By RICHARD WOODS - TIMESONLINE
Added: Tue, 11 May 2010 03:52:21 UTC

Original link

Hogwarts is a malign influence; we should be fostering a culture of science, not fantasy, says the inventor James Dyson

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Harry Potter and James Dyson

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Sir James Dyson is beautifully designed. Tall and lean, with architecturally important shoulders, the vacuum cleaner multi-millionaire looks 10 years younger and aeons cooler than 63. Even his packaging has style.

At his headquarters, an oasis of modernism in rural Wiltshire, Dyson comes boxed in a glass-walled office with a designer’s drawing table on one side. Before you get sucked into the Dyson vortex, however, pause for thought. His ideas for the future are a lot tougher than his appearance.

After phenomenal success in business, the entrepreneur wants to re-engineer Britain, to make it more like, well, one of his products: bright, smart, efficiently moulded and sellable around the world. It’s a vision that David Cameron endorses.

The UK’s culture of venerating arts over science is all wrong, says Dyson. Harry Potter is an evil influence, he says, and arty-tarty stuff consumes too much popular attention.

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Is Potter really malign? “Um, yes,” he admits. “I don’t like those sort of fantasy books. If children read and enjoy them, fine, I don’t morally object. But I’d be more interested in more practical elements of life and showing children what they can do, not what they can’t.”

Hogwarts wizardry, he says, “is a public school fantasy world and I don’t see that is relevant to children today, I don’t see what that teaches them”.

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TAGGED: EDUCATION, INTERVIEWS, SCIENCE

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