Children's rights
Sir: Many people 'interested in education will be grateful to John H. Chambers for his sane comments on children's ' rights' (April 28). Indeed many a young teacher caught up in the often turbulent world of the very large non-selective school may well be wondering if his or her rights are sufficiently protected in these permissive times from the hooliganism
and violence of some pupils!
Our reformers seem to have gone back in time several centuries: on the one hand they see the child growing up in the shade of a new twentiethcentury prison house; on the other they seem to envisage children as virtual miniature adults with all the privileges and responsibilities of that state! They fail to realise how unhappy many modern children are made by the enforced maturity that is thrust so often upon them — either because their parents are too busy to bother with them or because they are too inhibited by ill-digested psychological bugbears about 'repression ' to offer guidance or exert even minimal authority. Now the authority of teachers is under attack and so the children of today are to be deprived of the one remaining source of guidance and control in their lives. It is not be wondered at that they increasingly resort to bad conduct and even violence: partly, one suspects, in protest; and partly in a desperate attempt to provoke some positive reaction from an adult world that is too understanding and too ready to forgive. How fed up many young people must be with trendy teachers who aspire to be pals as much as pedagogues and weak-kneed parents who confuse authority with authoritarianism!
Historically, the most alarming example of the consequences involved in granting too many children's rights occurred in the nascent Soviet state in the 'twenties. Then children were virtually running their schools and terrorising their teachers in the process in an era when permissiveness was given full rein in and out of the classroom. Inevitably the collapse in standards of education when all authority and restraints were removed — when traditional education that included examinations, courses of study and formal teaching was recklessly jettisoned — became so appalling that a draconian reaction set in. Is this what we are heading for here?
J. H. K. Lockhart 21B King's Avenue, Ealing, London W5
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