Secret teacher: Are the 'clever' people turning into mean girls?

Mean Girls /Still of Lacey Chabert, Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried in Mean Girls

I have two rules for my own children and my students.

1.Be kind.

2.Try your best.

Pretty much everything slots into one of these two categories. Sometimes, they overlap. A young person attempting to try their best can lose sight of kindness. They can use their intelligence against someone. In this instance, I’m clear about the order of my rules. Being kind comes first. Always.

I’m concerned that ‘clever’ or formally educated people are becoming mean. In this, they remind me of the 2004 film, Mean Girls, written by Tina Fey. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a razor-sharp takedown of the most popular and beautiful kids in an American high school. Fey presents these toxic teens as self-obsessed and Machiavellian. A fresh-faced Lindsay Lohan infiltrates the group to break their power. She soon finds herself morphing into a full-on ‘plastic.’

My worry is that ‘plastics’ are no longer just in our schools and classrooms. They’re all grown up. And they’re not beautiful. They’re clever.

Clever adults are forgetting the basic rules of kindness. They sit around, a group of judgemental, nasty trendsetters admiring each other’s inherited qualities. It isn’t about wearing pink on Wednesdays. It’s about razor-sharp quips and comments. In the world of these clever people, a double entendre is akin to a perfect figure. It’s everything. And the ‘ugly’ people are the uneducated masses – the idiots who appear less gifted.

The clever crew often bullies through humour. They laugh at what others believe, just as mean girls mock people for their noses, bracelets, or dress sense. America is the home of this behaviour; we’ve grown accustomed to their Late-night commentators laughing at Trump supporters. CNN’s Don Lemon thought it completely appropriate to laugh his way through an entire interview with two political commentators. His guest impersonating Trump voters was just too much to take. ‘You elitists, with your maps and your Geography and your spelling… Knowing other countries…’

I’m in the business of teaching and learning but this meanness, this conversion of knowledge into nastiness has nothing to do with education or true intelligence. At least it shouldn’t. These people have forgotten the rules; they’re not as clever as they think. Whilst they sit around admiring each other’s inherited plumage, they lack emotional intelligence. And as far as I’m concerned, they’re tearing the fabric of our society apart.

Being laughed at is horrible. It makes people feel stupid. And guess what? It makes them angry.

We live in a country that still swallows the myth of meritocracy, even when we know the skewed statistics of those who go earn the highest professional incomes. In 2018 your chance of going to college ranged from 99 per cent in Dublin 6 to just 15 per cent in Dublin 17. Most people get handed so-called ‘cleverness’ by privilege. My Masters in English was fundamentally handed to me by my parents and my environment. I studied hard but compared to a lot of people it was a freebie. I picked it up in a discount bin.

A lot of comments on social media recently around the monarchy, I felt were a descent into the language of an American teenager. This is not coincidental. That’s where we’re at – with the mean girls, launching a juvenile attack on ordinary people. Ordinary people who have been duped into thinking they are being cared for by the very people who are oppressing them. Opportunity and education might improve things. Being laughed at certainly won’t.

The victims of these intellectual attacks are not always equipped to respond. Often, they don’t get the same level of education or opportunity. They don’t travel as much. Often, they’re too busy surviving to have an in-depth knowledge of social democracy. This is not about ‘cleverness.’ It’s about bloody luck.

As a teacher, this leaves me disheartened. The criticisms of Trump or the monarchy are worthwhile and important. We need to share them if we want society to improve. But how we share them matters. It’s more effective to be kind than it is to be right. Always. Unless we’re actually seeking conflict.

Imagine being a Trump supporter or growing up idolising the monarchy as much as your own grandparents. Imagine feeling laughed at. Someone laughing at your beliefs, your parents’ beliefs, your grandparents’ beliefs, would make you angry. You’d never hear the points being made. You’d never listen to why the monarchy might be outdated or elitist. If you’re laughed at, the game’s over.

We all know what happens next. America has taught us that – because knowledge loses its power and purpose without kindness.

I listen to people complaining about the ‘white saviour complex,’ of having a Trocaire box on your kitchen table this Easter. I endure environmentalists sticking their noses up at someone for eating cheap meat. Sometimes having principles is a privilege and it’s up to those with such privilege to frame it in a way that makes the world better, not worse. That’s what it means to be clever – at least that’s what it means to me.