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Wendy Fitzwilliam and the Square on the Hypotenuse

Denis Solomon • 1,244 words

"For as a University lecturer I continually incurred the annoyance of students for not providing them with set answers to set questions, instead of trying, as I did, to awaken their dormant reasoning faculties."

In primary school we had a subject called General Knowledge. We were asked questions like “Who is the greatest singer in the world?” to which we were supposed to answer, on pain of licks, that the greatest singer in the world was Marian Anderson.

Nobody objected that “greatest singer in the world” was an entirely subjective category, and that in singing there could be no “greatest”.

Readers will now assume that the subject of this column is Wendy Fitzwilliam, and that I am about to air my views on the inanity of beauty contests and announce that there can be no such thing as the most beautiful woman in the universe.

Wrong. There may be no such thing as the most beautiful woman, but I assure you Miss Wendy Fitzwilliam is quite beautiful enough for me, and that I am very happy for the world to know that she is my fellow-countrywoman. No, this column is not about Wendy. It is about the teaching of civics.

I am convinced the Marian Anderson syndrome still exists. For as a University lecturer I continually incurred the annoyance of students for not providing them with set answers to set questions, instead of trying, as I did, to awaken their dormant reasoning faculties. In my lectures I would scrupulously point out the weaknesses in the systems I was expounding. For twenty-five years I kept a list of questions I thought should be asked by anyone sceptical enough to challenge the standard theories, and thus turn them from dead to living matter in their minds. Not once in those twenty-five years did any student ask a single one of them.

If these faculties are not awakened at an early stage in the child’s development, he turns into the kind of zombified Gospel-spouting adult for whom “Eric Williams was the second greatest man in the world” or Marian Anderson the greatest singer. The historian Orlando Figes, in his recent book on the Russian Revolution, says the same thing about the hold of Marxism on a particular generation of self-educated peasants:

When people learn as adults what children are normally taught in schools, they often find it difficult to progress beyond the simplest abstract ideas. These tend to lodge deep in their minds, making them resistant to the subsequent absorption of knowledge on a more sophisticated level. They see the world in black-and-white terms because their narrow learning obscures any other coloration. Marxism…gave them a simple solution to the problems of “capitalism” and backwardness without requiring that they think independently.

Substitute “should be taught” for “are normally taught” in the first sentence and you have the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Commerce, Miracle Ministries and the Faculty of Arts of the University of the West Indies.

And not all the victims of the Marian Anderson syndrome became University students. Some became University teachers. At QRC I was taught the Euclidean proof of Pythagoras’ theorem, that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Though I didn’t doubt the theorem, the proof always seemed a bit fishy to me. But I couldn’t put my finger on what bothered me about it. Until many years later, in a collection of essays on linguistics, I found it. The ratio between the hypotenuse and the other two sides of a triangle is a ratio of areas, i.e. values, while the Euclidean proof is about shapes. As far as Euclid goes, you might as well say that the triangle on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the triangles on the other two sides. Or that the donkey on the hypotenuse is equal to the donkeys on the other two sides, provided that your three donkeys had all their parts in the same proportion.

I mentioned this in casual conversation to a colleague, without telling him I had seen it in a book. He immediately pooh-poohed the idea. How could Euclid be wrong? So I showed him the book. Oh yes, he said, now I see. His familiarity with me, as a fellow QRC student, and no doubt his lack of confidence in himself, meant I couldn’t possibly be right in challenging Euclid. A book, however, was a different matter. When you are trained to argue from authority rather than reason, there is no difference between swallowing Euclid whole and thinking that there is a world’s greatest singer.

Judging by the education pages of the newspapers and the Schools Broadcasting Unit programmes, civics is taught in just such a formulaic manner, on the basis of similarly unexamined axioms. One SBU programme, for example, starts by telling the pupils that citizens “have” rights as well as responsibilities. It then enumerates the rights set out in the Constitution, and informs the pupil that he must obey the law and pay his taxes. It goes on to say that he “must” take a lively interest in public affairs. He must contribute to society and even be prepared to die to make his country a “better” place.

I don’t disagree with any of these principles any more than I disagree with Pythagoras. But I seriously doubt that putting them across in this way makes for good citizens, or anything but cannon fodder if the pupils accept them or criminals if they don’t. Good citizens are thinking citizens. It would, I suppose, be a bit too abstract to inquire into the meaning of “have” in the statement that citizens “have” rights (where do rights come from?) or “must” in the statement that they “must” take a lively interest in public affairs. Or even to ask what makes a country “better”. But if I were conducting the class I would certainly proceed on the basis of the type of question I could never get my linguistics students to ask me.

These questions would be designed to bring out the utilitarian as opposed to the (implied) divine foundation of citizenship rights and responsibilities, by confronting pious phrases with historical reality. “Citizens must obey the law”. So what were Gandhi and Butler doing in jail? “Citizens must pay their taxes”. So were the British wrong to refuse to pay the poll tax, and was Mrs. Thatcher wrong to repeal it? “Freedom of the press is a right”. So what is all this about lies, half-truths and innuendoes? The SBU programme asks the pupils to “make up a story of your own about a good citizen”. I would ask my pupils to make up a newspaper report containing one lie, one half-truth and one innuendo, and then discuss whether it should be published, and why. I would then read the students a press report about “chutney rising” and take a poll as to whether it was an abuse of press freedom. Then I would get them to do a survey of the class and correlate the different responses with any underlying socio-cultural factors they could discern in themselves.

Next, I would remind the class that if someone has to die for his country it means that somebody else has to kill for his, and ask them whether they would be as comfortable in one role as in the other. I would remind them of General Douglas Macarthur’s statement that “A soldier’s duty is not to die for his country. It is to make some other poor bastard die for his”.

Then, I suppose, I would start looking for another job.

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