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| November | 19 |
| 2004 |
Almost everyone involved in schools - teachers, parents, even children themselves – says the same thing: that the single biggest obstacle to learning is disruptive pupils. An otherwise well behaved and eager-to-learn class can be ruined by just one such boy or girl.
Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, has decided to do something about this.
Not, as you might think, to tell schools that they are to be given sufficient powers to remove such pupils. And not to help ensure that as many schools as possible are free from such negative influences.
Of course not. To do that would be to make the terrible mistake of thinking that schools are primarily about teaching and that the job of government is to provide schools with the best possible platform for educating children.
Instead of doing that, the Education Secretary has decided that schools should focus on something far more important than mere teaching: social engineering.
Yesterday, Mr Clarke demanded that schools which do not have their “fair share” of disruptive pupils – at least three or four per school – must seek out such children and then bring them into the classroom. He wants to share those pupils around every school, so that those which do not suffer at the moment become equally disrupted.
It is egalitarian social engineering run riot.
Take grammar schools. Instead of rejoicing that there are schools which are able to educate their pupils to the highest level, free of problems, the Education Secretary’s response is to insist that they are even more guilty of being trouble-free than other schools and so must admit known troublemakers, even if they do not come close to the academic standards required of well-behaved pupils.
Mr Clarke’s argument is almost beyond parody. It is akin to saying that if you live in a neighbourhood which is relatively free from crime, while others are plagued by it, you are unjustifiably privileged and must ensure that you, too, are burgled. It’s only fair.
We have been here before. When Labour took office in 1997, its Social Exclusion Unit proposed that, far from helping schools to remove disruptive pupils, it should be made more difficult. It set a target for the reduction in the number of school exclusions. Within a matter of weeks of the new arrangements taking effect, David Blunkett, the then Education Secretary, was bombarded with complaints from teachers pointing out that their job was being made impossible, so damaging was the impact of these pupils on schools. Mr Blunkett reversed the policy and eased the rules on exclusions.
It is scarcely believable that Mr Clarke can propose to make the situation far worse, by forcing schools to accept disruptive pupils, and yet also claim to be on the side of the parent. It is difficult to imagine what could possibly show more contempt for parents – and for the overwhelming majority of pupils who are well-behaved and want to get on with their education – than his insistence that their desire for classrooms free of thugs should count for nothing.
MessageSpace
This doesn't quite cut it. I'd agree with your argument if the alternative was to educate all the disruptive pupils in special facilities somewhere, but it isn't. The alternative is to leave the 'good' schools that middle-class parents are skilled at wangling their kids into free of troublemakers, and force the schools in working class areas to take them all because nobody else wants to go there.
Result, the difference in results that you already get because of social and family background becomes even greater as even the clever kids in badly off areas get their education disrupted, and even the dim middle class kids get relatively plain sailing because the teachers have time to pay them more attention seeing as there aren't many hard cases to deal with.
Of course your answer will probably just be that we should solve that by having an entrance exam and sending the kids to the appropriate school regardless of all that, but firstly I'd think that's a different argument, and secondly kids are getting disruptive younger - under the current system an 11+ really would be just as much a test of how good your primary school was as how naturally talented you are.
Indeed. It seems like sending excluded kids to other schools is just spreading a problem around, rather than dealing with it, so the policy may be due some criticism but you're still faced with the question of what happens to excluded children. They have to go somewhere.
Just remind me, you will still be voting New Labour next year won't you Mr Pollard?
Notwithstanding his class-warrior tones jdc has one significant point. Disruptive children are clustered in working class areas. Not only that, a disproportionate number are black, are they not? I seem to remember a West Country school inspector getting the usual "r" word tossed at him last year for observing of an excluded child, "Don't tell me. He's black. They always are."
This government will never be dragged to an understanding of racial difference. On the contrary the entire left thinks equality ("inclusion") is only prevented by there being too little socialism.
Similarly, the notion that disruptive children are less commonly found in happy, two-parent families can never be admitted to practical politics. We all know its true. But it would explode too many other liberal and culture war shibboleths to reverse the trend.
For the same reason returning authority to the teacher in the classroom is beyond the thinkable. The quickest way to do it - reinstating corporal punishment - would give the therapy-queens of the SEU a fit of the vapours.
As in so many areas of life, our educational problems flow solely from the left. They cannot contemplate reality, and so real solutions, because they cannot see past their emotionalism.
A decent teacher will be able to deal with a single disruptive pupil in a class. The real problems start when, as now, there are five, ten or more in some classes in some schools. So spreading the disruptive ones around is not such a daft idea (although there are practical problems - do you bus kids from inner London to the Surrey countryside?). And, as others have asked, what's the alternative: consigning some schools to sink status and allowing the middle class to wriggle out of sending their kids there? Giving up educating disruptive children altogether?
Let's face it, education hasn't been the same in this country since we lost the facility of transporting undesirables to the colonies by way of rotting hulks in the Thames.
"the notion that disruptive children are less commonly found in happy, two-parent families can never be admitted to practical politics"
I hope this is an unwitting sleight of hand. Two-parent families are not necessarily 'happy' ones.
"Don't tell me. He's black. They always are."
This is obviously the statement of a world-weary school inspector! Cynical. What is this 'racial difference' you mention?
Nathaniel,
I can only contribute my personal experience in answer to your questions, but it is that of someone with many afro-caribbean relatives. Where there are strong parents (two) living in reasonable areas many of the children prove to be remarkably talented and successful. Where there are two strong parents but their children have to go to schools with more 'diverse' (which is to say poorer, often single-parent, crime-ridden areas) then it is a struggle to keep the children on the straight and narrow (though they do, but at the cost of mediocre as opposed to brilliant educational outcomes). Where the marital record is broken then drugs, crime, drop-outs and social problems are frequent. It has been a disaster for this country that so much of the afro-caribbean immigration has been from the poorer areas of places like Jamaica with a culture of marital irresponsibility, something that the 'liberal' culture here has magnified rather than mended. Talented emigrants from those countries have traditionally gone to the USA where they often succeed far better than other immigrants to that country.
Here is a possible economic solution to educating disruptive pupils. Those who have been excluded should bring a significant premium to any school prepared to take them. This would
compensate the school and the teachers for the additional effort needed. Schools' incomes already depend on their headcount of pupils. If they could increase their income by filling vacant places with difficult kids they might attract heroic and dedicated teachers by giving them premium salaries.
A benefit of this idea is that schools would retain their right of choice as to whether to accept disruptive pupils or not instead of having them thrust upon them by social engineering of the kind proposed by Charles Clarke. The premium attached to disruptive pupils would need to be set at a level that enabled the market to clear (i.e. all disruptive pupils willingly accepted by local schools). Whatever the market-clearing premium, it would surely be less than the cost of keeping the problem kids out of the courts, young offenders' institutions and ultimately prison.
Ian Senior
Ian,
Would you allow the parents of children in schools "bidding" for disruptive children to have a voice in this process? After all, they could be asked to weigh the question as to whether the extra "funding" (ie their taxes) outweighs the suffering that will be visited upon their children. I'm sure lots of them would think it was a jolly good deal. Well, some. Then again, maybe not.
Bernard,
To the horror of all who believe in self-definition, the Gaussian nature of things predetermines that not many blacks have brilliant educational outcomes. Actually, mean IQ is so rigid that our Afro-Caribbean population - average score 88 - does worse than many Africans who come here, despite the fact that the African average is a whole SD lower and the average for the elite of Witwatersstrand is 85. Immigration from Africa is far more difficult than from Jamaica, and that effectively filters out the lower part of the curve.
It does not, of course, filter out the non-IQ differential. Very early sexualisation and the poor adaptability of negroid, tribe-based social cooperation to western urban society remain. Forty years ago the former was contained among Afro-Caribbeans by a strong ethic of social-conservativism. Not any more. A high incidence of impulsivness and male violence are the consequence. As for the equally depressing issue of non-adaptability to the western model of social cooperation, the immensely high rates of crime and incarceration speak for themselves.
There is no solution to this grave difficulty. Detroit is what you get. It will hurt those who pride themselves on their liberal idealism to understand that. But reality won't change for the sake of liberal ideals.
Bernard & Guessedworker,
Thanks for addressing my query -- all very interesting, but these are cultural and not racial problems. Unless you are arguing (and I don't think you are) that there is a genetic cause, then your use of the word 'racial' (which is what prompted my question) is plainly incorrect.
Talking in terms of culture isn't about being PC, it's about being semantically accurate -- surely not something to reject as being horribly left-wing!
Nathaniel
On the culture versus genetics issue, I would have thought that culture is far more important than any likely genetic differences. But I also tend to think that the culture that is important is not that of Africa or Jamaica but the culture that is incentivised by the welfare state for those who are poor. The poor are the ones most incentivised to become lone parents. Blacks tend to be among the poorest. So they are the most incentivised to become lone parents. Lone parenting tends to lead to juvenile delinquency. There is reason to believe that if blacks are more likely to create disruptive children, it is because black tend to be poor rather than because they are black.
Larry Elder, in the USA, has argued that blacks there used to get married before having children just as much as whites. It was only when Lyndon Johnson introduced lots of welfare benefits that their behaviour changed for the worse.
Returning to the issue of what to do with the disruptive children who 'have to go somewhere'. One measure that would help in a simple, practical way is to stop forcing them to go to school for so many years. They are legally obliged, these days, to keep going until 16. Since the schools have in many cases failed to teach them even to read by the end of that time, it is clear that in their last five years or so, they are likely to have been fed up and alienated. Being kept at school during those years will only have alienated them further and made it more likely that they become juvenile delinquents and perhaps ultimately criminals. So perhaps we should go back to an optional school-leaving age of 14 or 11. Work is a very socialising experience. School, for someone who cannot read, is quite the opposite.
Some will be shocked by this suggestion. But what would you want for your child? For him to have a job and a relatively modest career or to be a criminal who spend much of his life in jail?
http://www.thewelfarestatewerein.com
James has hit upon one of the more practical answers. When I was a lad and misbehavior was generally looked down upon, the miscreants were removed from the general classroom population and sent to what were the called "600 Schools". Most of the teachers were male and the class work was aimed towards vocational training. This solution can be used again. Remove these children to a separate environment. And that can be a separate classroom if not a separate building
Guessedworker
In my scheme parents would have an indirect role in their school's policy about taking in disruptive pupils. In the immediate term, they could make their views known at parent-teacher forums etc. Over a period of a few years if a school's standards went down because too many disruptive pupils were accepted, parents would vote with their feet.
Ian Senior
www.rcubednews.com
James has hit on a brilliant, yet obvious, solution which will not be taken up by a government intent on having a population where everyone is force fed degrees as thought they were Strasbourg geese. No consideration, under utopian socialism, is given to the vast differences between humans. I would rebel against being taught to be a car mechanic. I would hate it, hate it, hate it and I would refuse to learn anything. (Hands over ears: "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!")
People who are fascinated by engines enjoy being car mechanics and make a lot of money.
So by forcing everyone into degree courses, the socialists get hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised car mechanics, plumbers, electricians, railway engineers, etc who are fidgety in class who would easily find a productive role in society if anyone listened to them. What is more, small businesses of plumbers, electricians, builders, form a rock solid basis not just of the country, but of the community.
Fascinating ...
So there are still folk trying to foist off the "inferiority due to excessive melanin content" "studies" on the gullible public ...
Decades ago, I learned that the Labour Party, generally, tries to solve inequality by requiring that as few as possible have the opportunity to rise above the lowest ... the exceptions tend to be the Labour politicians own family members ...
The Conservative Party, by contrast, tended to try to allow the market to solve inequalities by encouraging anyone to excel, by not holding back those who can and will excel ...
It seems that the Labour Party is still at it ... I'm not sure what happened to the Conservative Party ...
It seems ridiculous - the steps that the Labour government have taken mean it is so difficult for the child to be excluded they must be re\l tearaways, or have done something absolutely outrageous. Therefore in my less charitable moments I think "screw them, they're messing up everyone else's education and they've had plenty of warning. Chuck them out of school and don't let them come back". More often, I think that they would best be taught on their own until they more than prove they can be put back in the classroom.
The problems of disaffected children do come down to inappropriate teaching, however. I agree fully with the comments above that there should be a separation of academic and vocational and we should totally forget the one size fits all ideal that pushes far too many children into work they are uninterested in and often incapable of. If this means lowering the school leaving age to 14, I am all for it, provided some basic tuition is made compulsory thereafter.
There have always been disruptive children and there always will be, yes even at the grammar school I attended in the 70s. The problem is that schools have lost sanction after sanction to deal with this behaviour.
Mr Clarke is showing how simple it is to wipe out an Education system. Yet, as an Italian scoolteacher, I’m bound to say that British Education Secretary is on the same wavelength as most of his Italian colleagues since many years...
In the States they used to bus the kids around, but the suburban neighbourhoods' schools found that they were swamped by inner city incomers who disrupted classes. Local protests pretty well killed off busing. Now they dose the kids with Ritalin for "Attention Deficit Disorder", or stick them in sin-bin schools.
As a previous poster said, US marriage rates were almost the same for whites and blacks as late as 1950. Then came the civil rights era, "fairness", "fundamental human rights", affirmative action, welfare and all that. Today black children are roughly twice as likely as whites to grow up in broken, basically fatherless, homes, to live in one-class neighbourhoods. Boys are socialised more by the male role models supplied by rappers and local criminals-- since black middle class men have moved away from the 'hood. Even black male preachers and teachers less often live where they work.
Another problem, more relevant to ours in Britain, is that the sort of job which harnessed energy and determination rather than academic intelligence is rapidly vanishing in post-industrial economies. Service sector work-- flipping burgers, washing cars-- is less attractive than pushing drugs or having babies, given the high preference for immediate gratification among lower-IQ people.
The problem of finding the left side of the Bell Curve worthwhile work will loom large as the cognitive elite extends its grip and fences itself off from the lumpenproletariat. Social mobility seems to be declining in Britain, and wealth gaps widening.
"At all costs we should discourage racial mixing because, amongst other things, of the dramatic impact on national IQ (reducing it to the low 90's - the level of rural Turkey)."
This must be true because as we all know IQ tests measure innate intelligence. I blame Alexander the Great for slaughtering all those Anatolian peasants conscripted into the Persian army. Obviously all the rubbish elements were left at home and the effects on the present population is there for all of us to see. And any idiot who wants to argue that the low level of IQ in rural Turkey has anything to do with the lack of schools and schooling should get their bumps felt.
Bob Doney: Assuming your last post attempted sarcasm, and that in truth you do not believe that IQ tests measure intelligence, why do you think they have become the universal currency of psychometrics, and why do their results correlate so strongly with physical measures of relative and absolute brain size, brain structure and finction and mental processing speeds?
If you have a better method, or if you think we should not be concerned with intelligence at all, do let us know. Don't resort to gibes of the same calibre as "Oh yeah, everybody knows the earth goes round the sun."
And if you are arguing that IQ can be raised by formal schooling, it would be even more interesting for the world's psychiatrists, who have found no such effect during the 100 years or so that IQ testing has been spreading around the world.
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