He died almost 14 years ago but Michael Young, the supreme polymath – author, academic, consumer advocate, educator, researcher, policy- maker, and political activator – will have some of his 50-plus social enterprises re-examined today at a conference in London celebrating the centenary of this birth and exploring the brutal widening of inequality in the UK.
Just as he would have wanted, it is not just looking back but also focusing on the future role that contemporary social innovations can play in tackling inequality. Many of Young’s inventions must have helped millions of people from being shut out of the system: his national (and international) extension colleges that preceded his Open University, the Open College of Art and the University of the Third Age, the Consumers’ Association, brain trains where commuters taught each other, the School for Social Entrepreneurs, and Language Line, which provides an interpreting service for people using public services or private enterprises who can’t speak English.
The Young Foundation, a merger of his main research arm with his main innovation incubator, has organised today’s event. It already has an ever-expanding list of educational and neighbourhood projects committed to the cause. It has also widened its remit by taking up gender inequality.
Today’s social entrepreneurs will be unable to match Young’s unrepeatable upbringing. As a schoolboy he stayed in the White House with his foster parents, discussing regeneration policies with Roosevelt over breakfast. The small progressive school his foster parents ran in Devon, Dartington Hall, encouraged pupils to engage in enterprises. Young kept hens to sell eggs to the school and later started a motorbike repair shop. Ironically, both were for profit unlike his later not-for-profit projects.
What can Young’s successors learn from him? His social enterprises went through three stages: identifying a need; focusing on it; and devising imaginative ways of meeting it. His social science was a mixture of science, engineering and art. It began with science: listening to people and minutely observing the social structure, whether a hospital, school or neighbourhood. He demonstrated the same skills in looking at social structures as skilled mechanics display in examining cars. Only when you know how something works are you in a good position to know how to mend it. But he moved beyond engineers to true art – the inspired leap that created so many different ventures.
Not all his inventions followed this recipe. No one has ever turned personal experiences to more productive ends. In hospital with cancer in 1983 was where the College of Health was created, (copied by NHS Direct) providing patients with advice on their medical condition or guidance on different hospital waiting times. Organising the funeral of his second wife, Sacha, he saw the need to improve the training of funeral directors: the National Funeral College opened in 1994.
Then there is the unfinished business. In a lecture to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1990, Young tackled ageism. He called for the abolition of age as a governing criterion and the redistribution of leisure, education and work over people’s lifespan. Given the greatest achievement in the 20th century was the reduction of injuries from biological ageing, he believed it was time for the 21st century to concentrate on the serious injuries of discrimination against older people, which he called social ageing.
Finally, there is his satirical 1958 novel, The rise of the Meritocracy, widely misunderstood by Tony Blair and John Major among many others. He invented the concept not to encourage politicians to pursue it, but to warn them of the dangers of equal opportunity. He described a dystopian society in which intelligence ruled everything.
Young’s objections were simply put: the old aristocracy was unacceptable – and indefensible, which was its main virtue. Its members were never sure of their legitimacy. A meritocracy would be worse because its members would be much more confident about their right to power and wealth. Yet a meritocracy narrows potential rather than widens it; treats the less intelligent as inferior; and creates its own class structure. What was wanted was a society where people would be judged by their kindliness, courage, imagination and sensitivity. The book helped kill off the 11-plus exam, but 57 years on it is still relevant today.
