Unruly schools, part 3

Two previous articles looked at the policy passed at the National Education Union (NEU) conference, taking that union closer to the approach of the Nasuwt, a union that has recently organised a number of strikes focusing on student behaviour. It looked back at the experience of the 1985 Poundswick dispute, warning that striking against “student behaviour” can very easily develop in reactionary directions.

The word “behaviour” covers a lot of things - from students at Bacup sent to isolation for wearing stickers supporting striking teachers, to year elevens at the Michaela School in detention for not attending additional Saturday revision classes, to acts of violence or bullying by students against each other or against staff.

We want schools to be positive and welcoming places to learn. Though we do not want all of what is called “good behaviour” by students, in general we want “good behaviour” by both students and staff (politeness, quietness, attentiveness, etc.). It is true that schools prepare working-class youth to accept the “discipline of employed work”, but it does not follow that every push-back in school is something to be celebrated.

Children and young people spend a big part of their waking lives in school and we should demand that schools are decent places to be. One of the matters of concern in the NEU debate was misogynistic behaviour by boys affecting girls and non-binary students, for example.

Some reasons for “poor behaviour” are obvious, not least the very nature of schooling. Putting a few hundred people (or a couple of thousand in many secondaries) into an institution in which they have no say, even over rules or the curriculum is bound to go wrong now and then.

Summerhill

There have been experiments in “democratic” schools. The most famous in this country has been the private school Summerhill, where lessons are optional, and rules are decided collectively. Its founder, A S Neill, wrote in his memoirs that, “Summerhill today (1971) is in essentials what it was when founded in 1921. Self-government for the pupils and staff, freedom to go to lessons or stay away, freedom to play for days or weeks or years if necessary, freedom from any indoctrination whether religious or moral or political, freedom from character moulding.”

Neill himself was an anti-Stalinist left-winger, a former associate of Wilhelm Reich, and proud of having been denied a visa to both the USA and the USSR. His writings should, in my view, be required reading for anyone entering any role in a school. His memoirs describe a school where decisions are made on the basis of one vote per member of the community, adult or child, with a new meeting chair chosen weekly, and a democratically elected “tribunal” to handle complaints. Of course, a small private boarding school in the Suffolk countryside - it is about the size of an average primary - is a very different context to any of the schools I have worked in, but it provides a challenge to much of the received wisdom about how schools have to function - and about how “behaviour” has to be managed. It is very relevant too, in my view, to the possibilities for education under socialism.

Emulate

There have been few attempts to emulate the Summerhill approach within the state sector, and Summerhill battled government attempts, in the 1990s in particular, to shut it down even as a private school. When lessons were optional in schools in early revolutionary Russia, this was because of difficulties getting fuel to heat schools, not as a democratic experiment. The focus for children in those schools was on literacy and health - including getting enough to eat - and is a topic worth examination in itself.

The short-lived Risinghill School in Islington incorporated elements of student democracy, but was shut down in 1965 by the Inner London Education Authority following the refusal of its head, Michael Duane, to use corporal punishment. There are two state schools on democratic models still in existence in France: the Lycée experimental de Saint-Nazaire and the Lycée autogéré de Paris.

Neill again: “Summerhill has shown the world that a school can abolish fear of teachers and, deeper down, fear of life. Staff at Summerhill do not stand on their dignity, nor do they expect any deference because they are adults. Socially, the only privilege the teachers have is their freedom from bedtime laws. Their food is that of the school community. They are addressed by their first names and are seldom given nicknames; and if they are, these are tokens of friendliness and equality…

“There is no necessity for a gulf separating pupils from teachers, a gulf made by adults, not children. Teachers want to be little gods protected by dignity. They fear that if they act human, their authority will vanish and their classrooms will become bedlams. They fear to abolish fear. Innumerable children are afraid of their teachers.”

Control

From the 1970s, some elements developed that gave students a little more control over their experience of school, or at least an involvement or voice in decision-making.

Education writers Mick Waters and Tim Brighouse comment on this trend, and its reversal:

“Twenty years ago, the concept of ‘pupil voice’ was beginning to grow as young people’s participation, contribution and influence was welcomed in certain school contexts. Various studies confirmed the benefits of pupil voice: increased pupil engagement, improved relationships between pupils and teachers, better communication between pupils and school, and providing the right conditions for the school community to become a learning community. For a while, many schools were becoming genuinely collaborative places.

“The basis for pupil voice is found in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which sets out the right of children to express an opinion and to be included in decisions that involve and affect them. Some schools have successfully addressed this issue of what is essentially a lived curriculum. At that time, pupil voice began to appear in the inspection framework and was seen to be informing judgements; it seemed to be gathering momentum. However, when Michael Gove became minister he put an end to SEAL [Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning], diminished personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education and citizenship, and moved the inspection framework towards valuing a type of pedagogy which saw the teacher’s role as the dominant conditioner of learning. The general move towards pupil voice quickly fell away.

“Over the last 15 years, we have witnessed what we both regard as an alarming trend that started in secondary schools and has also spread to some primary schools: zero tolerance. The influence came from outside but the phrase has become increasingly common in all sorts of managerial contexts. It soon expanded to inform what became known as ‘assertive discipline’ policies; although the term is not used as much now, the procedures persist. Classroom and school practice began to include ‘red’ and ‘golden’ areas/zones, lists of pupils who have misbehaved (and deserve punishment) or been good (and deserve reward), names on the whiteboard with consequences for every sort of action - which was soon followed by isolation rooms, complete with solitary confinement booths -and informal exclusions of one sort or another.

“We struggle to see how sitting a pupil in a solitary confinement cubicle, facing three plywood walls, will help them to build stronger relationships with others. Of course, allowing a distressed child time out in pleasant surroundings where their distressed and distressing behaviour can be the topic of appropriate discussion or an opportunity for in-depth, well-calibrated conversation with a skilled member of staff, or even where they can learn online, does need to be part of our provision.”