Everyone’s an expert In a world of shouty, binary discourse, expertise and mastery should not be undermined. Wisdom must triumph in modern education, says Tom Arrand, Head of Cardiff Sixth Form College
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esponding to his concerns over the rise of fascism in Europe, Bertrand Russell noted in his 1933 essay, The Triumph of Stupidity, that, “The stupid are cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt”. His analysis, that people seek comfort in straightforward answers to complicated problems, resonates with us today and it can easily be suggested that the rise of social media exacerbates this problem, making everyone an expert, giving everyone a voice and condensing each proclamation into a limited number of characters or (for even greater impact) a wellcrafted meme. Debate over complex issues is reduced to the ‘hurrah/boo’ quality outlined by AJ Ayer, where ethics is little more than a shouting match.
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How should schools respond? This question is asked whenever society faces a conundrum. Issues of significance over the past 12 months require no introduction into this discussion and at every juncture, schools are expected to provide the solution. The list of themes and content that schools should be teaching is endless and, if curriculum time were given to each of these, there would be none left to deliver academic syllabuses. That is not to suggest that schools do not play a vital role in the broader education of the next generation. They do. The question of educational aims, however, requires further thought. At the height of the Brexit debate in 2016, a leading Leave minister, famously asserted that, ‘the people of
