Scotland’s stories…

Posted on | September 26, 2006 | 1 Comment

Just two to go after these three from the Demos publication and the article from Gerry Hassan. How many of them do we accept as elements of the Scottish myth? Even if we accept the nature of the myths described by Gerry Hassan, do we agree with his brief explication of each of them? Which, if any of them, have some resonance for the way we ‘do’ education in Scotland? And how many of them have their analogues in the mythologies of countries across the world?

Kailyard Scotland – an idealised backward rural society set in the nineteenth century based on a longing for the virtues of small town Scotland against urban industrialisation. In the twentieth century this was articulated by among others DC Thomson publishers and the Sunday Post newspaper.

Divided Scotland – this is the land of the divided self seen in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, RD Laing and, more recently, Tom Nairn’s studies of Scots identity. This is a nation split between Highland and Lowland, Catholic and Protestant, heart and mind, euphoria and self-doubt, which pathologises itself into believing it has a schizophrenic dual identity.

Collectivist Scotland – this is the progressive Scotland which gave birth to Labour’s institutional dominance of Scotland for most of the twentieth century. An alternative version of this story is dependency culture Scotland – the Thatcherite explanation for Scotland’s resistance to its charms, which has more recently been adopted by Blairite New Labour.

Last 2 tomorrow!

Technorati Tags: scotland, myth, demos, gerry hassan, kailyard, collectivism