Having a heart of stone

Some years ago, I was talking with my mother about an event she found upsetting. I spoke in a matter-of-fact way and made logical conclusions about what should be done to fix the situation. She did not. She was too overcome with grief and could not think straight through her tears. She was astonished by my cool approach and if truth be told I think she was deeply offended. ‘Snuffy,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what made you like this, I certainly didn’t bring you up this way, but really, you have a heart of stone.’ I took it as a compliment (no doubt because of my stone-like qualities) and went on my merry way.

Now in India, with my English colleagues, I am faced with the same scenario. As each day goes by, as the slums get more and more depraved, the schools more and more inadequate, and the children more and more oppressed, my colleagues are falling like flies. At first there was only one or of them in tears. But little by little, this crying frenzy has infected the entire group, including the boys. Wailing has become the expected response to scenes of poverty or examples of children overcoming huge obstacles. I think I must be the only member of the group who has not broken down in tears.

My colleagues find me odd. I am unfeeling. No doubt they believe I have a heart of stone. One asked me yesterday how it was that I had not been moved to tears by what we had seen. I wanted to shout at her. Did you now know that there were starving children in the world? Do you not read newspapers? Do you not travel? Do you not watch the news? Did you not know that child labour exists? What did you think? Did you think these children were working in lovely jobs which paid them lots of money? Come now! Pull yourself together! Your behaviour is ridiculous! And these children who are watching you cry must certainly think you are insane. Do you see them crying? Do you see them sobbing over their situations? Instead, do you not see them and those who are helping them actively and cleverly trying to make the best of their lives?

And therein lies the point. People with privilege who are kind and well-meaning, upon seeing deprivation, naturally want to change it. The upset they feel is the catalyst for action which will ultimately bring about change. Here in India, I can imagine England a century ago: a small number of very rich people taking no notice of the poor, and a large number of the poor literally starving at their doorsteps. Some good people (like my colleagues) were deeply upset by this and this inspired gradual change which has created the situation we have now.

But when one is emotionally shattered, logical thinking disappears. Yesterday, when the designated member of our group was thanking our hosts at the school, she was so overcome with emotion, I actually had to take over from her and do what was required. Elsewhere, while my colleagues have been overwhelmed with ‘feeling’, I have been able to give specific and useful advice to people which may help them.

My colleagues are all making plans to return here and do volunteer work. They remind me of my colleagues some six years ago when I worked in a school in the middle of nowhere in South Africa. Did any of them return? Of course not. They went back to their lives and promptly forgot about the starving children and stopped ‘feeling’ whatever it is that moves them into uncontrollable sobbing when in the developing country itself.

The natural inclination when seeing someone without, is to give. And for individuals to give to other individuals, or for charities to give, is a good thing. I give to many charities for that reason. I do my best at school to spread the word about my experiences around the world so that my children too might learn to care about those who are less fortunate than themselves. But when the emotion one feels prevents one from understanding the difference between receiving a gift from an individual and receiving an entitlement from the state, and when such ‘feeling’ clouds one’s vision to such an extent that one can no longer judge the negative effects of handouts from the state, then I believe that such emotion can do nothing to help the people we wish to save.

My mother was right in saying I have a heart of stone. But that does not mean I do not care about the children here or the children I teach. Indeed it is my lack of emotional response which provides me with the skills to change children’s lives for the better. As an Indian man told me today, when the rich man looks at the poor man, presumes he is unhappy in his poverty and cries for him, all he is doing is revealing his own unhappiness as he is in fact crying for himself.

Government Schools

In India, there are government schools which are meant to educate 90% of the population. The other 10% are educated in private schools and charitable institutions. Private schools range from women in slums holding crèches on their rooftops and charging 50p per month, to proper schools with teachers which cost a few pounds per month, to international schools which cost over fifteen thousand pounds per year.

I am at an event meeting a variety of Indian teachers. I am talking with an Indian woman, Mrs Green, who reminds me of that Indian actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan with the green eyes. She teaches at an international school and sent her daughter to one. Her daughter is now studying Medicine at the University of Toronto. With us is an Indian man who cashed in his software engineering fortune six years ago and set up a school for slum children. His own sons had Mrs Green as their teacher and they are both currently studying in the UK at Manchester University and the LSE.

‘Why would you never work in a government school?’ I ask Mrs Green.

‘Because I could never manage there. So much bureaucracy! They force you to pass all of these tests all of the time and you cannot breathe.’

I frown. ‘Is it really that bad?’

Mrs Green’s eyes open wide. ‘YES! And because you work for the government, they can send you to any school whenever they want. Also, as a teacher in India, you have election duties, midwife duties, polio shot duties, a hundred meetings to attend, so in fact, you are never in school.’

As Mrs Green is speaking I am recalling the several conversations I have had with people who say exactly this. Government teachers are never in school, can never be fired, and collect salaries for never teaching. But I press on.

‘But might you not want a government job because it is more secure?’

Mrs Green explains to me that she does not care about security, that teaching in a government school would be so tiresome, she would never do it. Looking around the room at the government teachers, I can see what she means. While I have only met a handful of teachers here, (say 70 or 80), working in charitable schools, private schools and government schools, it has to be said that those teachers who do not work for the state tend to have more of an energy about them, a love for children and a desire to change the world.

The man with the two sons at university in the UK pipes up.

‘Look, why would any critically-minded person want to work for the government unless they had to? It is the state! This means that everything has to be uniform across the country. All teachers must teach the same things in the same way. Mrs Green wants her freedom.’

This is all sounding so scarily familiar… Except that the situation is different in the UK. Teachers who teach in the state sector in England are passionate about teaching and about children. They don’t just do it for the security or for the salary. And they are passionate about teaching in the state sector because they believe in state education. No one in India believes in state education. Everyone is trying to get their child into something ‘better’, whether private or charitable. And that is because people here are motivated by whatever is best for their child whereas some people in England are motivated by a set of political ideals and are willing to sacrifice their children to support those ideals.

Such thinking is unheard of in India. It is incomprehensible. Every start of the new academic year, every employer knows that he will have to give out loans to his employees to help them pay for school fees which will gradually get paid off throughout the year out of their salaries. Entire villages will club together to send their brightest child to the best private school they can afford. Children who are educated in charitable schools return to their slums to give tuition to others, in an effort to spread the good fortune of their worthy education.

Imagine a world without state education: hard, isn’t it? Imagine a world where everyone pays for education and the better the school, the more expensive it is. Imagine a world with some charitable institutions which might be free where children would have to compete for a place. It is true that not everyone would be educated. And no doubt the schools right at the bottom would be chaotic places where little education would take place. And the rich would get the very best of schools – as they do currently.

Do I sound like Hitler? Do I offend? Is it shocking to hear a teacher saying she would be perfectly happy for some children not to get a decent education? If it is, then consider the alternative. Consider the situation we have now. The rich get the very best. And the rest of us get chaos. Well, some of the state schools are ‘ok’. But in so many schools there are few children, if any at all who get a worthwhile education. Is this really what we want? Do we really want the majority of our children to leave school in a tornado of chaos with qualifications that aren’t worth the paper on which they are printed?

A world without state schools: that’s right. Sounds like a damn good world to me.

The necessity of poverty

In India, the number of children who live in abject poverty and who cannot attend school outweighs the entire population of Great Britain. Children are exploited in every corner. In India, children are simply fodder for the capitalist machine.

But there are moments of sunlight in the darkness. Rich Indian men and women give up their heartless pursuit of the green monster and use their savings to set up charities to help where they can. Westerners also volunteer their time or their money to change people’s lives.

I’m sitting in a school, set up by a white American woman, established to educate the poorest of the poor from the slums. To be eligible for a place, the family must earn under £50 a month. Every year, hundreds of children apply, and every year, they only take seventy. That drops several hundred back into their hopelessness. But it gives a small number a fighting chance.

I chat with some of the 3-year-olds at the school. They look up from their tables, pencils still in hand. They are delightful.

How did I get here from England? I ask. After several guesses, finally they come up with an airplane. What else flies? I ask. Helicopters! Rockets! And birds Mam, birds! Yes, I say, so could I have come to India on a bird instead? NO! They shout. NO! Really, I say, but why? One boy puts his hand up. ‘Because a bird is too small, Mam.

Yes, I suppose a bird really is too small… They’re so cute, so cute… I simply cannot do justice to them on a blog.

Talking with the 16-year-olds, I ask them what they want to do later in life. Lots say some kind of engineer, others accountants, business men, one wants to be a cricketer and another a magician. And what of Michael Jackson? I ask. King of Pop! They shout. He was definitely murdered. They are certain of it. When I ask them what their friends in the slums think of them coming to this school, they tell me that their friends believe them to be very lucky indeed.

Back in the Principal’s office, my colleagues drone on about how amazed they are by the commitment to learning, the silence in classrooms, the order, the motivation, the inspiration. The Principal is a very forward-thinking woman who believes in good teaching and working hard. My colleagues are very confused. How can it be that poor kids in India are so well-behaved and our kids in Britain are terrors?

‘The children are so motivated! It’s so wonderful how they want to learn! If only our children could be like yours!’

‘Our children are so lucky. They get their education for free and yet they don’t appreciate it.’

I’m dying of my usual boredom when suddenly God hears my prayers and takes pity on me. One of my colleagues, an Assistant Head, and the only SMT member of the group, winces.

‘I guess your kids must really appreciate their places here. As they value their education, they work for it…. Whereas our kids, well… with the welfare state that we have, and with our kids being given everything, I guess they don’t know how lucky they are…’

HALLELUIAH! HALLELUIAH! HALLELUIAH! Handel’s Messiah rings through my ears. I look up from the floor. Another colleague pipes up.

‘I guess because there are so many others who cannot have an education, the kids here understand how lucky they are…’

I THINK SHE’S GOT IT! I THINK SHE’S GOT IT! By George, I really think she’s got it!

I nearly fall off my chair. And I’ve been so cynical! Use taxpayers money to send a bunch of teachers abroad so they can just continue to perpetuate the madness… But then, as if by magic, enlightenment descends…

Without poverty, real poverty, there can be no fear, no climb, no fight for survival. And without that, there can be no appreciation. The question is which is better? A country with starving uneducated children who cannot make a living and others who are given the opportunity to make that living, or a country where everyone is able to make a living, but few, if any, really live?

Life is more than just food and water. And I would say, that no matter how poor these kids are, they are richer than my kids will ever be.

Being Brainwashed

Brainwashing is pretty commonplace I guess. Sometimes husbands brainwash their wives into believing that they would be worthless without them, sometimes countries brainwash entire populations into believing that they are inferior to them and should therefore be subservient, and other times school systems brainwash their teachers into believing so much crap that to any normal critically-questioning human being, they would seem positively insane.

We are standing in the middle of an Indian slum. There is no running water. Houses are shacks made out of tin foil and paper. There is no electricity. A rotting smell permeates the air and the flies are a constant bother. Little 3-year-olds sing us their ABCs proudly and when we leave they wave madly, screaming ‘Bye bye! Bye bye!’ I want to stuff them in my bag and take them home with me.

One of the Indians with us asks me about poverty in England. I reply that we have poverty but that it is nothing on this scale. The young white teacher standing next to me screws up his face, pointing his finger.

‘That’s not true! We have the same kind of divide between the rich and the poor!’

I frown. ‘Well I’m not saying we don’t have a poor-rich divide. But we don’t have people living in these conditions.’

Mr Brainwashed shakes his head. ‘Do you know how much it costs to get a house in my area? At least 500 thousand pounds! But in the district next door, you can buy one for about 150!’

‘Yeah, I know. But we don’t have people who are living without running water and electricity.’

Mr Brainwashed growls. ‘But that’s not the point! He [the Indian] wants to know whether we have a poor-rich divide and the point is that we do. Things in India are just the same as they are in England!’

Can someone please tell me why some of us are obsessed with everyone and everything being the SAME? Even when it is blatantly obvious that poverty is not the same in these two countries, somehow this young man has persuaded himself that it is.

Swap to another conversation with my white English colleagues and some Indians. The Indians are describing their schools and the expectations of the students. These are slum schools: where children come from families who exist on less than a dollar a day. One of the issues is getting these children to remain in school. With their families so poor, often they are used to go out to work and bring home an extra 20 rupees for the day’s work. Given that the father might earn some 50 rupees per day if lucky, a child’s income can be very useful.

So various NGOs work with these families, trying to support them with government schemes, to allow the child to attend school. Unfortunately some 100 million children are forced into work, sometimes from the age of 3 or 4.

One of my colleagues pipes up.

‘Well maybe they don’t attend because the quality of the teaching isn’t very high!’

Our Indian host looks confused. ‘No, no, our teachers are trained and very experienced. And they have good salaries.’

‘No, but maybe they aren’t very good at inspiring. Maybe they aren’t very talented in the classroom!’

Our Indian host is frowning. Blame the teacher? He’s never heard of such a thing. Blame the teacher for the student’s failings? The very concept is baffling. But my colleague is like a dog with a bone.

The question is why. Why, when she has been presented with a perfectly reasonable explanation for why these children do not attend school, does she latch on to the quality of teaching? And why does our young man mentioned earlier insist that Britain has a larger-than-is-true divide between rich and poor?

Because this is precisely the nonsense that is shoved down our throats in British schools everyday. Why do our children misbehave? Because they are poor. Why do we have chaos in our classrooms? Because our teachers are not good enough. This is the mantra. This is what we are constantly told. And only teachers who are brave enough will question it.

If you tell a people long enough and constant enough that they are stupid, they will eventually believe it. These poor teachers are simply interpreting the world through the glasses provided for them by the British school state system. They cannot help it. That is the beauty of brainwashing. The victims have no idea what has happened to them. They genuinely believe themselves to be free. But the reality is that they are simply pawns in a cynical and complex game. They consequently misinterpret the world, relay that misinterpretation to the children they teach, and continue to perpetuate the brainwashing myths that will eventually destroy us all.

Are we to blame?

I have always defended my fellow teachers against the accusations: we’re too liberal; we have low standards; we’re the reason our education system is failing our children. I have always argued that the government/DCFS (Dept for Children, Families & Schools) forces teachers against their better judgement to implement policies which we know are a load of bollocks.

So here I am, in India, with those teachers who I love to defend. The man who is hosting us for the morning in his business offices is a great success: rich, powerful and philanthropic. But he thinks that young people no longer have values. His experience of hiring youngsters just out of university has shown him this. They think of themselves as individuals, not part of a community. They have lost their sense of religion, of making their parents proud, of wanting to do something well for the sake of simply doing it well.

I look around the room. My colleagues are all nodding vigorously.

‘Wow! We have the same issues in England!’

‘Yes! Isn’t it incredible? We fly thousands of miles and we find that children are the same all over the world!’

‘Children in both the West and the East have the wrong attitudes! That’s why we need to stop teaching them subjects and start teaching them how to learn!’

Everyone is smiling, congratulating each other with their eyes. One teacher yelps with delight.

‘Imagine! All this time I had the impression that Indian children were interested in education, when actually they aren’t any different from anyone else!’

Everyone nods in her direction, including all the Indians in the room. I, of course, just look at the ground. All I’m thinking is, something doesn’t quite fit here. I mean, I know what Indian kids are like in England. And so do all my fellow teachers, but somehow for the simplicity of today’s argument, they’ve conveniently forgotten what they know to be FACT. And then I also know, as do all my colleagues, that all of the Indians we’ve met over the last few days, in shops, at organized events, in schools, have been remarkably polite and well-brought up. What this man is saying, simply doesn’t make sense.

So later on, I catch him on his own, determined to find the missing card.

‘What you said about young people in India today was really interesting.’ I giggle. ‘You know sir, I love to hear the horror stories. Of all the ‘bad’ things you’ve seen some of your young new employees do, I would love for you to tell me one of the worst.’

This man is in his late forties. His face is weathered and his funny mustache looks as if someone had painted on his lip. His eyes open wide at my suggestion and he winces as he leans in to whisper the terrible atrocity.

‘Well, you see, once I hired this young man, and he came to his first day of work, and well, he was wearing this pair of trousers which had several pockets on the outside!’

I pull back. ‘Several pockets?’

‘Yes! At least sixteen of them!’

I laugh. He laughs too. ‘Yes! Can you imagine! So I shouted at him and told him to go home and get changed!’

I smile. So there you have it: there’s the missing card. What this man means by ‘having no values’ is something entirely different to what we mean when we say our kids have lost their way. As this man and I laugh together at his experience with this young man, I think about our three boys at school who currently wear ankle tags, put there by the police to keep them in check because they violently attacked a man on the street without any provocation whatsoever.

GBH vs trousers with lots of pockets: yeah, I can see how they’re similar. I can see how my fellow teachers might easily have misunderstood this situation. And you know what’s funny? Not only do my colleagues now believe that Indian children are really badly behaved, but these Indians now think that our children are the same as theirs!

But I cannot blame the Indians. How would they know differently? But my colleagues… not only SHOULD they know better, they DO know better. But for some reason, they’d rather come to conclusions which are patently false. And then I have to ask myself… whose fault is this? Is the government always to blame? Is the government in the room with us now? Is the government making us forcibly blind? Have they removed our powers of analysis? Or are our accusers right? Are we teachers to blame after all?

Aberration

I’m sitting with other English teachers, amongst foreigners in a foreign place, a place where education is taken seriously, where parents work several jobs in order to pay for their children’s school fees, where children viciously compete for the top scores in national exams so that their names will take pride of place in the newspapers. And I am, as I always am in such places, somewhat in awe of their ability to keep hold of what is ancient, precious and decent – values that have all but disappeared in the western world.

I mention a television programme where the talk show host is discussing with his panel and audience whether children should be allowed mobile phones in their lessons. Unlike in England, mobile phones are banned in schools. An older woman on the panel, an old-school Headmistress is defiant: absolutely not. What good would these phones bring to their learning? Children in the audience argue back saying but what if there is an earthquake? They would need to call their parents. The Headmistress swiftly dodges the blow and explains that the school, in sending out one SMS, in a matter of seconds can alert all of the parents of the emergency situation. There is therefore no need for every child to carry a mobile phone. I am impressed. I find myself inspired. While she knows nothing of the serious damage that mobile-carrying has done to learning in the British classroom, she instinctively knows that such items should be banned. She is clever. She is conservative. She is right.

Not so! Says my young white female English colleague. This old woman is clearly ‘scared’ of technology. What this woman should do is embrace it, the way that my colleague does in her own classroom. And how does my colleague do this?

‘My students use their phones to record what’s going on in the classroom and then they we go to the ICT room and put it up on Facebook!’

My heart sinks. I want to disappear under my chair in embarrassment. Not all education in Britain is like this! I want to shout. Not all of us are morons! Not all of our children waste their precious learning time recording with their phones (a skill they all know backwards) and then posting evidence of their wasted lives on a social networking site on which they all spend several hours everyday. And most importantly, not all of us teachers believe in this stupidity. I mean sure, this mantra of ‘all that is modern is good and those who reject it are dinosaurs and bad teachers’ is shoved down our throats daily, but not all of us teachers are so stupid to swallow it. Not all of us. Not all of us.

But then I look around me at all of my other English colleagues… and I start to wonder. How many of them think like me? How many of them use their critical thinking tools to reject the abject nonsense we are force-fed?

And then I hang my head, because as I quietly think these thoughts to myself, I dare not utter a word. And I know inside that the reason I am quiet is that I would be hard-pressed to persuade even one of my colleagues to agree with me. I am an excellent teacher. I am not a dinosaur. But I will never believe that Facebook has a place in the classroom. And that, in modern-day Britain, makes me an aberration.

To frown

Out to dinner with a black friend of mine in his forties, we stray off the usual topics of politics, education and religion, and I ask him about his daughter.

'Where does your daughter go to school again?'

'Sunnyside Up'

'Oh. So what's it like?'

I'm expecting him to give me some stats, percentages of pass rates at GCSE etc., but instead my friend looks to the floor. He's embarrassed.

'Well, well, you know... well, it's private.'

'Oh.' I pause. 'Yes, I mean, yes, of course.' I smile, remembering that my friend used to be a teacher. He knows the drill. Of course his child is at a private school. He continues, looking up from the floor.

'The thing is, well, it is basically my local school.' He smiles nervously. 'There aren't any closer schools really. I mean, this school is...'

I hold my hand up.' Whoah... what's up? Why so defensive? You don't have to defend yourself to ME... I get it, remember?'

My friend laughs. 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course you do.' He then goes on to explain some of his daughter's achievements this year and how proud he is of her.

I start to wonder more about the school. 'So what's the percentage of black kids at the school?'

My friend's eyes open wide. 'Well, there is a huge number of Asian children at the school!'

I wince. 'What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you so defensive?? I didn't ask how many Asian kids there are. I asked how many black kids there are.'

I'm guessing there can't be many. What's weird is his reaction: just like his reaction to sending her to a private school. He feels bad. And he feels so bad that his instinctive reaction is to defend his decision to send his daughter there, or to tell me that there are lots of Asian children at the school. I never criticised him. Yet, he is defensive.

Is this because other people have criticised him in the past? Or is this because it is not socially acceptable to send one's child to a private school? Anywhere in the developing world, people would never be ashamed to admit their child was at a private school. They would be proud. They would be admired. In some countries, putting one's child first isn't frowned upon.

So why do we frown on it here?

The importance of language

When politicians speak, listen to the language they use. Their language tells us how they think. My quotes are taken from a Polly Curtis article in the Guardian last week on the new White Paper published by Ed Balls.

Ed Balls, the schools secretary, said: "It may be that we will discover some teachers who don't make the grade ... We want this to be a profession which is continually learning and developing, and that will be central to the licence.”

Erm… yes, ok, teachers should be of a certain standard. I have no problem with that. Heads should be able to fire underperforming teachers. But isn’t it interesting that pupils don’t have to reach certain standards too…?

What else does The White Paper say?

• It sets out plans for a new report card judging every school on six factors: pupil progress, attainment and wellbeing, parental and pupil perceptions of the school, and how well schools are narrowing the achievement gap between rich and poor. Balls said he was "convinced" that the report card should include a single-grade verdict for every school.

Funny, isn’t it, that pupils are not required to meet certain standards to be able to attend these schools? Funny isn’t it that pupil perceptions of the school contribute to this single-grade verdict whereas teacher perceptions don’t even make it onto the list? Funny, isn’t it that ‘narrowing the achievement gap between rich and poor’ is the ultimate goal for schools? Why hasn’t Balls said, ‘Ensuring all children achieve their potential’? Under such direction, schools would be better off giving their rich kids no support at all so that their performance drops, thereby closing that achievement gap and ticking Balls’ all-important and frankly racist target.

The White Paper makes various promises to families and children about what schools will provide. If schools fail to meet the guarantees to families, parents can complain first to the school, then to the local authority, and ultimately to the local government ombudsman, says the document, Your Child, Your Schools, Our Future.

I can’t wait for the day when a parent takes a school to court because their child is unable to learn, because the teacher is unable to control the other children because, well, the schools don’t have any powers to do something about those children. And why don’t they have any power? Because The White Paper didn’t give it to them! Is Balls stupid or does he just not know what makes children tick?

To be fair to Balls, The White Paper does lay out some obligations parents have and lays out fines if they don’t meet them. But the over-arching feel of the paper is that the pupil is the customer and the school is the provider. And that’s no the way to improve schools for children. Children must be given reason and motivation to improve themselves. If we constantly put the onus on schools, children will never take responsibility for their actions and our current situation will just get worse.

Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, said: "Ed Balls has refused to give teachers the powers they need to deal with violence and disruption, such as removing the restrictions on teachers removing disruptive pupils. He rejected our plan to give teachers the power to search for banned items. He rejected our plan to let schools make parent contracts compulsory. His new gimmicks will not solve the deep problems we have with bad behaviour in schools."

Listen to the language that Gove uses. The feel of what he says is very different to Balls. Of course it is much easier to criticise from the other side. But the Conservatives will soon get the opportunity to shine... Let’s hope they make the situation brighter.

To make school better

Surrounded by our best pupils, not necessarily the brightest, but the most loyal, the most interested in making something of themselves, the most driven, I ask them what they think is the number one thing that would make them happier at school. There are about 15 of them, all between 12 and 14 years-old, boys and girls, some black, some white, Indian, Chinese: a real motley crew.

Would you learn more if you had ‘better’ teachers? I ask. Or what if you had bigger classrooms? Better textbooks? Better food at lunchtime? What about smaller classes, would that help? Perhaps learning would improve if we used computers more? What if we played more games in lessons? Perhaps if we set you more homework?

One of the smaller boys leans forward. ‘No Miss, none of that stuff is important. Well, I mean, it’s important, but we’d learn so much more if everyone in the class just listened to the teacher.’

I nod. ‘Ah, so the behaviour of other pupils in your lessons is the thing that stops you the most from learning?’

All of the children around me nod vigorously. They say nothing at all.

I grin. ‘That’s interesting. I’m guessing that you find that pretty irritating, do you? I mean, you must get very annoyed that there are these other pupils who are preventing the teacher from teaching and you from learning, right?’

Again, they nod in unison as if I had pushed an electronic button that makes their heads suddenly bop up and down.

‘So what could we do to make school better for you?’

A black boy with a bit of a stammer pulls his chair up. ‘Make them stop talking Miss, stop them interrupting, make them listen to the teacher.’

I look around at these keen, eager-to-learn children, who are staring at me, their eyes wide-open, wanting me to fix it for them, wanting so badly to simply go to school and learn, and a feeling of depression sweeps over me. All these poor kids want to do is to go to school and learn without disruption.

But in 21st century inner-city London schools, that notion is simply absurd. Go to school and learn? Pah! What nonsense. What are these children thinking? That’s so 19th century. Ed Balls would never have it. Children to take responsibility for themselves? Children having to meet certain standards or face consequences? Of course not. That would mean creating the kind of environment that my 15 pupils want: where schools would be places of learning instead of chaos.

And we don’t want that, do we? I wonder why…?