Big Society and Education

Hugh Rayment-Pickard

I bumped into a friend yesterday climbing off his bike and asked him about 'The Big Society' (he works in government, so I thought he might know). 'Mrs Thatcher reduced our expectations of what the state should do for us; New Labour raised our expecations again; the Coalition is bringing us back to reality: the state can't do everything and shouldn't do everything. At some point citizens have to do it for themselves. That's where "big society" starts.' He had to get to Marks and Spencer before I could explore further.

There was further enlightenement in a Carnegie Trust report 'Making Good Society': 'Liberal democracy is a three-legged stool — though, at present, it’s a pretty wobbly stool. One leg is government, providing public capital. Another the market, providing market capital. And the third, civil society, providing social capital. To get things back in balance, the third leg needs strengthening.' Which was well put, I thought, and implies that The Big Society is a very significant initiaive.

But if it is significant, then it will surely require significant resources to develop and sustain the traditions and habits of civil engagement and service that will be required, which reminded me of an essay by Frances Fukuyama, who was talking about these things a decade ago: 'the area where governments probably have the greatest direct ability to generate social capital is education. Educational institutions do not simply transmit human capital, they also pass on social capital in the form of social rules and norms. '