An ex-Marxist deputy head teacher called Katharine Birbalsingh got a standing ovation at the Conservative conference.
Among the things she said were:
“If you keep telling teachers that they’re racist for trying to discipline black boys and if you keep telling heads that they’re racist for trying to exclude black boys, in the end, the schools stop reprimanding these children.”
… and …
“When I give them past exam papers to do from 1998, they groan and beg for a 2005 or 6 paper, because they know it’ll be easier. The idea of benchmarking children and letting them know how they compare to their peers is considered so poisonous by us teachers that we don’t ever do it.”
The management at her school were not happy and sent her home to await their judgement. It should be noted that she had only worked at this school for a few weeks, so most of the experiences she related referred to her previous schools.
It turns out that the “executive head” (not sure what that means) who sent Ms Birbalsingh home was quite happy with some other forms of political activity. Dr Irene Bishop allowed St Saviour’s and St Olave’s School, of which she is also head or executive head or whatever, to be used as the backdrop for the launch of Labour’s 2001 election campaign. I remember Matthew Parris describing the occasion in the Times as “breathtakingly, toe-curlingly, hog-whimperingly tasteless”.
Ms Birbalsingh is now back at work. But it also turns out that she is also Miss Snuffleupagus of To Miss With Love, a very fine education blog. I cannot link to it because at some time over the last few days it was taken down.
Laban Tall grabbed a bit of it via Google Cache:
The girls push open some doors at the top of the staircase and draw back quickly.
‘Nah… we can’t go down that way.’
I frown. ‘What do you mean, we can’t go down that way?’ They are visibly frightened.
So I push past them, enter onto the staircase landing and find a bunch of boys half way down the stairs, sitting on chairs, gambling with paper money and cards. We are in the middle of lesson time. The girls are uncomfortable. They have clearly been briefed to make sure they avoid such scenes. And these boys are not happy either to be interrupted.
‘Come on girls!’ I shout. ‘Let’s go!’ And I motion for them to follow me down the stairs towards the boys. The girls follow me, reluctantly.
These boys don’t know me of course. I have no clout in this school. So I know I cannot inspire fear. ‘Sorry boys!’ I sing. ‘Coming through!’
The boys look up at me, almost growling. As we approach, one of them puts his foot up on the chair, on top of the money, and blocks our way. I step over his leg. ‘Thank you boys!’ I smile. The girls follow sheepishly. As we continue now on the other side, moving down the stairs, I call back up, grinning. ‘Boys… I’m sure you’re not meant to be doing that right now! Better watch someone doesn’t catch you!’
And off we go. Phew. I can almost hear the girls’ relief.
i’m going to miss her blog.
After being made redundant from the Railway in ’96, I spent 5y in HE, first gaining an HND in Mechanical Engineering, then following through with a science teaching degree.
I lasted two years in teaching before bailing out with my tail between my legs.
I had no problem with teaching my subject, or teaching mathematics to GCSE level, but what did force me out was having to spend so much of my time fighting against class indiscipline with little or no effective backup from higher authority.
And I speak now as a member of the Conservative Party when I hope we get this lady into Westminster with a ministerial post in Education.
Bob,
As you must know, your story is not unusual.
In one sense I did all right on the discipline front. They were quieter in my class than in some others. But that was at the cost of continually suppressing my natural self. I never relaxed, hardly ever smiled.
It’s a huge issue – much more important in affecting teachers’ quality of life than pay or hours or how tatty the school buildings are. That is why Katharine Birbalsingh’s blog and her speech resonated with many teachers, although it might not be politic for them to say so.
Don’t teachers in the UK get to push a little button to deal with troublesome students now? Or is that only for thoughtcrimes?
The left love “free expression” as long as it agrees with them. Any real dissent – and they attack.
One of the hardest thing for a libertarian to learn is that the left have different definitions for words – basic political words.
For example a libertarian and a conservative might disagree over freedom of speech – for example the conservative might support censorship in wartime.
However, they would both be using words to mean the same things – for example the conservative might say “I favour restricting freedom of speech, because there is a war and giving aid and comfort to the enemy will…..”
However, with the left (or at least the majority of the left – there are some exceptions) one enters a different universe.
The leftist will say, and say with passionate feeling, “I support free speech” and the libertarian will feel a wave of kinship.
Then the libertarian will watch the leftist get busy censoring speech – punishing people for what they have said and so on.
The libertarian will be baffled and say something like “you are going against what you said was your belief” to the leftist.
But the leftist will also be baffled (honestly baffled) because the leftists is NOT going against their belief.
You see to the leftist “freedom of speech” means speech that supports the leftist “freedom” cause. It is their duty to stop speech that is not “progressive” because such speech is a threat to “freedom of speech” (as defined as speech that supports progressive causes).
This is only one of many differences in language.
The fact that leftsts and libertarians speak different langauges (or rather use the same words to mean radically different things) is one of the reasons that the “libertarian left” is a dead end.
Either such a “libertarian left” person will give up their leftism (i.e. their efforts to ally with the left) or they will give up libertarianism (in order to ally with the left).
It really is that brutal.
Ah, the dear, dead days . . .
It wasn’t so very long ago that YHS served his sentence in a UK high school – boys-only.
– On your feet when a teacher – any teacher – entered or left the room. We didn’t need any word of command to do this – it was a Pavlovian refex, drummed in in about 15 minutes on the first day in the 1st form and continued until the day we were released from the 6th form.
– Yes, Sir, Yes Ma’am (in the UK elocution, ‘marm’) and no nonsense. Omitting the Sir or Ma’am, or any other lack of appropriate deference, was a heinous sin for which the sinner would be immediately and thoroughly called to account.
– Talking in class? Not and live to see the next sunrise.
– I well recall a boy of West Indian descent – Robert Joliffe was his name, I think I can name him after (quite a few years) who was the butt of some racist remarks – which were not unusual in the time and place, you understand. Only some bright spark made the mistake of using some epithet in the hearing of a teacher, with the result that the entire form got one of those toe-curling lectures, plus further group punishment, and it was made clear to us that that sort of thing was Not On.
– I had a French teacher – Margaret Elsey, I can name her now after (quite a few years) – who could hit any boy, from any point in the room, with a piece of chalk that packed the delivery of a 30-30. And if you didn’t shape up, the blackboard eraser was right behind it, with the same pinpoint accuracy and the same muzzle velocity.
And this was not unusual at all. I knew from my contemporaries in other schools that these standards of behaviour were absolutely normal. It wasn’t Dotheboys Hall, far from it, I look back on those days with great fondness – but, by God, you were at school to learn manners as well as algebra, and you got both, good and hard.
So what happened?
llater,
llamas
“What happened”?
Even I can not just blame statism – it was statism plus “progressive” ideas on education.
You can trace it back (in Britain) to the 1960s – but things do not change all at once, things get worse over time (as teachers retire and new ways of doing things and a new “culture” in the school develops) it happens over generations.
Nor is it inevitable – for example Bavarian government schools are not like this (although the left is working hard to make them like this).
The bad guys?
Philosophically Rousseau – and more directly John Dewey.
However, even these people had their virtues – but their followers have just developed the bad side of their thought.
Of course in America (where the British bad practice comes from) John Dewey was working on easy ground.
Right from the days of H. Mann, American state educationalists had dreamed of a Prussia without structure, religion or tradition.
In short a system of state education – without the elements in Prussia that made it work (sort of).
John Dewey gave them that – and the ideas of such “reformers” have spread to many other places (even to France – where traditionally people opposed Rousseau in practice as much as he was honoured in theory).