Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Why I’m learning to be grateful for our world-class education system
a nearby place of learning.
In 1410, a Scottish university was agreed upon and St Andrews was the chosen destination, due to its co-location with the highest-ranking Scottish bishop and a monastery. Arthur Herman indicates “only Episcopalians could attend Oxford and Cambridge...” whereas St Andrews offered the first UK university accessible to everyone.
Secondly, the Reformation. Until 1560 Protestants, agitating for the separation of church and state as well as for the Bible’s accessibility to common folk, were barely tolerated and often martyred.
Consider George Wishart, after whom an arch in Dundee’s Seagate is still named, and who was burned to death in 1546.
The former minister of St Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, Rev David Robertson, in his book Awakening says Wishart’s mentee – Scottish Reformer John
Knox – insisted “where there was a church there should be a school”.
In 1560, Knox’s Book of Discipline called for “a national system of education”.
A century later, Scotland’s then independent parliament passed the Act for Setting Schools establishing a school in every parish.
Within a generation, schools and teachers were strewn across Scotland.
Herman writes: “Scotland’s literacy rate (was) higher than any other country by the end of the 18th Century.”
He adds: “Scottish culture had a built-in bias towards reading, learning and education.
“In no other European country did education count for so much.”
What Scotland began ricocheted into England and spread like wildfire across Europe. I have concerns about the trajectory of Scottish education but am grateful Dundee remains a centre of education, with several universities attracting and enlightening international talent. It is a reminder that true greatness comes from a keen mind disposed towards learning.
Arthur Herman, in The Scottish Enlightenment, adds: “Whether Highlander or Lowlander, Orcadian or Borderer, crofter or urbandweller, (Scots) would transform every society they touched.”
Growing up in Scotland, and discovering the history of my country, I have developed a keen mind for learning and believe Scotland’s future prosperity and resilience rests upon our ability to adequately develop and train future generations.
Returning to that notion of gratitude, the late Conservative political philosopher, Sir Roger Scruton, in his very last article just weeks before his passing in January 2020, wrote: “Coming close to death you begin to know what life means, and what it means is gratitude.”
For Scotland’s leadership in education, I am grateful.