|
Ed,
Are you really arguing that environment has no
effect upon learning or personality? That growing up next to
those things is the same thing as growing up on the plains of Canada and having
them in your history? Or that the wonderful Canadian sky
and all of that clarity is no better than the weather in London or Stuttgart and
that it has no effect on you?
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2003 4:45
PM
Subject: Re: This sceptred compost heap
(was Re: [Futurework] Education
I'm in maroon this
time.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2003
12:42 PM
Subject: This sceptred compost heap
(was Re: [Futurework] Education
Ed,
Thanks for this. I've read three different
summaries of this same OECD report this morning!
I've just come back
from a dogwalk and still dwelling on what I wrote after sending you my
previous posting. What was occurring to me is that the reason for a number
of the arguments we have is that our societies are much more different than
we might imagine -- or at least I might imagine anyway. Time and again, I
describe things going on here and I get the impression from some of your
slightly nonchalant responses sometimes that you might be thinking that I am
exaggerating. I also get the impression that you live in a much more laid
back -- indeed much happier and less stressed -- society than here.
Hitherto, I've regarded the difference as a personality one. However, during
the dogwalk -- and I hope you don't think I'm being patronising here -- I
think our society is more complex than yours because we have so many layers
of history. Please don't think I'm trying to show off -- but consider. We
were building quite complex stone buildings at the tip of Scotland and in
the south of England before the pyramids were built. By 1,000BC we had
probably the most complex bronze technology in the world (apart from
China's), using tin from Cornwall and copper from north Wales, with,
correspondingly, a very advanced mining technology (scores of tin mines
stretching for miles under the sea bed in Cornwall and over 50 miles of
recently discovered tunnels in north Wales from that date -- made with bone
and stone tools), and with significant manufacturing areas somewhere in
between (not yet discovered) to actually make the bronzes (of different
blends for different purposes) and then trading the products over thousands
of miles from the Baltic through to the Mediterranean. Then we've been
invaded by the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Vikings and Danes, and the
Normans with their advanced feudal system followed by the landowning
classes. We were at the back-end of the Mediterranean Renaissance but one of
the first into long-distance trading with Asia and big trading companies,
the first into the Western Scientific Enlightenment and then the Industrial
Revolution, and the first into the computer revolution. We are the
third/fourth largest exporting country in the world -- not of products
(we're mined out of almost everything we ever had by way of resources), but
of a variety of services. In short, we probably have the most mature job and
social structure of anywhere in the world. We live by our wits. We may not
have the sheer mass, momentum or technological products that the Americans
have got but I think we lead the world in the acquisition of problems,
strains and stresses from all this historical/technological development.
We're a well-rotted compost heap, showing extremes of anything that can be
discussed in terms of job structure and society. In addition, we're also
geographically small enough to have started the most comprehensive welfare,
educational, social services, health and transport services in the
world and now we're the furthest advanced in showing that they're breaking
down -- that the welfare society is absolutely cram full of problems and
we're showing them all in abundance, so much so that even a Labour
government is trying to privatise as much as it can get away with (albeit in
more cunning ways that Thatcher did). The only other country which has had
such a complex history as ours, running through the whole gamut of every
type of economic and technological development is China. I cannot think of
any other with such a varied experience and with so many historical residues
which are still fermenting away.
A couple of
points, Keith. One is that, for most Canadians, your history is
also our history. Whenever I've been to Europe, I've felt quite at
home because my people shared in the building of your ancient civilizations
and the monuments they left behind just as your people did. When we
were in Ireland a couple of years ago, we visited a famine burial ground in
the far west of the country. My wife's and daughter's ancestors
could have been among the famine victims buried there. We visited
Knouth and Newgrange which could also have been their ancestral burial
grounds. Then in County Carlow, we visited the gravesite of my wife's
multi-great grandmother, who was buried there in 1799. We also visited
Vinegar Hill in Wexford, where a multi-great grandfather was killed.
But it doesn't end there. Both the multi-great grandmother and
grandfather (different families) were British landowners who had likely
migrated from Somerset. I think you get my point. Your history
is also our history. However, it goes well beyond that. Our
institutions, our laws and indeed our democratic processes were inherited
from you. They were modified to suit our purposes, but they differ
only in detail and degree.
The other point is
that I cannot see our society as being less complex than yours. With
perhaps the exception of some Tibetan monks living in the most isolated of
monasteries, we all share the world and it is not a simple world. Like
England, we too have comprehensive health, education and social services
that are in various stages of growing, maintaining a stability or
declining. The socialist ideals of 19th Century Europe caught on here
and flourished into a society that has tried its very best to provide good
services to its citizens. Margaret Thatcher's neo-conservative ideals
also caught on here so that one lot of politicians is trying to take apart
what another lot built up. We are in a continuous process of
reappraising our health, education and social services, and coming to any
real conclusion about what they should be like and who they should serve is
still a distant dream and will probably remain so.
I don't think we
will ever really know whether we are a mature society or not. I would
suggest that it really doesn't depend much on history, but on how we are
able to handle our problems in the here and now. You are suggesting
that England has a difficult time in coping with the provision of its
various social services. You also seem to suggest that Canada may have
less of a problem. Does that make Canada a more mature society
than England? Perhaps, but I really don't think so.
I'm very probably over-egging the pudding (once again without
wishing to be patronising in any way at all) but, in comparison, Canada's
(and America's) social, economic, historical, cultural problems are somewhat
simpler than ours. I'm not suggesting in any way that you are personally
naive, but I think that your problems can be stated (and solved) in much
more simplistic terms than could be done here. However, I believe that many
of the trends and problems here in England that I am writing about will come
to you, too, in due course -- because we are much further on in what I
believe to be the decline of the industrial revolution.
I've dealt with this in the
foregoing. I can't for one moment think that any country's problems
are more simple than any other's. Each country has its unique
characteristics, but to classify these as more simple or more complex is a
bit of a stretch. Speaking of compost heaps, we are currently into an
election here in Ontario and will probably be into a national election
soon.
Ed
|
