How the West was Won: Liberating the Past to Preserve the Future
Traditionally, the term ‘academy’ or ‘academia’ held a very particular meaning and connotation. Originally, it referred to the school established by Plato in Athens in 388 BC. Noted historian of ancient science David Lindberg described it as ‘a philosophical community, consisting of scholars who had reached various levels of maturity and attainment and who interacted as equals. It must have been a centre of academic freedom, to use the modern term, as it ‘was (at least in principle) open to students of any persuasion.’ It was certainly not the only school in town – after Plato’s death, Aristotle founded his Lyceum, there was the Stoa, and the Garden of Epicurus – but clearly the name stuck. In the modern world, it seems the term ‘academy’ came into vogue during the first half of the eighteenth century, connected with centres for the scientific study of nature such as the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, the London-based Royal Society, and the French Académie des sciences, all founded already during the middle of the seventeenth century.
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Clearly, the beacons have shifted. Frequently, and with notable exceptions, what today goes for ‘academic research’ and even ‘the academy’ seems far-removed from the lynx-like qualities of Cesi’s Accademia. It is not just that the sciences and the humanities have gone different routes and barely talk to each other, the two cultures so eloquently described by C.P. Snow in his Rede lecture of 1959, but that both cultures seem to suffer from a unique combination of myopia and hyperopia. Myopia, or shortsightedness, because they focus on what is near, whilst losing sight of the bigger picture in time and space. Specialisation has brought deep knowledge, but the hyper-specialisation of today means that two colleagues occupying adjacent offices or labs – or even share one – in the same department cannot understand each other. Perhaps more disturbing, most researchers are unable to have a meaningful conversation at the dinner table, or indeed teach students or – the horror – the general public. They have no interest in anything outside of their microbubble. Rest in Peace, ye Intellectual. It is rather odd than, that the same researchers frequently suffer from hyperopia, or far-sightedness. They see distant objects clearly, but near objects appear blurry, or so it seems. They have firm theories about the distant past, or distant future, extremely strong convictions that they adhere religiously, yet cannot distinguish between daily fact and fiction even if the evidence stared them in the face. They live in worlds of extreme disconnect. And these are the people that we entrust with the education of our children.
Education and the Nation State
My interest in education for national identity is longstanding, going back to the 1990s when England was introducing a national history curriculum focused primarily, but not exclusively, on the core elements of British history. As head at that time of England’s national curriculum body I kept on hearing that some teachers were unhappy about such an emphasis, even calling it ‘racist’. The idea that British history for children in English schools could be regarded in this way shocked me and I began to argue publicly not just for the centrality of British history in England’s school curriculum but also for the wider responsibility of schools to provide children with the means to develop their sense of identity with the nation and the nation state in which they lived. My critics, at least within the education system, appeared to outnumber my supporters, describing my views as ‘neo- racist’, ‘neo-conservative’, ‘cultural imperialist’ and (the one I took as a badge of honour) ‘cultural restorationist’. 3
Underneath all this I sensed the presence of what Roger Scruton had called the ‘disease’ of ‘oikophobia’ (an abnormal fear of one’s home), which he saw as common among intellectuals since the Enlightenment: a distrust, dislike or rejection of things close to one and in this case a self-hatred with regard to England’s identity and inherited culture. 4
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The core justification for ‘educating for national identity’, in the context of a liberal education, is that it is an element of the transmission that is at the heart of such an education and that it is therefore the duty of the school to convey to children those features of the world, both past and present, necessary for them to develop a sense of belonging to a particular nation governed through a particular state. This is the justification for the transmission of core ‘communal knowledge’ required for pupils to achieve what E D Hirsch has called ‘cultural literacy’ and for making this an important component of the early and middle stages of all educational programmes in schools. 22 This transmission is not just necessary because of our responsibility to individual pupils but so that what is worth valuing – in this case the continued consciousness of a national identity - is, in the words of Roger Scruton, passed on ‘by lodging it in brains that will last longer than (one’s) own’.
Education versus indoctrination: challenging the politicisation of schooling
In moving away from classical education and the transmission of knowledge as an end in itself, schools have adopted a variety of instrumental goals. This has led to education becoming increasingly politicised as demonstrated through the introduction of new subjects onto the curriculum, the transformation of traditional academic subjects, and the emergence of the teacher activist. All contribute to shifting the purpose of schools towards concerns with social justice. To challenge this politicisation, we need teachers to better distinguish between education and indoctrination and to take responsibility for the world as it is, rather than how they wish it could be. We need to re-orient education towards the intellectual legacy of the past by bringing canonical knowledge back into the curriculum.
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There are three means by which education has become politicised. First, new subjects have been added to the school curriculum which have no basis in academic disciplines and are explicitly concerned with changing attitudes and behaviour. For example, Comprehensive Sexuality Education teaches children about contested concepts like gender identity and the nature of intimate relationships, while Citizenship classes look to cultivate particular attitudes to the nation and the environment. Second, traditional academic subjects have introduced new, more political, topics. For example, geography focuses on sustainability and environmentalism; literature becomes a vehicle for exploring attitudes towards race and gender, and history centres the sins of the nation state. Third, we see the rise of activist teachers who unashamedly use the classroom to preach their own views.