31.10.1996

Crisis in education ... Punishing the wrong people

Cane them or throw ’em out - moral guidance, capitalist style

Children have not been excluded from the drive to target society’s victims and blame them for all its ills.

Nothing could illustrate this more clearly than the ruling class’s attitude to indiscipline in schools. Gillian Shepherd’s education bill seeks to increase disciplinary powers - egged on by Labour, which has thrown in its own parents’ contract scheme for good measure. She slightly embarrassed some of her colleagues on Tuesday by taking the ‘big stick’ approach to its logical conclusion and called for the return of corporal punishment.

Because schools are now forced to compete for pupils by the government’s insistence on bogus parental choice, the least popular have become dumping grounds for ‘awkward’ children rejected by institutions with a reputation to maintain.

Matters came to a head this week at Manton primary school in Nottinghamshire and at The Ridings comprehensive school in Yorkshire. The parents of 10-year old Matthew Wilson had twice succeeded in preventing his expulsion from Manton after complaints against him of constant violence. An interim ‘solution’ of giving him individual tuition while keeping him on the roll was abandoned last week after the cash-strapped local authority refused to continue paying the costs of employing an extra teacher. Faced with a threat to strike by staff who deemed him too disruptive, the headteacher preferred to close down the entire school.

At The Ridings school in Halifax, teachers have also balloted for strike action - this time over at least 60 pupils, 10% of its intake - whom they want disciplined, if not excluded. Twenty of these have already been expelled from other schools and placed in what parents call the “sink school” for rejects.

Instead of locating the blame where it belongs - on the ruling class and its dumping policy - Nigel de Gruchy, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers, added to the media chorus condemning the children themselves. This ‘workers’ leader’ considers it his duty to protect only the perceived interests of his own members in the narrowest possible way, and demands that at least 20 children must go. He thinks an alternative tip should be found - preferably where teachers belonging to other unions, or none at all, are left to cope with society’s rejects.

The establishment’s willingness to cover up real problems by sweeping them under the carpet is an indication of the worth it places on children. After all, a minority will end up unemployed, so what is the point of persisting with their training as capitalism’s future army of labour?

But the consequences of this callous neglect continue to revisit its perpetrators. Philip Lawrence, the murdered headteacher, had been responsible for expelling 60 of his students in a single year. Although no doubt genuinely concerned for the welfare of children, like de Gruchy he believed that it was possible and sufficient to put parochial limits on his concern.

The murder of Philip Lawrence should serve as a reminder that this is not so. The extreme alienation of youth, cast out from society’s mainstream, can only be ended through an overriding global approach.

Alan Fox