 How to get the critical mind back in our society, a critical mind which makes it possible, you know, to cut through all kind of myths and say, well that's nonsense or that's the past or how? It may be that it's events like this, it's certain political exchanges to contradict what I said earlier. That the critical mind can only now be produced in institutions other than those of traditional education because although I spent most of my life in universities and in traditional educational institutions, I have to say that among the changes of the last 20 years which have been the most regressive has been the remodeling of educational institutions as industries, the remodeling of educational institutions as market oriented institutions. That's to say with internal profit, fantasy sort of profits that they make, one of the key errors I think of the last 20 years was quite different from deregulating markets is that all social institutions have to be restructured as markets. And that means an incredible hollowing out of ethos. I was lucky enough to go to a traditional institution in which that had not yet happened. A traditional grammar school in Britain followed by a traditional Oxford College, not from a background where my family could afford that. But even if issues of access which have gotten worse with the increasing inequality of recent times were resolved, what you would go to all these institutions have been to some extent deformed. Not to say that there were no problems, there were all kinds of problems, they were opaque, there were various difficulties of many many kinds, one didn't have any nostalgic view of them. But the key element which is lost and the key is the idea of institutions with their own ethos and with having a non-market ethos and that I think in education would include as a critical element the inculcation of skeptical thinking, the inculcation of a disciplined sort of thinking in which the fact that you want something or hope for it is not by itself a reason for thinking that it will and can happen. And that's a hard discipline which needs to be taught. But at the moment I'm afraid I'm not too confident that within the institutions that we have which are organised if not around status then around market notions that they will or can provide it. Can I say something about the British press in that respect? Could you say something about the British press? Which aspect? I mean there are so many proliferating evils as it were connected with it. But one can say something good about the British press in this respect which is that, let me take an example, not so well known as the more recent scandals. There was a recent case of a serviceman who had been damaged in Afghanistan I think, Rory might know about it, who went to prison for having a gun which he hadn't discharged, which he hadn't handed in, which he'd forgotten about. And I think that example, that case, probably if the press had not taken that up, so along with all the other things it does, intruding in people's lives and they've used criminal techniques of phone hacking and all the rest of it, if that case hadn't been pursued by the press probably he might have stayed in jail. So I do think that with all its unruliness and its anarchic tendencies and the actual crimes and invasions of privacy that the press has been involved in and its collusive relations with elements in the police force and with enormous powerful press magnates, I do think actually that old fashioned press freedom is still important. Yeah, I think the problem is that we have lost a sense of the real, of the local, of the political. I think we exist in a world of extraordinary abstraction. I mean that's true for our educational system, it's true for our universities, it may sometimes even be true of the discussion on this panel. Right, that we are a collection of people with particular specializations who aren't actually engaged in a conversation. You have Kenny keep saying, when are you going to challenge my theory on technology and everybody else is talking about whatever else they want to be talking about, right? Understandably. No. Which is why I think the solution must slightly lie in getting off this kind of panel into a particular real situation. I mean we pose a sort of moral and political philosophers in an extraordinary vacuum using a few little anecdotes and the way in which my students were taught at Harvard was very, very similar. You know, we created a culture of academics who knew nothing really, attracting in idealistic young students and giving them theories of development, theories of intervention, theories of this, theories of that and every student goes away with their take away and we have to sit and listen respectfully. If we were really down in a particular place dealing with problems that we had to justify with this affordable housing scheme, with installing this broadband in this village, with working out the road network, a lot of these problems fall apart. The problem basically is that you can't have a civilized educated elite when that elite no longer connects in any way with the real, the local or the political. Would you like to join Birdlife Conservation because it's very local and on the ground. It's very ground up and it has to work with people who live there because unless the people who live in a place can be convinced that there's something good for them in this, no conservation effort will work. So you're engaged at the same time with people who live in a locality because nature is very localized and with conserving habitat and conserving species. I think it's a great example. I invite you. It's a great example. And the other reason I invite you is this. Of the money given to charities in North America, for an example, 97% goes to people things, things having to do with people, hearts, kidneys, arts, whatever it may be, education, whatever. It's all about people. Of the remaining 3%, half goes to pets, cats, dogs, parrots and gerbils. That leaves one and a half percent for all the rest of nature, the nature upon which we depend. So get down and dirty with the nature people. You're all invited. I just want to reiterate what Rory has said actually. We need to rediscover, and it may be very unfashionable to say in a forum like this, but we need to rediscover how to think small. There is a tyranny of big ideas out there. Everyone wants to be a big thinker. I mean, look at the success of the TED conference. Everyone wants to think big in preferably in 18 minutes. As if you could deliver a solution to every single problem of the world in a very short space of time using as abstract of a language as possible. It's a fetish. Everyone wants to be in the business of big ideas. No one wants to go and get dirty and get empirical and actually investigate how many of the technologies, for example, we talk about, have completely different logics. That's why I am opposed to using a term like Pax Technologica because it assumes that technology has a coherent logic to it. There is no coherent logic to it. And you know what? Ordinary people know that. That's why they find most of us so ridiculous. On the other hand, we don't... Because our theorists do not match their empirical experience with their cars, with their devices. They have a very serious... On the other hand, we don't want people with no ideas at all. You can have a technological fix to crime. One fix would make it impossible. In other fix would use technology to make sure that innocent people don't go to jail. You can do the fix technology. Maynard Keynes, who I admire very much, said, you know, there is a kind of danger in... There's a great danger in people running around with great ideas. Great ideas in the 20th century went with great casualties. And it's very dangerous. But there's also a danger in saying, let's get back to practice. Because actually, practice very often consists of the bad ideas of a previous generation. But John, this is exactly... John, this is exactly not what I'm saying. The point is to try to put the ideas into practice. The point of the political sphere, which you're abandoning in many, many ways through this kind of conversation, is exactly discussing ideas and contesting ideas in the local context. But if you have a defect of... One of the things is we're discussing the whole issue is if all human beings were adults. Already adults. They're not. They have to go through families and schools. And so although I'm very critical and rather skeptical of university education as it now exists in many countries, we certainly can't write off schools. If people emerge from schools with no coherent worldview, with no ability to think about ideas big or small, it doesn't matter in a sense what you try and do at the local ground level. It'll not have terribly good results. So I do agree with that. We should look back at education, particularly maybe schools, and consider has a lot gone wrong or has it not gone wrong? Is it actually better than we think? What are the changes that have in fact taken place? Why is it the case that people emerge with the capacity for critical thinking or not?