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July 22, 2024 - 3:30pm
Woe betide the silent majority of well-behaved children, who just lost any institutional support they had for learning in a quiet, safe and orderly environment. Labour education insiders have trailed a new slew of policies on behaviour, which look likely to replace the strict Tory school behaviour interventions with more cuddly ones focused on “inclusion” and tackling the “root causes” of disruption.
Opponents of policies such as silent corridors and “isolation” rooms argue that they are “cruel”, according to the Guardian, and fall most heavily on children who are poor, who have special educational needs, who come from chaotic homes, or are otherwise vulnerable. So instead of routine exclusion of disruptive pupils, Labour education minister Stephen Morgan has vowed to “get to grips with the causes of exclusions”.
It surely stands to reason that neurotypical children from happy, materially comfortable homes will be less likely to act up at school than those less fortunate. And from a progressive standpoint, policies that fall hardest on those already vulnerable are obviously bad. Who would disagree with wanting to include everyone?
Except the difficulty with this is that it assumes everyone can be included. And this is shaped by a progressive view of human nature that differs sharply from the conservative one. Are we a mix of good and bad instincts, capable of excellence but with flaws that need social management and sometimes to be kept in check by force? Or are we intrinsically good, with our true nature distorted only by an imperfect world of poverty, oppression, and injustice?
It’s ultimately a metaphysical question, with deep roots in religious tradition. Progressives, who view bad behaviour as a kind of mechanical byproduct of structural ills, will respond by focusing on trying to help those who they see as worst affected by impingements on their natural goodness. Conversely, the conservatives’ tragic view is that a capacity for mischief is baked into the human condition, which means that they will focus more on narrow measures that constrain it.
The reality is surely somewhere between the two. Any observant parent or teacher can see that children sometimes act up due to external factors, such as hunger, tiredness, or distress. But it’s also clear that children can act up for any number of other, less obviously structural reasons, such as a desire to test boundaries, to inflict suffering, or make their friends laugh. To claim that this never happens is to imply that children are mere automata.
And it’s not always easy to tell the difference. Given this, conservative efforts to constrain bad behaviour will invariably sometimes have the effect of “punishing” children for behaviour that is not, strictly speaking, their fault. But the progressive approach tends to respond with empathy, which will result in other, unacknowledged costs — in this case less on the individual than the rest of the group.
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SubscribeYeah they did this here in Switzerland and it failed miserably. From parents through kids and teachers, everybody’s unhappy. Teachers quit in droves because they hate the constant disruptions and their complete lack of power to discipline. Schools needed more social workers, psychologists and administrative personnel. Most classrooms now need to have both a teacher and a teacher’s assistant. Excellence is being stifled, good students held back. Thankfully there’s now pushback against this woke insanity and we might be able to get rid of it soon.
But will those responsible ever be held accountable? Of course not, because those who implemented it were a faceless mass of politicians, “experts” and bureaucrats. And nobody will learn that the left’s compassionate narcissism is a recipe for disaster.
There’s nothing even remotely compassionate about this. This policy is deeply cruel, unnecessary.
A compassionate policy would include the wellbeing of the children affected by bullies and disruptive students. Labour couldn’t care less.
Like all of their policies, it’s about hate and spite. The zombie hand pulling all people down into the gutter.
Yes, Labour governments have always been hostile towards the intelligent, the hard-working and the genuinely intellectual. This goes all the way back to Tony Crosland and beyond.
They should look at Michaela – all the pupils are from minority backgrounds with 25% on free school meals, but they are taught how to behave and are thriving as a result.
Allowing children from broken homes to disrupt class doesn’t fix the broken home. It just makes life miserable for children who want to learn. This kind of policy is unserious on its face. I like to think I have empathy for people growing up in challenging circumstances, but you don’t fix that in the classroom.
Yes, quite. An orderly classroom won’t cure a chaotic home environment, but it might give a child from such a home some welcome respite from it.
Agreed. Children from chaotic homes are often looking for an adult who is consistent and caring, someone like a teacher who has clear expectations and shows that s/he expect every child to adhere to them.
It is nature versus nurture. The lefties will not let go of their fad for Lamarck.
Yvette Cooper, the new Home Secretary, labelled the behaviour of those rioting in Leeds over the past few evenings as “appalling and unacceptable”.
Home secretary: Leeds riots ‘unacceptable’ (youtube.com)
Someone should tell her that her colleague, Stephen Morgan, the Education Secretary, has a different view on the type of behaviour which is but a continuation of the failure to maintain order (by both Tories and Labour) so that the ‘silent majority’ which MH cites can get on with their lives without aberrant disruption. What happens in the classroom becomes magnified outside it.
Of course she *said* that. But watch what they actually *do*.
I read that there’s a Home Office “clampdown” coming on “carwashes and nail salons” to crack down on illegal immigration and employment.
But none of that actually means anything unless you take some action when you get the information. Just as a government digital ID could be used to identify benefit fraud and illegal immigrants – and this would undoubtledly be used as a selling point to introduce one. But does anyone actually expect it to be used for that ? Any enforcement will be prioritised on less serious – perhaps accidental – middle class infractions. Ability to extract money being a prime motivation.
Back to the article: Mary seems to be sitting on the fence when she says “The reality is surely somewhere between the two”. Perhaps it is. But that certainly doesn’t mean that schools or parents should sit on the fence when it comes to maintaining order and discipline. Firmness and consistency are important. And self-discipline is not something we’re born with.
Thanks for a balanced discussion of conservative versus progressive approaches. This all makes me think that we should give schools the autonomy, within limits, to set their own discipline. I think getting to grips with the causes of exclusions, as you quote, is an admirable goal. Any disciplinary system will have an escalation of consequences and exclusion will be the final straw. An exclusion would always be a failure (or at least a disappointment) because it means that whatever disciplines came before did not work. Disallowing punishments would clearly be wrong – I was bullied as a kid and was glad of action by teachers. But just punishing with no attempt to reform is surely pointless as well? At school, I was glad to be able to form a friendship with one or two who had given me a hard time in the past.
Has anyone watched the Freedom Writers? True story and great film! Shows that children often fail to consider the effect of their words on others. Of course schools have a role in this!
Isn’t the tax itself an example of that spiteful and disruptive behaviour in the classroom it is proposed to irradicate there? We spend money on not tax education?
I honestly wonder if all female staff isn’t something to do with this….will stand back now and await the onslaught….(writing as a female btw..)
Probably. Even during my schooldays back in the 90s, at a not-especially-rough school, there was a hardcore of pupils that everyone knew could only be controlled by a handful of male teachers.
When I was training in a rough comp, the best disciplinarian was a female English teacher, and the most hopeless a male History teacher. There’s nothing predictable about this, I’m afraid.
I saw that Katharine Birbalsingh is already leading the backlash against this.
I admire this lady for many reasons (not least because she has a great name), but I saw an interview with her (may have been on Unherd actually) where she said that children are happiest and learn better in an ordered, predictable environment, i.e. one with clear rules which are properly enforced. I also remember her saying that the imposition of strict discipline on children while they are at school gives them the tools they need to be properly free in later life.
I agree on all counts and the results of the Michaela school would indicate she’s right.
As my daughter, a teacher, said: “it’s obvious he’s never been in a classroom.”
Yes, she’s one of the greatest living Britons.
Katharine Birbalsingh is overdue a well deserved damehood. Unfortunately this will not happen under Labour for fear of upsetting the far-left teaching unions.
Let’s show particular empathy for little dears who punch their teachers or just innocently threaten them with gang rape. It’s not their fault so the best response is to spend lots more on interventions that are proven not to work.
Birbalsingh believes in levelling up – providing a calm and ordered environment for all children including those from chaotic and disadvantage backgrounds to enable learning.
In contrast Labour believes in levelling down – facilitating chaos by an empathetic approach to ill-behaviour so that learning is rendered equally difficult for all thus reducing the opportunity for the well-brought up to “unfairly” thrive.
I’m no sociologist but I just know that the Labour dream of all kids mucking in together,making friends up and down the scale and in five, ten or twenty years time living in the egalitarian world that has evolved just by their enforced mixing. It’s not going to happen.
Children are not the colour blind,gender blind,social scale blind little angels that some media likes to tell us. OK tiny children at infant or primary school may muck in together but most kids are more savvy than our sentimentalist society likes to admit. Because sentimentalism is linked with consumerism. They want us to show our love by buying stuff for our cutie. Most people are not taken in by that,but it’s a factor. So,in my opinion (and experience) by age 9 most kids and I will say to a greater or lesser extent have an idea of what’s what,an idea of status,an idea of money,an idea of the worth of different lifestyles. To cut it short the middle class “posh” kids will – I suspect- band together and form a cadre,with invisible walls and will keep out the school kids who they recognize an association with will not benefit them in later life. That is the middle class kids who will be forced to attend a state comprehensive as their parents just won’t be able to pay the fees. It’s not a sound argument to stress the quality of the factual teaching of this or that local comprehensive school. The main reason for going to a private school is to make links that will form your social network in later life. As a good example of this read Dennis Healey’s autobiography. The boys and girls don’t realize at first that this is what they are doing but I reckon by age 13 ,recalling when I was that age,the smart ones have got the idea. Doesn’t mean friendships aren’t genuine.
Just carefully curated. Labour can try to.squash everyone together but they can’t force people to be pals.
So what? I’m not sure how children’s tribalism feeds into the argument for or against discipline at school.
By the way, I went to two private boarding schools and was bullied. I feel no particular urge to send my own children to private school. Are we in danger of assuming all middle-class children are angels?
‘The main reason for going to a private school is to make links that will form your social network in later life.’
it really isn’t, you know. It’s to get knowledge-rich lessons from experts in their fields, in calm classrooms where learning can take place for the whole of the lesson, rather than just five minutes of it.
A model of education which Labour clearly loathe and detest.
The knowledge rich lessons in a calm environment are one facet of that future social network. They’re not separate things.
No, they’re knowledge-rich lessons. They have nothing to do with socialising and everything to do with knowledge.
This is why debate and dialogue with leftists is a pointless thing. Euphanisms, like calling disruptive and bullying children “vulnerable”, are lies. The people using them are liars. The liars know they are serving up a dog s**t sandwich but like all snake oil salesman, they want to wrap it in shiny paper.
This has nothing to do with them believing everyone is born good, because they don’t. Please, please, please, stop given these plodding zombie drones, who stomp in lockstep to pre-defined ideology, the benefit of the doubt.
Every policy they have mentioned so far has bene needlessly cruel and punitive, from taxing middle class parents, to destryoing safety and peace in the classroom, to concreting over the green belt, to what else…
They are not good people. They are cruel, punitive and want to rub your noses in it and dare you to say something. That have always been that way.
“Anarcho-tyranny” is a bit of an online right wing buzzword, misapplied fairly frequently, but this seems like a textbook microcosm of the phenomenon.
In our school days we are far more vulnerable to the predatory subset of society than anyone in power seems willing to acknowledge. We’re thrown in with people we spend the rest of our lives avoiding; we’re vulnerable to differing levels of physical development and streetwise savvy; violence is far more common amongst teenagers than older cohorts; and we’re prone to being disbelieved by adults. Nice, well behaved kids risk being thrown the wolves.
Yes, but many of these parents voted Labour (and LibDem) and assume these issues only concern other peoples’ kids.
Because if they DO have to send their kids to the local comp they will subtly take control and ensure their.kids are (subtly) prioritized and good for them. They are smart people with brains and they’ll use them. Actually that is part of Labours theory.Pressure from the better off,better educated parents will raise standards for EVERYONE
It’s a nice idea but I doubt it will work out quite like that.
When I was teaching high school, usually the first few months of school I taught my students manners. Raised by wolves apparently. I know that sounds weird, but that’s how they learned what was acceptable and what was unacceptable in my classroom. Often it was the well-mannered students who admonished the I’ll-mannered. Teaching them manners also established boundaries. Of course some of my students would test them, but I pulled them back. Personally, I think all students want boundaries. I also think that they want an orderly classroom. I had a lot of poor students with chaotic home lives, but that was not an excuse to act out in my class. I would have kids (seniors) transfer from a certain teacher’s class into mine, because her class was so chaotic and loud. I’m not trying to come across as God’s gift to teaching. What I did was pretty simple. And mainly I did what I did to maintain my own sanity.
Good for you.
c250k suspensions the last autumn term, with c3k permanent. There appears some correlation with impact of pandemic but the rate has been rising for over a decade. The Author somewhat late to the issue.
The correlation with rising child poverty and rising social inequality should not be lost on anyone. And what do we think those excluded often go on to do – be model citizens?
There will be some who just can’t be accommodated, who almost certainly have significant mental health issues too requiring special support in a separate environment. It is little surprise though that the main writers and comment makers on Unherd are wilfully blind to what a decade or more of allowing increasing inequality will do and instead fixate on protecting advantage for a select few.
I grew up in the 70’s in a council estate and was on free school dinners. Both my parents worked to pay the bills. Picnics were our holidays. We always had the correct school uniform and respected the adults at school. My parents and the majority of my friends’ parents were married.
The majority of the children in our school come from single parent households. Before you say the usual that I’m picking on single parents I’m not. It is the breakdown of the family, marriage discouraged. Getting more benefits if single rather than married.
I am so sick of hearing that we have to educate these parents to be parents. Both my parents left school at 15 but always made sure my sister and I did our homework. They instilled a work ethic in us. We had routine, helping around the house and a proper bedtime.
No more excuses.
A predictable response from J. Watson. It would, though, be quite nice if he were to read the article: Ms Harrington is explaining very carefully that, if you prevent schools from excluding violent and disruptive pupils (who are actually ‘the select few’), it’s the vast majority of pupils who suffer. I take it that J. Watson has never taught in schools for a living.
I have worked as a classroom assistant in primary education for a number of years. I despair at the state of our schools.
1. 5 year olds swearing at teachers and asked to say sorry as their consequences.
2. The amount of absentee children because feckless parents can’t be bothered getting up in the morning (most of the children tell you this).
3. I have been kicked, choked and spat at by 5,6 and 7 year olds, they said sorry and that was it.
4. The clever/stupid people who call themselves experts, sat in some nice office with nespresso machines coming up with traffic light systems, sticker charts and asking a 5 year old about complex emotions.
5. These children being rewarded after being good for 5 minutes whilst the rest of the class is good all day and gets nothing.
6. Frazzled teachers trying to teach a class whilst several children are crawling around on the floor, refusing to work and howling like toddlers (my latest class).
7. Taxis laid on thanks to you the tax payer to get children into school (before you say it that these parents are ‘vunerable’ not all of them are).
8. More and more classroom assistants in classrooms to try and stem this behaviour, when we are not sufficiently trained and this is not the teachers fault. The teachers are now trained in this softly, softly approach!!
9. A colleague I work with has just moved from a secondary school because she had had enough. She was threatened with rape, violence and death on a weekly basis by teenagers. They have no respect for the adults and nothing is done.
10. Child psychologists come into the school to speak to the genuinely vulnerable children but take them out of important lessons. They don’t want to go as they are forced to talk about things at home. They return having missed the lesson, often in tears and usually refuse to take part in any other lessons. Where is their safe space?
I’m sorry for the long list, I could go on all day. I love my job but somedays I look around the classroom and think I’m working in an insane asylum!!
Hats off to you, if you still love your job despite all that!
What a terrible indictment of not only the UK ‘education’ system, but about cultural values and attitudes generally in 21st Century Britain. I am fortunate to live in a small, relatively isolated rural community where such monstrous behaviour is mercifully absent. I would hate to live in an urban environment where this dreadful behaviour appears to be the accepted norm. Standards of decency, respect and discipline no longer prevail. The UK is a failed society.
Sadly, it’s not only the UK. It’s happening here in America, as well. And, I suspect, most of the western countries.
‘Labour education minister Stephen Morgan has vowed to “get to grips with the causes of exclusions”.’ I’m so glad to hear that Labour will promote two-parent families and crack down on drug consumption.
The empathisers will be told whatever they wish to hear by young people who possess enough guile. Behaviour always rewarded continues, as anyone who has empathetically fed a neighbour’s cat will know.
The difference between these two schools of thought – the evils of human self-will or the evils of environment – is behaviour derived from the family and its attendant parental authority over their own children in a private life, and behaviour organised by state micro-managerial control.
Or there’s a third way. This is the regimen at the Michaela School. This combines both approaches. For example, children have their lunch ‘friends’ chosen for them along with the subjects they can talk about.
This break time isn’t free time but part of a constant teacher-monitored environment. Perfect schooling derived from complete population control, euphemistically described as strengthening the school’s sense of community. At this school, ‘children have freedoms of all sorts’ so long as they don’t threaten the ‘happiness of the whole school community’. Who decides that this happiness is being threatened and what is threatening? Or even what happiness is?
I wonder if Starmer, Philipson et al. are happy to send their own children to this kind of school. My guess would be that the next generation of Labour princelings and princesslings are safely in middle-class schools with no behaviour issues (or maybe even in the private sector, like Diane Abbott’s boy).
And much good it did him!
How has he turned out. I felt sympathy for Ms Abbott
As a mother you would want to keep your child from harm,but of course it meant she had to be a hypocrite. But I guess thats the cost of parental love.
“Are we a mix of good and bad instincts, capable of excellence but with flaws that need social management and sometimes to be kept in check by force? Or are we intrinsically good, with our true nature distorted only by an imperfect world of poverty, oppression, and injustice?”
The eternal question dividing the world, especially in the West, into two camps: smart and stupid.
As usual, Labour is approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Don’t like private schools? Then make state schools so good that parents don’t feel the need to go private, rather than price parents out of the private sector in the quasi-religious belief that it will somehow, eventually, make state schools better.
Don’t like school exclusions? Then empower schools to create a good learning environment for the majority of children so that the next generation will have fewer children from troubled backgrounds. Is there any evidence that allowing disruptive children to remain in the classroom is beneficial for their own education? There’s plenty of evidence that it spoils the education of the remainder of the class.
But – “Labour will invest in a brilliant state education for every child paid for by ending private schools’ tax breaks.”
What could possibly go wrong?
We’re still subjected to the stupid policy in the US. My brother taught fifth grade (12 year olds). In a meeting with the parents of a well-behaved boy, he told them that their son wouldn’t learn much because most of his time was devoted to managing the two badly-behaved boys in the class. Escape from the nonsense, for the lucky, is charter schools or parents with sufficient wealth to pay for a school outside of the government systems.
in relation to this it is interesting to read the experiments (in the UK) of Hillary Cottam she summarised in her book Radical.
They are amateurish, dull and dour, and lack any concrete vision or joined-up political logic.
Never has there been a better moment for British conservatism. Just seeing Sunak still standing there in parliament should mobilise the Right to make sure that never happens again.
Labour will be keen to keep children in independent schools, where they cost the Government nothing, and where they’ll soon be generating tax revenue – rather than have too many transfer to state schools where they’ll cost a lot (especially where new capacity needed).
So I think this is quite a smart move by Labour to encourage parents to pay the VAT for independent education.