We saw in the last two blogs that the slow disintegration of our society as an organic whole  (the rotting effect) might be halted by introducing a radical change in state education. State education MUST TRY to inculcate all its learners into a sense of responsibility to, and membership of,  society. The whole purpose of education is to secure the continuance of the enduring common culture of a society. An education system which conspicuously avoids trying to inculcate the enduring, existential values of its society is a complete absurdity.

So we need to be clear —very clear— about the complexion of our society’s enduring culture. What past moments are we proud of?  Which of the high points of the track record are most deeply felt? Which are the most clarified examples of our cherished values?

To expect the children (immigrant or established) to turn themselves into responsible citizens of a vibrant society which is in a state of total muddle about its own culture… this is an outrageous,  impossible ask.

Here in the UK we have accepted, ever since WW2, wave after wave of immigration, at a time, unfortunately, of minimal public clarity about the essence of our way-of-life.  Instead of clarity, we have been living through a period of deep confusion —over what our society’s core culture really is.  So how can we expect enthusiastic, anglophile immigrants to begin to know how to integrate themselves into a culture which doesn’t know itself?

As Colin Alexander says, education failure puts us all at risk.  (New English Review August 2024) But what is the ‘it’ which is failing?  Education began hundreds of years ago from the premiss that society needs to convey its core culture to the young generations.  The imperative energising this ‘core culture’ must be contributive. The young need to be made aware that everyone must earn their huge package of citizenship benefits… by contributing to the whole.  Everything on which we rely is someone else’s work contribution… to the commongood.  So minding the commongood must serve as the main driving emotion behind education. It is not just a work ethic, which can be motivated by personal gain: our total obligation to society is much greater than the rewards we are lucky enough to receive.

We need this intensity in schools.   To let the “couldn’t care less post modern pandemonium” culture (=today’s street Status Quo) into classrooms is disastrous. This implies that schools must embrace the power of logical, rigorous reasoning. They need to become citadels of the best ideals of the society, not tame followers of its sloppy, cynical, pathological loss of standards.

The massive immigration into the UK since WW2 is simply a fact.  Commentators say that 45% of the population of London is now composed of ethnic groups.  This is a huge influx of broadly sympathetic, but partly alien, partly ambiguous, culture, which came-into and mixed-with a host culture which happened to be stuck to the floor,  making little progress in working-out what its core values were.

This influx overload needs to be accommodated by turning up the commongood imperative in education.  At the present time the school Status Quo focus seems to be bent on (feebly) “empowering” the individual and (feebly) “training” her/him (in a  substandard, technicist fashion, one which crassly ignores the commongood.)   Common human values should always underly genuine ‘skills’.

The education system ought never to have been handed-over to banal, valuefree, so-called “cognitive scientists”: this ticked all the wrong boxes.  It paralysed the core UK enduring culture, neutralised the outside cultural assumptions of the immigrants, and destroyed any chance that the main immigrant population would take-on the historic enduring UK core culture.

The UK’s unique enduring culture used to be the envy of the world.  It was a mixture of basic Christianity, realistic Shakespearean psychology,  Newtonian logic and Darwinian empiricism.  It implied minimum governmental intervention, and relatively “free” public behavioural norms… which allowed a vein of richly reflective pragmatic thinking to thrive. (This freedom also had a nasty downside,  in that it let-in aberrations like the slave trade and the satanic mills… fortunately they were both eventually removed.)  However, as the responsibilities and burdens of a large empire mounted, prudence slowly became the dominant motif of the society, and the UK began foolishly to neglect its priceless open-minded exceptionality…  It began to copy the dirigiste, authoritarian elite-driven polities of France and Germany.

The exceptionality and sturdy confidence of our culture finally crashed with the toppling of Isaac Newton from the top of the mathematical tree in 1919.  With this development our formerly supremely confident, down-to-earth, open-minded approach to science took a terrible existential knock.

It shouldn’t have, because the concept of spacetime, which became the Official Story, implied that the future was already there. Nothing could be more inimical to commonsense, creativity or scientific insight. If the future was already there, life was pointless. Nothing could be changed, nothing could ever be achieved… it was already there, set in stone.

The 20th century was lumbered with this monstrous death-wish mindset.

A cloud has now lifted. We are well into the 21^st century.  We are also exceptionally fortunate that this nightmare has passed: anti-maths has been recognised… an amazingly unexpected insight which was completely hidden by the routine regimentality of maths. The absurdity of spacetime can now be discarded and forgotten.

Anti-maths plainly shows how the behaviour of light can be relativistic without imposing infinite rigidity and timelessness onto everything. It shows why space is three dimensional, why nothing can move more quickly relative to something else than light, why we can all enjoy our freewill. A new dawn has dawned.  Our former open-minded, down-to-earth approach to science can live once more. When it has all sunk-in, it will be possible to restore the civilised disciplines of the past.

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