By Patricia Lança The first target of the multi-culturalist project espoused by the far left of the British Labour Party (so-called New Labour) was not immigration but the indigenous working class. Aiming to end the sharp class differences which characterized British society, Left-wing sociologists directed their militancy towards primary and secondary education. In teacher training institutions, the first objective was no longer to prepare trainee teachers to teach the content of their subjects but to transforming their attitudes. Aspiring teachers were accused of being middle-class and therefore prejudiced. They had to change their ways. It was no longer the business of teachers to inculcate the manners and habits of the middle class in their pupils They should no longer correct their grammar or their vocabulary. Shouting in class, interrupting, name-calling, and all the behaviour that the traditional teacher would not tolerate, now became acceptable, if not encouraged, as legitimate self-expression. And the reason, according to the teachers of 'sociology of education' was that this was the way the working class normally behaved. Such was their 'culture'. To try and change what pupils learned in the home was a form of repression inadmissible in a democratic society. This was even more the case with children of immigrants from the Carribean or elsewhere. It might be a good thing to rewrite school text-books in 'Creole'. This bright idea was shipwrecked on the rocks of the extreme diversity of dialects among the islands from which these children’s parents came, a factor which these sociologists only noticed some time later. So the easiest way out of the dilemma was simply to give up teaching English to such difficult pupils. Soon the same solution was applied to English working-class children who were encouraged to maintain their language within the bounds of the uncultivated regional speech used in their homes and which varied greatly from one part of the country to another. In tandem with the laisser faire mode introduced into the curriculum, was the total abandonment of sanctions. Any kind of punishment simply ceased to exist. The British, once specialists in the deplorable practice of corporal punishment, ceased to chastise even the worst offenders. Even if a teacher was physically assaulted the only remedy was the aggressor’s expulsion and even that became progressively more difficult to effect. Forty years of applying such permissive attitudes in English schools have now borne fruit: the worst figures in Europe for educational failure; child hooliganism in the streets reaching the point where adults live in fear of children and adolescents; city streets at night full of drunken and aggressive youths of both sexes; and a government, at its wits’ end to cope and now setting up a government department in charge of inculcating 'respect'. The changes in social behaviour caused by these Left-wing policies were many. Among them two small but disagreeable phenomena: the generalization of the habits of urinating and spitting in the street. In earlier days such practices, said the British, only happened across the Channel. Nowadays it is they who are surprised at the polite manners of Continentals. We are, of course, referring to the products of State schools (where I myself taught for some ten years). Private schools (called with typically British contrariness 'public schools'), often boarding establishment, benefited from the degradation of State education. The better off, including many ministers of Tony Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s governments, continued to send their children to private schools. And it is these who have privileged access to the best universities, which naturally select the best candidates. Such is New Labour’s classless society. And it is this model that has unfortunately been imitated in many other countries, including France. ~~~~«»~~~~ |
Portolani for Our Times Patricia Lança's Web Site How to deconstruct a Nation |
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only be produced by good education. This section is devoted to what is probably the most important part of government: its educational policy. Problems to be found today in most if not all developed industrial countries arise directly out of a misguided philosophy criticized at some length in the second article IN DEFENCE REASON. The first text, below, describes briefly what has happened to English education in recent years. This lamentable state of affairs is a direct consequence of the cult of relativism and irrationality prevalent in important areas of the Humanities.
situation in the rest of the United Kingdom is slightly different, |
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