the buggy and speaks to the child in it
Don't worry sweetie. Mummy's alright now.
Immediately I knew. She was a victim of domestic violence. The person on the other end of the phone was a friend or relative of the perpetrator, seeking either to pass on his tearful apologies or to threaten her into taking no further action. However she was standing firm, envisaging a new life for her and her baby, freed from the man who had made her life hell.
Or maybe not. Maybe the "charges" were related to something else entirely and the "Mummy's alright now" was a simple reference to the fact that she had had a cold this morning but was recovering. The point is though that out of this tiny snippet of one side of a conversation my mind had constructed an entire narrative, with an immediacy and force that changed the way I saw the woman and her child.
Which set me thinking about what I have called the narrative imperative: the seemingly unstoppable drive in our minds to construct narratives out of everything we see and hear. We are at it all the time, because narrative is the means by which we draw together strands of observation and memory and use them to predict the future.
Some narratives are simple and entirely predictable: when a cricket ball soars into the air our mind immediately constructs its path as a narrative that allows us to predict where the final scene will occur and position ourselves in an appropriate position to be there. However our mind goes further than that and even as we run our mind is constructing one of two denouements- either the tragicomic one where our hands transform into unwieldy flippers that flap aimlessly at the flying projectile or the heroic one where our dive is perfectly timed and our fingers unerringly clutch the ball to our chests. And in constructing that narrative our brains determine its progress.
Other narratives are more complex and less linear, but I do not believe it is any accident that we use the verb "read" for our analysis of complex situations. So a driver approaching a busy junction "reads" the traffic by constructing a series of interconnected narratives: will that lorry turn left? And will that car overtake it? And what about that motorbike, weaving through the line of vehicles? A police officer similarly "reads" the situation outside a night club at 3 am. Is that group of lads going to wander off drunkenly down the street or are they going to respond to the taunts of that other group? And if they do, is one of them (the one who's putting his hand inside his coat) going to produce a knife?
This process of reading and constructing narratives even applies to static images. When we see an effective piece of photo-journalism we cannot help but construct a narrative that puts that person in that place, and that expression on his/her face. And this applies even to apparently abstract still images. To take a slightly bizarre example electricians use the language of narrative to "read" circuit diagrams: "See, the power comes in here, then that junction box sends it down that spur..." etc. Non physicists use verbs such as "flow" to describe how current works, not because it is a realistic description of what appears to happen (everything happens effectively simultaneously in electrical circuits) but because it allows us to construct a narrative that makes the circuit comprehensible. Film makers understand this. It is why in disaster and action movies lights go off in a sequence rather than instantaneously together when the big explosion goes off.
Perhaps the most intriguingly minimalist expression of our minds' ability to construct narrative is the indie platform game Thomas Was Alone. I have not played it, but the consensus is that its narrative is compelling and imbued with sadness. It has been described as "funny and heartfelt" and its central character as "charming". A central character which, like all its other characters, is a monochrome rectangle.
So why is this? It seems to me that a large part of our conscious mind is devoted to pulling together strands from everything we see and hear around us and combining that mass of data with stuff plucked from our memories in order to construct narratives that help us make sense of the world. I am quite sure that this predates the development of the human brain (how else does a prey species perceive something as a potential threat, or a predator stalk its prey?) but has expanded massively with our brains' increased capacity. So unbeknownst to us, our unconscious mind is constantly constructing narratives, to the point that it is these narratives that help us understand everything around us.
So of what relevance does this have for literature? It is of course central. Narrative is what holds almost all literature together. Even lyrical poetry has a narrative of sorts and it is a rare haiku that does not, for all its often static depiction of a single experience, imply a narrative. Here's a rather sweet one, picked at random:
the first cold shower
even the monkey seems to want
a little coat of straw
In more obviously narrative forms this driving imperative in all of our brains allows authors to imply narratives, often in the subtlest of ways, trusting to the reader to fill in the gaps. So in Browning's My Last Duchess the final act of this chilling story of autocratic power is stated simply in the words:
"This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together."
Out of context it might be possible to misunderstand these lines but by the time we get there in the poem our mind needs no more information than this to construct the narrative of the Duke's cold-blooded murder of his first wife.
An even better example is Alan Bennett's Talking Heads monologues. I unfortunately do not have the text but remember one called Soldiering On. This is the story of a recently widowed woman who is being slowly scammed of her inheritance by her son and whose daughter was sexually abused by her late husband. Except that she does not tell us any of that, and (it being a monologue) neither does anyone else. So how do we know? Because, like it or not, our minds cannot help constructing narratives, in exactly the way I did when I overheard the young woman with the buggy.
Friday 30 May 2014
Tuesday 27 May 2014
Corrections and clarifications: he is an angry and patronising little man
So Michael Gove has corrected all the "culture warriors" such as myself with his customary patronisingly rude imitation of politeness. He is not banning To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men et alia. He is simply requiring that all students at GCSE "cover ... a whole Shakespeare play, poetry from 1789 including the romantics, a 19th-century novel and some fiction or drama written in the British Isles since 1914." After that they can study what they want. War and Peace maybe, or the complete works of James Joyce. After all, English teachers are quite likely to have nearly three hours a week with their students, and they will have very little else to do beyond acquiring an absolutely secure grasp of English grammar (something linguistics professors have been struggling with for decades) and addressing the "shameful" inadequacies in their ability to read and write which will no doubt still be hampering them until Mr Gove's glorious revolution has fully run its course.
There are two key points here, that make me, if anything, more despairing of Mr Gove's attitude to the teaching of English Literature than I was before I read his Telegraph statement. First, it is absolutely clear that he equates genuine engagement with and study of literature with a stamp-collector's quest to "cover" all of it. When he cites "the bests schools'" approach to studying literature it is invariably in the form of a list: "[At] King Solomon Academy, in one of the poorest parts of London, ... all children are expected to read Jane Austen, a Shakespearean pastoral comedy such as As You Like It, and a Shakespearean tragedy alongside George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, William Golding, Erich Maria Remarque and Primo Levi." There is nothing here, or anywhere else, about what children might gain from all of this reading. The key to good literature teaching, clearly, is quantity not quality. So long as you can say that you have "covered" every great classic known to (English) man then you have done literature, and can presumably move on.
Second there is the absolute contempt in which he holds the nation's teachers for whom he is responsible. He presents as "sad" the fact that 190,000 GCSE students last year studied Of Mice and Men whilst only 3,000 studied Pride and Prejudice, Far from the Madding Crowd or Wuthering Heights. Has he ever, I wonder, asked himself why that is?
Teachers, under pressure from all sides to deliver genuine educational outcomes in limited time and in the face of unrelenting pressure and criticism want to deliver those outcomes as efficiently and meaningfully as they can. Students at GCSE need to engage with the novel form: to understand how characters can be developed, themes established and worked through and features such as setting used to engage with those themes and characters. They can get this from studying any of the four novels Mr Gove lists, but they can get it from Of Mice and Men in about half the time that it would take with any of the others.
And would they be missing out anything significant as a result? Frankly, no. Mr Gove professes himself to be "an unabashed Americanophile" but his contempt for Of Mice and Men has clearly clouded him to its literary merits. He "read [it] and loved [it] as a child" but quite obviously does not regard it in the same light as the others he lists. And one has to ask why. Partly the reason, clearly, is that it was not "written in Britain." Then there is the fact that it was not "written before 1900." And finally there is the biggest issue: it is not LONG. A reluctant reader does not have to slave for weeks simply to get to the end of the story. And so for all these reasons he does not see it, or To Kill a Mockingbird, as important literary texts which must be "covered" to ensure an adequate grounding in the classics.
So Mr Gove, who sees an absolute antithesis between the enjoyment and the study of literature, believes the first duty of English teachers to be to teach students the stoic value of persistence in "covering" the maximum range of English Literature. And worse still he condemns as feckless and lazy "culture warriors" anyone who tries instead to engage students with books and bring them into the community of those who, unlike our Education Secretary, read and study literature for the intellectual stimulation, emotional engagement and sheer pleasure that that can bring.
There are two key points here, that make me, if anything, more despairing of Mr Gove's attitude to the teaching of English Literature than I was before I read his Telegraph statement. First, it is absolutely clear that he equates genuine engagement with and study of literature with a stamp-collector's quest to "cover" all of it. When he cites "the bests schools'" approach to studying literature it is invariably in the form of a list: "[At] King Solomon Academy, in one of the poorest parts of London, ... all children are expected to read Jane Austen, a Shakespearean pastoral comedy such as As You Like It, and a Shakespearean tragedy alongside George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, William Golding, Erich Maria Remarque and Primo Levi." There is nothing here, or anywhere else, about what children might gain from all of this reading. The key to good literature teaching, clearly, is quantity not quality. So long as you can say that you have "covered" every great classic known to (English) man then you have done literature, and can presumably move on.
Second there is the absolute contempt in which he holds the nation's teachers for whom he is responsible. He presents as "sad" the fact that 190,000 GCSE students last year studied Of Mice and Men whilst only 3,000 studied Pride and Prejudice, Far from the Madding Crowd or Wuthering Heights. Has he ever, I wonder, asked himself why that is?
Teachers, under pressure from all sides to deliver genuine educational outcomes in limited time and in the face of unrelenting pressure and criticism want to deliver those outcomes as efficiently and meaningfully as they can. Students at GCSE need to engage with the novel form: to understand how characters can be developed, themes established and worked through and features such as setting used to engage with those themes and characters. They can get this from studying any of the four novels Mr Gove lists, but they can get it from Of Mice and Men in about half the time that it would take with any of the others.
And would they be missing out anything significant as a result? Frankly, no. Mr Gove professes himself to be "an unabashed Americanophile" but his contempt for Of Mice and Men has clearly clouded him to its literary merits. He "read [it] and loved [it] as a child" but quite obviously does not regard it in the same light as the others he lists. And one has to ask why. Partly the reason, clearly, is that it was not "written in Britain." Then there is the fact that it was not "written before 1900." And finally there is the biggest issue: it is not LONG. A reluctant reader does not have to slave for weeks simply to get to the end of the story. And so for all these reasons he does not see it, or To Kill a Mockingbird, as important literary texts which must be "covered" to ensure an adequate grounding in the classics.
So Mr Gove, who sees an absolute antithesis between the enjoyment and the study of literature, believes the first duty of English teachers to be to teach students the stoic value of persistence in "covering" the maximum range of English Literature. And worse still he condemns as feckless and lazy "culture warriors" anyone who tries instead to engage students with books and bring them into the community of those who, unlike our Education Secretary, read and study literature for the intellectual stimulation, emotional engagement and sheer pleasure that that can bring.
Monday 26 May 2014
Of Mice, Mockingbirds and unhappy little men
So, as has been widely reported, a number of texts are being dropped from exam boards' English Literature GCSE syllabuses reportedly following pressure from Michael Gove. There really is no point me entering the (pretty one-sided) debate about how retrograde a step this is for the nation's children. Instead I should like to speculate as to why he should have done such a thing.
The reasons put forward are pretty much what we have come to expect from such an original and forward-looking thinker: that the old syllabuses were not rigorous enough (that bloody word again) and that they did not give sufficient weight to the English cannon of great authors. So pretty much the same reasons as Gove presented for his 1066 and All That history curriculum. The serried ranks of academics telling him those changes were idiotic, counter-intellectual and damaging clearly seemed to spur him on, so we are to get more of the same as regards English Literature. However he does not have the excuse of willful ignorance this time: I learned with astonishment recently that Mr Gove studied English Literature at University.
Nevertheless, English Literature is a subject on which Mr Gove seems to have been uncharacteristically reticent, at least in public. In his great speech of May 2013 (which will surely go down in the annals as the first true evidence that a genius walked amongst us) there is actually very little clear discussion of what was wrong with the then-current English Literature syllabuses. As I see it he presents three main arguments:
1) That Middlemarch is a better book than Twilight
2) That it is "depressing" that so many students study Of Mice and Men, An Inspector Calls, Pygmalion and Hobson's Choice
3) That (except in what he calls "the very best schools") very few students study works from what he calls the Great Tradition of English Literature (capitals his)
Of these, number 1 is clearly specious and not worth spending time discussing, except insofar as to point out that what Twilight resembles above anything else is the 18th Century Gothic horrors satirised by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey. The 21st Century does not hold the monopoly on trash.
Leaving aside for now the merits of the texts he lists in 2, clearly it cannot of itself be depressing that large numbers of students study a small number of books. This could, logically, only be depressing were number 3 a genuine concern. Unless he thinks there is something actively bad or dangerous about students engaging with texts that explore the terrible consequences of poverty...
So to number 3. The texts that he implies it is depressing that more 15 and 16-year-olds do not study at school are Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Far from the Madding Crowd and She Stoops to Conquer. An odd collection in many ways.
I can remember little about She Stoops to Conquer, except that it is a pretty lightweight comedy of manners without particularly significant literary merit and no contemporary relevance. The novels cited are all worthy of study, though in very different ways, but I really cannot see their merits as means to engage students in either the detailed study or the passionate engagement with texts. Pride and Prejudice has an ironic detachment of tone that it is clearly possible for readers to miss entirely (or how would Colin Firth be cast as Darcy and then be filmed emerging half-naked from a lake?) Teenagers would, I think, be particularly prone to read both it and Wuthering Heights as the love stories that actually neither truly is, thus entirely missing the point.
What these texts do have in common, and how they differ from the texts Mr Gove finds "depressing" is that they are long, occasionally dull and sometimes difficult for any but the most literate to engage with. Which, it seems, is the attraction. For Mr Gove, the study of literature should be rigorous (read hard work and not particularly enjoyable). Of Mice and Men is not rigorous because it is short and readable.
Yet Of Mice and Men for all its brevity (because of its brevity in fact) richly rewards close study with its efficient characterisation, its narrative foreshadowing and its inspired use of symbolism in the description of setting. It is something students can get their teeth into and find real meat almost straight away. That is why teachers love using it with classes- because taught well it leaves students with a real understanding of what literature can do and a hunger to read more.
There is meat in the longer novels of the Great Tradition... too, but it is often harder to find and you have to chew longer to get to it. And to be frank, sometimes once you get there you discover that it was barely worth the effort. If I want to read something that really engages with the plight of the industrialised working classes I will walk (nay, run) past the entire Dickens canon and reread one of Gove's "depressing" texts, An Inspector Calls. Not because it is an easier or shorter read (though clearly it is) but because it is better.
Yet the only conclusion I can come to is that the question of whether a literary text is any good or not is simply not an issue with Mr Gove. Aside from the patently absurd comparison of Twilight with Middlemarch he presents no meaningful argument as to the comparative literary merit of any of the texts he mentions. The texts he criticises are to be banished because
a) they are short
b) too many students currently read and enjoy them
c) in "the best schools" (whatever they are) students study them at Primary level
None of these is an argument about literary merit or lack thereof.
So why get rid of them? Well, the key is b), I think. These are books students enjoy and get reward from studying. Hence, of course, not RIGOROUS enough.
The picture emerging is of Mr Gove as a very unhappy little man indeed. He studied English Literature at University and apparently reached the conclusion that any text that students enjoy and get reward from studying is to be distrusted.
Listen, Mr Gove, please. Just because you clearly hated studying literature and found it an unpleasant and unrewarding struggle, that does not mean that everyone has to suffer the same torment. Pleasure in studying great books is not inimical with rigour. Short, readable books can be just as worthy of study as long, unreadable ones. And the only sure way to bring about the demise of the Great Tradition of English Literature is to turn it into a masochistic obstacle course that all teenagers must traverse.
The reasons put forward are pretty much what we have come to expect from such an original and forward-looking thinker: that the old syllabuses were not rigorous enough (that bloody word again) and that they did not give sufficient weight to the English cannon of great authors. So pretty much the same reasons as Gove presented for his 1066 and All That history curriculum. The serried ranks of academics telling him those changes were idiotic, counter-intellectual and damaging clearly seemed to spur him on, so we are to get more of the same as regards English Literature. However he does not have the excuse of willful ignorance this time: I learned with astonishment recently that Mr Gove studied English Literature at University.
Nevertheless, English Literature is a subject on which Mr Gove seems to have been uncharacteristically reticent, at least in public. In his great speech of May 2013 (which will surely go down in the annals as the first true evidence that a genius walked amongst us) there is actually very little clear discussion of what was wrong with the then-current English Literature syllabuses. As I see it he presents three main arguments:
1) That Middlemarch is a better book than Twilight
2) That it is "depressing" that so many students study Of Mice and Men, An Inspector Calls, Pygmalion and Hobson's Choice
3) That (except in what he calls "the very best schools") very few students study works from what he calls the Great Tradition of English Literature (capitals his)
Of these, number 1 is clearly specious and not worth spending time discussing, except insofar as to point out that what Twilight resembles above anything else is the 18th Century Gothic horrors satirised by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey. The 21st Century does not hold the monopoly on trash.
Leaving aside for now the merits of the texts he lists in 2, clearly it cannot of itself be depressing that large numbers of students study a small number of books. This could, logically, only be depressing were number 3 a genuine concern. Unless he thinks there is something actively bad or dangerous about students engaging with texts that explore the terrible consequences of poverty...
So to number 3. The texts that he implies it is depressing that more 15 and 16-year-olds do not study at school are Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Far from the Madding Crowd and She Stoops to Conquer. An odd collection in many ways.
I can remember little about She Stoops to Conquer, except that it is a pretty lightweight comedy of manners without particularly significant literary merit and no contemporary relevance. The novels cited are all worthy of study, though in very different ways, but I really cannot see their merits as means to engage students in either the detailed study or the passionate engagement with texts. Pride and Prejudice has an ironic detachment of tone that it is clearly possible for readers to miss entirely (or how would Colin Firth be cast as Darcy and then be filmed emerging half-naked from a lake?) Teenagers would, I think, be particularly prone to read both it and Wuthering Heights as the love stories that actually neither truly is, thus entirely missing the point.
What these texts do have in common, and how they differ from the texts Mr Gove finds "depressing" is that they are long, occasionally dull and sometimes difficult for any but the most literate to engage with. Which, it seems, is the attraction. For Mr Gove, the study of literature should be rigorous (read hard work and not particularly enjoyable). Of Mice and Men is not rigorous because it is short and readable.
Yet Of Mice and Men for all its brevity (because of its brevity in fact) richly rewards close study with its efficient characterisation, its narrative foreshadowing and its inspired use of symbolism in the description of setting. It is something students can get their teeth into and find real meat almost straight away. That is why teachers love using it with classes- because taught well it leaves students with a real understanding of what literature can do and a hunger to read more.
There is meat in the longer novels of the Great Tradition... too, but it is often harder to find and you have to chew longer to get to it. And to be frank, sometimes once you get there you discover that it was barely worth the effort. If I want to read something that really engages with the plight of the industrialised working classes I will walk (nay, run) past the entire Dickens canon and reread one of Gove's "depressing" texts, An Inspector Calls. Not because it is an easier or shorter read (though clearly it is) but because it is better.
Yet the only conclusion I can come to is that the question of whether a literary text is any good or not is simply not an issue with Mr Gove. Aside from the patently absurd comparison of Twilight with Middlemarch he presents no meaningful argument as to the comparative literary merit of any of the texts he mentions. The texts he criticises are to be banished because
a) they are short
b) too many students currently read and enjoy them
c) in "the best schools" (whatever they are) students study them at Primary level
None of these is an argument about literary merit or lack thereof.
So why get rid of them? Well, the key is b), I think. These are books students enjoy and get reward from studying. Hence, of course, not RIGOROUS enough.
The picture emerging is of Mr Gove as a very unhappy little man indeed. He studied English Literature at University and apparently reached the conclusion that any text that students enjoy and get reward from studying is to be distrusted.
Listen, Mr Gove, please. Just because you clearly hated studying literature and found it an unpleasant and unrewarding struggle, that does not mean that everyone has to suffer the same torment. Pleasure in studying great books is not inimical with rigour. Short, readable books can be just as worthy of study as long, unreadable ones. And the only sure way to bring about the demise of the Great Tradition of English Literature is to turn it into a masochistic obstacle course that all teenagers must traverse.
Saturday 24 May 2014
The erosion of trust and the Scottish Independence referendum
Looking back on the first 14 years of the new millennium (or 13, depending how you measure the starts of millennia) it seems clear that one of the predominant trends of this time has been the extraordinary erosion of public trust in institutions and prominent individuals, from the Press to the Church and everything in between. The list is seemingly endless: Government intelligence agencies, the banks, politicians in general and the Liberal Democrats in particular, Radio 1 DJs, children's entertainers (Rolf Harris, for God's sake!), the police, the staff of old people's homes, multinational corporations from Amazon to Starbucks... I could go on. Indeed the erosion of trust seems to have become government policy. There have been concerted (and unfortunately often successful) efforts to undermine our trust in the NHS, the State education system and the British impulse towards supporting the underdog (from penniless immigrant to destitute benefits claimant).
Of course most of this erosion of trust has been brought about by the exposure of iniquitous and self-serving behaviour on the part of individuals and organisations that it is vitally important has been brought to light. The Public Interest Disclosure Act of 1998 introduced powerful protections for whistle-blowers and it is in part this that has led to the exposure of wrongdoing that had remained hidden often for decades. The time was that power and privilege bought secrecy and the opportunity to exploit others with impunity and it is of course wonderful that those days are gone. We are cannier now, empowered by social media technology and the availability of information. To quote the Who, we won't get fooled again.
Yet this erosion of trust has not been without its downsides, and perhaps the clearest illustration of this is what has been happening in UK politics of recent years. The whole MPs' expenses debacle, combined with the revelation of the poisonously cosy relationship between political leaders and the Murdoch press and the Liberal Democrats' abandonment of their manifesto pledges have led to a catastrophic destruction of public trust. In a poll in 2013 93% of those surveyed said they would not trust politicians to tell the truth when in a tight corner. What this has led to in England has been a quite extraordinary rise in support for UKIP- a party without MPs or indeed discernible policies. Why? Principally it seems because they are not in any meaningful sense politicians. It is not that anyone trusts Nigel Farage, it is simply that he, like the rest of the UK population, doesn't trust politicians either.
This way of course madness lies. You do not trust politicians, so you choose people about whom you know virtually nothing (beyond their uninformed, narrow-minded and xenophobic attitudes to foreigners) to become... politicians. The same applies to that other public-school educated "anti-establishment" (I hate ironic quotation marks, but what option do I have?) figure, Boris Johnson. Londoners continue to elect him because he shares their cynical, world-weary distrust in anyone and anything. Plus he's good for a laugh.
On a wider level the habit of distrust has a corrosive effect on any notion of State-provide services, so playing into the hands of the neo-cons who want to tear such institutions down. We no longer automatically assume that hospitals, schools or social services departments will be acting in our interests. And should you think that this attitude affects only the neo-Thatcherites amongst us, consider even those who work in such institutions. Most, it seems, no longer trust their own higher tiers of management, or assume that the whole institution is broadly working together in their common pursuit of a worthwhile goal.
Bizarrely the bankers, whose betrayal of trust was the most flagrant and expensive of anyone's, seem to have been the least affected by the erosion of that trust. Maybe self-serving cynicism has for so long been engrained in them that they barely noticed that no one trusted them any more. Presumably they always knew that no one should, and were just astonished that up until the great financial crisis of 2007-8 people seemed to. Nowadays they function just as they always did, paid just as much as they ever were and gambling just as recklessly, only this time with money given directly to them by the taxpayer under quantitative easing.
So does any of this matter? Surely it is better that at least now we know when we have been shafted, unlike the forelock-tugging proles who preceded us. Well, yes and no. The problem is that to a certain extent any social organisation is based on trust: an act of faith in the fundamental decency of other human beings on whom we can rely to act broadly in the public interest. Without such trust there really is (to echo Thatcher) no such thing as society. A complete erosion of trust can have only one destination: the assault-rifle-wielding sociopaths of the American right wing. Which surely most sentient and rational humans would regard as a bad thing.
So how do we square the circle? When recent revelations have taught us that people in public life up and down the country (and the world) have been venal, corrupt, self-serving and deceitful how do we retain trust in institutions, even where we believe them to be essential to the civilised functioning of our world?
Partly I think the answer goes back (for me) to a lesson I learned in many years as a headteacher: adults and children are fundamentally exactly the same, it is just that children are generally more transparent in their childishness. Thus what we know about children's behaviour can be applied wholesale to adults too. And one thing that I have learned about children is that if you distrust them they will behave in such a way as not to be worthy of trust. The converse may not always be the case (children are capable of lying even to people who offer them complete trust) but distrust inevitably gives rise to lack of trustworthiness. If a child knows they will not be believed whatever they say then they will always lie. If you give them a genuine chance of telling the truth and being believed then they may possibly live up to that belief. If you subject children to a behaviour-management regime based on distrust then they will find sneaky ways to misbehave and not get caught. Give them trust and a positive sense of responsibility and they just might live up to it.
So what possible lessons can be learned from this? Am I suggesting that so long as we trust David Cameron and [shudder] Michael Gove they will, in the end, do the right thing? Ummmm, No.
Where this is relevant though is in the question of the Scottish Independence vote. Although still barely rippling the political waters south of the border the upcoming referendum is clearly building towards a political reawakening in what was North Britain of which a vote for independence may not be the most profound outcome. Poorly informed as I am it does seem to me that what seems to be gathering momentum is a sense that just maybe Scotland can make a leap of faith away from the narrow-minded, UKIP-centric, anti-cosmopolitan politics of England towards a more egalitarian, demilitarised, pro-European vision of an independent nation state.
The thing is, if the Scottish people are to vote for independence then that will require a great deal of the quality which this millenium seems so profoundly to have eroded: trust. They need to trust that Alec Salmond is not just a politically astute media-junkie. They need to trust that all the bluster about not letting Scotland keep the pound was just bluster. And most of all they need to trust in each other, that independence will take them not towards jingoistic introspection but away from it, and towards a fairer and more enlightened society.
And I say all power to their elbows, though I will be profoundly sorry to see them go. In fact if it wasn't for the weather I'd be contemplating a move right now.
And the lack of availability of ethnically diverse food shops.
And the sheer bloody DISTANCE from anywhere.
And did I mention the weather?
Of course most of this erosion of trust has been brought about by the exposure of iniquitous and self-serving behaviour on the part of individuals and organisations that it is vitally important has been brought to light. The Public Interest Disclosure Act of 1998 introduced powerful protections for whistle-blowers and it is in part this that has led to the exposure of wrongdoing that had remained hidden often for decades. The time was that power and privilege bought secrecy and the opportunity to exploit others with impunity and it is of course wonderful that those days are gone. We are cannier now, empowered by social media technology and the availability of information. To quote the Who, we won't get fooled again.
Yet this erosion of trust has not been without its downsides, and perhaps the clearest illustration of this is what has been happening in UK politics of recent years. The whole MPs' expenses debacle, combined with the revelation of the poisonously cosy relationship between political leaders and the Murdoch press and the Liberal Democrats' abandonment of their manifesto pledges have led to a catastrophic destruction of public trust. In a poll in 2013 93% of those surveyed said they would not trust politicians to tell the truth when in a tight corner. What this has led to in England has been a quite extraordinary rise in support for UKIP- a party without MPs or indeed discernible policies. Why? Principally it seems because they are not in any meaningful sense politicians. It is not that anyone trusts Nigel Farage, it is simply that he, like the rest of the UK population, doesn't trust politicians either.
This way of course madness lies. You do not trust politicians, so you choose people about whom you know virtually nothing (beyond their uninformed, narrow-minded and xenophobic attitudes to foreigners) to become... politicians. The same applies to that other public-school educated "anti-establishment" (I hate ironic quotation marks, but what option do I have?) figure, Boris Johnson. Londoners continue to elect him because he shares their cynical, world-weary distrust in anyone and anything. Plus he's good for a laugh.
On a wider level the habit of distrust has a corrosive effect on any notion of State-provide services, so playing into the hands of the neo-cons who want to tear such institutions down. We no longer automatically assume that hospitals, schools or social services departments will be acting in our interests. And should you think that this attitude affects only the neo-Thatcherites amongst us, consider even those who work in such institutions. Most, it seems, no longer trust their own higher tiers of management, or assume that the whole institution is broadly working together in their common pursuit of a worthwhile goal.
Bizarrely the bankers, whose betrayal of trust was the most flagrant and expensive of anyone's, seem to have been the least affected by the erosion of that trust. Maybe self-serving cynicism has for so long been engrained in them that they barely noticed that no one trusted them any more. Presumably they always knew that no one should, and were just astonished that up until the great financial crisis of 2007-8 people seemed to. Nowadays they function just as they always did, paid just as much as they ever were and gambling just as recklessly, only this time with money given directly to them by the taxpayer under quantitative easing.
So does any of this matter? Surely it is better that at least now we know when we have been shafted, unlike the forelock-tugging proles who preceded us. Well, yes and no. The problem is that to a certain extent any social organisation is based on trust: an act of faith in the fundamental decency of other human beings on whom we can rely to act broadly in the public interest. Without such trust there really is (to echo Thatcher) no such thing as society. A complete erosion of trust can have only one destination: the assault-rifle-wielding sociopaths of the American right wing. Which surely most sentient and rational humans would regard as a bad thing.
So how do we square the circle? When recent revelations have taught us that people in public life up and down the country (and the world) have been venal, corrupt, self-serving and deceitful how do we retain trust in institutions, even where we believe them to be essential to the civilised functioning of our world?
Partly I think the answer goes back (for me) to a lesson I learned in many years as a headteacher: adults and children are fundamentally exactly the same, it is just that children are generally more transparent in their childishness. Thus what we know about children's behaviour can be applied wholesale to adults too. And one thing that I have learned about children is that if you distrust them they will behave in such a way as not to be worthy of trust. The converse may not always be the case (children are capable of lying even to people who offer them complete trust) but distrust inevitably gives rise to lack of trustworthiness. If a child knows they will not be believed whatever they say then they will always lie. If you give them a genuine chance of telling the truth and being believed then they may possibly live up to that belief. If you subject children to a behaviour-management regime based on distrust then they will find sneaky ways to misbehave and not get caught. Give them trust and a positive sense of responsibility and they just might live up to it.
So what possible lessons can be learned from this? Am I suggesting that so long as we trust David Cameron and [shudder] Michael Gove they will, in the end, do the right thing? Ummmm, No.
Where this is relevant though is in the question of the Scottish Independence vote. Although still barely rippling the political waters south of the border the upcoming referendum is clearly building towards a political reawakening in what was North Britain of which a vote for independence may not be the most profound outcome. Poorly informed as I am it does seem to me that what seems to be gathering momentum is a sense that just maybe Scotland can make a leap of faith away from the narrow-minded, UKIP-centric, anti-cosmopolitan politics of England towards a more egalitarian, demilitarised, pro-European vision of an independent nation state.
The thing is, if the Scottish people are to vote for independence then that will require a great deal of the quality which this millenium seems so profoundly to have eroded: trust. They need to trust that Alec Salmond is not just a politically astute media-junkie. They need to trust that all the bluster about not letting Scotland keep the pound was just bluster. And most of all they need to trust in each other, that independence will take them not towards jingoistic introspection but away from it, and towards a fairer and more enlightened society.
And I say all power to their elbows, though I will be profoundly sorry to see them go. In fact if it wasn't for the weather I'd be contemplating a move right now.
And the lack of availability of ethnically diverse food shops.
And the sheer bloody DISTANCE from anywhere.
And did I mention the weather?
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