Skip to main content

The Good Citizen's Alphabet


When I was young and annoyingly lean I read a book by Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy,which equipped me with an equally slender and shallow interest in the topic that I have never really sought to plumb much further.

The book by Russell that I should have read is the delighfully obscure, forgotten and illustrated The Good Citizen's Alphabet. It is literally an A-Z of ThoughtSpurs.

Russell's introduction to the otherwise spartan text goes like this:

This book, it is felt, will supply a lacuna which has long disgraced our educational system. Those who have had the largest amount of experience in the earlier stages of the pedagogical process have in a very large number of cases been compelled to conclude that much unnecessary difficulty and much avoidable expenditure of school hours is due to the fact that the ABC, that gateway to all wisdom, is not made sufficiently attractive to the immature minds whom it is our misfortune to have to address. This book, small as is its compass, and humble as are its aims, is, we believe and hope, precisely such as in the present perilous conjuncture is needed for the guidance of the first steps of the infant mind. We say this not without the support of empirical evidence. We have tried our alphabet upon many subjects: Some have thought it wise; some, foolish. Some have thought it right-minded; others may have been inclined to think it subversive. But all — and we say this with the most complete and absolute confidence — all to whom we have shown this book have ever after had an impeccable knowledge of the alphabet. On this ground we feel convinced that our education authorities, from the very first moment that this work is brought to their attention, will order it instantly to be adopted in all those scholastic institutions in which the first elements of literacy are inculcated. —17 January 1953. B.R.


I came across the book in the wonderful site/blog Design Observer. I will encourage my students to visit it when they get a moment between txt msgs.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse...
1 comment
Read more and leave a comment

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St...
Post a Comment
Read more and leave a comment

Why billboards must go.

The problem with billboards and advertising in public places is they are an invasion of privacy. Unlike magazine, tv, radio (etc) advertising you cannot choose to turn it off or avoid it. Nor does it offer anything in return. It is a medium that offers no benefit or advantage to the person it is inflicted on. At least television ads subsidise the programming. Without doubt some billboards are entertaining - I thought the anti GE poster for short lived MADGE activist group was particularly good. But most are rubbish. Literally. Badly executed. Nothing important to say. The debate has led to a great deal of hysteria - mostly from people with a vested interest in perpetuating the deployment of hoardings. Perhaps the idea that the issue at stake is 'property rights' is the creepiest. If you own a building you have every right to plaster anything you like on its external surfaces. Is that an antisocial point of view? I think so. In the UK you could have an ASBO slapped on you for si...
Post a Comment
Read more and leave a comment