Anti-Social Behaviour
Sep. 25th, 2018 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinWhile 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
It was a very interesting show to listen to personally, because I remember being tested extensively in elementary school and being tracked into a gifted programme, though I never found out what the results of those tests were or what they were even looking for. One glorious year – Grade 5 – I was in a very small class of very bright kids, and that was the only year I remember actually being happy to get out of bed in the morning to go to school. In middle and high school, the "special" schools were an awkward commute away (and, my impression was, not worth the hassle) and I ended up going to the ordinary local ones, which I hated, but what can you do? I have always wondered what might have happened if I'd stayed on the gifted track, or had the money to go to private school, or lived in another city with better academic possibilities – ponderings which have only amplified since moving to Cambridge and seeing what opportunities and resources bright children have, here. I'm sure there was a degree of "holding me back" for "social reasons", though I never did get the hang of fitting in with my peers, and that poor fit may have contributed to an already strong feeling of alienation from the society in which we lived.
So it was interesting to hear the point of view that shunting students onto different tracks using test scores contributed to the competition-based, individualistic world we have today, given that I had always seen testing up as my only hope to find a more sympathetic environment. I can see the point, certainly, and testing has only increased since I was in school. Ranking pupils by test scores certainly happened in my time, and membership in any group (sport, music, drama) was always ultimately turned to competition to find out how much worth it had – it was supposed to encourage us, but I only remember finding it dispiriting. I've long argued that the modern paradigm makes one see all other humans as competition, and Mr Newman makes a good case that the education system plays into that, and conditions children to accept that worldview as standard. That it seems to be based in post-war psychology, and may be a cause rather than a consequence of neoliberalism, is something I'd never considered before, and carries a lot of water.
That said, on reflection I can't help wondering if a more successful testing-up regimen, combined with appropriate educational opportunities, could actually have had a more positive socialising effect on me. In Grade 5, when I was in the "extra special" class, I was more engaged with my classmates and more extroverted than, I think, I ever had been. Nevermind the academic track, what if that had been allowed to continue? I was raised in a devoutly neoliberal household, and in my alienated teenage years that gave me full permission to withdraw completely, believe that Every Man Is An Island and that humanity in general sucked. It wasn't until college that I found people whose company I genuinely enjoyed and felt a part of, and it took years after that for me to open up to humanity as a whole, and our interdependence, something I'm still learning. Would my conversion to collectivism not have taken as long, or indeed not even been a conversion at all, if not for the years upon years of hammering my square peg into a succession of round holes? But then isn't true collectivism about including everyone, round and square pegs alike?
Lots of pondering going on here tonight, which I suppose is the point of philosophy, so well done, show. But now my colouring has fallen behind, and how on earth will I win the prize with these poor time management skills?
*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
It was a very interesting show to listen to personally, because I remember being tested extensively in elementary school and being tracked into a gifted programme, though I never found out what the results of those tests were or what they were even looking for. One glorious year – Grade 5 – I was in a very small class of very bright kids, and that was the only year I remember actually being happy to get out of bed in the morning to go to school. In middle and high school, the "special" schools were an awkward commute away (and, my impression was, not worth the hassle) and I ended up going to the ordinary local ones, which I hated, but what can you do? I have always wondered what might have happened if I'd stayed on the gifted track, or had the money to go to private school, or lived in another city with better academic possibilities – ponderings which have only amplified since moving to Cambridge and seeing what opportunities and resources bright children have, here. I'm sure there was a degree of "holding me back" for "social reasons", though I never did get the hang of fitting in with my peers, and that poor fit may have contributed to an already strong feeling of alienation from the society in which we lived.
So it was interesting to hear the point of view that shunting students onto different tracks using test scores contributed to the competition-based, individualistic world we have today, given that I had always seen testing up as my only hope to find a more sympathetic environment. I can see the point, certainly, and testing has only increased since I was in school. Ranking pupils by test scores certainly happened in my time, and membership in any group (sport, music, drama) was always ultimately turned to competition to find out how much worth it had – it was supposed to encourage us, but I only remember finding it dispiriting. I've long argued that the modern paradigm makes one see all other humans as competition, and Mr Newman makes a good case that the education system plays into that, and conditions children to accept that worldview as standard. That it seems to be based in post-war psychology, and may be a cause rather than a consequence of neoliberalism, is something I'd never considered before, and carries a lot of water.
That said, on reflection I can't help wondering if a more successful testing-up regimen, combined with appropriate educational opportunities, could actually have had a more positive socialising effect on me. In Grade 5, when I was in the "extra special" class, I was more engaged with my classmates and more extroverted than, I think, I ever had been. Nevermind the academic track, what if that had been allowed to continue? I was raised in a devoutly neoliberal household, and in my alienated teenage years that gave me full permission to withdraw completely, believe that Every Man Is An Island and that humanity in general sucked. It wasn't until college that I found people whose company I genuinely enjoyed and felt a part of, and it took years after that for me to open up to humanity as a whole, and our interdependence, something I'm still learning. Would my conversion to collectivism not have taken as long, or indeed not even been a conversion at all, if not for the years upon years of hammering my square peg into a succession of round holes? But then isn't true collectivism about including everyone, round and square pegs alike?
Lots of pondering going on here tonight, which I suppose is the point of philosophy, so well done, show. But now my colouring has fallen behind, and how on earth will I win the prize with these poor time management skills?
*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.
