ABSTRACT
Deep-rooted tendencies in talk of education (western, at any rate) imply an individual, even solitary, learner. An infant teacher ticks boxes to inform next year’s teacher that Daniel can ‘choose appropriate operations to solve subtraction problems’. This does not allow for the possibility that he may be able to carry out this mathematical task in the company of Chelsey and Peter, who are models of concentration, collegiality and persistence, but not when he shares a table with Paul and Donna, whom maths fills with contagious panic and despair. So too with intelligence in general. We readily forget how much what we take to be our individual intelligence is a function of the group in which we find ourselves: of the respect with which its members treat each other, of the possibilities which the group allows of taking risks, venturing opinions, advancing tentative ideas. I shall have something to say later about other qualities, such as courage and unhappiness, that also tend, perhaps misleadingly, to be seen essentially as functions of individuals.
