ANOTHER VOICE
Parent Power is no cure for the mess left by Shirley Williams
AUBERON WAUGH
Mrs Jane Tarr, headmistress of Kings- ton St Mary Primary School in the good old days, used never to tire of pointing out that schoolchildren spent only one ninth of their time at day school. All the rest of their time was spent with their parents, or at any rate under their parents' care. She used to raise the matter every year at the school prizegiving in order to urge parents to help children with their reading, or to read to them, or if that was not possible, at least to talk to them.
But her point is surely capable of wider application; that day schools, attended by the vast majority of the nation's children and nearly all of those who come under the authority of the Secretary of State for Education through the various local bodies, have much less control over the developing child than parents. No doubt it is possible for a perverse teacher at these establishments to inculcate foolish ideas, but it is by no means easy for teachers to inculcate any ideas at all outside the school curriculum, and few enough of those inside it, as the massive failure of the Depart- ment's campaign to educate children in the dangers of cigarette-smoking illustrates. I do not know how many hours of lesson- time every term are devoted to the impor- tant subject of Reasons for Not Smoking, or what proportion of the education budget is spent on procuring the diseased lungs pickled in formaldehyde which they pass around on these occasions, but one observes that the campaign appears to have had no effect whatever. Among young people between the ages of 16 and 21, in my acquaintance, almost all smoke like chimneys.
Which might reasonably lead one to ask how much harm is really done by teachers who insist on propagating unpleasant left- wing views under the mantle of `Peace Studies', or ethical views which are repug- nant to religious parents under the guise of sex education. Allowing for a reasonable degree of pupil-resistance, one might sup- pose that such efforts on the part of teachers, to the extent that they have had any effect at all, might explain the extraor- dinary success of the National Front in recruiting among the young, as well as the general indifference to sex, not to say hostility towards it, which has been observed among sections of the young.
My suggestion that day schools have very little influence on schoolchildren may seem to contradict my usual refrain, that Mrs Shirley Williams, through her unique- ly malevolent influence on education, has destroyed an entire generation of Britons, but I do not think there need be a contradiction.
Shirley's achievement (which Sir Keith Joseph has done little or nothing as yet to threaten) was that in the process of des- troying state secondary education she cre- ated these huge factories of non-education, where the nation's youth could spend its time away from parental control, with very little supervision and no discipline, often one or two thousand strong, of all academic abilities and of none, in the desperate attempt to evolve a 'classless' society. What has emerged from that bold experiment is a level of class rancour within the schools themselves which is unprecedented in the social history of England. From these state pleasure-domes we have the generation of subliterates to whom any idea of discipline — whether self-imposed or imposed from outside produces nothing but incredulity. But this cannot really be ascribed to the influence of schools or teachers. What has brought about our present sorry state is the absence of whatever restraining influence schools and teachers were able to exert during school hours, coupled with a new level of indifference and irresponsibility among parents who do not see it as any concern of theirs to instil discipline in a generation which can live as happily on supplementary benefit as it can on whatever wages its meagre qualifications might command.
It is at this point that we can ask ourselves whether Sir Keith Joseph's prop- osals in the Education Bill — which has been hailed by him, if by nobody else, as the most significant legislation since the Butler Education Act of 1944 — will do anything to improve matters, or whether they will introduce a new element of horror in the scheme of things. His idea of `teacher assessment' — a polite expression for sacking of bad teachers — is obviously beneficial and obviously overdue. I do not suppose there is an adult in the country who has not suffered from a bad, idle or incompetent teacher at some stage, with the result that there is a great, gaping hole in his knowledge of the world. My own lacuna, I am sorry to say, covers the entire history of Europe in the Middle Ages. The obvious answer is to sack the brutes. This is one of Sir Keith's Good Ideas.
It is when he starts talking of Parent Power that one begins to have reserva- tions. As I demonstrated at the beginning of this article, parents have much greater opportunity to influence their children than school-teachers ever have. It is an opportunity which, for the most part, they refuse to take. Being a politician, Sir Keith is particularly concerned about left-wing indoctrination, and he sees Parent Power as a counter to this. I have already express- ed my doubts about the effectiveness of left-wing indoctrination in a pluralist socie- ty like our own — my remarks are based on nothing more scientific than my own observation and experience — but I won- der if Sir Keith has ever observed Or experienced the phenomenon of Parent Power. Parents, as I say, have largely turned their backs on the opportunity which they already have to influence and mould their young. Some continue to do so, but most don't. Parent Power, if parents were accur- ately represented on the Board of Gov- ernors, would be no more than a further influence towards inertia and indecision. But of course they will not be accurately represented. Those parents who push themselves forward will belong to the minority who wish to throw their weight around, influence not only their own dui' dren but those of other people, and gener- ally make a nuisance of themselves sometimes against sex educaton, some' times for Militant Socialism, sometimes for their own emotionally stunted satisfactir° Perhaps Sir Keith's experience of these parental activists is different from mirlei My own experence suggests that parer° activists, if not hysterical or mad, ar,e characterised by a degree of stupidity an ° wrongheadedness which makes it Yell dangerous indeed to give them any influ- ence whatever over the rest of us. Unfortu- nately, our society is full of bossy wool.° (and some men, too) who want nothing more than to throw their weight around' The teaching profession, traditionally, Was full of such people, but they were at least identifiable and able to be separated from the rest of humankind. In the general inertia of the majoritY, any extension of democracy works to frustrate the majority's greatest desire', which is for a peaceful life. In the matter 01 secondary education one could reasonably argue that the majority needs nothing more than a hefty kick up the backside. S." i Keith has not found the way to deliver t in releasing a further swarm of gabbling madwomen to have their say in the des tinies of the nation.
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