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A hero for today: Trump or Gump?

E T Ranger compares and contrasts

We need heroes. Who do we identify with? In those imaginary pre-industrial village times beloved of pop psychology, it was our fathers and mothers, and we aimed to be as good as they at whatever craft the family practised. Boys, we used to be told, might aspire to be blacksmiths, or farmers, or hunters, or camel-drivers – and girls to be mothers. Today, especially in the allegedly wide world served by international schools, we have myriad models available to us.

One is the Trump model. Given a million dollar launchpad, and the confidence that comes with being richer than most people roundabout, one can make a fortune, and many people would accept that as their aim in life. Very few of us will follow that pattern, but we may have much in common with it. An expatriate child growing up in a developing country, attending an elite international school with fee assistance from a major employer, may have a comfortable sense of privilege and an image of a ladder of ambition on which we start half way up.

Another is the Gump model. Forrest Gump started with physical, intellectual and social disadvantages in an impoverished single-parent family, and in due course life delivered all the miraculous events which the mythology of his home community could picture. This creed of infinite ‘can do’ is a staple of lands of great and institutional inequality, where the climb from the depths is clear and the target obvious. Cinderella, Aladdin and his lamp, Dick Whittington and his cat, are all similar fantasies from past eras which

I recall being told by a West African girl’s guardian that she had been set a target of GCSEs, failing which would lead to her being sent home and married.

thread their story through the social fabric of their day to ultimate triumph.

What are these stories trying to tell us, and why is that message so attractive?

The Trump model is one in which the starting point is already well clear of poverty or disadvantage; social miracles by which one overcomes great handicaps are no part of the picture. The demons to be overcome by the adventurous entrepreneur are the nameless regulators who restrict enterprise, but this isn’t half as much fun as a giant that eats children, or a half-decent dragon. This is not the trope for small children. The really gritty tales in the modern repertoire are along Gump lines, and they don’t tell such a jolly message. Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiegel, Thelma and Louise: these are road movie themes to warn of the potential for disastrous outcomes on Life’s journey. They might serve as warnings for teenagers, but not as dreams for little ones. Indeed, Miguel de Cervantes’ own life story topped the fictional adventures of his hero, but it still ended tragically. Faust, Peer Gynt, King Lear, Lemminkainen, War and Peace: in adult literature the great tragedies seem to outnumber the success stories. Is it that we make rosy promises to motivate children, but discover as adults that the enjoyment of life is in surviving?

How long can or should we continue to tell the Gumpian fairy stories? ‘Fairy story’: there’s a loaded expression! We all know that it is used to dismiss or trivialise an alternative account that we ourselves reject. Yet our heroic models, whether placed in our particular picture of history or in a fantastic other or future world, are an opportunity to offer images that incite children to try. The crunch comes when we must decide for how long we should promote targets which we know almost everyone will fail to reach. Meritocracies generate more losers than winners. In ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, T S Eliot had Thomas a Becket say ‘Ambition comes when early force is spent, and we find no longer all things possible’. There seems to be a need for personal nuance in our promises, in the targets we offer our students, making some rewards available without diminishing the value of success. And to get this right we need to listen to their parents, because those are the voices which dominate their lives and frame their aims. There must be a danger that if we leave realism too late it can only induce cynicism and a loss of trust. Felipe Fernández-Armesto writes that every parent telling their children about Santa Claus is committing themselves to a future betrayal, when they will have to admit, or confirm, the ugly rumour that … but here I feel I should be careful what I say!

Part of the creed of colonial countries is the ambition to make something out of nothing. In a ‘new’ land one is no longer classified by position on the Old Country’s rigid scale of inherited worth, or required to complete the traditional canon of socially necessary education, so one can aspire to success by effort alone. Targets are accessible, and to be achieved by will, not skill. Respect in this world is earned, not inherited. Or so we promise. Well, yes, but … This is a cruel deception if we take it literally. Certainly we liberals all aim for a just world in which effort is rewarded. But in terms of employability, wealth, respect, social success, influence, the true story is so much more complicated. Once merit is to be earned, a hierarchy arises on a competitive basis. Not just where you end up, but how far you have got, by each stage. Walking at 9 months, working the TV remote control at two years, using an iPhone at four, reading at five ... And to oppose the training of the home, family and nation is to claim ownership of the child. Surely this isn’t our right? I recall being told by a West African girl’s guardian that she had been set a target of GCSEs, failing which would lead to her being sent home and married. This makes practical and moral sense in a certain view, and it is our job to understand how to calculate the view that will give her the most happiness in her future. I don’t recall that we saw marriage as the immediate priority.

It is all very well for us educators, often the coastal collegeeducated elite of the USA, known as Weird – Western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic – societies, and their equivalents from other English-speaking countries. We proclaim that education is the key to all worthwhile success; isn’t that how we got where we are? But popular votes in the USA and UK have shown that other communities exist. Which of these do we nourish/aid/assist/promote? Gump is a comfort for the less fortunate, but a fantasy. A growing problem is the veracity/validity of the models. Because we can see a little about a lot of people, we can easily espouse remote models of whom we know little. In their turn, Influencers seeking quantity of contact rather than quality can manage their presentation so that the visible image is amazing. But it is a fiction. Money is showered upon celebrities and Influencers in proportion to the quantity of contacts, regardless of their quality. If money is accepted as the measure of good, then John Lennon’s claim to be better known than Jesus Christ is a claim not merely to fame, but to merit.