For the respectful formation of young people, I reckon the three most important influences are family, schools and peers. It’s great when all three are good and aligned, disastrous if all three are bad. There is a lot of talk about ‘influencers’ today, especially the online variety, but parents and teachers were surely the early influencers before that was even a concept.
Bad influence was an issue on Rod Liddle (Times Radio, Saturday). Baroness Claire Fox lamented schools being used as ‘political footballs’. She saw schools inviting activist groups as guest speakers, who then influenced schools’ policies – e.g. on gender. Broadcaster Trevor Phillips thought we were in ‘an era of really unpleasant pressure group politics’. Presenter and guests were at one in disapproval about story where a local Labour MP, Cork-born Damien Egan, was disinvited from a school in Bristol, apparently because he was a supporter of Israel. ‘Cancel culture’ can become a bit of a cliché, often with people proclaiming loudly and freely that they’ve been cancelled, but we’ve had too many of these stories of speakers being disinvited or venues being refused and meetings cancelled. A variation on the theme featured in news reports last Friday from a school in Co. Antrim where a whopping 19 boys were suspended for causing distress to female teachers, who were refusing to teach the affected classes. I was concerned when I heard the principal blaming ‘toxic masculinity’, another cliché that people reach for all too easily. It seeks to capture a complex issue in a simplistic manner.
In a not unrelated matter teacher Enoch Burke was released from Mountjoy prison on Wednesday of last week, which I thought was sensible, but then he was back outside his school, Wilson’s Hospital, last Friday, and I thought that was unfortunate. By Monday last, RTÉ News was reporting that the High Court had ordered him returned to jail “immediately”. Surely there must be a way for pragmatism and principle to co-exist. I can sympathise with his stand against affirming social gender transition, and I understand him claiming his right to work. Of course, he has not been jailed over pronouns but over the disobeying of court orders. He outlined his position to camera on the Nine O’Clock News (RTÉ One, Friday) and seemed reasonable, but rigid in his stance. It wasn’t an interview, which was a pity, as I’d like to see what happens when he is subject to robust questioning, preferably in a long
form interview.
Calling things ‘woke’ is another simplistic cliché, but perhaps a useful shorthand. So many TV dramas are full of it, preaching on the latest fashionable causes. So far, after three episodes, Ludwig (Virgin Media 1, Friday) is mercifully free of any of it. Even better, it’s very funny, with witty scripts and thoroughly likeable characters. Comedian David Mitchell takes the low-key road as John, a nerdy genius who must replace his missing detective twin brother in order to find out what happened. Hilarity ensues as he has to negotiate the workplace and colleagues he is supposed to be familiar with. Predictably, as an ardent puzzle solver, he solves a few murders on the way – all of which is seen as a distraction by his sister-in-law Lucy (a touching performance by Anna Maxwell Martin). The scenes between the of them are both humane and humorous. Predictably there is also a crime of the week to be solved. The series is set in Cambridge which provides a picturesque setting. Last week’s episode featured a walking tour that ended with murder in a church. The characters return there at the end for the big whodunnit denouement, to match the revealing of the dead body at the start. I felt the sacred place was treated respectfully by the programme makers, and that’s not always the case with church murder scenes.
Another scenic church featured in Monty Don’s Rhineland Gardens (BBC Two, Friday) a gorgeous new series just started. He visited the island monastery of Reichenau on the German side of Lake Constance. This was where abbot Walahfrid Strabo, in the 9th century, pioneered the idea of a monastic herb garden, for culinary and medicinal uses, writing one of the world’s first gardening books about it. It was ‘a repository of horticultural wisdom’ that was hugely influential throughout Europe.
The programme is relaxing, colourful and beautifully filmed, an antidote to the craziness of our times.
