Fabulista Supposes: Culture can be Ordinary

Culture is both a product and a way of life. It surrounds us and is us from the moment we open our eyes. Since is such an intrinsic part of us, it makes sense that it should be ordinary. In that sense, Williams is right, it should be ordinary in the sense that it should be accessible to all and everyone.

However, one cannot discount the relevance of Leavis' comments. He is most prophetic in the sense that he had talked about the mass-ification of the population and the distinct lack of ‘taste’ so to speak and thus critical judgment of what is essential ‘good culture’ in his view. The consumeristic culture of today’s generation does appear as his apocalyptic vision.

With the advent of mass-media and thus mass-production of ‘cultural merchandise’ as churned out by the so-called ‘cultural industry’, the world’s population, including Singapore’s, is under such constant bombardment.

Engaging both William and Leavis’ ideas about culture and education of the so-called masses, we apply it to the Singapore context. As a developed country, with an advance info-comm infrastructure, we would appear as the ideal consumerists of this mass-ification of the crowds. Everything and anything, material, intellectual or otherwise, does literally appear to be at our very fingertips. Without any discernment or critical ‘taste’, it would seem that such a generation, brought up in such a climate of consumerism is doomed to be the ‘faceless crowd’.

Nevertheless, this is where we can propose the power and empowerment of education. With quality education, instead of mass production of ‘units’ to be fed into the ‘industry’, we can instead re-mold the factory that is for mass-dissemination of knowledge and ideas into an institution for the exposure of young, moldable minds to the variety of ‘cultural products’ now so easily available to all. Then, without prejudice, introduce the contents of such products, be it culture or the cultural. For example, we teach young learners the basic skills of reading and slowly introduce the basic elements of a story; characters, plot, settings, etc. Through such introduction and ideally discussion, we infuse the ideas of how a ‘good’ story should look/read like.

In the process of sharing such skills and knowledge, we thus impart the capabilities choosing and judgment to these learners, that they acquire the skills to be critical and selective about the choices they make of the cultural products they consume that is mass-produced by the cultural industry, thus necessarily avoiding the dreaded path of being massified.