Last night I attended a Royal Society of Arts regional 'networking' meeting, my first ever and a rather daunting experience. The first thing I noticed at reception was a bold advertising card 'Do you know anybody who would like to be a Fellow?' It reminded me of Pyramid selling and Party Plan in the 70's! I was then interrupted, while I was chatting with a local architect I had not met before, to talk to a stranger by the (presumably Scandinavian) young facilitator (no, we don't do that in the south of England!) and then ushered into neatly formed discussion groups. I felt like a sixth former being controlled to speak freely. Of course it had to be this way. Sitting beside me was a young guy with trendy soft leather retro winkle picker shoes (looked pink to me but I'm colour blind) busy 'networking' on his mk3 iPad jumping up and down taking pictures and recording the experience, yet not once did he make eye contact with me sitting next to him! This is called social networking.
Two young speakers emerged and I had to choose which discussion group I joined. The first group was headed by a pretty young and self-confident woman who immediately announced 'Dementia is wonderful, depression is wonderful' campaigning for a local support group, and the other, a young guy who had a plan for kids in schools which included knowing how to set up a bank account and preparing for dinner parties. I presumed he was talking about teenagers but he may have been referring to primary school kids! I couldn't help wondering that parents lost the art of having dinner parties decades ago and that the notion of a dinner party in a secondary school in Glasgow was plain funny. As to bank accounts for the young we are still reeling from the education Industry tricking young kids into borrowing vast sums after their 'gap year' to pursue high status and high earning careers through our universities all on a plastic card! I stupidly joined the education group because that is my passion and of course got embroiled in fanciful ideas-overload making me wonder is it the process or the end result (sorry - 'outcome' is the jargon) that counts in all of this here at the RSA?
I engaged in discussion with my sub-group and another very pretty young woman with a nose piercing that glinted under the cold fluorescent lights in this church cafe, muttered something about kids being inspired to use their imagination in schools. No we can't do that, it would lead to anarchy in society, but of course I agreed with her but teachers themselves are terrified of using their imagination, they are so locked into a controlled system! I tried to get a word in saying we need to get back to kids using their hands and minds and making things, but half the problem is in the outdated use of language such as the word 'craft' in society.
And then the whistle was blown and the two group leaders stood up and revealed something I would never have imagined in all my years on this planet - the young pretty girl announced that the two groups had much common ground and would link together as educating the young and changing attitudes would lead to society changing its attitude over dementia and death. Hang on this is the RSA which is about 'fresh' thinking. Haven't we heard this before and isn't it the age old argument about whether it is the place for school to innovate or reflect what is going on in adult society and thus prepare young adults for it? Of course a bit of both goes on and school is one of the few playgrounds there is. Most teachers don't know what we are preparing young people for because who knows what jobs will be needed in the next decade alone?
One thing I learned was how the world has changed with all the social media frenzy and we were all encouraged to Twitter away. I would rather have flittered my eyelids at a pretty young woman sitting at the same table but we have lost that art and of course by my repeated use of the word 'young' here means clearly I am not part of the the club that has 'fresh' ideas! Well okay, my ideas are old but are yet to be taken up!
I was rather offended by the highly articulate facilitator saying that it is fruitless to be a lone soldier taking on projects, but when you have tried getting funding and collaboration for something you are passionate about for longer than he is old and land up funding it and doing it yourself I feel is a simple case of putting your money where your mouth is. As to depression being a wonderful thing I wondered if the pretty young lady had experienced two bouts of utterly indescribable hell in a hospital psychiatric wing and living with it on a daily basis and as to dymentia being wonderful, well, my dear half-sister Barbara suffered rapid premature dementia and died of a brain tumour not long ago. But obviously her heart is in the right place and I can see the logic of trying to make your enemy your friend. But will the research she called for be directed in creating technological gadgets that aid those suffering dementia or used to get to its causes?
The harrowing experience of someone like myself, essentially someone quite shy, and not a great 'people manipulator' who works primarily alone and gets concrete results on my own, was that the RSA's invitation to me to become a Fellow was a flattering gesture that in reality relies on my subscription to fund much younger people's (and less experienced) voices being exercised and that unless you conform to this relatively new language of social networking, you have nothing to offer, quite apart from age unless you have the title 'professor' before your name!
I would have liked the opportunity to say not long ago I was invited by my local technical college to teach a group of 16 to 19 year olds who failed everything in their schooling with no bits of paper to flash around and some were in trouble with the Police, to build an acoustic guitar. I had to teach kids with criminal records for violence to stop brandishing chisels at my face and re-direct their focus. They learned more about numeracy, literacy and discipline in that short experience making something that interest them than all the King's horses and when I met one or two of them in the street years later, they simply stopped and thanked me. I was invited to continue with this project but maintaining simple respect and discipline (that manipulating tools and materials alone demands) was so exhausting I could not go through it all over again. And why should I when discipline is a thing others should teach as a collective effort and first and foremost from their parents.
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