When did you first think of yourself as smart? (Or conversely,
when did you first start thinking you were dumb?) And who told you that?
The University of Bath taught me I was smart (please
note I avoid using the word intelligent.) But I didn’t arrive there until I
was 24 and up until the time they offered me a place I never believed I was the
sort of person who could go to a university! A fellow student demonstrated a
profound lesson in thinking and attitude on the very first occasion we met. It
was week one and we were at the ‘fresher’s fayre’ where everyone signed up for
the various clubs and societies which promised to transform your social life. Without
thinking too much about it I simply joined the political society which was the most
representative of my views at the time. I noticed another guy doing the same,
but it soon became clear that, with deliberate intention and forethought, he
was going around the room joining all the political societies. Now my brain
registered that this was interesting - why not get a range of political thought
and knowledge? But it wasn’t until months later that I appreciated, from within
just one group, how much the activities of all the groups were focused on what
all the others were doing!
I soon discovered too, that my new friend, almost 5 years
younger, was smarter than me in many other ways. He wasn’t bothered about what
kind of degree he got, as long as he got one. But this attitude was born out of
a confidence that he already knew he could pass. The question of the hour for
him was therefore how little need be done to pass, therefore allowing him to get
on with what interested him - which ranged from the highly intellectual, to just
messing around at the university’s radio station. I on the other hand, started
out lacking in intellectual confidence, but at least knew I didn’t know. All I
did, having previously worked at a nine-to-five job, was apply the same amount
of effort and routine to studying. Indeed, my work experience had counted a
little towards my admission in the first place, since my academic
qualifications came nowhere near the number of points required for admission by
the university, let alone actually achieved by my fellow students. But now, as
far as I could observe, they didn’t care nor need to put in the hours I did.
However, after about a year of getting to know the other
students I decided I had caught up with them by putting in those extra hours,
and that what was at fault - as long suspected - was the notion of
‘intelligence’ itself. But equally, there was the realisation that ‘exam
passing’ was a particular set of skills, in and of itself. But the overriding
lesson of my early period at university was an increasing awareness of two
elements in my consciousness, the absence of which I have since attributed to
me being trapped in a ‘can’t do culture.’ Reading across and around the various
suggested reading on offer, led first to a rather shocking insight that my taken-for-granted
view of reality and how the world worked was not the only possible one! That
there were other models of reality, equally as sophisticated, with a common-sense
understanding of their own which could equally well explain the facts I saw
around me. Indeed now it seemed the certainty of those facts themselves was
under threat. Such models suggested other ways of being in the world, other
competencies and if taken-up, offered opportunities to do many things I’d
assumed I couldn’t do. Secondly, and more frightening still, it was legitimate
to argue in an essay for any view of the world I liked, as long as the form of
argument, conformed to a number of academic standards. The shock of realisation
was as profound as when as a young child you walk into a new friend’s home and
realise that the rest of the world doesn’t live as ‘we do’ at home. Over the
years those skills for critical analysis and judgement of ways of living (my
subject was Sociology after all) have led to as many negative conclusions as
positive ones about my own background and upbringing. After three years I came
away with a first class honours degree and a sense of intellectual confidence
which has never left me, but also an abiding question; where did the, ‘can’t
do’ come from? And why also, in other areas of my life should it persist? I
write elsewhere of my experience of being a psychiatric patient for almost 30
years.
I assume nothing is beyond my understanding, although I
can never know everything. I’ll never be able to do the Math of relativity or
quantum mechanics but I can visualise the topography of light bent by a massive object in the four dimensions of space-time, equally I can see how a Feynman diagram
illustrates the paths and interactions of subatomic particles, allowing for the
calculation of probabilities high enough for anything electronic to be built on
the back of it. But emotionally I have remained crippled in many ways, despite
insight into my problems. An intellectual understanding of human behaviour does
not lead necessarily to change in actual behaviour. In childhood I picked up
the message that much was beyond me, but that one could find a place, in what I
was assured was a growing meritocratic society.
I was born in 1959, but it might as well have been 1945
in terms of the socio-cultural ideas with which I was raised. My parents approach
to life was imbued with the post-war philosophy of a welfare state within a
growing capitalist economy. My father worked in local government, he had
trained as an architect and town planner, he considered himself a
‘professional’ and to be exercising an expertise appropriately ceded to him by
others; in exchange he deferred to the expertise of other professionals who
equally assumed special knowledge in their own areas – particularly educationalists
and health professionals. We grew up expecting that with the right
qualifications (and a willingness to move around the country) we could choose
careers and expect advancement leading to the economic resources to buy houses
and raise families who in turn might expect even great prospects than
ourselves. All of this was available if we recognised where our talents might
lie and applied ourselves. My subjective experience was somewhat different.
Whilst still in the reception class of my infants school
I remember getting 6 out of 10 on a spelling test and despite my best efforts
feeling ashamed. Already, from somewhere I got the message I was not good
enough and was letting somebody down. When I was 12 or 13 I went after school
to the local teacher training college to meet with a lecturer (who later became
the local university’s first Professor of Education) because tests showed I was
four years behind in my writing and reading! Much remedial work followed plus
years of failing exams before at age 22 a lecturer at the local college who I
liked and trusted, confused me by saying I should apply for university. By then
I was firmly convinced all careers advisers were charlatans and I only took the
advice of friends I trusted, yet here was one telling me there was more to me
than I had supposed myself. Interestingly my parents still cautioned against
further disappointment, though my sister, and they themselves, had all achieved
a higher education.
The key event as a child had been failing the 11 plus
exam, this was what for many years decided the shape of secondary education in
the UK, those who passed went to separate and better resourced state schools.
The exam was intended as a measure of intelligence and a predictor of
developing abilities. Now the education system is selective in other ways, but
it remains the case that most people’s common-sense understanding of
personality and child development is that childhood is the moment of
opportunity, for afterwards personality and capabilities are much more stable
and enduring. Those who believe in democracy, latch-on to ideas such as ‘equality
of opportunity’ and anything else that may make society more meritocratic. Alas
this has meant an ever expanding public sector and the attempt by the
bureaucratically minded to develop ever more complex rules to ensure equality
of outcomes - systems, which run on ideas about capabilities and the judgement
of certificated experts. Somehow out of this, I and millions of others have
come to feel excluded despite over the years being in receipt of a
disproportionate amount of public resources!
Somewhere along the line my emotional education never
caught up with my intellectual achievements - whilst I understand only too well
that every thought comes from somewhere and always carries with it an emotional
tag. With enough intellectual confidence you can be a genuine scholar
throughout life, focused on the ‘pleasure of finding things out’ rather than on
status or reward. But even being able to apply intellect to emotional life is a
limited advantage. But with each insight of the academic community into what in
nature holds families and communities together there comes a new group of
experts demanding to spend more of the public’s money to assure rights and
entitlements to the very things which cannot be legislated for.
