Centrepiece
Saved from the majority
Colin Welch
Some think my fears about the teaching profession exaggerated, the examples I gave in the past two weeks untypical. Most sincerely do I hope they are right, though I'm sure they won't be right for long, unless the present degenerative process is halted. Who is to halt it, and how?
High hopes are based on parent power. A Green Paper giving parents more say in the running of their children's schools than ever before was recently emitted by Sir Keith Joseph, whose restless reforming in- tellect, checked or disappointed at this point or that, seeks ever fresh ways of mak- ing progress, compromising here, retreating there the better to leap forward, grabbing half a loaf where the whole is denied. Vouchers, it seems, once 'in', are now `out'. Very well, power must be transferred to parents in other ways, less decisive perhaps but easier to accomplish. What Power will parents get and, if any, will they use it well?
Note first how narrowly circumscribed are Sir Keith's proposals. Parents will have a small majority on most governing bodies: five out of nine in small schools, ten out of 19 in big. Yet local authorities will still hire and fire teachers; curriculum and discipline will remain with head-teachers, Governors will be able to establish 'guiding principles within which the headmaster operates' — or does not operate: we all know how dif- ficult it is for part-time dignitaries like trustees, directors and governors to impose their will on the chap who is in day to day control, especially if he is appointed by so- meone else. Candidates for teaching posts will be selected by a panel on which parents will be outnumbered, before being con- sidered by the local authority, which has the final say. Parents will certainly have a foot in the door. They will be less easily ignored than they are now. They will make bigger nuisances of themselves. But real power will continue to elude them.
This could easily be changed, by making the hire-and-fire, curriculum and discipline People directly answerable to the gover- nors. This would doubtless have some very good results. Sir Keith expects the influence of parents to be on the whole conservative with a small 'c'. The days of many trendy social worker teachers for peace would be numbered. Yet no such good results can be guaranteed. Mr Ray Honeyford, the com- prehensive school headmaster I have already quoted with gratitude, has seen 'far too many able working-class children fail because of their irresponsible parents' failure to co-operate with the school'. In some 'deprived' areas — not many, I hope
such parents, together with those who, so far from co-operating, roll round to threaten and beat up conscientious teachers, may constitute a majority. Such parents need, according to Mr Honeyford, either 'a kick in the pants' or 'constructive criticism'. They hardly need power. The power to procreate, however, is not denied to extremists. Often endowed with a terrible energy and formidable infiltrating techniques, these would soon turn up on the governing boards for which their off- spring qualify them. If the teacher and local authority nominees were also extremists, one or two extremist parents would be enough to form a majority, reducing or- dinary parents to baffled impotence.
Extremist majorities might otherwise be formed by the notorious power of 'experts' and 'educationists' to win over the innocent amateur by flattery and patronage, by blinding with science, by revealing for the first time the jargon-infested mysteries of modern educational philosophy and techni- ques. Ordinary parents may thus soon find themselves the deferential allies and lackeys of their supposed superiors. The purpose of parent power is to take the schools out of politics. What it will actually and inevitably do is to take them out of one sort of politics and into another sort, arguably better but still politics.
Not all these dire developments will take place everywhere. But there are certain drawbacks to parent power which seem to me inescapable. Let us suppose that state bakeries, giving away bread free, were run by governing bodies elected by the con- sumers. Sliced white bread, perhaps, would be produced in adequate quantities. Minorities who wanted croissants, baguet- tes or wholemeal could expect to be con- sistently outvoted. Under a free market system, of course, it pays bakers to cater for minorities. But democracy is less kind to minorities than the market is.
Parents are not an unknown quantity. What they want, and how they will use whatever power they get, are reasonably predictable. Parents in Tory-controlled Redbridge were recently polled about a pro- posal to go back to a system of selective secondary schools. Which would they prefer: a fully selective system or the present system, mostly comprehensive but with two grammar schools surviving? They were not even offered a fully comprehensive system, yet that is what 53 per cent obstinately chose. Twenty-six per cent favoured the present system and only 15 per cent opted for full selection. As a local councillor gloomily said, 'The figures speak for themselves.' What do they say?
They whisper one very important thing which might be overlooked. That 15 per cent: who are they? I will bet that they are the parents who truly value education, and who have bright children who would profit by selection and competition, by being plac- ed among their peers and taught by teachers who are equipped to bring the best out of the brightest. Outvoted at Redbridge, these parents will probably be outvoted everywhere: outvoted by parents (not all working-class by any means) whose children, not specially bright but loved all the same, must be protected from the risk of failure; by parents who will conscien- tiously care for the welfare of the average but who cannot sympathise with the special needs of the gifted; by parents who may in- deed seek to hold back the gifted, to leaven the residual lump; by parents who may value education but who value other things as much or more — fairness, equality, 'the community'. Even the exam system is not safe in the hands of such worthy people: who truly cherishes exams except those who shone in them and expect their children to do likewise?
The saddest knowledge about our present system is that there are gifted children buried in it, ignored, bored stiff, never stretched, taught English and maths by newfangled methods more suited to duds than high-flyers, taught some subjects not at all, getting into mischief or, according to Margaret Henfield in the Daily Mail, play- ing solitaire in corners while children vainly try to catch up. How many of them are there, these angels trapped forever in the marble? Two per cent, ten, 15? Estimates naturally differ. Never can they hope for rescue from parent power. Their parents, like themselves, will always be in the majority.
To give that minority power over the ma- jority would be, if desirable, possibly unjust and probably impossible. One power it must get: the power to opt out. It must be given the value of the present state educa- tion and empowered to spend it at indepen- dent schools. Or, if this smacks too much of freedom, the state must take over good schools, one in each area, remove them from local authority and mass parental con- trol, and foster and maintain them, like monasteries in the dark ages, as centres of excellence accessible to all gifted children.
Only a minority would initially profit: but what a minority! Included in it would be all the guardians and creators of our future, intellectual, scientific, artistic and spiritual. Would the loss of this elite be a crippling blow to the residual comprehen- sive sector? Not in the long run. For in this elite would be included all the best teachers of tomorrow, who will bring back to mass education all the cultivation they acquired outside it. The present comprehensive system is not self-sustaining. Parasitic now on teachers from past systems, it cannot generate good teachers for its own next generation. It does not so much eat the seed corn as lose it, waste it, let it rot. The elite will return as saviours, bearing gifts.
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