ANOTHER VOICE
If we can't smack the children, let us at least flog the parents
AUBERON WAUGH
There was a certain amount of ribald comment recently when Sir 'Terry' Burns, permanent secretary of a Treasury which has allowed our timid and incompetent Govern- ment to increase public expenditure beyond the wildest dreams of Labour, issued an edict requiring Treasury memorandums to be written in tabloid English. Some of his offi- cials had difficulty in understanding anything else, he explained. Above all, the use of Latin tags or phrases was forbidden. This could only make them terribly confused.
At about the same time, Sir 'Ron' Dear- ing, chairman of the Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority, was apologising to the headmasters and headmistresses of more than 440 schools over an unfortunate tendency which had emerged in the mark- ing of English tests for 14-year-olds, where- by bright pupils had been treated more strictly and given lower grades than they deserved, while those of lower ability were treated too leniently. The 440 schools had demanded that their English papers be marked again, resulting in changes in the grades of 20,000 pupils.
Sir 'Terry' has let it be known that he is a supporter of Queen's Park Rangers, although I do not know which team Sir 'Ron' supports. One can quite understand that a genial, easy-going fellow like Sir 'Terry', who comes from Houghton-le-Spring, near Het- ton-le-Hole in County Durham, would not wish to be too strict about his officials' English. He is five years younger than me, and grew up in the Sixties. In the same way, Sir 'Ron', who comes from Doncaster and is 14 years older than Terry, might be a little more old-fashioned. But it is not only in English that the new generation of Britons, raised by those who grew up in the Sixties, fails to excel. Mathematics is just as bad.
Last week Dr 'Nick' Tate, who is described as 'chief executive' of the Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority, decided to give utterance. If anyone is won- dering whether Dr 'Nick' bats above or below Sir 'Ron', I can give no guidance on the point, any more than I know which football team he supports. His main plank was to complain about the prelapsarian state of so many schoolchildren, their igno- rance of good and evil, their inability to learn right from wrong. This lack of moral sense was being compounded, he said, by the failure of a significant number of pupils to gain even the lowest-grade pass in GCSE mathematics or English. He explained: `This is 100,000 young people a year not reaching by the age of 16 the average attainment that might be expected of a 10- to 11-year-old.'
For some weeks I have been looking for- ward to a new edict from Sir 'Terry' to his Treasury minions, instructing them to avoid references which require mathematical expertise beyond the six times table. 'What is that?' I hear on every side from the ranks of the new Spectator readers. I will not and shall not explain. Perhaps Terry should instruct his people not to use any figures at all in their memorandums to each other. But in fact the next Terry-Burns edict to be circulat- ed to all Treasury staff was on a different subject. It came in a multicoloured leaflet with 'Respect' printed across the cover.
In it, he urges Treasury employees to avoid rudeness, bullying or intimidation in their behaviour to each other, to treat each other with the ordinary politeness with which the English have always behaved until now.
When I described Terry's latest edict as being on a subject which was different from English and mathematics, I should add that they are all very much interlinked, as Dr `Nick' may have been hinting when he com- plained that indifference to right and wrong was compounded by incompetence at English and mathematics.
The connection between manners, morals and mathematics may not seem clear, beyond the obvious fact that inepti- tude in all three (and in much else) is part of the New Brit syndrome, evidence of an intelligent society in dramatic decline. For the last 20 years it has been fashionable to put the blame on progressive teachers, and no doubt they have a share in it, although incompetent traditional teachers are no better. The Chief Inspector of Schools, Mr `Chris' Woodhead, reckons there are 15,000 incompetent teachers, with a few thousand more on the borderline. The total number of teachers in primary and sec- ondary schools is 400,000, teaching nearly seven million pupils. No doubt there is a strong element of wetness and wrongheadedness among them, but one must remember that, like the police, they are in the front line. Among their numbers are many of the most dedicated, unselfish, hardworking, sensible and passionately moral people in the country. We must also remember that 16,000 teachers are attacked every year bitten, pushed, punched, hair pulled out, sworn at — and as often as not threatened by moronically aggressive parents who see any attempt to discipline their kiddies as victimisation. Where they don't threaten to punch the teacher, they now threaten to sue — and, under Lord Mackay's dis- pensation, no doubt soon will.
Good teachers are quitting the profes- sion, leaving a combination of saints and duds behind, but the real key to the col- lapse of discipline must be the parents. At present the only effective sanction against the psychopathic 5 per cent in every class is a place in the dwindling number of 'sin- bins', more expensive than Eton. Labour's proposal to sentence parents of disruptive children to parenting classes is possibly the wettest solution of all. If teachers can't con- trol a class of disruptive 10-year-olds, what chance have they of controlling a class of contemptuous parents?
I am not given to whingeing, Booker- style, about the hardships imposed by European Union rules, but it does seem to me that the article in the European Convention on Human Rights which out- laws corporal punishment in state schools disregards the peculiar need of many young Anglo-Saxon males to be threat- ened with physical chastisement from time to time. Even if the Euro-rule did not exist, we have invented our own much sillier Children Act, which can lead to an accusation of child abuse whenever a child is touched — as smart children soon learn.
If, in the nauseating sentimentality about children which prevails in our increasingly childless society, there can be no question of reintroducing corporal punishment in schools, then the only hope is to flog their wretched, mumbling, dope-smoking par- ents and hope they pass it on. The Conser- vatives are too wet and too exhausted even to contemplate such a radical measure. We must look to New Labour's Mr 'Tony' Blair for a lead. Come on, Tony. The whole country is looking to you.
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