Where your head comes from

We are social animals. Partly due to nature (genes) and partly due to nurture (learning). There are many ways of being social, and of arranging the nurturing. Amongst these is more or less formal schooling at primary, secondary and further levels. How powerful are these particular enculturation processes? Can the education system be a revolutionary hotbed or is it condemned to reproduce the existing systems? 

In what follows I present five short biographies by way of noting similarities and differences. And I  invite you to sketch your own story. Who was an influence on you, when, and in what way? In short, “Where does your head come from”?

Boris Johnston was a newborn in 1964. His genes set the broad foundations upon which his culture built copies of itself. His influential family would have presented the first set of inputs; then he was banished to an exclusive, single sex, private, boarding school (Eton); then to Oxford University to read Classics and to be initiated as a member of the Bullingdon Club by trashing up-market restaurants and burning a £50 note in front of a beggar. He has since tried to distance himself from the club, calling it "a truly shameful vignette of almost superhuman undergraduate arrogance, toffishness and twittishness." After Oxford he was a journalist before getting involved in politics (Conservative party) and becoming Mayor of London.

David Cameron was a newborn in 1966. Then he was despatched to an exclusive, single sex, private boarding school (Eton); then to Oxford University to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics and to be a member of the Bullingdon Club at the same time as Johnston. After Oxford he was a researcher and special advisor to the Conservative Party before becoming an MP and then Prime Minister.

Both the Confucians and the Jesuits are quoted as saying, “Give me the child till he is 5 (or maybe 7?) and I will give you the man.” This usually involves removing the child from the family home and subjecting it to Spartan, monastic and often sadistic routines in single sex, private, boarding schools.

I was a newborn in 1949. I admit to bias and stereotyping because (a) I went to the local, co-educational, comprehensive, day school (b) I read Zoology at Aberdeen University and (c) I served as a teacher then as an international education advisor in five countries.

I worked in two rural, co-educational, government, boarding schools in Zambia in the late 70s. The government policy at the time was to deliberately ship secondary school students away from their home areas so as to (a) gain experience of students from different tribal regions of the country and (b) be removed from their traditional tribal roots and thus become ‘modern’ in thought, speech and behaviour.

Mary Ngoroje was a newborn in 1960. She was born and brought up in rural Zambia. She passed the primary school leaving exam and appeared in my boarding school in 1976. I remember her one evening standing at the door of her dormitory switching the electric light on and off in amazement. She had a lot to learn about modernity eg how to use toilet paper, how to obey the clock, and how to study.

Tedson Mphongo was also newborn in about 1960. He was born and brought up on the modern Copper Belt and was bemused to follow his schooling in a rural environment. I remember him on several occasions asking astute questions about the creation v evolution debate. He was playing me off against Sister Caritas, an English Nun who ran the English Department. I imagine that he has done well for himself.

Whilst studying Zoology at Aberdeen I committed to zero population growth. So I have no children of my own. I have, however, spent more than 10 years ‘educating’ adolescents in Scotland, Jamaica, Zambia, and the S Sudan, and another ten years ‘advising’ the governments of S Sudan, Belize and Lesotho on how to manage their education systems.

All cultures are different and most are complicated. There is division of labour and different sets of rules for me, us and them. People argue about status and their place in the hierarchy. There is therefore a need for what is variously called education, training, enculturation, brainwashing, or enlightenment.

SO – where does your head come from, would you rather have a different one, and how would you arrange the change?

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It would be interesting to hear about where YOUR head comes from. You can use a comments box at the bottom of this post. Comments on other posts would also be welcome.