Essay one of twelve, as part of my twelve blog posts of Christmas challenge.
By Toby Payne-Cook
Before we can talk about education, or improving our experience of life here on planet Earth, we first need to consider society, and what is society?
There is no such thing, according to Margaret Thatcher. I have been considering this of late, and I’m starting to see her perspective. (Maggie went on to apply her assertion by spearheading a step change towards a more individualistic, free market economy; powered by entrepreneurism and extrapolated towards greed and selfishness). Under Thatcher, and notably all Prime Ministers since her, we have undoubtedly become a more materialistic and economically driven society.
Yet, we weren’t exactly a commune of harmonious hippies, or radical Marxists, before she came along and purged the Earth of collective human decency. Three decades after Maggie, a less principled man with weaker convictions called David Cameron blabbered on about the Big Society and it began to grate.
I, too, refer to society rather a lot in passing, and it is endearingly naive of me and huge swathes of my teaching contemporaries to suggest that we – via the medium of the classroom – can improve society with the blunt tool of education. This doesn’t mean we should stop trying but a little reflection on the nebulous, abstract concept of society is required before considering the slightly more accessible problems with schools, curricula, assessment and teaching.
Before I explain why I broadly agree with Maggie’s assertion, let’s briefly race through a potted and inaccurate history of human society.
We now know that the myriad and complex riches of life on Earth have evolved over a turbulent 3.8 billion years (there are approximately 1 billion seconds in 32 years, and 1 million seconds in 11.5 days), – so, compressing 1 year to 1 second, then 3.8 billion seconds is about 120 years ago. The first mammals evolved just over 100 million years ago (3 years ago) and modern humans last common ape ancestor existed about 6 million years ago, (70 days ago). It is thought that Homo Sapiens, our species of human (and the only remaining hominid species on Earth, and in the known Universe) first ‘appeared’ 300,000 years ago (just 4 days ago), by which time there is evidence of the daily use of fire.
It is possible to argue that the daily use of fire was humans first of many sequential steps in removing ourselves (subconsciously) from the then unwritten laws and interdependence of nature; though the gradual movement from being hunter-gatherers living in small tribes, probably of no more than 150 – 200 people, into becoming farmers, and then traders, between 10 and 12,000 years ago (about 3 hours ago in seconds).
Whatever happened in those approximately 288,000 years from 300,000 years ago (4 days ago, if each year were a second) to 12,000 years ago (3 hours ago) is remarkable. The daily use of fire enabled us not only to heat our simple shelters and fend off predators, but also to cook food. The cooking of food (we are the only species who does this) enabled far greater efficiency of calorie intake, thus enabling the “faster rate of nutrition” available to our glucose hungry brain cells and the gradual development of our massive pre-frontal cortex at the front of the human brain. Advanced communication (speech and language) evolved during this time window; sometimes described as the cognitive revolution – where our ‘minds’ exploded into our heightened state of consciousness, the awareness of ‘self’ and the ‘I think, therefore I am’ of Rene Descartes’ big philosophical idea.
Back then, in those dark, challenging times Homo Sapiens lived, largely, in harmony with wider nature. We were infused with it, and of it. As our nebulous minds developed between the physical substrate of our brains, senses and our environments we learnt how to communicate effectively within our small tribes. We would, I’m sure have been wary and fearful of any nearby, infringing tribe and the human (and animal) tendency to compete for territory and resources would have been instinctive. Beyond the inevitable territorial conflict, our social instincts, language and cognitively induced ingenuity led us to develop highly skilled, knowledgable and harmonious social groups. Those social groups, then as now, would have been anchored by gossip and stories; wonder too. Myths developed which later seeded religion to help try and make sense of it all. We, homo sapiens, lived this way for the vast majority of our history.
Then, farming: producing food for people beyond our immediate social groupings. Consequently, trading. Bartering and then the invention of money. Learning to co-operate with neighbouring tribes. Larger tribes, more competition; more conflict; war and now – specialisation: tool and weapon makers; farmers and growers; animal carers and handlers; shelter builders and craftspeople; cooks and potters. You know the drill.
We built bridges and the first cities; walls, boundaries, borders; nations and empires. Social and military hierarchies evolved. The history of human civilisation, and by extrapolation the concept of society adorns many a more authoritative and comprehensive book or documentary than I can do justice here.
In Britain, we are steeped in the rich and powerful culture and history of empire. There is some cancelling going on at the moment, and the desire from many – but no means all – to renounce some of the uglier, elitist stories from our past. And as we enter 2022, we are all at sea. Our current tide of bombastic politicians trade on the gory, brutal glories of our past while others, like me, wish we could be a little more consensual and collaborative in our politics, a little more, ‘that was then, this is now and this is where we should be heading.’
Over the last two hundred years, and particularly the last fifty, the structure and demographic of society has changed dramatically – since the dawn of the industrial revolution and the urbanisation of Britain. Human inventiveness and innovation has brought us electricity, motorised vehicles, international air travel, television, computers, the internet and social media. We are globally connected on a massive scale. Much good has come of this – we are more tolerant and accepting of cultural and religious differences; sexual preferences too. Archaic rituals are largely a thing of the past, and while there is still far too much poverty, extreme poverty is diminishing globally.
In the last 150 years we have become better, via schooling, social services and the NHS at looking after the most vunerable and oppressed in society. There is a very strong argument that things have improved, and continue to do so. And yet, we are divided: politically, educationally, religiously, ethnically. Social media, that great connector, is a mirage. It suggests that we are better connected and have more contacts than ever before, yet many people feel lost; cut adrift and a sense of foreboding at the world.
We have globalised the world in two words: economic growth. This is – quite wrongly in my view, but it’s a hard habit to kick – what drives the vast majority of political, business, family and individual decisions.
I was thinking about this in church this Christmas – I don’t normally go to church – but I’ve been staying with my sister and brother-in-law, who is a vicar. I was thinking about how the vast majority of people don’t go to church anymore, in our largely secular society; thinking about how the only thing which now unites us as a people at Christmas, is the heavily marketed consumerism. The feasting and the wine; the presents and the plastic; the decorations and the cards. Football, or Strictly or Gary Barlow being the most irritating and insipid ‘pop star’ on the planet, or moaning about the government, or thinking Boris Johnson is a self-serving, narcissistic, morally defunct plonker, or fearing Covid, or being nonchalant about Covid or denying Covid unites quite a lot of us, but not all of us. We have our tribes, our friends and our families and it can feel like we are part of a far larger whole but most of those wholes are fragile, or fake or – increasingly – fake or grossly exaggerated.
This is the inherent problem with society. We want to belong. But belonging is so much easier in our known, comfortable, trusted niches. Maggie was right: for all our goodwill, for all our global connectedness; for all our civility, society doesn’t really exist. Society is abstract, intangible and ultimately just another imagined reality – like money, like corporations, like religion and like nations.
Society is something well-meaning teachers like me or you; or politicians trying to win us over, bang on about. But, I wonder, if we’d be better focussing on our local communities, our immediate work colleagues, our strong but small network of friends and our families – and to stop pretending to care about everyone else. We are largely out for ourselves, and our nearest and dearest, and we are deeply distrusting of those whom we perceive we have little in common.
It pains me to admit it, but I think old Maggie T was right – the problem with society is that it doesn’t really exist.
The key to building a better society – that nebulous, vacuous concept so beloved of politicians – is bottom up, in small communities of people and it is the base unit of those communities that I turn my attention to next – that of the family. And there’s a problem with them too.
CREducATE 