A Musement

I spent this morning giving a little talk to the Friends of the local Museum. It was a talk about '200 Years of Atlantean Education'. One charming senior lady told me that Aristotle had mentioned it (I suppose that would have been more than 2000 years ago!) but refused to tell me exactly what he'd said.

This Atlantis, of course, is not the Mediterranean vision of Plato and Herodotus, but the distinctly different one of Old Thumbs. It was amazing and amusing to all of us that I was able, in my allotted hour, to cover all 200 years of the educational history of the place.

The main concept, as always, is the use of education as more than (but also) a tool for commercial gain. It is the basis of a state's security — whether social, military, or economic — and should not be seen as merely something that gives people a generic kind of value-added quality. Rather, the careful and directed application of education is, just as Stalin said, like a weapon. And Wisdom, as the Preacher said in the book that bears his title, is actually better than weapons of war.

So there I was, at the brand new Museum, having a perfectly civilised discussion about how Atlantis had come up with the superb piece of social engineering called the Education System. I began with the whims and fancies of the Gambler, fast-forwarded through the efforts of the various religious orders and the tight-fisted Cathayans of my ancestry, and ended up with the sweeping reforms of the Gnome and his successors.

Everyone enjoyed themselves. So did I.