Educating Insular Minds

Most people would agree that anti-social behaviour – from taunts and intimidation to exploitation and violence – should be curbed. But what can education do about it?

One way to approach this problem is to focus on the degree of mental insularity that needs to be overcome. There is a wide spectrum of propensity for interpersonal engagement amongst the young. At one end, there are those who empathise with others, respect their concerns, are well disposed and equipped to talk things through even when there are disagreements, and seek others’ views before acting in ways that may affect them. At the other, we have those who tend not to register others’ feelings, are often oblivious to their perspectives, rigidly refuse to discuss or even listen to contrary arguments whatever the evidence, and act as they please regardless of what others may think.  

The challenge for educators is to help the young develop in the direction of reducing their mental insularity and becoming more inclined and able to engage with others constructively. There are three key components to achieving this:

·      Empathic Thoughtfulness: moving the learners’ moral sensibility outwards through an expanding circle so they can appreciate how others might feel, and are more disposed to take the wellbeing of others into consideration.

·      Cognitive Thoughtfulness: developing the learners’ critical and collaborative reasoning skills so they have a better understanding of the roles of objective evidence and logical argument, and can deliberate with others in assessing what warrants belief.

·      Volitional Thoughtfulness: cultivating the learners’ control of impulse and lethargy so that they are disposed to act appropriately in light of the informed views of others, and avoid irresponsible choices.

What does this entail in practice? Above all, it calls on educators to adopt techniques that can take individuals out of a state of ‘closed mindedness’ and show them the positive experiences of mutual concern, collaborative reasoning, and inclusive decision-making. 

For example, instead of celebrating only one type of ‘success’ (e.g., formal test results), young people should have the opportunities to learn about the valuable contributions each other can make. Where there has been transgression, restorative justice methods should be applied to ensure the transgressors learn from those they have hurt and change their mindset and behaviour in the future.

There should be lessons on how to sift through and evaluate sources of information to gauge their reliability; explanations of how objective scientific and scholarly investigations actually work; case studies of serious distortion and deception in the media; and team exercises in cooperating to find provisionally acceptable answers. 

Debates, which focus on the skills to press for one claim or its opposite regardless of its overall merit, should always be supplemented by sessions that nurture abilities for conflict-resolution and consensus-building. More widely, decisions on a range of issues that affect the students in a class, their school, or the wider community, should be made through democratic engagement – which may involve elections, participatory voting, or deliberative conference.

Insular minds ignore the suffering, reasoning, and perspective of other people when these are critically relevant to how one should behave. Learning to engage with others as we need them to engage with us must be at the heart of education.

Premier Diversity

It is noticeable that people who rely on ‘information’ sources which have a not so hidden agenda of spreading negativity about immigrants, refugees, ‘non-whites’, ‘aliens’, tend to subscribe to the notion that there are ‘too many foreigners’ in the country already, and we need to stop more ‘coming in’ and making everything worse.

Some commentators – and quite a few politicians – seem to think that this means that xenophobia is so deeply rooted that it would be unwise to go against it. Instead of pointing out how people with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds have been helping us in countless ways socially and economically, everyone is supposed to meekly nod and mutter ‘we must have fewer of them’.

But are people really that xenophobic? What if, despite whatever anti-foreign diatribe is pumped out, people get to see for themselves the positive difference individuals with foreign ancestry make – week in, week out?

Welcome to the English Premier League – widely considered the most exciting, and certainly the most watched, football league in the world.  A recent count puts the number of foreign players (those not eligible to play for the England national team) in this league at almost 66%. Furthermore, many of the English players in the league have parents or grandparents born outside the country. Are football fans upset with their clubs fielding so many non-white, or non-UK born players? Far from it.  They are lifted by the higher quality of football on display, the greater competitiveness, and at the level of the national team, it is acknowledged that the skills and mentality of England players have been immeasurably raised by regularly training and playing alongside their impressive club teammates who have joined from abroad. 

If any politician wants to campaign to get rid of ‘foreign’ players from the Premier League, they are not going to get very far. Imagine them bemoaning these ‘aliens’ taking English jobs, when there are so many true born English folks who are unemployed or on disability benefit, and who should be trained up to take over from the likes of Haaland, Salah, and Casemiro. People love their football heroes, they adore what they bring to their teams, and they won’t put up with any disrespectful attempt to remove them.

But is this because football is uniquely immune from racist and xenophobic attitudes? Hardly. Before the 1970s, it was rare to see a black player in any of the teams in the top division. Abuse was hurled at the few black players who were selected. Pundits did not want foreigners coming in to weaken the intensity of the English game. What changed?

When managers and clubs began to realise they would have much better teams with quality players regardless of their skin colour or country of birth, they started to recruit accordingly. As the fans witnessed the superior performance and impact, they embraced a league that had become outstanding, not in spite of, but because of its diversity – in skills, temperament, background, experience, and adaptability.

We must not let manipulators twist the facts about immigrants and their descendants, but ensure the good work and added value brought by people of diverse backgrounds are widely known. As in football, in every field of human endeavour, we are much better off when we welcome what others can contribute, rather than trying to exclude them out of sheer prejudice.