Great Scot May 2020 Great Scot 159_MAY 2020_ONLINE_V3 | Page 8

CHAPLAIN
REV DOUG CAMPBELL
SCHOOL CHAPLAIN
RECONSIDERING
THE INDIVIDUAL
When I realised the theme of personalisation was
central to this edition of Great Scot, I was a little
stumped. I had heard of the term ‘personalisation’ but
was unsure of its exact definition and origins.
A little research later – isn’t the internet wonderful?
– I noted that the term stems from the world of
business and marketing. In this internet age, experts
are urging businesses to promote their particular
brand or product to the customer by adopting a more
personal approach, especially in their marketing. In
our increasingly anonymous and remote online world,
it is argued that we, the customer, hanker for and react
better to a more personal touch.
Customers, the marketing gurus suggest, do not
like to be seen as simply another order or invoice
number. We like to see ourselves as having worth as
individuals and loathe business-speak and the lazy,
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Great Scot Issue 159 – May 2020
general emails that jam up our in-box full of fake
sincerity and unrealistic promises. The advocates of
personalisation urge the manufacturer to remember
the customer, and to try and think of an individual
when tailoring advertisements of their wares.
Personalisation seems very good in theory, and
appears to be a genuine attempt to bring back a little
more humanity into the corporate world. Of course,
like all innovations and movements, the bottom line
will naturally be ‘Does it work?’ Will personalisation
be superseded by the next in vogue theory just around
the corner?
How could personalisation be useful in education?
There certainly exists a danger that in the hurly-burly
of school life, we, the teachers, can be so focused
on the assignments, the marking, the SACs and the
curriculum that we lose sight of something rather