07.11.1996

Schools crisis blamed on kids

Bourgeois society’s irrational nature is painfully obvious in the current furore over education and ‘morals’.

Naturally, David Blunkett was eager to get in early and seize the ‘moral’ high ground. Last week he issued a 10-point plan to combat ‘indiscipline’ in school and tackle what he called “laddism”. This revolutionary programme will include sending 14 to 15- year-olds into the workplace for one day a week, providing them with “role- model mentors” from the “local community”, and “reinvigorating” the Boy Scouts. As part of this experiment, “successful men” will visit schools in Basildon, Essex, and Lewisham, with the aim of raising the morale of pupils.

Contemptibly, Blunkett laid the blame for the current schooling ‘crisis’ squarely on the shoulders of the children, explaining: “Groups of boys are developing a culture of not working, of thinking it is acceptable to truant and misbehave. Some of these young men end up carrying knives.” The fact that there is no work for these kids, apart from dead-end slave labour, seems to evade Blunkett. He clearly feels that kids need to pull up their bootstraps and get on their bike.

A further sign of the desperation of bourgeois society has been reflected in the attempt to draft a set of ‘universal’ values - something ‘above’ politics which ‘everyone’ can agree to. This was the task given to the National Forum for Values in Education and the Community. After months of deliberation, a code of values was drawn up - and, of course, it is an indoctrination programme rather than an educational one.

The National Forum aims, very ambitiously, to brainwash children into meekly accepting the twisted values of bourgeois society. Hence, the code wants kids to “help people to know about the law and legal processes” and “obey the law and encourage others to do so”. Does this mean that children have to inform on all those who do not “obey the law” - or go home and convince their parents about the marvels of the Prevention of Terrorism Act?

As for the rest of the codes, they are an offensive mixture of vacuous communitarian-speak and sub-‘new age’ nonsense, which most of the tabloid press would probably damn as ‘political correct’. We are told we must “accept diversity and respect people’s rights to religious and cultural differences”, “make truth and integrity priorities in public life”, “take responsibility for our own lives within our capacities”, etc. Quite how you can do all this and obey bourgeois law at all times remains a bit of a mystery. Only in an ideologically bankrupt society could such platitudes be described as a “commendably terse statement of values ... whose brevity belies its ambitions” (The Guardian October 31).

Another insult to our intelligence comes in the shape of the pompous Tory MP, David Shaw. He is planning to table an amendment to the current Education Bill which would lay down dress codes for “sloppily dressed” teaching staff: “If teachers want to be treated like professionals, as they always say they do, then they should dress like professionals.”

Not content with patronising and insulting children, the likes of David Shaw want to treat teachers like infants as well - not that he wants to raise the wages of teachers, so they can afford to buythe ‘designer’ clothes which Shaw wants them to wear.

There are very few voices raised in opposition to all this. Instead, politicians, priests and media pundits are competing as to who can be the ‘hardest’, with the rest of society being dragged along the road of empty ‘common sense’. An alternative vision and voice, to take society forward rather than backward, desperately need to be raised.

Paul Greenaway