Workers' Liberty 36, November 1996

It is not entirely true that “instruction” is something quite different from “education”. An excessive emphasis on this distinction has been a serious error of idealist educationalists and its effects can already be seen in the school system as they have reorganised it. For instruction to be wholly distinct from education, the pupil would have to be pure passivity, a “mechanical receiver” of abstract notions — which is absurd… In the school, the nexus between instruction and education can only be realised by the living work of the teacher. For this he must be aware of the contrast between the...

A S Neill, founder of Summerhill School, died in 1973 at the age of 90. In his practice and in his writings he was the most uncompromising advocate of freedom in education. “Their reaction to freedom is rapid and tiresome. For the first week or two, they open doors for the teachers, call me ‘sir’, and wash carefully. They glance at me with ‘respect’, which is easily recognised as fear. After a few weeks of freedom, they show what they really are. They become impudent, unmannerly, unwashed. They do all the things they have been forbidden to do in the past: they swear, they smoke, they break...

Recent press reports claim that “problem” pupils are on the increase and are holding schools to ransom. At Manton Junior School, Worksop, governors overturned a decision to expel a boy. The NASUWT threatened to strike if he stayed. The school had to find £14,000 from its own budget to provide isolated one-to-one tuition. Eventually, after much conflict, the whole school was closed. It is simplistic to blame “bad” boys and girls for these incidents. There are many causes of “bad” behaviour in schools. Class size is one of them. As classes of 35-40 become common in primary schools, insecure...

As the teachers fight it out for more resources and events take an ugly turn in The Ridings School, the debate about disaffected youth has grown narrower and narrower. When the government used to think there was such a thing as society, pupils who were not doing well at school were a cause for concern. Now that the government says society costs too much, the arguments are no longer about how reforms could be made, but about how to discipline pupils into accepting schooling. The issue has been privatised: disaffection is now a personal, moral weakness which can be beaten out of children or...

Nigel de Gruchy and the union he leads, the NASUWT [National Association of Schoolmasters / Union of Women Teachers, the second biggest teachers’ union], are campaigning to win members from the National Union of Teachers. The NUT is not in favour of vilifying children. De Gruchy’s high profile, sensationalist media campaign will clearly make a recovery in the Ridings School more difficult. But it is not just De Gruchy and the NASUWT. The Tories and Labour are vying with each other for profile, despite having only minimal differences in policy. In the run-up to the general election the...

The business about Ridings School and other things in the press about the “indiscipline” of children reflect a real problem — but it’s a problem that’s partly being used as a cover for other issues: a lack of resources in schools, lack of support for teachers, underfunding and selection. Possibly some of the ministers concerned in the debates are jolly pleased to have these issues to blast the headlines with. If they can make it appear that the education system is breaking down because the UK’s youth are impossible, violent and delinquent, and so forth, then they don’t have to look too closely...

On October 25th, 1971, Peter Graham died in Dublin at the hands of semi-gangster members of the "Republican" urban-guerrilla organisation, "Saor Eire", of which he was a member. (Its nearest equivalent today would be the INLA and IPLO). He had been beaten with a hammer, subjected to other indignities, and then shot in the neck and left to choke on his own blood. He was 25 years old. An electrician from the Coombe district of Dublin, Peter had joined the Stalinist "Connolly Youth Movement" at 20 and become a Trotskyist a year later. I knew Peter Graham well, and cared about him. He was marked...