Bad Idea for Dealing with the Behaviour Crisis #5: End Parental Choice
Posted by: oldandrew in UncategorizedThe leftwing option for dealing with the collapse of the secondary school system is to ensure that parents of well behaved children can’t all send their children to the same school. Instead there must be “good social mix”. The plan is that if enough middle class pupils are forced into sink schools then standards will rise. Some will even suggest closing private schools in order to bring this about.
Of course this is one of those fantasies that flies in the face of human nature. While having a challenging intake will make a school more challenging, intake is never the whole story. Middle class students forced into a school with an ethos of non-achievement and loutish behaviour will not change that ethos. They will either become withdrawn and quiet, scared of their new peer group, or they will go native and behave as badly as any other kids. In my experience it can take as little as a term at a poor school for a student who arrives wanting to learn to adopt the attitudes of the majority. The lowest common denominator will always prevail in schools because the attitudes of the worst behaved kids are enforced with intimidation, social pressures and the every present threat of violence.
Also it is incredibly difficult to stop parents trying to get their children into the decent schools. End private education and the wealthy will educate their children overseas. Use catchment areas as the admissions criteria and middle class parents will buy new homes to get into the catchment areas. Force schools to take a mix of abilities and we will soon see students encouraged by their parents to underperform in tests.
Simply put, forcing middle class kids into bad schools would take considerably more effort than it would to deal with the schools directly, and would have little effect on the school.
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April 28th, 2007 at 9:08 am
“Of course this is one of those fantasies that flies in the face of human nature.”
Could you show me some of this human nature, which drives so many of your arguments?
You teeter precariously between blaming the students for a bad school (the lowest common denoms making up the majority), and poor management. Do poor students produce poor management and bad schools? Or does poor management accept bad students creating a bad school? Or do bad schools have an aura that attract bad students and management?
Surely you are also bringing back selection (argument #2), but simply making middle-class parents worry about the selection by buying new houses, and condeming those without the money to local provision?
I am also interested in how you plan to discipline the ‘bad schools’ full of ‘bad students’ if you have not introduced more students who want to learn, and would readily display their willingness and create a new peer pressure if allowed to. Would you just send them all to prison for being morally wrong?
April 29th, 2007 at 4:20 am
The point of taking away parental choice isn’t to deal with the behaviour crisis. It is to cover it up by doing away with schools that contrast too sharply with the squalor.
May 4th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
“The lowest common denominator will always prevail in schools because the attitudes of the worst behaved kids are enforced with intimidation, social pressures and the every present threat of violence”.
A first-hand experience tells me this absolutely correct. Newsisgood (above) must be living in a fantasy world if he/she thinks otherwise.
My neighbours, a very supportive middle-class family, have nearly bankrupted themselves moving their daughter from the local comp to private school because of the effect it was having on her. Previously a keen and sociable pupil, she quickly deteriorated into a surly, monosyllabic chav (as the father called her) losing all interest in lessons, sport and music. They reckon it was due almost entirely to peer pressure.
Within a few weeks of starting at public school, she is back to her old young self - with more enthusiasm for life than ever.
I can only assume Newsisgood is working to some idealistic agenda where the real world does not exist.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:33 am
And henceforth, PaulD, you are bringing back selection - those rich enough can make the choice to move to a new area, and a new school.
This means all the poor students will be left behind, with immense peer pressure to be rubbish (no dissenting voices at all). Do we then rename the school as a prison?
May 9th, 2007 at 11:31 am
What do you mean “bringing back selection”, newsisgood? It already exists. Unless some totalitarian regime (we’re almost there) makes it illegal to educate your children privately, it will continue to exist.
My neighbour’s daughter obviously had no improving effect on the disruptive, disinterested kids around her. What make you think a few more of them - assuming they are all resistant to the gravitational force of troublemakers - will transform the classroom?
No, the problem runs far deeper. I suggest, for starters, that the law of the land is applied behind the school gates.
What we see on these pages are examples of intimidation, conspiracy, threatening behaviour, libel, and any number of criminal and civil offences that would not be tolerated anywhere in the outside world. I would like to see the full weight of the law brought down on anarchic pupils. They would think very seriously before waging their campaigns of destruction if some of their mates had been locked up for it.
It would also teach them the most valuable lesson of their lives. Isn’t that what schools are for?