Prophets without honour in their own land

It can be concluded that powerful bureaucratic structures have been a key factor in preventing innovation.  New ideas run the risk of disrupting established systems, of casting doubt on the wisdom of routine practices, and of raising disturbing fundamental questions about the aims of education.  The historian T.C. Smout, writing in the 1980s, stated that ‘some of the more depressing aspects of modern Scotland’ could be traced to educational institutions that ‘afforded established authority and tradition an exaggerated respect’.   And earlier this year, a report produced by the Social Market Foundation argued that Scottish education needs to be more open to innovation and experimentation if it is to make significant progress.

Scots have a self-image of being frank and forthright.  Within the professions at least, this is rarely justified.  Agreement with official policy rather than plain speaking is the dominant form of discourse at the upper levels of Scottish education. Similar tendencies can be seen in law and medicine.  Lawyers are trained to show due regard to the conventions and hierarchies of their field. Within Scotland (perhaps less so in England) the term ‘radical lawyer’ seems a contradiction in terms. Again, in medicine, there are career penalties for those who dare to question the confident pronouncements of their institutional leaders, as the experience of whistleblowers has shown. 

All this suggests that there is a deep cultural issue to be addressed, requiring us to re-examine our assumptions and values.  In his provocative book, Is Scotland Educated?, first published in 1936 and recently reissued, A. S. Neill argued that a potent mixture of residual Calvinism and ascendant capitalism, reinforced through a system of schooling that suppressed dissident voices and rewarded compliant functionaries, was at the heart of Scotland’s cultural malaise.  Is it any wonder that original, creative Scots were sometimes not honoured in their own land?