What the hedgehog and fox teach us about racial division in schools

From Terence Netto

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim likes to quote renowned thinkers in his speeches. Critics have said he likes to parade his erudition, which they argue is pointless because he fails to follow through with implementation.

In his budget speech the other day, he cited Isaiah Berlin, the Latvia-born and English-naturalised philosopher, famed for inventing the “hedgehog and the fox” metaphor in a celebrated essay on Leo Tolstoy’s meditation on history.

Berlin divided history’s seminal thinkers into hedgehogs and foxes: hedgehogs being those who relate everything to a central vision (Marx, Nietzsche); while foxes (Shakespeare, Montaigne, Sophocles) pursue multiform, even contradictory, insights to their finale.

He held that Tolstoy was a fox, a brilliant discerner of particularities, who towards the end of his life flirted with disaster by trying to be a hedgehog.

The metaphor sheds light on the concerns raised by Puncak Borneo MP Willie Mongin about schoolchildren refusing to sit next to classmates because they eat prohibited foods or wear religious symbols of other faiths.

Willie did not say from where the aversion stemmed but few would have difficulty in knowing the motivation.

Interestingly, the problem of polarisation among school pupils can be helped by understanding Berlin’s musings. He said that human beings have to be both hedgehogs and foxes; we maim our sensibility if we choose the exclusivity of the one and dissolve into nihilism if, fox-like, we opt for contradictions that lead nowhere.

Willie has highlighted a problem during the tenure of a prime minister who, in his youth, championed a cause that has contributed to the dilemma facing our education system.

Fortunately, the same leader has access to the ideas needed to free those trapped by a form of exclusivity that harms. He is aware of the way out. Would that he opted for it.

Our children should be open to being both hedgehog and fox.

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.