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Anti-Social Behaviour
Sep. 25th, 2018 08:36 pmWhile I was packing and tidying in advance of travelling, I turned on Radio 4 and heard the most perfect spiel about the interdependence of mankind and how we've been conditioned to reject it. But I was busy, so didn't look it up, and failed to note the day or time so I could look it up in future, and so I thought it lost.
Tonight I was doing a bit of busy work, and as such was looking for something to stuff in my ears to keep the other half of my brain happy. Browsing the Radio 4 website I found a comedy show about philosophy. Sure, that sounds like my bag, I thought, and then most of the way through there it was! That speech! Only now I had context.
The programme revolves around a study done by psychologist Cyril Burt on separated twins to determine if intelligence was a heritable characteristic. The study suggested it was, and formed in large part the basis for the post-war educational system in the UK, in which children at age 11 would be tested and sent either to a grammar school, for the high achievers destined for University, or a comprehensive school, where the nation's future factory workers and shopkeepers would be taught enough to get by.* Later it was discovered that the co-authors Burt cites in that report quite probably didn't exist, his data was fishy, and he'd burned a lot of his notes and records before his death. But despite the shade this cast on the validity of his research, the educational system's method of testing and segregating students continued, along with the cultural ramifications of making education a competitive enterprise.
So then we come to this:
Cyril Burt is, of course, on Wikipedia, and you can listen to the programme here: Rob Newman's Total Eclipse of Descartes
( And now, some navel gazing. )
*The two-tier system was largely abolished later in the century, but efforts have been made by the current government to bring it back, albeit in a somewhat disorganised way. It's a very contentious issue, and there was a lot of debate on it before Brexit took up everyone's available brain cells.
I do frequently wonder if the grammar/comprehensive test (known as the Eleven Plus) is why age 11 is so significant in British children's literature. Obviously that's the age at which you get your letter to go to Hogwarts, but it's an age that pops up in many previous books. Then again, it's also a great age to make your child protagonist – grown up enough to be rational and autonomous but not enough to deal with puberty – so maybe it's a coincidence, or comes from a much older tradition.
Tonight I was doing a bit of busy work, and as such was looking for something to stuff in my ears to keep the other half of my brain happy. Browsing the Radio 4 website I found a comedy show about philosophy. Sure, that sounds like my bag, I thought, and then most of the way through there it was! That speech! Only now I had context.
The programme revolves around a study done by psychologist Cyril Burt on separated twins to determine if intelligence was a heritable characteristic. The study suggested it was, and formed in large part the basis for the post-war educational system in the UK, in which children at age 11 would be tested and sent either to a grammar school, for the high achievers destined for University, or a comprehensive school, where the nation's future factory workers and shopkeepers would be taught enough to get by.* Later it was discovered that the co-authors Burt cites in that report quite probably didn't exist, his data was fishy, and he'd burned a lot of his notes and records before his death. But despite the shade this cast on the validity of his research, the educational system's method of testing and segregating students continued, along with the cultural ramifications of making education a competitive enterprise.
So then we come to this:
The two-tier system, built on Burt's fraud and bizarre fantasies, is with us to this day. It is a system built not on science, but on a brutal individualist dogma that flies in the face of what science tells us about the type of creatures we really are. We are social mammals. Not all mammals are social: polar bears, golden hamsters, and Siberian tigers are not social mammals. But Chacma baboons, gibbons, elephants and African hunting dogs, Alpine ibex, indri, bonnet macaques, and we, are. To be a social mammal doesn't mean to be gregarious at the weekends, but helplessly dependent on each other our whole life long. Our sociability is an ancient instinct that we share with other primates. Rhesus macaques, isolated from birth, quickly learn to press a lever that projects images of other Rhesus macaques on the wall, and there is some evidence to suggest that the macaque starts to pretend to himself that the macaques on the wall are real. He invites them to play, offers them food, cites them as co-authors on a paper on inherited IQ in identical twin macaques separated at birth. We have a profound and lifelong need for each other, against which instincts the education system inculcates the philosophy that the bulk of your peers are impediments and a block on your hopes for self-realisation.
Cyril Burt is, of course, on Wikipedia, and you can listen to the programme here: Rob Newman's Total Eclipse of Descartes
( And now, some navel gazing. )
*The two-tier system was largely abolished later in the century, but efforts have been made by the current government to bring it back, albeit in a somewhat disorganised way. It's a very contentious issue, and there was a lot of debate on it before Brexit took up everyone's available brain cells.
I do frequently wonder if the grammar/comprehensive test (known as the Eleven Plus) is why age 11 is so significant in British children's literature. Obviously that's the age at which you get your letter to go to Hogwarts, but it's an age that pops up in many previous books. Then again, it's also a great age to make your child protagonist – grown up enough to be rational and autonomous but not enough to deal with puberty – so maybe it's a coincidence, or comes from a much older tradition.
