As part of a campaign to improve the world a little at a time, Scottish grannies provided inspiration for a new book, finds Claire Black
‘WHEN my Granny Sheila came down to visit me from Aberdeen, she always asked my mum, ‘Oh, when will you teach me to text?’ and mum was always saying no, because she thought it’d be a bit silly for her mum to send her text messages,” says Erica Ritchi
e, 10. She knew, however, that it was far from a silly idea.
Erica lives in London, while both of her grandmothers live in Aberdeen. She visits them at least twice a year, but that’s not as often as she would like. She knew that her grandmothers both owned mobile phones, but she also knew that texting was not a skill they had mastered.
“I started teaching my Granny Sheila before I started teaching Grandma Elspeth, but Grandma Elspeth picked it up more easily because her phone’s got bigger buttons,” Erica says. Lessons are continuing, though, and she’s going to teach texting to her eight-year-old brother, Ewan, who’s just got his first mobile.
I don’t mean to stereotype, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the more birthdays you’ve celebrated, the smaller the number of texts you send. With mobile-phone buttons the size of split peas and screens no bigger than postage stamps, it’s not difficult to see why texting and the older generation isn’t a match made in technological heaven.
That’s what makes Erica’s idea so clever. Teach Your Granny to Text is simple, achievable and ingenious. Who better to teach older people – for whom ‘Bluetooth’ and ‘handsfree’ are incomprehensible terms – than little people, who seem to be born with an innate understanding of all things electronic and thumbs that move at lightning speed? Kids understand technology – Erica knows it and so, now, do her two grannies.
Erica’s clever idea ultimately became a book title, after she submitted it to a competition that asked all primary schoolchildren in England what one thing they would do to change the world. It sounds like a tough question, but with more than 4,000 answers sent in it transpires that children are not short on ideas.
The competition was the brainchild of Eugenie Harvey, the woman behind We Are What We Do, the global social-change movement that brought us the book Change the World for a Fiver in 2004, as well as the Anya Hindmarch “This is not a plastic bag” phenomenon in 2007.
Teach Your Granny to Text is the latest idea from Harvey and the We Are What We Do team: from the 4,386 schoolchildren’s answers supplied, 30 favourites were picked for publication. From the prosaic (‘Read with a pal’) to the profound (‘Don’t start a war’), the practical (‘Go to more parties’) to the playful (‘Walk your dad’), the ideas give a funny and inspiring snapshot into what children think about the world in which they live.
Erica realised that teaching their grannies to text was something that all children could do and it would make it much easier for far-apart families to keep in touch. “I text my mum the most, then my friends,” says Erica. “I like it, it’s more fun than ringing someone. And cheaper, too.” This was exactly the kind of thinking Eugenie Harvey was after.
“Teach Your Granny to Text is such a lovely idea,” she says. “It’s not that we expect it to be taken literally, but what it symbolises is important and it’s a lovely set of words. As we become more technologically advanced, there’s a danger that people on the other side of the digital divide may lose out.”
Harvey had been working in financial PR when she realised that she wanted a bit more out of her job and also to put more back into her community. Fast-forward a few years and, after a fair amount of hard graft, Teach Your Granny to Text is in every school in England (with plans under way to bring it to Scotland’s schools) and there’s a website where you can submit ideas and track completed actions. Harvey’s priority is not making money or even creating a cosy group of like-minded people, she’s only interested in people doing things – small, achievable, everyday things – that will help improve our world.
Harvey is straight-talking and not in the slightest bit vague, which I only mention because it’s a criticism often levelled at people who talk about grandiose concepts such as changing the world and it doesn’t seem fair that Harvey should be tarred by that same woolly brush. It’s an image problem of which she’s only too aware.
“We try very hard to work in the mainstream,” she says, hinting politely that this isn’t about preaching to the converted or appealing only to “left-wing do-gooders”, as she puts it.
“If we want to change the world through mass action, we need to work [in] the popular mainstream. To do that we work in a style that’s humorous, engaging, inspiring and uplifting rather than pointing a finger and telling people what to do.”
So why was it important for the book to be by children, for children? “I feel very passionately that children are going to inherit some really challenging problems,” says Harvey. “Chances are you and I won’t be around to see the devastation wrought by the consequences of the way in which our generation has behaved.
“Children and young people get such a hard time in the press, it’s just criminal to me that on one hand we’re going to hand over this broken planet and on the other we’re demonising the very people who we expect to step up and change it.”
It’s a sobering thought. The strength of Teach Your Granny to Text – and We Are What We Do as a movement – is that all of this is handled with a light touch. It’s funny rather than preachy, thought-provoking but not mind-numbing. According to Harvey, it’s about inspiration. “When I look at the book I feel a sense of pride, because I know it’s such a huge collaboration,” she says. And was she surprised by the ideas that the children came up with? “Yes, we were surprised by how much they knew – they’re really clued up on the environment. Also by the emphasis they put on social actions – things around exclusion, bullying, friendship, safer communities. We thought they’d come back with the same kinds of things that adults think about – turn the tap off, drive your car less often. Kids responded with thoughts like ‘Don’t start a war’.”
But what does Sheila Gourlay, one of Erica’s two texting grannies, think of what her granddaughter has done?
“I’m the granny she hasn’t quite succeeded in teaching yet,” she says, sheepishly. “I’m getting my tutorials, but so far she’s been more successful with her other granny, Elspeth.”
But she’s not giving up on you? “Oh no, she’s going to give me more lessons next time she visits. I only use my mobile phone for emergencies, really, but I would like to be able to text.”
Erica uses predictive text and emoticons. She sometimes gets confused between text-speak spelling and the way her teachers would like it to be done, but she can take photos on her phone, too. Brace yourselves, grandmas Elspeth and Sheila, that may well be your next lesson.
• Teach Your Granny To Text is available at
www.wearewhatwedo.org