The SNP suggested recently that Scottish schools should include Scottish cultural studies in the curriculum. Details are vague and similar proposals have appeared and faded for decades; nevertheless they provoked a shiver of dread in Holyrood and the Scottish media.

Would this involve racist indoctrination? Would the next generation take Scotland seriously as a cultural entity and demand independence? Would cultural activity in Scotland increase? All of these questions had suitably terrifying answers.

Now, it could be that the SNP harbours strange supremacist designs. (Some of them are a little odd.) It could be that our new amalgamated police force will become Alex Salmond's private army. It could be that Scotland moves beyond its depressing obsession with the Catholic-Protestant divide – or, rather, its obsession that there should be one – and explores additional hatreds. It could, just conceivably, be. But although economic crises don't bring out the best in human behaviour, I feel these options are unlikely. The Scottish electorate doesn't take well to demagogues and has a tradition of left-leaning internationalism to keep it from McNazism.

Outside the SNP, Scottish politicos fear manifestations of Scottish identity, lest they encourage independence, or general strangeness. (Members of the Conservative and Unionist party are physically incapable of believing in Scotland. Hence the Scots' reciprocal inability to believe in Tories.) Ironically, it could be they feel themselves unequal to the responsibilities of self-government, because they're Scots.

The famous Scottish Divided Self, our Jekyll and Hyde complex, often simply involves a swing between riotously emphatic tartan cliches and real self-doubt. This is hardly surprising. Scots and their culture have long been kept apart. It's difficult to overemphasise the importance of having role models and inspirations that come from within your own community as well as beyond it.

I found Scotland when I was living in England and a theatre student. I was required to read John McGrath's drama about Highland history, The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black Black Oil. It was like swallowing a lighted match. Why hadn't anyone told me? I was beyond astonishment and subsequently encouraged to discover whole new territories of music, verse, history, art, being. I came across Alasdair Gray. He was an extraordinary writer and sometimes a magic realist, which is to say his words made worlds within which to do anything and everything. And he was Scottish. He wrote about places I'd been to. If he could do that, maybe I could do what I wanted to. Maybe I could actually be a writer.

Gray's work led me to Tom Leonard and James Kelman, writers who broke the most fundamental rule of my childhood – they sounded Scottish. When I was a child, if you wanted to be successful, you had to sound anglicised or English. Generations grew up tiptoeing linguistically between the playground and the classroom, strangers and friends. Leonard and Kelman produced work that celebrated their right to sound like themselves and extended that courtesy to the reader. They celebrated rights in general and with vigour.

You can imagine the effect of feeling that if you open your mouth you will sound wrong, that you are somehow thinking wrongly in your own head. Instilling such a feeling is one of the most fundamental ways to control a population. Now imagine what happens when the feeling stops – that miracle.

In the latter half of the last century thousands of Scots across the classes redefined themselves because they had heard Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street and knew the intended Baker Street wasn't in London. Or they'd looked at John Byrne's remarkable paintings, or caught his series Tutti Frutti on TV. (That man is far too talented.) Or they'd heard Billy Connolly being funny internationally. Now, perhaps, Franz Ferdinand would do the trick, or Peter Capaldi's spin doctor swearing at Americans.

The SNP knows the arts in Scotland provide jobs, make money, attract tourists. With the right encouragement Scottish arts could mean we punch above our weight internationally in the manner of Ireland, another small country with a global diaspora.

What makes the possibility of a real cultural awakening scary for many Scots politicians is that the arts are expressive, liberating and unpredictable. Encourage cultural literacy in a nation bent on rediscovering itself after centuries of being silenced and you could end up with an electorate that's confident, outspoken and energetic. Heaven forfend.