"Let's find somebody to, sorrov, start the meeting," said the
young teacher. Well, -a 'surrov' teacher anyway, on a much easier number than his comprehensive school colleagues or even infant school
teachers: he, with two others, had responsibility for eight chronic truants in Tower Hamlets. Some of them had absented themselves for two years. They didn't like school you see. "We've got to alter the system," said a pretty little redheaded girl who couldn't read. "I'm just one of them kids," said another naughty boy. "I just can't stand school. I just can't go to school." The indefatigable Peter SimPle has been at it again, anonymouslY scripting, last week, a programme for Man Alive (BBC2) called Our School. This was vintage stuff. There is, we're told, a truancy problem of great proportions in London schools. 10 per cent (on any given day, one imagines) of pupils absent themselves. Don't make the grotesque mistake though, of imagining that these children are in any way to blame, either for mitching or for the petty thievery in which so many of them indulge. It's the sys.tern, see? Not, of course, the comprehensive system or the low-grade teachers that the Colleges of Education, encouraged by the Ministry and their own dafter lecturers, are turning out. No, it's just the'sorrov' system. • Naturally, then, you have to think of ways of making these Artful Dodgers happier. So you divert three teachers from an already absurdly inadequate teaching force and let them devote all their time to eight delinquents. And, from the look of it, to the composition of delightful euphemistic phrases. These kids don't lie; they "make plausible things up." "They are exploding with talent!" said one of the teachers, though there was no evidence of this, except for a strikingly, if crudely, executed picture of a tiger's head. In Britain, especially in London, the public education system is near collapse, with many schools working short-time: the situation is as serious as any ,economic crisis as far as the future of our country is concerned, and it has been created largely by bad educational theorY and lack of the right kind of investment. Young teachers are encouraged to look on themselves as a class of social worker not as edu.cators: it was revealing in the film how true this was of the teachers that were featured in the film who were naively pleased. at the fact that these seemingly incorrigible youngsters liked coming to their school, or fun group. No one at their College of Education, poor things, had ever told them that it is very easy to achieve instant popularity, firstly by letting the kids do what they please and secondly by self-consciously bringing themselves down to the children's level. The prospects are chilling. It all had something more than a whiff of the 1945 patchily Portrayed by William Hardcastle as The Year That Shaped Our World. Where was Mr Edward Short, then, the man who said he looked forward to the abolition of the 18-p1os now that the 11-plus had gone? Not too far away, one imagines. Carried away by saeva indigna' tio, I've left myself no room for a word about the new ITV coined), series. Both seem promising. more about them next week.
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