How to make a Polymath

The sad coincidence of the deaths of Clive James and Jonathan Miller (the latter a great hero of mine) caused the BBC to ponder if we were seeing the end of polymaths. The same evening I caught this from Sally Vickers' Grandmothers: "It doesn't do to expect answers from other people for all your questions.... you know more than you think... that's the trouble with schooling... school teaches you to rely on what other people tell you, the trouble is they're either liable to tell you wrong, or stop you from finding out for yourself."

Most of what we hear about the internet these days in negative - fake news, phone addiction, bullying and endless anxiety about whether my life is cool enough, my body beautiful enough. Yet what a gift the internet should be for the budding polymath! When Miller and James were at school their ability to find out about the world was limited to the books in the school library, a few celebrated documentaries on TV, and the enthusiasm of the adults in their lives - teachers, parents, aunts and uncles. I became a scientist largely because my father sat me down in front of Jacob Bronowski's "Ascent of Man". Now we have what one pundit called the Library of Alexandria in our pocket.

All human knowledge, and all we have to do is reach our for our phone. Surely we should be awash with polymaths! Except that the books in this new library have no editors, and the librarian sells the privilege of recommending a book to the highest bidder in a never-ending pay-per-click auction.

Still it is better than it used to be, chaotic information is better than no information at all. Once again its down to the adults - the teachers, and the EdTech content creators too, to set the ball rolling. This takes time and space. They need to fight against the dead hand of "efficacy" our whatever awful word we are using this month to describe a form of quality control driven by the mistaken assumption that all that matters is that our students get a good grade in the biology exam (for example) so they can get into medical school. No! We are not teaching them to pass biology exams, we are teaching them biology, which is not at all the same thing, even if it should be. That will give us better medics, and if some of those medics choose in time to become satirists or opera directors rather than doctors, we must not grumble that such things are "less useful" - supply and demand will sort that out - we should instead celebrate that they have been exposed to sufficient breadth in their schooling to see the possibilities. A narrowing of horizons, a lack of ambition, is surely one of the worst failings in any education system. The "red herring", the random conveying of ideas which have nothing to do with the exam, or even the subject, but open students' eyes to what else may lie beyond the horizon, these are surely key to any education worthy of the word.