Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse

by David Mitchell

  What separates us from the beasts, apart from fire, laughter, depression and guilt about killing the odd beast, is our curiosity. We’ve advanced as a species because we’ve wanted to find things out, regardless of whether we thought it useful. We looked at the sky and wondered what was going on – that’s why, for better or worse, we’ve got DVD players, ventilators, nuclear weapons, global warming, poetry and cheese string. And it’s for better, by the way.

  The Research Excellence Framework is starting to ask what sorts of curiosity our culture can afford, and that scares me even more than the demise of the silly survey because it strikes at the heart of what it means to be civilised, to have instincts other than survival. If academic endeavour had always been vetted in advance for practicality, we wouldn’t have the aeroplane or the iPhone, just a better mammoth trap.

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  There’s often a lot of controversy surrounding how history is taught. Maybe educationists would say I’m wrong but it seems to get discussed much more than, say, maths or geography. Politicians and hacks don’t argue about how there’s too much emphasis on the numbers five and seven while 11 is sadly neglected. At parties, no one moans about the modern obsession with the oxbow lake at the expense of the names of Asian capital cities.

  But, when it comes to history, everyone’s got a sob story: how they were taught a meaningless series of dates in an atmosphere of chalk dust and looming corporal punishment which sedated an interest in the subject that was only reawakened decades later by a visit to the Ellis Island museum. How their daughter is finding the GCSE syllabus terribly unchallenging, focusing as it does on empathising for deceased proletarians rather than learning of the triumphs of kings. How we ignore African history, or teach it to the exclusion of anything else. How we’re obsessed with battles and nationalistic glory, or can’t stop banging on about social history and what people’s wives were doing. “Kids need to know dates!” “We mustn’t bore them with dates!” everyone alternately shouts.

  Professor David Abulafia of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, seems to be of the former opinion. In a proposed curriculum for the thinktank Politeia, he’s come up with 31 events that every schoolchild should know. In a similar vein, the Department for Education has announced that it’s giving £2.7m to English Heritage to compose a list of historically interesting sites to encourage schoolchildren to visit. “We have a rich island story, which can be brought to life by seeing our historical and heritage sites,” said Michael Gove. Yes, a rich island story, all about a rich island.

  I hate the expression “island story”. People who talk about our island story are often trying to reduce history to the level of a Pride and Prejudice box set or a marketing strategy for scones. The things that happened on this island before what’s happening now are, in many cases, interesting. But they’re not a simple narrative to which we’re the happy, sad or ambiguous ending – or a shaggy-dog story with the Cameron administration as the disappointing punchline. They’re a confused series of events. Or rather our best guess at a confused series of events constructed from studying a random hotchpotch of surviving artefacts.

  For example, we don’t absolutely know that the Tudors didn’t have CDs. I mean, obviously we completely do know that, but only because of the absence of the objects themselves or related technology dating from that period. We only know it because any other inference from the available evidence would be insane, not because there’s a trustworthy place where such obvious facts are stated. We’re only ever one discovery of an album of Henry VIII covers in a priest hole away from a major re-evaluation of what all the nooks and crannies in castle walls might have been used for. (Surround sound?)

  But I must admit that “Some things happened but we’re not sure what” is a confusing message to give schoolchildren. The emphasis on teaching the past through understanding sources has led to several generations entering adult life with a pointless grasp of 1% of the skills needed to be a professional historian but no clear idea who Richard III was. They have a right to be told that he was the hunchbacked guy who said “My kingdom for a horse”. Only those doing A-level need find out that, actually, he wasn’t and didn’t.

  Society doesn’t function well unless we have shared references. When turning up at a new job, university or party, we all rely on mentioning TV characters like Spock, Bagpuss or Hitler in the confidence that others will know what we’re talking about. In the last 50 years, television has supplanted history, culture and mythology as what we have in common. We’re much more likely to have fond pub chats about Blake’s 7 than Gog and Magog.

  Now TV channels are proliferating even faster than obscure GCSE social history modules, this cosy community of viewers is dispersing. Just as jokes about Napoleon are obscure to those who only studied the history of cutlery, or disability under the Plantagenets, so the number of TV references that we all get is being drastically reduced by the bewildering quantity of viewing options.

  This gives the Gove–Abulafia approach to history a real chance of success. If everyone has learned the same 31 dates and trudged round the same 12 castles, our history (or rather, what a government-written curriculum has chosen to define as our history) could become a major national shared experience. Stand-up comedians wouldn’t do jokes about Grange Hill any more but about the visitor centre at Sutton Hoo.

  It wouldn’t much matter what dates and facts were picked. Pupils, until degree level at least, would have no way of checking the importance or even veracity of what they’d been told. It would just be an exercise in learning, like Latin or remembering what objects were on a tray before a cloth was put over it: press-ups for the brain.

  But this could present problems. Leaving aside the terrifying question of what right any central authority has to decide which are the most important historical dates and facts, this shared “island story” lacks generational demarcation. We feel ownership of “our” generation of kids’ shows, be they Battle of the Planets or whatever crap you watched if you’re not my age. But history is the same for the children as it was for the parents, just marginally longer. The history syllabus couldn’t replace popular culture as what defines our various age groups’ tribal identities unless it was deliberately changed each generation. So kids now could learn about the Jarrow crusade but, come 2020, it would need to be replaced by the suffragette movement, while the unification of Italy gets benched in favour of the war of Austrian succession.

  Advertisers would love this as it would help them to reach particular demographics. If you want to appeal to the under-25s, they’d know, you could exploit their understanding of the Crimean war, while you can always touch the over-40s with Industrial Revolution-, interregnum- or Danelaw-themed stuff. Being aware of which island story each generation has been told would be the perfect complement to accessing our Google search histories. Corporations wouldn’t just know what each of us wants, they’d also know what we know.

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  Parents’ groups were shocked to discover what the Guides have been getting up to lately. That’s not a set-up for an off-colour St Trinian’s-style joke from an era when people took a more relaxed attitude to paedophilia. I’m talking about Girlguiding UK’s officially sanctioned activities. Instead of lighting fires and tying knots, Guides are now eschewing arson and bondage in favour of giving each other makeovers and massages, and talking about celebrities. Such pastimes, with names like “Parties, Chocolate and Showtime”, “Passion 4 Fashion” and “Glamorama”, can even count towards badges, the Scouts’ and Guides’ time-honoured currency of achievement.

  As the nation’s womanhood polarises into anorexia and obesity – a minority miserably struggling to emulate the unattainable and bizarre bodies of catwalk models, and a majority defeatedly guzzling McFlurries in loose-fitting clothing, unable to express their aspirations other than by getting their toddlers’ ears pierced – this is surely the last thing we need. Guide patrols are supposed to be fresh-air-loving paramilitary groups, not weird, self-pampering, prepube
scent hen parties throwing their childhoods away learning feminine wiles. They should, as Margaret Morrissey of Parents Outloud puts it: “get dirty, look scruffy and do anything they want”. As long as what they want is to get dirty, look scruffy and sing round a campfire, rather than get a facial and bitch about Adele.

  What is the world coming to? First, that shooting spree in Afghanistan and now this. If we’re going to put a stop to our 150-year experiment in protecting the innocence of British childhood, we’d be better off sending the kids back up chimneys and into factories rather than letting them give each other boob jobs. At least child labour contributes to the economy. All this objectification of girls only pushes up the sales of blusher and leads to more teen pregnancies. The same sort of twisted precocity once made Lancastrian cotton competitive. In China, they use it to make iPhones.

  So you won’t catch me questioning people’s justification for getting cross. Still, you can’t deny that putting on makeup is a skill most women will use more often than starting a fire without matches. I’m a sort of man and even I’ve needed to apply lipstick on more occasions than I’ve had to light an outdoor fire, tie anything more complicated than a shoelace or recognise a songbird from the colour of its shit. Isn’t Girlguiding UK just responding to the realities of the modern world?

  I never joined the Scouts. Growing up in 1980s suburbia, I was convinced that fresh air and the outdoors were dated concepts. Tron provided proof. “Soon such things will be obsolete,” I thought, as I played Frogger on my BBC micro while simultaneously watching Metal Mickey – an early example of multiscreening. But had the activities on offer seemed more relevant, I might have been tempted to don a woggle and try for my dot-matrix printer maintenance badge.

  Here are some other activities that the movement should encourage in order to prepare kids for a less wholesome world.

  Texting while you’re supposed to be talking to someone in real life

  It is very rude, we can all agree, to be constantly texting when you’re supposed to be socialising in “meatspace”. On the other hand, when you receive a text message, it’s often preferable to read it and reply immediately rather than continue listening to the droning of someone who happens to be physically present. People call this hypocrisy, when in fact it’s just caring more about your own feelings than another person’s; that’s something we’re evolved to do.

  The Guides could resolve this apparent contradiction by teaching kids to text by feel. The message-sending hand could dangle covertly beneath the pub table while sympathetic eye contact is maintained with the real-world companion throughout their anecdote about builders/divorce/a friend who won’t stop texting.

  Stopping someone sitting next to you on a coach or train

  Only a psychopath would happily stretch out over a double seat while someone else has to stand. But only a saint doesn’t mind losing their own luxurious double seat before other people. Clearly, the optimal path is for the empty seat next to you to be the last to go. The trick here is to look like you might possibly be a maniac, but not to the extent of attracting wider attention. In terms of a lifetime of travelling convenience, learning these techniques has got to be a higher priority than fording streams.

  Suppression of the awareness

  Our society has a new scourge: awareness-raisers. We are surrounded by people, organisations, companies and charities desperate to raise our awareness of whatever they’re concerned with. But if we become intensely aware of everything, comparatively speaking we’re no more aware of anything. We’re just hyper-aware – paranoid, terrified, our heads buzzing with issues that don’t concern us directly. We need to be schooled, from an early age, in obliviousness – in being able metaphorically to stick our heads in the sand. The relevant badge could have a picture of an ostrich on it.

  Always having a pen

  “Be prepared!” But how is this state of preparedness to be maintained? We live in an environment of apparent pen plenty – they’re given away as freebies, left lying around, found down the back of sofas. This is all designed by a malevolent God to lull us into a false sense of security that can leave us penless in a crisis. The myth that you can ever have the right amount of pens is key to this problem: in truth, you’ve always either got none or too many.

  The trick therefore is to steal pens. Not from shops, I hasten to add, but from each other. Never use your own pen when you can borrow one and neglect to return it. In any circumstances where pens are left lying around, snaffle a fistful. Only when boxes and rooms in your house are filled with unwanted Biros can you have any confidence that you’ll have a pen when you need one.

  Online abuse

  No young person should go out into the world without a robust schooling in both ignoring and hurling online abuse. In the fraught ecosystem of the web, the demoralising effect on your rivals of anonymous bile may give you a vital competitive edge, as may an ability to ignore their retaliatory insults. Just as Scouts of old could forage and survive in the forest, the cyber-Scouts of the future must learn to be ruthless predators in the online jungle.

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  Michael Gove’s scheme to send a special edition of the King James Bible to every state school in the country has been saved. The plan, which was announced in 2011, was reported to have run into difficulties when it was decided that it wouldn’t be appropriate for taxpayers to pay for it. Instead, the bill is to be footed by leading Tory donors. That’s not to say that they’re not also taxpayers. I’m sure they are. To some extent.

  It’s going to cost £370,000, which is a lot of money if you’re a normal human. It’s not quite so much if you’re a leading Tory donor. That’s not to say that they’re not also normal humans. I’m sure they are. To some extent.

  But it’s not a lot of money for the government either, so it wouldn’t really matter if the taxpayer had paid – apart from the principle of the thing. By which I mean all the adverse publicity. People care much more about that £370,000 than about vastly greater sums being squandered or saved less interestingly.

  Just like people, some bits of money are cared about more than others. Some bits are cherished in coin collections or tax havens; others are left to fend for themselves down the back of sofas or in the budgets of lazily written action movies. In my life, the money I would otherwise spend on shampoo is very dear to me. I buy the cheapest possible shampoo. When I can steal it from hotels, I do. I use every last squirt from every bottle, eking out days’ more use from each one when most people would have thrown it away. I dote on the thought of that saved money. It may amount to as much as £14 over my lifetime. Meanwhile, the money I waste because I’m perpetually on the wrong mobile phone tariff is sent out into the world neglected and unloved.

  But this Bible distribution money is not just loved, it’s famous. It’s not part of the anonymous billions that go into servicing the national debt, or the hardworking billions that pay for doctors and nurses, or the parasitic billions that are spent on bureaucracy. It’s a celebrity, always in the papers, hobnobbing at parties with what the logo for the London Olympics cost and the price of that duck island.

  The fuss over who should pay for this scheme has, rather sadly in my view, overshadowed its goals. Which are stupid and loathsome in equal measure. First of all, the whole idea, practically speaking, is pointless. Many, if not most, of the schools to which Gove is arbitrarily sending a King James Bible will already have at least one. For those that do not, the acquisition of one copy of a book is useless for teaching purposes. And the entire King James Bible is available online anyway.

  Second, it is self-aggrandising. Every copy of Gove’s specially printed Bible has “presented by the secretary of state for education” written on it. In gold. On the spine. Not inside in small letters, but on the outside in shiny ones. That’s rude to God. And, if you don’t think God exists, it’s rude to King James, who definitely did. This grandiose sending out of a single book is not going to be of any educational use. It’s just going to annoy teachers b
ecause it’s so high-handed.

  Third, this very high-handedness is, I suspect, what appeals about the scheme to many of its fans. It’s clearly a dog whistle to a reactionary constituency who, in a lazy and uninformed way, are suspicious of the teaching profession, which they consider decadent and liberal, and of society’s general multicultural direction. “That’ll knock some sense into all those socialists and Muslims – send them a big old British Jacobean book and see how they like that!” they think.

  This allows Gove to perpetuate in the public’s minds a view of our education system in which he’s not really responsible for it. He sends out Bibles, makes speeches about how scandalous it is that private schools are so much better, moans that kids don’t learn Latin or read Shakespeare enough, argues for performance-related pay and generally makes all the right old-fashioned noises – and then everyone assumes the inadequacies of our schools must be despite, rather than because of, his efforts. In short, by this dispatching of a book, Gove is clearly implying that he’s not really on the schools’ side. He’s not asked them if they want one and made it available to those who do. He’s not bothered to check which schools already have a copy of it. He’s not trying to find out what other books they might want or be short of. He’s just dispensing the Word of Gove from on high.

  Transport minister Norman Baker would probably advocate doing it remotely. No need to drag Moses all the way up the mountain when you can just tell him what’s what over Skype. Responding to the Whitehall plan to “cut or change” 50% of civil servants’ journeys during the seven-week Olympic and Paralympic period by encouraging people to work from home, Baker said: “I’m very keen to use this opportunity to record speeches remotely.” He continued: “It’s much better value than travelling maybe hundreds of miles to make a 10-minute speech.” On top of that, you save the dry-cleaning bill – if it’s all done over the internet, people will just be hurling rotten tomatoes at their own computers.