Old Andrew is a teacher. He writes a blog called 'Scenes from the Battleground'. The title of his blog tells you what kind of school he teaches in. He has recently driven me mad with a discussion on right and left. I say that there are certain mentalities in schools which are too leftist. He says it isn't about right or left. I suggested that the reluctance to exclude, for instance, is a leftist position. The reason we (schools and LEAs) are reluctant to exclude is because of the general culture which says that poor children, children from difficult backgrounds, should be given more chances, or should be allowed to misbehave. Inclusion, for me, is a leftist ideal. Old Andrew's response?
The willingness not to exclude, because it will only create expense for the taxpayer, and the only beneficiaries will be underclass children and lefty teachers, is a rightist position. In practice they are indistinguishable.
Interesting. I have never considered exclusion in this way before. What do you think?
Snuffy
You can email me at snuffysnuffleupagus -it is at yahoo dot com
- Miss Snuffleupagus
- United Kingdom
- I teach in a state school in inner-city London. I'm black. I want to change the world - one kid - one school - one policy at a time. I blog because I need to stay sane. But my blogs won't necessarily stay up for long... so be quick! And while I have been blogging for over two years, I am not sure how much longer I will last... My views are a little controversial. What I say makes sense. It's just that we don't like to make sense anymore. My goal in life is to find perspective again.
28 comments:
I shouldn't attach any credence to it if I were you. What part of 'right' is it that suggests everyone's problems are due to a lack of intervention by the state, or urges us to let malefactors go unpunished?
No, this is just another attempt by socialists (not that they call themselves that any more, but that is what they are) to evade responsibility for the catastrophe they have unleashed on the rest of us.
I suspect from the desperation evident in this notion that they are chiefly trying to convince themselves.
I'm curious now, have you never, ever, heard it claimed that inclusion is about saving money?
Or that not excluding is about "cost"? (To the school, or the local authority?)
Old Andrew
Yes, of course I've heard it said before. I guess I just don't believe it, especially in light of the recent increase in expenditure on education.
If Labour actually believed in making education better, instead of appearing to do so, then they would have spent all that money on taking apart the Inclusion agenda, instead of making it even stronger.
And I have never taught under a Conservative government. Having said that, I do think that the Conservatives are also lefty in their views on education.
And I never said that everything was the fault of the left. In my previous post, I said that some concepts are the fault of the right, like Ofsted and league tables.
If Labour actually believed in making education better, instead of appearing to do so, then they would have spent all that money on taking apart the Inclusion agenda, instead of making it even stronger.
I can't help noticing that when we were talking about Tory governments failing it was due to being thwarted by the left. Yet when a Labour government fails it is proof that they never wanted to succeed in the first place. The double standard is blatant.
Having said that, I do think that the Conservatives are also lefty in their views on education.
We now have the left-wing Tories to add to the right-wing Stalinists as examples of how messed up your labels are.
Surely the case that you should be reconsidering your definition of "left" becomes unanswerable at this point?
Old Andrew
Yes my definition of left and right isn't really about parties, it is about ideas.
I suppose you would argue that it is because Labour is so right-wing that they are more interested in saving money and therefore back the Inclusion agenda?
But as I don't believe it is about money, it then has to become about something else: a desire to see inclusion work. And that is a left-wing idea. And if the Tories were in power, I would say the same thing.
When the Conservatives are in power the left in the profession frustrate the ideas because they do not agree with the ideology, therefore no progress is made.
When Labour are in power both parties are singing from the same hymn sheet. It is just that the hymn is rubbish.
In either case failure results. It just happens that when both sides of the equation are of the left the only people to blame are the Conservatives, who wrecked everything before in such a way that the left cannot put it back together, as they do not have enough funding, time resources etc. Never do the left look at themselves and ask is what we are doing wrong, in a way that I can look at Thatcher and see that her economic policies helped the many but left some behind.
It was the liberal leftist ideas that have us in the mess we now find in the education system today. However, these ideas have failed miserably and rather than hold their hands up and try a different approach, they would rather continue on the road to nowhere as they haven't the moral courage to admit they were wrong in the first place.
Don't want to put even more words into your two mouths - but I've visited both of your blogs and read around them. From where I'm standing both of you want very much the same thing for the good of the children in your charge - and both of you are more than intelligent enough to see that the cultural changes in Society englobe the political changes of the State.
Perhaps your prior philosophical commitments explain why you seem to be having this kind of non-argument.
I mean by this that Miss speaks of herself as a recovering Lefty Girl who saw these problems through that Left-wing prism - until she actually started trying to do something about them... Old Andrew, as far as I can tell, is a kind of G K Chestertonian and the nearest label we have for that genial and brilliant thinker is the ungainly "paleo-conservative". Accordingly, he is immediately suspicious of all Political Labeling because it is too often an excuse for intellectual laziness that doesn't get to the real roots of the questions - which are, at the end of the day, philosophical and metaphysical.
(I should add that I REALLY don't think that Miss could be taxed with intellectual laziness!)
So at the risk of sounding as paternalist as the very people I am critical of below, I think you actually understand yourselves far better than this question of labels implies!
As far as I can see from my very limited point of view the Left/Right political labels have ceased to have a clear and distinct meaning: Relativism really has conquered the field.
On the other hand there still seems to be a discussion over the extent to which we are Paternalists or not: foisting on to others what we JUST KNOW to be best for them.... Education, of course, becomes the battleground under such conditions.
When these questions are looked at under the angle of Paternalism and Relativism the cosmetic Political Label is by the by.
Hence the very urgent need for us to be rediscover from a philosophical point of view 'objective reality'. It's not easy, of course it's not: who really wants to have to tackle that last grand Occamist, Immanuel Kant? But it has to be done, culturally speaking because so much really IS at stake. We've become so used to the ironic mode which is so useful for exposing the Emperor's New Clothes of so much intellectual discourse that we have forgotten that wise counsel of C.S. Lewis: in the end, if you see through absolutely everything you are no better than a blind man - because there is nothing left to see through, there is nothing left to see.
That's where we are at today.
I'm so sorry that both of you have to deal with the all too grim fallout of that intellectual dead-end.
I don't know if we're capable of retracing our route back to something more intellectually and culturally healthier - there's so many megolamaniac paternalists who know what's best for us. What I DO know, however is that we will have to die trying.
"Ours is only the trying - the rest is not our business."
Keep the Faith!
Just smack the little sods FFS
When the Conservatives are in power the left in the profession frustrate the ideas because they do not agree with the ideology, therefore no progress is made.
When Labour are in power both parties are singing from the same hymn sheet. It is just that the hymn is rubbish.
It is this kind of stuff that has me wondering whether you have read any education news at all in the last 30 years.
Yes my definition of left and right isn't really about parties, it is about ideas.
The problem is that it doesn't seem to correspond to any existing frame of reference within British politics. The ideas being discussed here are mainly around being authoritarian and anti-authoritarian, and we live in a country where both left and right has had quite an authoritarian and both have, regrettably, turned more liberal in recent decades. This does not fit at all well with the idea that all the liberalism comes from the left and all the authoritarianism comes from the right, which strikes me as a lazy attempt to bring partisan politics into a more complex matter.
I suppose you would argue that it is because Labour is so right-wing that they are more interested in saving money and therefore back the Inclusion agenda?
No. Labour is as incoherent as the Tories on inclusion. The 1997 Labout manifesto promised more PRUs. The original legislation and guidance notes on inclusion of SEN explicitly said that it wouldn't apply to disruptive kids. Unfortunately the departmental advice said the opposite. Then we had the targets (now abandoned) to reduce exclusions.
I am not trying to claim a left-right divide here but with the goodies and baddies on different sides. I am blaming both parties equally and despairing at how little either of them comprehend the problem.
I am also more than a little despairing when the issues are used as a proxy for some wider ideological or party political conflict, or when some different agenda (teacher bashing, privatisation) is conflated with the key issue of behaviour.
Two key points ignored.
Left wing frustration of Conservative policy.
Left wing self examination of own ideology.
Default defence mode, create diversion by labelling non agreeing person as not knowing anything.
Default defence mode, create diversion by labelling non agreeing person as not knowing anything.
You claimed the system and the government has been singing from the "same hymn sheet". That puts you firmly in the "not knowing anything" category regardless of what opinions you later build on top of this complete lack of knowledge of recent history.
Inclusion like its cousin 'care in the community' is a good way of cutting back on public spending and dressing it all up as some kind of philanthropic exercise. The trick is to make sure the policy makers are not adversely affected by these policies - that's where the poor come in...
But this is all so ridiculous. The desire for the common good and the desire to make people individually responsible are not mutually exclusive.
Labelling these ideas up like football teams is not doing anyone any favours.
I thought exclusion stats were kept artificially low not because of the politics of conservatism/socialism but because self designated experts said that children only misbehave when lessons are bad.
Schools didn't want the experts to say they gave bad lessons, so they massaged the misbehaviour figures instead of challenging the "children are not responsible for their behaviour" at its source.
This is very deep stuff for a Sunday after a couple of glasses of rather nice Red! Especially the discourse on philosophy from Anonymous. But maybe it's the start of what we need...
We all agree that what we're interested in is better education for all children, whether rich or poor, black / white / Asian / Martian / whatever.
So we have to try to be pragmatic and ask ourselves how we can try to get where we want...
1/ Central control of schools has not worked - that's where all the idiotic commands have come from. It's probably also true that wider policies (e.g. welfare) have contributed to the problems - but we can't solve these overnight, and we ought to think about how education can be improved to help tackle them, rather than seeking to answer all of the problems via schools...
2/ We are not going to persuade people not to send their kids to private school (incidentally, not all are rich - I know relatively poor people that have plunged all of their spare money and more into their kids' education). So, short of a totalitarian law banning private education (which even the Left would struggle to achieve), this is not an option.
3/ So we need to look at how we can best make schools accountable to parents and / or taxpayers, and deliver what they want for children, or what children need to succeed in later life, socially and intellectually as well as in wealth terms (are these the same things?!).
4/ At the same time, we don't want teachers to suffer at the hands of ignorant 'customers' / parents, e.g. those who try to insist on keeping disruptive kids in class, even at the expense of others.
5/ The classic way to do this is in the form of a combination of choice and contract: parents can choose the type of education they want for their children, and in return they take responsibility for ensuring that their children are equipped to make the best of that education, behaviourally etc., and ensuring that they do so by backing up the school in terms of discipline, etc.
6/ This is why 'moderate' libertarians like me have long advocated a voucher system along the lines of that used in Sweden and parts of the US. Given its use in Sweden, this doesn't require everything else to be libertarian (as much as I would like that!).
7/ The good news is that not everyone needs to consciously make a choice to improve standards in such a system - many can free-ride on the choices of others (and you can, at a cost, provide support for those who find it hard to make choices). But there will, no doubt be problems in such a system: the transition to it from the current one; the resistence from those who benefit from the current arrangements (bureaucrats and ineffective teachers); the need for an independent regulator to help make the market work (can government - central or local - resist the temptation to intervene? Especially when the - left-wing and right-wing - media calls for it); how do we deal with religious or other extremists who want their own schools (conditioning funding on intake mix - but where do such conditions end?).
So there are some potential answers. But there are lots of questions too. We need to move beyond left-wing and right-wing to tackle them.
'Lefties' may suggest other answers - I'm all ears to hear them.
How's that for a challenge...
anonymous, my friend, it still seems to me that Alex is on the money
These people are the establishment and the state now. These are the people who believe all serious political authority is illegimate, including their own
In other words the relatvists are the paternalists these days, which on the page, or these days, the computer screen is very Chestertonian, but is not so entertaining for teachers who have to keep classes quiet before they can begin to do their job.
I blame that %$*& Foucault, myself.
"1/ Central control of schools has not worked"
And this is where we jump straight from the reality of the issue of behaviour to the propaganda. Yes, there is obviously discussion to be had about how "centrally controlled" schools should be, and in many respects I want them decentralised, but that's not the issue here. As ever we have ideology suggesting a solution without even looking at the problem.
In the issue of behaviour. There is not central control, or central leadership. Everything is shifted downwards. Responsibility invariably lies with the schools, which in turn blame the teachers. Central control of behaviour has never been tried.
Let's imagine "central control".
Imagine if the government legislated for a list of offences for which children must be excluded by law. Imagine if OFSTED looked for evidence that discipline policies were followed without fail and without increasing teacher workload. Imagine targets for raising exclusion based on an assessment of behaviour in a school. Or targets for the number of students in PRUs. Imagine if schools were required to centrally organise punishments and failure to punish was considered as a serious failure of management.
Now I'm not suggesting this is the best answer, but this method (central control of behaviour policy) has not been tried, and so it is bizarre to suggest that it has failed. Starting your argument with "Central control of schools has not worked" tells us in 7 words what your conclusion is going to be, and that it has nothing to do with the issue at hand where central control has never been an issue. No control, or accountability, has been the issue.
jolly boating weather
yes - you're right - the relativists are the paternalists now. That's to say:
The crazies have taken over the asylum.
Miss has been saying that all along.
And so has Old Andrew, by the looks of things.
And both of them are concerned enough to spend the precious little free time they have to ring the alarm.
Now it's up to the rest of us to do our bit where we're at.
How odd, would any right wing person support any of the following:
Praising everyone all of the time (At work you will be performance reviewed)
Not excluding (Gross mis-conduct = dismissal)
Inclusion (Fit in with your colleagues or you have problems)
Discouraging competition (What happens every time you go for interview)
Never posting up results (Individual targets and internal competition)
Being more forgiving of bad behaviour because of the child's background (Everyone is equal regardless or else it is discrimination)
Blaming the teacher when the children are not engaged. (Blame your Manager for your poor work, see how far this gets you)
Giving away textbook after textbook and never getting them back (Lose your laptop the company will pay once)
Having 'support' instead of detention (Disciplinary Procedure = improve or you are out)
Bribing children to learn or behave with sweets (Bonus if you make target at year end not during year)
Carry on having the soft love policies, but non of this prepares the pupils for real life after school. In fact they are the actual opposite of how the real world will operate. I thought that was the purpose to educate pupils for work and life?
I think from reading your blog you worry and care about the problems in your school but cannot make the connection between how the policies of the left are failing the pupils.
At the end of the day the outcomes will be Prison, Benefits or a McJob and I am the one who has the power to decide who will get the job not you.
Would a right wing government introduce...?
target setting - and all the dumb incentives that it brings
league tables - and all the book cooking that they bring
disincentives to exclude poorly behaved kids
incentives for attendance and punctuality
blame teachers for poor results
the national curriculum that details what to teach, when to teach and how to teach it
compulsory coursework
the gcse where grades a- g are passes
Not only do I reckon a right wing government would introduce all of that I know a right wing government did.
Ah so you don't like being told what to do and should be free to express yourself entirely as you wish.
Hence subconsciously why should the pupil be told what to do.
Many of the things mentioned only fail because they are not managed strictly and the system allows this. Imagine a company with no target, no aim and all the staff do exactly as the like.
"Ah so you don't like being told what to do and should be free to express yourself entirely as you wish.
Hence subconsciously why should the pupil be told what to do"
Eh? Whether I like it or not is not the point - the relevant thing is that these reforms were introduced under one of the most right wing governments in this country's recent history. Mrs 'roll back the frontiers of the state' Thatcher's government attempted to micro manage education and it does not look like it worked does it?
Point taken about companies - has education only become any good since people started modelling schools on companies?
I don't really go along with the schools as business model. I don't think it's helpful. Which company was the Academy of Athens modelled on? The Sorbonne? Alexandria? Cambridge? Oxford?
You seem to be under the impression that all those who are opposed to adopting the school as a business model or who doubt the wisdom of micro-managing education are in favour of total freedom of expression - that is a very silly error.
"No control, or accountability, has been the issue."
I agree, but why is that - because it has been centrally-dictated!
Central diktat has meant that schools cannot exclude pupils.
Central diktat has meant that alternatives to the mainstream education system are not available for children who are excluded.
Central diktat led to the destruction of Grammar schools, a 'solution' to the underfunding of secondary modern schools, again a result of central diktat.
Central diktat has led to the undermining of exam standards - even Oxbridge graduates who I've managed couldn't write properly!
That's why I think it's time to try something different. But what central diktat could do would be to allow schools to set their behaviour standards and be free to exclude pupils that don't meet those standards. But they're too cowardly to do that.
Central diktat didn't get rid of grammar schools in Kent, Buckinghamshire, Slough, Sutton and Trafford.
Why does no-one lament the passing of secondary moderns?
Why do many 'comprehensives' in areas which still have selection feature prominently in the list of 'National Challenge' schools? (The following percentages refer to proportion of secondary schools where less than 30% of pupils obtain less than 5 or more GCSEs A*-C)
Selective Bucks. 24% Comprehensive Oxon. 12% Comprehensive Surrey 9% Selective Kent 34%
Answers please on a postcard to Messrs Knight and Balls.
"Left" and "Right" are meaningless phrases.
The BNP is broadly socialist in its social policy - eg. save the money spent on EU membership and spend it on the NHS.
George Galloway's views on military dictators in the middle east would not be out of place on Rumsfeld's lips.
Politics is more of a clock than a line and Hitler and Stalin probably met at midnight.
Central diktat has meant that schools cannot exclude pupils.
Central diktat has meant that alternatives to the mainstream education system are not available for children who are excluded.
Central diktat led to the destruction of Grammar schools, a 'solution' to the underfunding of secondary modern schools, again a result of central diktat.
Central diktat has led to the undermining of exam standards - even Oxbridge graduates who I've managed couldn't write properly!
Actually none of these were by central diktat (which is why the first three vary massively between Local Authorities).
If you wanted to demonstrate that you had an ideologically motivated "solution" that you were wedded to regardless of the problem being discussed then you couldn't have shown it better if you'd tried.
And by even mentioning grammar schools you have simply given another example of someone on the right talking about middle class escape routes rather than the problems of the majority.
What's right and what's left?
If I remember correctly originally monarchists (who were both authoritarian and conservative) sat on the right of the chamber and progressive non authoritarians to the left. This meant something then (over two hundred years ago) as there was no tradition other than authoritarianism.
Nowadays we have people brought up to believe in socialism who continue to believe for essentially conservative reasons and people who convert from communism to Market views because they themselves are progressive.
Some things require an authorititive approach, and some things don't. I think the trick is to tell which is which, regardless of mere custom- and a check through what has worked best in similar situations helps sort that out.
p.s. great blog- its really nice to know someone is seeking truth.
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