Anonymous Teacher Calls for More Nietzsche in Scottish Primary Schools

 

Lighten Up

Nothing succeeds if prankishness has no part in it.

Looking through, Teaching Scotland, the GTCS’s professional journal, one is struck by the manic marriage of its unrelenting moral censure of Scottish culture with imminent rapture. Magazine after magazine, piling up like pancakes, berates us natives as racial bigots, while holding out the almost grasped promise of excellence to be at last achieved by multiculturalism; itself contingent on us natives removing ourselves from the future. O, and embracing digital solutions, kindly sponsored by the same global cabal that bring you viruses and vaccines. A small price to pay, Teaching Scotland implies, for us losing our patrimony and presence.

All this is very complicated and serious, however. And we wonder if this focus on social targets and political goals is taking light-heartedness and fun out of teaching, as it most definitely has out of the magazine? This observation has led an anonymous teacher* to call for more Nietzsche in Scottish primary schools, apparently as a counter to this seriousness. Despite that stern moustache, it seems that the German overman was a noted advocate of prankishness:

”Maintaining cheerfulness in the midst of a gloomy task, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds if prankishness has no part in it.” — Nietzsche. Twilight of the Idols.

Noting, not only its role as a fun increaser and balance to excessive seriousness, but as an intellectual quality in its own right. For it was ever a sign of intelligence and a lively spirit at work; naturally gathering to itself wit and ironies, self-depreciation and smiling eyes behind the rebuke.  Good old, Nietzsche, always looking for a laugh and in it finding a truth presciently apposite to our Scottish school circumstances. Such prankishness should be encouraged in schools, so naturally it isn’t! Perhaps, rather than more ‘conversations’ about the underlying racist and sexist structures of our schools, we need more prankishness. Especially when such ‘conversations’ begin.

It would be nice to think that Nietzsche would be added to the German wall in our primary class to keep Arminius, Wagner, von Manstein, Beckenbauer and Merkel company.

What think ye?

*   It was me (identity withheld to preserve anonymity).

NB. I’ve described Teaching Scotland as the GTCS’s professional journal, but really it is so much more than that. In fact, mere words cannot convey the vasty extent of my opinion. Perhaps, in a later post, assuming voluminous requests, I may do so. Consider me as Macduff, but yet without the sword.