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October 7, 2008 October 13, 2008 October 22, 2008 October 28, 2008 November 11, 2008 December 2, 2008 |
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| The Observer Sunday, 4 March 2007 Jade Goody vs. Joan Bakewell? No contest Cristina Odone Plato knew he was on to something. Boys and men in Athens - and further afield - clustered round the Academy, eager to show off their oratory, debating skills and general knowledge. Some had literary pretensions, others academic ones; many simply wanted to learn. Through the ages, that intellectual hunger became suspect; among middle-class Britons, it was regarded a character flaw. No more. Today, 'conversazioni' are held in schools and church halls from Aberystwyth to Arbroath and debates take over theatre auditoriums from Notting Hill to Nottingham. Learning is in - and intimate. Through Intelligence², a debating society founded four years ago that regularly attracts 800 ticket-buyers, and turns away 500 more, or Miller's Academy of Arts and Sciences, which opened its doors last December and draws a weekly audience of 50, the lawyer, the housewife and the accountant can meet cerebral pin-ups over drinks or spar with them in question-and-answer sessions. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Joan Bakewell and Andrew Motion take part: here is a chance to attack their arguments, defend their positions, fawn, up close and personal. Moreover, ticket in hand, there is no audience, more a feeling of being on an almost equal footing with these heavyweights. Ask some of the architects of this intellectual renaissance what they attribute their success to and they'll tell you 'television'. Both John Gordon, co-founder of Intelligence², and Ioana Miller, who co-founded Miller's Academy with husband Martin, blame the ever-shrinking number of intelligent television programmes for middle-class hunger for ideas. AJP Taylor's lectures or Brian Walden's disquisitions on political greats gave way long ago to Jade Goody's effings and blindings. This is not the kind of entertainment from which you can winkle the amusing anecdote that impresses a dinner party or the little-known fact that shows your friends you've been improving your mind. Like all middle-class undertakings, the new intellectual pursuit is highly competitive: you don't just attend a lecture or a debate - everyone else must know you have done so. When Ioana and Martin Miller decided to expand their academy to Somerset, they were delighted to see that its genteel inhabitants were vying with one another to be among the 'founding members' of the new society. When there is queue-barging and scuffles breaking out over tickets to a 'conversazione' between AC Grayling and the editor of the Salisbury Review, you know the life of ideas is not spent. Britain may not have reached the Platonic ideal yet, but plenty of Britons know what that means now. << Return |
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September 25, 2008 September 16, 2008 June 30, 2008 June 24, 2008 May 20, 2008 April 29, 2008 March 18, 2008 March 5, 2008 |
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