I am disappointed. When I was anointed the Scottish Schools Young Thinker of the Year, I believed a turning point in my life had been reached. I waited with bated breath for a phone call from Max Clifford and visualised the outfit I would wear down the red carpet to glitzy London premieres. I even thought long and hard about which member of girl band the Saturdays I would invite to accompany me.
None of this has happened. If only I had one of my generation’s strongest stomachs instead of one its most thoughtful minds. Perhaps then I would be given the opportunity to eat a kangaroo’s testicle on primetime television, and perhaps then I would be valued by society. Putting my personal struggle for recognition to one side, however, there is a serious question that arises from my sorry situation: does our society value thought?
Throughout history, political leaders have always sought to distract the masses while they pursued their own agenda. In ancient Rome corrupt emperors filled their coffers and increased their personal power at the expense of democracy, all the while boosting their popularity with visceral gladiator games. In 1936, were it not for Jesse Owens, the National Socialist Party may well have succeeded in turning the Olympic Games into a celebration of the Aryan master race, social Darwinism and fascism. Has history taught us, then, that the twin weapons of mass distraction; entertainment and spectacle, are more powerful than thought?
Leon Trotsky once wrote that Britain was not ready for revolution because the ‘deepest passions of the working classes [had] been diverted along artificial lines with the aid of football’. Almost 100 years later it can be argued that Britain remains an intellectually distracted nation. I do not want to blame all of the ills of society on the beautiful game though; after all, Cogito ergo sum (an Aberdeen FC fan). But if not football, what is at fault for the lack of thought in Britain? Why does a nation which once produced thinkers of the quality of Adam Smith and George Orwell now look to Simon Cowell, Cheryl Cole and Piers Morgan as authoritative voices on current affairs?
Some like to paint a simple picture of ‘Broken Britain’, but it is really ‘Tabloid Britain’ that is the gladiator games of our times? While our political leaders implement the most severe spending cuts for a generation, the tabloid media fills our heads with the sex lives of the rich and famous and gossip about reality television contestants. As a result, tabloid consumers become expert on ‘The X Factor’, but are intellectually disengaged.
If we want the majority of our society to value thought, and have the intelligence to think for themselves, then we must put thinking at the
heart of education.
It is too easy to be seduced by the simplistic black and white view of the world that the tabloid media offers. Their Good versus Evil, Hero versus Villain narrative discourages critical, independent thought, and breeds intolerance and knee-jerk reaction. The perfect expression of this occurred when President Sarkozy announced plans extending the working age to 63 and masses took to the Parisian streets in widely supported protest. In Britain, however, when George Osborne was revealing his cuts agenda, Wayne Rooney’s wage demands and contract negotiations dominated the headlines, and a 20-foot-high effigy of him was burnt on November the 5th.
In George Orwell’s ‘1984’, the protagonist Winston Smith recognises that if there is hope against Big Brother and the thought police, it lies with ‘the proles’. However, in Big Brother’s society:
It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented…their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.
If, like Big Brother, the tabloid media are determined to distract us, what can we do to awaken our collective mind to critical and independent thought? How can we once more make Britain an enlightened and thoughtful nation?
In the 1960s, depressed by its abject failure to beat the Russians in the space race, the USA enacted a wide-ranging inquiry into the state of its education system. The overriding message returned was clear: if America was to secure the position of the world’s foremost superpower, then it must teach its children to think.
The same holds true in Britain today. If Britain is to shed the shackles of distraction, and once more lead the world in thought, then we must put thinking skills at the heart of how we educate our children. The educationalist Robert Fisher writes that children must be taught the skills to think creatively, critically, and emotively because ‘it is the linking of reason with emotion that provides the prime motivation for learning, and for the development of intelligence’. The focus of all education from the very earliest age therefore must be cognitive development, based on the principles of cooperation, social interaction, dialogue and metacognition, with the ultimate aim being independent learning and thought.
The question remains, does our society value thought? Well, clearly a part of it does. If it did not, then this paper would not have been written. However, when the great American statesman Adlai Stevenson was running for president in the 1940s, a supporter reassured him: ‘Every right thinking person in America will vote for you!’, to which he replied: ‘I’m afraid that will not be enough, we need a majority’.
If we want the majority of our society to value thought, and have the intelligence to think for themselves, then we must put thinking at the heart of education. Only when we are educated in thought will we be able to shape the intellectual discourse of our country, and only then will we once more be a truly thoughtful nation.
Thom Sherrington delivered this prize-winning paper for the Young UK and Ireland Programme. He is a history teacher at Aboyne Academy
