Sir, - Maybe it is a product of my working-class conditioning, but I am constantly amazed when academics appear to display a singular lack of intelligence in presenting their view on topics outside, or on the margins of, their speciality. Perhaps this lack of common sense is a result of separation from the observations and critical analyses which the rest of us are forced to undertake in our daily lives in order to understand why, in a period when Ireland is experiencing unprecedented wealth and growth, there is a parallel growth in poverty, homelessness and deprivation. Or perhaps sometimes it is a message not well flighted.
Dr William Reville, a biochemist from UCC (Science Today, October 26th) is the latest to pontificate from the gates of academia. In his article, "Time to stop blaming the middle classes for all ills", he contends that the disadvantaged should stop whinging about their oppression at the hands of the middle class and get up off their backsides and take control of their own lives. Those who attempt to organise, support or show solidarity with the disadvantaged, by encouraging analysis as a first stage of empowerment, are in fact dis-empowering them, according to Reville. So much for the thinking of Paulo Friere, Nelson Mandela and the entire world civil rights community. The biochemist knows best.
And what is the argument which Mr Reville brings to bear to back up his contentions? Well it is basically this: that feeling positive about self is coterminous with feeling in control of your life, and that lack of control over one's life can often lead to psychological and physical ill-health and a feeling of hopelessness. OK, so far so good. This has been well documented in relation to unemployment and poverty, especially by Chris Whelan of the ESRI. But Reville then goes on to expand on this fundamental fact of developmental psychology to contend that from the age of about 18 each individual has a responsibility to accept personal responsibility for their life, no matter what the starting position.
And the massive obstacles which confront those from disadvantaged backgrounds? Well all you have to do is feel responsible for your self-determination and your righteousness will see you through; as a matter of fact, according to Reville, "no discrimination, in a society such as ours", would survive "long against such tenacity". Perhaps Mr Reville should spend some time in the history department. The past is littered with the bodies of those who thought that righteousness was sufficient.
The arguments which are put forward in the offending article are, if taken at fact value, so facile as to not warrant a response. The main arguments are framed terms of psychology, a science where the perspective is narrowly individualistic, often right wing, and the source of more spurious research than any other area of study. That said, the undertones of the article are far more worrying. For the implication is that the disadvantaged have only themselves to blame for their social exclusion, and that the reason why social, economic, political and educational disadvantage is exclusively experienced by certain communities lies in some cultural or biological deficit - and that is the unstated but strongly implied core judgement of the article.
In this, Dr Reville is in line with those who believe in eugenics and social Darwinism - that there is such a thing as biological advantage which manifests itself as individual determinism. In the world which Mr Reville inhabits the middle class have it and the socially disadvantaged do not; therefore by implication they are biologically inferior. And that I would suspect is what is really being said when a biochemist makes social comment in a scientific arena about the nature of disadvantage. - Yours, etc., Aiden Lloyd,
Castlesize Way, Sallins, Co Kildare.