Another voice
Teachers' problems
Auberon Waugh
T ast autumn, a disturbing article by Dr Bryan Thwaites, principal of Westfield College, London University, in Readers Digest. claimed that 50,000 teachers — roughly one in ten — were involved in the conscious promotion of left-wing pro- paganda in schools. He nominated the Schools Council, which receives £4 million annually from the Government, as a major offender through its humanities curriculum project, which issues 'educational material' in the form of documents, photographs and tapes on poverty and the economic system.
It is easy for people to become over- excited about attempts by teachers to subvert their pupils, but I draw comfort from the intractability of the young. Ob- viously one should not rejoice when one sees — as one can in any London school playground — children lighting up cigaret- tes during break. But when one thinks of the amount of anti-smoking propaganda they are continuously subjected to — in the form of gruesome films, lectures, video nasties, tapes in the language laboratories, posters on the school noticeboard, plasticine models, biological specimens in glass jars handed round, and damp-eyed female teachers giving them soulful looks — then it remains an impressive thing to see them puffing away like steam trains. There is also the thought, of course, that without tobacco revenue the Government would have to raise the standard rate of income tax to somwhere around 50 pence in the pound.
The National Union of Teachers, I would say, emerges from its annual conference in St Helier, Jersey, as still being in the control of the Shirley Williams generation. By this I mean the generation of Shirley Williams's contemporaries rather than the generation they have spawned, ovulated, inspired or otherwise shaped. The fact that conference defeated a motion on unilateral disarma- ment did not blind such astute observers as Miss Lucy Hodges, the Times's Education Correspondent, to the fact that the Left will soon be in a position to make all the runn- ing. She saw evidence of 'a generation gap between the silent majority of older teachers and the noisier, 1960s-educated minority' — in other words, between the Shirley Williams generation itself and the generation it has produced.
But if I am right, we should be more wor- ried about the teachers than about their pupils. It is true that a huge number of these Shirley Williams products, having been subjected to no discipline and virtually no learning in the centres of classlessness which her brilliant mind devised for them, have drifted into a life of welfare fiddling, minor crime and occasional violence. They are the real victims of this fiendish woman, but they are neither articulate enough, nor economically important enough, nor even sufficiently dispersed through the com- munity to threaten the peace of mind of the rest of us. The ones who should worry us are those who somehow managed to emerge from the Shirley Williams experiment in social engineering with a couple of A-levels, followed by some sort of degree or diploma in politics, social studies, linguistics or plasticine modelling at a college of further education.
These are the people who have descended in vast numbers on theleaching profession, and who threaten, by their parallel takeover of the welfare services, the Catholic priesthood and Anglican ministry, parts of journalism and even the universities, to bore us all to death.
Something of the horror of their lives emerged from St Helier and also from the annual conference of the National Associa- tion of Schoolmasters and Women Teachers which was taking place simultaneously at Eastbourne. The Association, with some 120,000 members, is the up-market equivalent of the National Union of Teachers, which has twice the membership. In Eastbourne, the schoolmasters and women teachers heard how teachers lost up to £100,000 a year in cash stolen from them by their pupils; how the ILEA falsified its statistics for assaults on teachers by pupils, publishing only those where teachers asked for legal help to bring prosecution, possibly a fifth of the total; how teachers' pay had fallen by 20 per cent against inflation in nine years.
Obviously, it is a miserable life, and we should none of us grudge them whatever small satisfactions they find in it. The pressures of this dreadful trade, so much more perilous than gathering samphires, would seem to produce three entirely dif- ferent reactions. The first, illustrated by the I'm against Cruise because it brings down property values'.
National Association of Schoolmasters, is just to moan. The second, illustrated by the leadership of the NUT — those whom I have characterised as belonging to the Shirley Williams school — choose to bury their heads in the sand and pretent that none of these problems need really exist: West Indian thugs are invariably the pro- duct of colour prejudice, disruptive or violent pupils need counselling and a system of pastoral care, rather than caning or put- ting in 'sin bins'. A splendidly dotty con- fidential report of the NUT opposes all forms of disciplinary action, including suspensions and expulsions, in favour of a 'stern glance'. The idea of some scruffy, squinting, semi-literate post-adolescent teacher, straight-out of teacher training col- lege, being able to quell a class of 40 restive proletarian youths by a stern glance should surely find a place in the next illustrated edi- tion of The Thoughts of Shirley Williams' Teachers and youngsters should work in unison Over such matters as improved health and education and reasons for giving up smoking, says the Report. Yes, yes. And try to understand when they bash your brains out, having finally located them. The third reaction might be attributed, perhaps unfairly, to the Socialist Alliance of Teachers: if you can't beat them, join them. This tendency is apparent in its most extreme form in an example given by Dr Bryan Thwaites from a book published bY the Black Ink Collective of South London, itself receiving an annual £30,000 grant from the Department of the Environment. He quotes a poem which includes these words: 'I belong to a street gang. We enjoy frightening old ladies .... We like them to shiver and beg for mercy.' Obviously, few left-wingers and no damp-eyed 'moderates' would actuallY agree with bashing up old ladies, but the in- stinct of wet or frightened teachers to seem to approve of recalcitrance or delinquencY, to be on its side, is evidently a strong one. Hence the outbreak of teachers with punk hairstyles, foul language and an apparent grudge against society. They claim to be moved by the spectacle of underpriviliged 'kids', but in fact they are simply frightened of the brutes. Having established that the real object of our concern should be the teachers rather than their pupils, we might be tempted to ask ourselves what, if anything, should be done about them. Since it may be thoughit callous to answer 'nothing, let them stew', feel we should not even ask ourselves the question. Mr Fred Jarvis, general secretary of the NUT, was quite right to warn Con- ser v ativ e politicians to leave the teacher training curriculum alone, on the grounds that they would be paving the way
for
time when a government of different coM- plexion would be able to use their ow_n measures of political control much more ef. fectively. Nothing the Tories can do mil achieve consent in any case. Far better to leave pupils to draw their own conclusions,
the as they always have and always will.
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