Educating Gordon Brown, The Wisest Fool In Christendom

Posted on February 14, 2008
Filed Under Politics |

British people are neither impressed by nor enamoured with intellectuals, as a general rule. In New Britain, we expend vast energies of feverish excitement over the banalities of The X Factor and Big Brother (or, in the case of the latter, we once, embarrassingly, did so), but anything which requires thought, we tend to steer clear of, as if we might be infected by it and forever after be compelled to use our brains against our wills and better judgment.

Mrs Thatcher, from the outset, portrayed herself as intelligent: we were all persuaded to swoon at her mastery of facts of the Mr Gradgrind variety. Tony Blair was described as ’superficially intelligent’ and when standing alongside the normal drones and lobotomised retards of the political world, he did have a quality of twinkling artifice imitating something like intellectual animation. Of course, outside that normal context, he was just another grinning imbecile.

Much has been made of Gordon Brown’s towering intellect, along with his moral compass and clunking fist, but although he knows things, does he have the common sense to apply them intelligently? Does his compass let him down and leave him to ricochet around like a headless chicken? Does his clunking fist simply smash things he attempts to mend, when they had not previously been broken?

The Wisest Fool in Christendom was a title given to James I of England, (VI of Scotland) and The Economist has this neat little precis of what it meant:

It is not even clear what prompted the coining of the epithet, though James was certainly a mixture of opposites of every kind. In the words of Sir Walter Scott,

He was deeply learned, without possessing useful knowledge; sagacious in many individual cases, without having real wisdom…He was fond of his dignity, while he was perpetually degrading it by undue familiarity; capable of much public labour, yet often neglecting it for the meanest amusement; a wit, though a pedant; and a scholar, though fond of the conversation of the ignorant and uneducated…He was laborious in trifles, and a trifler where serious labour was required; devout in his sentiments, and yet too often profane in his language…

In short, he was a fool. Yet he was also wise.

That made him a much rarer bird than the foolish brainbox—the egg-head who, as a child, takes every prize for scholastic achievement but cannot be trusted to tie his shoelaces, or cross a road, let alone take charge of anything. Such people are indubitably clever. They are the ones who, later on in life, may work out in their heads every kind of intellectual puzzle and show off every arcane piece of knowledge. They may shine at mental long division and be able to expatiate upon the workings of machines or the writings of scholars. But of judgment—everyday, practical judgment of men and human affairs—they have none.

So, we can see that being educated in what might appear to be a perfect manner will not of necessity make you capable of doing any particular job which might be required of you. You may end up red hot on the theory of how best to change the world, but absolutely useless at seeing that what you are actually doing is smashing what is good and replacing it with something shabby, shoddy and extremely unlikely to work.

The other day in The Guardian, Gordon Brown wrote an impressive NewSpeak article about education, including this:

In a globally competitive national economy, there will be almost no limits to aspirations for upward mobility. Globalisation dictates that the nations that succeed will be those that bring out the best in people and their potential. And this is the new opportunity for Britain. Put simply: in the past, we unlocked only some of the talents of some of the people; the challenge now is to unlock all the talents of all the people.

This will require a richer view of the equality of opportunity we seek. Opportunities to acquire education and skills must now be lifelong. We must recognise that human potential expresses itself in different ways over time and across a wide spectrum of abilities, aptitudes and talents. These cannot be determined simply by IQ testing carried out once and perhaps too early. Fulfilling the demands of a global jobs market requires us to nurture and develop creativity, interpersonal skills and technical abilities, as well as analytic intelligence.

In essence, all it said was that children are economic units to be exploited by the state for nothing other than their earning capacity in the wonderful new global economy. They do not have to be good, rounded, properly developed people; simply ruthless money-making machines.

Needless to say, nobody who responded to Gordon Brown’s article agreed and he received the usual kicking meted out to idiot politicians trying to sell their deceitful claptrap.

Then, on AOL News, we have this:

Ministers are treating school pupils as if they were business products to be managed rather than children to be educated, an Oxford University study has suggested.

The Nuffield Review of 14-19 education said the Government’s aim of boosting the British economy was overshadowing the true role of schools in young people’s lives.

Businesses increasingly run state schools and can even award their own A-level equivalent qualifications, as in the recent case of McDonald’s.

The lead author of the report, Oxford’s Professor Richard Pring, said: “The changes at 14-19 are too often driven by economic goals at the expense of broader educational aims.

“This is reflected in the rather impoverished language drawn from business and management, rather than from a more generous understanding of the whole person.

“We need to give young learners far more than skills for employment alone, even if such skills are key to the country’s economy.”

The Nuffield report said the broader aims of education were neglected, there was a “risk of damaging the values that define an educated and humane society”.

It criticised the use of terms such as “inputs”, “targets” and “curriculum delivery” in education.

“The boundaries between running a school and running a business can easily become confused,” the study said.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families dismissed the report. “This depressing view of education is simply not one that we recognise,” he said.

So, who are you going to believe? A scholar or a lying halfwit politician?

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