Thought bubble: Haberdasher's school has improved its motto
Theodor Adorno, scion of the assimilated German bourgeoisie, flees the Nazis and arrives in New York, and writes a book complaining about how you can’t close a modern car without slamming it, and oh yes I suppose I like Adorno because he is in mourning for a disappeared world. Anyway, in the spirit of Minima Moralia, Haberdasher’s school has changed its motto from “Serve and Obey” to “Together, Boundless”. The logic is because Robert Aske, the school’s founder, had £500 invested in the slave trade and something something the motto contains the word “serve”? I guess? I wonder how they will describe what goes on in the school cafeteria.
Quiz, which of (a) “Serve and Obey” or (b) “Together, Boundless” fits better into the following conversations:
Hey, I heard you’re administering a public buildings contract for 10 million renminbi. Wow, that’s a long list of requirements…. We go back a long way. I’ve got seats for the State Opera this week. After all, XXXXX, right?
I’d love to come out tonight, but I said I’d finish the accounts for the local Cat’s Protection League. You know how it is. XXXXX.
I’ve got the brains. You’ve got the looks. XXXXX. You’ve got the brawn. I’ve got the brains. XXXXX.
You could trace Serve and Obey’s roots as far back (at least!) as Martin Luther’s Freedom of a Christian Man, where he writes “A Christian is a free lord of all things, and nobody’s servant; a Christian is a serving man in everything, and servant of everybody.” The brilliant paradox that service is perfect freedom inspired the Reformation to rewrite the politics of German cities, and eventually of much of Northern Europe. “Serve and Obey” is a good slogan to get people to work for others in a group that has solved its collective action problem, or, as the Church might put it, in one body. It fits the idea, from the public school movement’s heyday, that schools could integrate merchants’ sons and daughters into the upper class, bound together not by the ties of aristocracy, but by a shared set of norms, which were provided by Victorian evangelicalism, which itself had infiltrated the Church of England via groups like the Clapham Sect, who also incidentally campaigned against slavery, like, before it was cool.
“Together, Boundless” is free of that baggage. Its roots lie in the mindset of Marvel comic books and films, where teenagers with mystical powers can change the world when they work as a team. It would be a good slogan for an internet start-up. It fits the idea that contemporary public schools offer great advantages to children whose parents can spare £20,000 per annum. Surely none of that money was ever invested in, say, tobacco firms or Purdue Pharma or Xinjiang manufacturing.
I don’t think “Together, Boundless” has yet been added to the school crest. Maybe they should leave it blank. If China keeps moving in the same policy direction, they can bring the old motto back and swing for that market.