ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a series of snapshots of debates about the status of ‘truth’. In various ways, the concept is in retreat. Initially, the excerpts indicate how widely and urgently the problematic of ‘truth’ circulates in educational debate and connected fields of enquiry. George Orwell was increasingly despondent about the degradation of public discourse. With the abuse or distortion of language, he felt that ultimately political truth was falsified. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Animal Farm is the animals’ passivity towards Napoleon’s abuses. The abuse of language is a central motif, as the collectivist decrees of animalism are rewritten, so that ‘All animals are equal’ reappears as ‘but some animals are more equal than others’. In The Prevention of Literature, Orwell writes, what is really at issue is the right to report contemporary events truthfully, or as truthfully as is consistent with the ignorance, bias and self-deception from which every observer necessarily suffers.
