A word on discipline

 It's normal, during the Easter holidays, for an editor of the right wing press to get  one of his junior journalists to write a piece to take a pop at 'lazy teachers'.  They know that teachers will rise to it because they've got time and parents can always be relied upon to remember their awful teachers (everyone had one) and take the opportunity for revenge.  This year however, they know that the great unwashed are firmly on the side of the profession.  It's only been a few weeks since they were having to supervise their children's education from home, so in their eyes teachers are still saints.  However, an Easter holiday can't go by without upsetting teachers so this year it was left to the broadsheets and Gavin Williamson.

The story that came out was that old Gav has been persuaded that during lockdown kids have forgotten how to behave (definitely not my experience) and need strong discipline to keep them in control.  He has enjoyed pushing the conservative, kids in rows, teach from the front, knowledge of dead-white-men-only based learning theories. He loved using the term Cultural Capital to push his agenda (sending Bourdieu spinning in his grave) and has generally had a great time suggesting that the curriculum needs tweaking.

This curriculum tweaking is something every Education Secretary likes to do.  They are a bit like dogs pissing up a lamp post in that respect.  Mine! Mine!  There might have been a taller, bigger dog here before but it's still mine!

You may agree with him.  You may think that discipline in schools has gone to rack and ruin since they banned the cane.  You may prefer the idea that kids are seen and not heard and you might prefer the lower classes to be kept in their place.  I hope you don't because then we can't be friends.  I'm just warning you that if you are the kind of person that thinks keeping anyone 'in their place' is a good idea then it might be best if we don't speak.

The problem with a knowledge based curriculum is that it doesn't ever allow you to admit you are wrong or learn anything new.  I'm not against a bit of rote learning, to teach how to rote learn but it should never be all we teach children.  

They have taken Bourdieu's research and twisted it.  He noticed that economic, social, symbolic and cultural capital were all linked and that there were cultural elements that all the people in power shared.  He wasn't saying that if you teach the oiks about Mozart then they will suddenly have the economic and social power.  It's not being a member of a brass band rather than a symphony orchestra that keeps you poor.  A brass band gives you the same skills but in a way that is understandable and affordable to your frame of reference.  The 'what' of teaching isn't as important as the 'how'.

Anyway, I was distracted.  I was going to talk about discipline.

I have been working on a case from 1898. The headmaster of the National School was brought before the local court for caning a boy. The details of the punishment are horrific.  It wasn't unusual at the time for children to be canned.  Parents were actively encouraged to whip their children and they did.  The boy in question was solidly middle class.  He came from a well known and respected family of bakers. I doubt he was perfectly behaved.  His punishment came because he threw a stone, which hit the skirt of a teacher after school.  The headteacher appealed to the court not to make his job harder by upholding the case.  He said that he had received a circular from the Education Board urging him to stop stone throwing and that this was "the worst case of it he had seen in his professional duties and it merited a severe punishment."  To the fact that it was something that happened outside of school he said that he would not be "worth his salt if he had no influence outside of the school." The court agreed with him and he went unpunished.

Did this beating improve the lad?  Of course it didn't.  He didn't suddenly rise to the upper echelons of society or become filled with wealth and status.  In fact, him and his whole generation were felled by war.  The bakery eventually closed due to mechanisation and he lived a normal working life, working in a flour mill.

I could see the headteacher's point though.  If the Education Board had told him that stone throwing had to be stopped then surely it was his duty.  In my research of the man, he was clearly well respected.  He was the headteacher for 35 years, was the secretary of the bowling club, retired to a large house in the 'posh end' of town.  One of his daughters ran the girls school, a son joined the Navy, another daughter had a lavish wedding in 'a gown of satin broche with pearl trimming a a veil trimmed with orange blossoms' (I'm a little bit obsessed with newspaper descriptions of wedding outfits). This incident was early in his career and I liked to think it taught him something.  

It was just a one off, I told myself.  Some precious parents who thought their boy was too special to be disciplined (I don't really believe that I was just putting myself in the mind of a Tory education minister).  However, I've just discovered that this wasn't the last time a parent took him to court.  I've since found another case, which he didn't get away with.

Who am I kidding?  Of course he got away with it.  The court fined him and he went back to work to continue in exactly the way he had always done.  In his defence of that case he pointed out that "he had always obtained the discipline grant for the school" and that he did not want his grant to go down. "It seems to me, therefore that I am between the devil and the deep sea."

Is this really what we want to go back to?  Do we want sanctioned child abuse for the sake of a discipline grant?

Luckily for my teaching friends school canes are still available to buy on eBay