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'Philistinism and Cultural Renewal':
Essays on Education
by Tony McManus

Introduction by Lindsay Paterson

School of Education, University of Edinburgh, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh. EH8 8AQ
Tel: 0131 651 6380 Fax: 0131 651 6678 Email: lindsay.paterson@ed.ac.uk

 

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These pages provide a collection of essays by Tony McManus, teacher and cultural activist. McManus was a teacher of English in schools in Scotland and North Africa, latterly in Queensferry High School. He was a founder (in 1999) of the Scottish Association of Teachers of Language and Literature, and was its most prominent spokesman until his death in 2002. He contributed many essays and articles to the press and magazines on topics in Scottish education, most notably on the reform of the system of assessment in the senior years of secondary school. He contributed widely to cultural debates, particularly in support of the Franco-Scottish poet and writer Kenneth White whose works he introduced to a wider Scottish public, and in connection with the Celtic traditions of music and poetry.

The essays collected here are contributions to current educational debates informed by McManus's deep knowledge of and engagement with Scottish and wider European culture. They command general and continuing attention because of their being rooted in the combination of his professional expertise as a teacher and his cultural knowledge and understanding. They thus illustrate the abiding concern with ideas and culture that, at its best, has characterised the Scottish educational tradition. The purposes of making the essays available publicly on the web are:

  • They offer a trenchant analysis of issues in educational policy that remain as relevant now as when they were written at various times around the turn of the century. Although mostly occasioned by particular controversies or incidents, they always transcend these to address some of the abiding dilemmas of education in our age - such matters as the role of culture and free thought in a society dominated by economic and technocratic ideas about education, or the relationship between tradition and democracy as schools try to engage a much more diverse range of students than in the past with a broad and demanding education.

  • They show lucidly how Scottish traditions of educational thought can illuminate the problems of today.

  • They situate Scottish thought in a European context, illustrating the relevance of these wider traditions to current issues in one small northern country.

  • They situate specifically educational issues and problems in the context of debates about culture, notably in connection with poetry and music.

 

The essays can be accessed here:

Paths of Perception (1997): an essay on the Celtic and European basis of Scottish thought.

Philistinism and Cultural Renewal (2000): a general cultural critique, with particular attention to the state of education.

New Labour and the Poverty of Ideas (2001): a political polemic, arguing that the UK Labour government and its predecessors have come close to destroying the intellectual basis for social renewal.

Higher Still and Lower Yet (1997): critique of the reform to the examination system in the senior years of Scottish secondary schools that was put in place between 1994 and 1999.

Inaugural Lecture to the Scottish Association of Teachers of Language and Literature (1999): political activism set in the intellectual context explained in the other essays.

Because all the essays allude to the reform of assessment and curriculum in Scottish secondary schools in the late-1990s, some background on the controversies that surrounded that is provided here as well.

Tony McManus's essays are included here with the kind permission of Nanon McManus, and have been edited with advice from her, John Aberdein and Raymond Ross. The essay Philistinism and Cultural Renewal is reproduced with the permission of the editor of Textualities, the successor to Scottish Book Collector (Jennie Renton). The essay Higher Still and Lower Yet is reproduced with the permission of the editor of Cencrastus (Raymond Ross). The places of publication (if any) of the other essays have not been found; we would be very pleased to add a note about these locations if any reader could inform us about them (contact lindsay.paterson@ed.ac.uk).

The essays have been edited by Lindsay Paterson. Changes to the texts themselves have been minimal, involving small inaccuracies. In all but the essay 'Paths of perception', footnotes have been added to explain certain topical references that might otherwise be obscure. McManus supplied his own footnotes to 'paths of perception'.

 

Lindsay Paterson
Edinburgh University
June 2006

 

(Published Online: 28 June 2006)

 

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