King’s Speech

Lord Chartres Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chartres (CB)]

My Lords, research done by the House of Lords Appointments Commission points to the fact that your Lordships’ House still has some way to go in the fields of diversity—in particular, regional diversity. Therefore, it is particularly refreshing, and good, that we now have a fresh, eloquent, new voice from the north-east. I join other noble Lords in congratulating the right reverend Prelate on her maiden speech.

The other respect in which diversity could perhaps be developed is, of course, in age, and that brings me to the second maiden speech. I visited a primary school the other day and they said to me, “Can you remember anything from when you were at school?”. I said, “Yes, I was the ink monitor. I had this can and every day I filled up the little porcelain ink-wells, and we learned how to write with a steel nib, following the pattern of the great Renaissance calligraphers of the 15th century”. They looked totally bewildered, I have to say. The teacher came to my rescue and said, “Oh yes, we have done a project on the Victorians and we have one of those cans over there”.

On the subject of the extraordinary changes that will come upon the world through AI, I was glad to hear in the gracious Speech that the Government’s plan is to

“strengthen education for the long term”

through the enhancement of knowledge and skills among young people. I follow other noble Lords in congratulating the Government on their timely action to ensure the safe development of AI and all those efforts to encourage innovation in technology and machine learning. We do indeed live in a time of technological exhilaration. Let us hope that it is not increasingly accompanied by cultural exhaustion. Education for the long term has to recognise that the great question for the 21st century centres on the meaning and value of human life—here I very much resonate with the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth—and to encounter the already powerful current of thought that sees human beings as little different from machines, or, even worse, as rapacious bipeds bent on consuming the planet.

I can understand this desire to enhance skills and knowledge, because that translates into power. We also need the wisdom and humility that translate into service, as well as love. Failure to grasp this elementary point will lead to a new ice age for humanity. Technical knowledge enables us to know how to do something, but humane wisdom enables us to know why it is good for this thing to be done. We already see how the technological environment, conceived in the beginning as a useful tool, begins to shape those who use it. As we flick from screen to screen, constantly diverted by what is presented as new—but is in reality just more of the same—there are trends, spasms of the hive mind and gusts of indignation, but nothing accumulates. Cultivation, which is essential to culture, becomes impossible.

If the Government’s ambition is really to

“strengthen education for the long term”,

then, alongside the acquisition of skills and knowledge, there needs to be at every level a fresh and profound attention and investment in the creative arts—music, for example, which unites numbers and harmony. Music should not, at any level of education, be just a divertissement.

At the same time, we must be very serious about translating and transmitting the texts of the great wisdom traditions of world culture, all of which teach that humility—being close to the humus as human beings —is the beginning of wisdom. We grow by connecting with one another in humility. We grow by self-giving, not by performing on platforms. We cannot genuinely grow up online; we grow up in communities, where we can make one another our work of art and learn profoundly what it is to be human. Any education for the long term must ponder the practical implications of this truth. It is a way in which we shall recover our confidence in the future of the human species.