Reports say that while people in other countries are becoming better educated, standards in England are declining. This comes as no surprise. There are a number of social and political factors behind this decline. But not least is the prejudice against the intellectual. Before you say this is not the case, in Rome there is an Irish pub. It is called the Scholars Lounge and the Irish bar staff wear T-shirts bearing the image of Joyce, Beckett, Wilde, Kavanagh and Shaw. Is there an English pub somewhere that honours England's writers?
Sneering at the well-read is nothing new. Even back in the 1960s and 1970s reading was a suspect activity, unless of course you were reading for titillation and excitement. Nothing that might exercise the mind, if you please, nothing that might challenge your preconceptions.
You were allowed to better your income but not your mind.
When you go abroad you find that all sorts of common people have a love of the written word. From Africa to Ireland, from Arabia to India, poets are revered, thinkers valued, questions asked, answers sought.
But not here. Perhaps there is a lucky side effect here. When someone breaks through the prejudice against independent thought, they cast off all restraint. With an attitude of 'no-one likes us, we don't care' the English intellectual is free to fly.
Who is it that is considered an intellectual in this dumbed down society? I would say, anyone who reads a book for instruction, opinion, or the beauty of the language, anyone who does not take their opinions or their values off the peg from newspapers, radio or television, someone who questions and works things out for themselves.
I know a man who likes to tell people he is an 'ordinary man', that he is 'uneducated', even though he has a university degree. Yes, he loves football, he tells us, and he gets his information from the idol in the corner of the living room.
Of course, he is normal - one more cretin in a farmyard of mental slovenliness.
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