SCOTLAND'S greatest living philosopher, Dr George Davie, took precious
time away from his latest project to telephone the following statement
to me:
''The visit of Noam Chomsky to Glasgow in January is a very
significant episode in the present crisis of Scottish education. It is
organised round the gifted writer James Kelman who found great stimulus
in the philosophy department at Strathclyde Univ-ersity. The Chomsky
conference provides a complete answer to the official decision to close
philosophy at Strathclyde on the grounds of its being an ivory tower
that had no relevance to life outside.
''What is especially interesting about this affair is that it confirms
the point, rightly made by Turnbull and Beveridge in their recent book,
The Eclipse of Scottish Culture, that the tradition of Scottish
philosophy is much more alive outside the Scottish universities than in
them.''
Everyone associated with the Chomsky visit is eager to hear Davie
speak, and he hopes at least to be present. But at present all his time
is taken up with reading (including everything that Andrew McPherson has
written) for further vital writing on Scottish education.
George Davie has become the guru of a growing number of Scottish
philosophers, writers and others concerned with the destiny of the
nation in general and our education system in particular, which he
described as being ''completely fractured'' in a recent Herald
interview.
''Most philosopy departments in Scottish universities are completely
moribund because they're under the influence of an outmoded, outdated
Anglo-Saxon analytical tradition,'' says Peter Kravitz, editor of the
influential Edinburgh Review. ''It should be a national disgrace that
George Davie never became professor at Edinburgh University, though he
would be the last to complain.''
An American who came to Scotland 10 years ago, Kravitz studied
politics and philosophy at Edinburgh University. ''It was dismal. I got
most of my enlightenment from a superb Chinese lecturer merely because,
whether he realised it or not, he exemplified a Scottish tradition of
roaming across disciplines and popularising complex issues.''
Kravitz is a founder member of the Free University of Scotland which,
in association with the magazine Scottish Child, is bringing Chomsky,
philosopher and political activist, to an event at Govan in January.
The Chomsky coup arises out of a commission from the Edinburgh Review
to the Scottish writer James Kelman to write an essay on Chomsky. In his
respectful criticism Kelman has drawn on arguments propounded by Davie.
''Jim Kelman and I are both mutual admirers of George Davie's work,''
says Kravitz. ''Chomsky is unaware of a lot of Scottish philosophical
development, as are many people.''
Kelman asked Chomsky to stop over in Glasgow on a London trip, but the
philosopher's diary was full of world-wide engagements for two years
ahead. Six months later, however, he wrote to say that he'd had a
cancellation. Derek Rodger, editor of Scottish Child, explains: ''By
coincidence I'd been corresponding with Chomsky because Scottish Child
was interested in staging something to do with childhood and
nationhood.''
The ''coincidence'' has been turned into a two-day event on 10 and 11
January, called Self-determination and Power. Kravitz explains the
theme: ''A country has to know itself, going forward through each person
re-inventing himself. But this is a very difficult task and something
that a lot of post-Govan nationalists haven't faced up to.''
Central to this educative process is the Free University of Glasgow,
''a decentralised and loose network to bring together people of
different ages and different classes who are completely outside orthodox
educational establishments, but who still want to continue to debate and
discuss issues outwith a small-minded Labour or SNP party caucus.
''The Free University is something that everybody can use, and it's
replicating itself over all the place at the moment. It's no coincidence
that it comes at the time of closure and narrowing of the university
system.''
There are no lecturers or tutors in this mobile university, but
recommended study includes the works of W.R.D. Fairbairn, J.D.
Sutherland and R.D. Laing.
Kravitz describes Fairbairn, father of the flamboyant Sir Nicholas, MP
and artist, as ''probably one of the most important post-Freudians'' and
reminds us that ''J.D. Sutherland set up the Scottish Institute of Human
Relations in Edinburgh, a little-known sector for therapy and
counselling which arose out of his experiences as the first medical
director of the Tavistock Clinic in London.
''Sutherland came to Scotland and realised that, in order to be
politically free, the country also had to free itself from all the
different familial, religious and spiritual traumas which hadn't been
worked through.
''If Scottish commonsense philosophy could be linked with the
sophisticated advances of people like Fairbairn, Sutherland and Laing,
then linked to progressive political self-determination, you're on to
something.''
But how do Scottish people achieve this freedom? ''Scotland is a very
macho, very violent culture and people are often the victims of traumas
that are not of their own making -- traumas passed down through many
generations, insecurity complexes leading to alcoholism, leading to
denial of emotions, leading to bringing up screwed-up children and all
the problems of a claustrophobic family where love is sometimes
synonymous with violence. I'm talking some of R.D. Laing's words here.''
But it isn't only the teaching of philosophy in Scottish universities
that Kravitz and his Free University friends are worried about. ''Any
university that tries to teach English literature, not only without
including a proper amount of Scottish literature, but without allowing
you to read European writers in translation, is a severely limited
university system. It's a charge that Jim Kelman made against
Strathclyde University when he was a mature student there.''
Could the Free University put pressure on the traditional Scottish
system to change? ''It's a bit like New Forum now in East Germany; it's
not seeking to replace an establishment or to become a political party.
It's seeking just to keep a whisper of free intellectual debate going,
which is not found in the universities or the political parties in
Scotland. In a small country a cluster of networks like this might
actually have some effect.''
Members of the Free University dispute that intellectual attainment is
confined to university and social classes. ''Chomsky has said that many
people are intellectuals, stretching beyond the middle classes, witness
the finesse of argument and vigour of debate present in phone-in sports
debates on American television.
''There's a similar example, the football commentator, the late Jimmy
Sanderson who was on Radio Clyde on Saturday evenings. He would leap
down people's throats. The level and intricacy of debate and of logic
would have put a lot of Oxford logicians to shame.''
Could Scottish universities produce such liberated individuals? ''The
best thing you could hope for is to put constant pressure on these
institutions. The problem with the narrowing of Scottish universities is
not just the familiar debate of anglicization, but also the fact that
working-class people can often no longer go because they can't get
proper overdrafts, unlike the middle classes.''
Kravitz believes that a ''proper thorough national psychoanalysis'' is
needed in Scotland, but our universities haven't even supplied the
couch, never mind the analyst. ''There's a complete failure on the part
of university psychology and philosophy departments. They're involved in
a world-wide specialist career network; they can't be expected to keep
up with the debates and demands of ordinary people.''
He refers contemptuously to ''the small-minded administrators who live
in every Scottish university and allow London to run the show. The
terror is that if Scotland is liberated and is able to determine its
future from a boring parliament of political specialists centralised in
Edinburgh, it'll be the same small-minded administrators who'll be
running the universities.''
Derek Rodger of Scottish Child, a magazine that is enjoying phenomenal
success, says that ''by no stretch of the imagination'' are Scottish
schools succeeding in the educational process. He argues: ''Teachers are
compelled, under the circumstances in which they operate, to act and
think defensively.'' Schoolteachers have put their
ames down for the two-day Govan event to learn from Chomsky (listed in
Who's Who in America as an ''educator'') and other speakers, including
the Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, African writers, and Jim Kelman, whose
latest novel, A Disaffection, is about a Scottish teacher. But the 300
seats are filling up rapidly at #10 a day (#6 concessionary).
#10 per day.162120 Nov 89
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