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moribund because they're under the influence of an outmoded, outdated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