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Anywheres and Somewheres
By Nicholas Tate
It is not often that a single book adds new terms to political discourse and changes how people look at the world. This, however, has been the legacy among some of us of David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere (2017), a book which gave us the terms ‘Anywheres’ and ‘Somewheres’.
Goodhart’s argument is that recent social and political tensions in many societies can be explained, at least in part, by the differences between a powerful highly educated and mobile minority group which values autonomy and openness (the Anywheres) and a larger and less influential group of people who are less well educated, more rooted in their local and national communities, and socially conservative (the Somewheres). Anywheres represent 20-25% of the population and Somewheres 50%, the rest being ‘Inbetweeners’. Goodhart also has a 3-5% Anywhere sub-category of ‘Global Villagers’ familiar to those of us in international education: people at the top end of their professions and businesses, part of internationalised networks, often with homes in more than one country.
Goodhart’s main focus is the UK, though similar divisions can be found in other countries within the Anglosphere, in continental Europe, and indeed beyond. Understanding the Anywhere–Somewhere tensions helps to explain many recent political events, not least the last two US presidential elections and conflicts within and between the states of the European Union.
Goodhart is far from alone in drawing attention to this feature within contemporary societies. Furedi, in Why Borders Matter (2021), pointed to a pervasive distaste among Anywhere elites for the nation states to which Somewheres are so staunchly attached. Eatwell and Goodwin, in National Populism (2018), highlighted
growing resentment towards ‘elitist liberal democrats’ who are ‘detached from the life experiences and outlooks of the average citizen’. Lind, in The New Class War (2020), and Kotkin, in The Coming of Neo-Feudalism (2020), chronicled the widening divisions within western societies and their damaging consequences for those lower down the new class hierarchies. These books are highly recommended reading for anyone involved in educating young people beginning to manoeuvre their way around a rapidly changing world. As educators we are most effective having informed ourselves and refl ected deeply upon the context in which we are operating.
But how do Anywheres and Somewheres relate specifi cally to international schools? My experience of these schools over the last twenty years has convinced me that most (though by no means all) are fully paidup members of the Anywhere camp, with students largely from Anywhere families, educational programmes supportive of the continuing cultural hegemony of an Anywhere elite, and teachers and administrators committed to the promotion of an Anywhere ideology which is individualist, internationalist, socially liberal, sympathetic to aspects of identity politics, and open to radical change.
International schools are often explicit in their aim to prepare students for admission to (or, in many cases, continued membership of) an Anywhere elite. Students are helped to go on to appropriate higher education and specifi cally prepared for leadership in the kind of roles associated with these elites. International schools, unlike most of the world’s state schools, are not ones from which 50% or more of students are likely to go on to lifelong roles as bus drivers, plasterers, waiters, kitchen assistants, cleaners and security personnel. They also do not usually educate children most of whom are unlikely ever to move more than 20 miles from where they lived aged 14 (as with three-quarters of the British population, and the vast majority of people across the world), children whose families often have strong local loyalties and a profound sense of alienation from those who make most of the decisions that determine their lives. decisions that determine their lives. For this reason, given education’s core function of introducing students core function of introducing students to our world as it is, it must be a to our world as it is, it must be a central task of international schools central task of international schools to look outside their immediate to look outside their immediate contexts and ensure that students are contexts and ensure that students are able to experience and understand able to experience and understand how others see this world. This is not how others see this world. This is not philanthropy I am talking about, or philanthropy I am talking about, or helping people during ‘humanitarian’ helping people during ‘humanitarian’ disasters or because of special disabilities disasters or because of special disabilities and disadvantages. It is learning about and disadvantages. It is learning about people who do not want or require people who do not want or require extra help but ask only to be noticed extra help but ask only to be noticed and understood, and have their views and understood, and have their views respected and legitimate interests taken into account.
This, you may think, goes without saying, but again and again in recent years Anywhere elites have shown an extraordinary lack of empathy with Somewheres: lengthy ‘fi rst world’ Covid lockdowns privileging their society’s ‘laptop classes’ and those with big houses and gardens, and massively disadvantaging economically undeveloped parts of the world; zero carbon policies imposed from above with costs falling disproportionately on the poor; liberty-denying measures of all kinds undertaken without consultation on the grounds that ‘experts’ and the
‘exam-passing classes’ (Goodhart’s phrase) always know best.
What more, therefore, could be done to prepare students in international schools for a world in which they are likely to be or become an Anywhere, maybe even a Global Villager, but in which most of the people around them are Somewheres? I have three suggestions.
First, international schools should add to their understandable concerns for global awareness and global citizenship a similar preparation for a world in which most people are deeply attached to their nation state and where it is effective national citizenship which makes the biggest difference to people’s lives. The war in Ukraine has helped to remind us that national sovereignty really matters. An international school’s host country, its language and culture, and the large numbers of ‘Somewheres’ among its employees – coaches, teachers, clerical, kitchen, security and cleaning staff – should be one starting point. In international schools where most students are citizens of the country in which the school is located there is a particular responsibility to prepare them for national citizenship.
Second, international schools, despite best intentions, have sometimes been rightly criticised for contributing to greater economic and social inequality in their host countries, strengthening local elites to the disadvantage of the wider population, enabling students to launch careers away from countries that need their skills, and contributing to the linguistic imperialism of English at the expense of other languages. The leaders of these schools
References
• Eatwell R and Goodwin M (2018) National Populism. London: Pelican • Furedi F (2021) Why Borders Matter. London: Routledge • Goodhart D (2017) The Road to Somewhere. London: Penguin • Kotkin J (2020) The Coming of Neo-Feudalism. New York: Encounter
Books • Lind M (2020) The New Class War. London: Atlantic Books
should ask themselves if any of this applies to their own school, whether there is any discrepancy between their stated aspirations and reality and, if so, what they might do about it.
Third, as teachers we have a particular duty, not just to reflect on the wider context in which we operate, but also to examine our own perspectives and opinions on controversial ethical, political, cultural and social issues and to ensure that our biases impinge as little as possible on students’ autonomy. This is particularly important given the well-attested divergence, at least across the western world, between the Anywhere political affiliations of most education professionals and those of the majority populations from which they come.
At a time when it has been suggested that, perhaps for the first time in human history, the main influence on a young person’s world picture is more likely to come from educational institutions than from their family, there can be few more sacred duties for educators than leaving the next generation well-informed, aware of the variety of opinions which exists in the world, liberated from all kinds of ‘groupthink’, and able to make up its own mind about how this world should develop in the future. ◆
Nicholas Tate has been a chief adviser to England’s education ministers, and from 2003 to 2011 was Director-General of The International School of Geneva. ✉ nick@nicholastate.com
