Rampant paedophobia
Further to Phil's observations on Tory slogans, I couldn't help noticing while driving into work at silly-o-clock this morning that Commercial Road is absolutely rife with Cameron's billboards. I am presuming that they are aimed at the driving-to-Essex passing trade rather than the locals (or possibly to banker boys in the Wharf?), but it interests me that Central Office have picked two particular slogans to go nap with for the four poster sites they have within about a mile of road.
"Let's have national citizen service for 16-year olds", and "Let's bring back discipline in our schools". It is always with the fucking spanking with these people, isn't it? (I am not sure if they're actually advocating the return of corporal punishment and suspect that Strasbourg probably wouldn't let them, but "discipline in schools" is pretty clear dog whistle talk).
Do 'ordinary hard working families' really dislike their kids as much as all that? I was never a big fan of fearmongering about 'feral youths' back when it was all meant to be abstract, but these two explicitly paedophobic slogans seem even more unpleasant.
Discipline in schools! Hurrah!
ReplyDeleteto be honest, this post was just a rather irresponsible exercise in trying to label people as "paedophobes" in the hope of attracting a howling mob to their door. Yes I know that's an urban myth too.
ReplyDeleteI don't think its their kids so much as other kids. You know, the kids of those problem families who don't do nuthin'. Its like Grammar schools. Nobody who might respond to that particular whistle thinks that their kids might go to the shitty Secondary Modern, they just want their little darlings segregated from those kids.
ReplyDeleteDo 'ordinary hard working families' really dislike their kids as much as all that?
ReplyDeleteNo, but they have to live with them, instead of foisting them off on the nanny then packing them away to Piddlingcote Prep, where regular beatings never did anyone any harm.
I picked up a Ukip candidates election material, and one of her policies was something like 'No more tinkering with local education - I promise a new grammar school'.
ReplyDeleteUKIP's education policy explicitly promises spanking in primary schools, and also promises to abolish my degree.
ReplyDeleteSeriously - they hate the EU so much they want to abolish all courses and lectureships in European Studies, apparently on the basis that if you really think something is the enemy there's no reason to think about what it might be up to.
It is interesting, after years of complaining about being called 'the nasty party', the speed and apparent enthusiasm with which the Tories have taken up 'nasty' packaging. I can't help but think 'discipline in our schools' has little really to do with education, more of a general pledge to crack down on other peoples children in the manner Cian suggested. I've also always felt that in the phrase 'ordinary hard working families', the word 'families' is doing the least work, and that it's really a pitch to white lower-middle class people of any family status. After all, most people are in a family, even if they don't have children of their own. You, I'm talking to you, you're 'ordinary', not like the 'different' troublemakers. Ordinary is in the eye of the beholder.
ReplyDeleteRe UKIP: It was alleged in the Guardian following their manifesto launch, that Lord Pearson transparently hadn't actually read the document before the press conference, in that he didn't know the 'burqa ban' pledge was contained inside. I had always assumed that writing the manifesto was the best bit about being in these nutter, fringe parties; God knows what else they find to enjoy in it.
Youth mobilization and discipline - "Let's have some living space" signs are probably coming up next.
ReplyDeleteIn an interview on radio 4 Lord Pearson was reduced to repetitive claims that he wasn't a "professional politician". As in, "well I don't know about that exact bit of the manifesto, but its important for people to remember that I am not a professional politician".
ReplyDeleteIt's much of a muchness with the rampant fear-mongering about 'rising' crime. When it's, er, not rising.
ReplyDelete... instead of foisting them off on the nanny then packing them away to Piddlingcote Prep ...
ReplyDeleteI couldn't thinking of an interview by the gushing Libby Purves with the daughter of John Dankworth (another case of My Tough Life, I would guess) about how marvellous it must have been growing up in a home full of music. "No, I was at boarding school", came the reply.
"No, I was at boarding school", came the reply.
ReplyDeleteHaving had conversations about this with ex-boarders at college, I can actually understand the rationale In certain situations: diplomats' kids, for instance, whose parents are likely to move from post to post every few years, with all the upheaval that entails. I suppose the same could apply for the Dankworth/Laine kid(s), given the touring schedule.
"this post was just a rather irresponsible exercise in trying to label people as "paedophobes" in the hope of attracting a howling mob to their door. Yes I know that's an urban myth too."
ReplyDeleteIf you're talking about the story of the mob that attacked a paediatrician's home - that really happened...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/wales/901723.stm
Well, there is a definite problem with bullying in schools, to which brutality is the obvious cheap wrong solution favoured by so many. It's very hard to get people to talk about it sensibly.
ReplyDeletediplomats' kids, for instance, whose parents are likely to move from post to post every few years, with all the upheaval that entails.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in this situation, the government actually paid the boarding school fees, having presumably calculated that this was cheaper than maintaining a string of comps across the world like the French and the Americans. Don't know if this is still so.
I imagine it was more of a class decision. The British privately educate proportionally more of the population than anywhere else in the first world. I know that ten years ago they also paid the fees for military kids, though I don't know if that's still the case.
ReplyDeleteCertainly a class issue then. My parents were offered private education for me in '65 when posted abroad (luckily for me they turned it down), but that was never available to the ranks.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the things that puzzles me about this debate a little. On one hand, as Cian says "the British privately educate proportionally more of the population than anywhere else in the first world"; on the other, the public discussion of it then switches to, in effect, the sharp injustice of advantage given by attendance at Eton or Winchester (which injustice is very real; which discussion is important, not to say currently topical).
ReplyDeleteBut the great majority of this larger-than-elsewhere tranche of private education doesn't happen but these high-end flagship establishments at all; a significant portion of it must be at low-end private establishments. What advantages are conferred exactly by the seemingly many public schools that fall below the quality median?
(I'm not asking this because I think the answer is "none"; let alone "actually they confer distadvantages: they're an expensive route to a rubbish education" -- I'm asking because this would seem to be an important issue to potential customers of same, which doesn't seem to enter the wider discussion at all, even though facts pointing in any clear discussion would give foes of this system better leverage... if the whole system confers significant proven advantage, then the injustice of paying for social advance can be better articulated; if significant lower reaches of the system confe no significant advantage, why does it have such support? Always exploring it in terms of Eton seems to miscue it, when you're not actually discussing the make-up of the cabinet)
(This isn't a snipe at this thread: it's a more long-running peeve of mine...)
actually they confer distadvantages: they're an expensive route to a rubbish education
ReplyDeleteIn some cases this seems to be the case. I know people who have sent their kids to private schools because they'd had bad experiences with the local state sector, only to take them out again after a term or two because they were even worse. I suspect there's a layer of Dotheboys Halls out there which attract people who believe that the whole system confers advantage because they haven't yet seen the evidence to the contrary.
But will all these disciplined young people doing national service be able to make the trains run on time?
ReplyDeleteengels
"Do 'ordinary hard working families' really dislike their kids as much as all that?"
ReplyDeleteYes, they do (and with good reason, I might add).
Take also into account that in many cases it's not "their" kids, but the sons/daughter of the spouse from a previous marriage.
Well, don't forget that a private school doesn't have to be better than the best or even the average state school to be worth the money, it just has to be better than the other available state schools.
ReplyDeleteDotheboys Hall may well be worse than most state schools. But if it's slightly better than my local state schools (which are the only ones my kids are eligible for, due to residence requirements) then it's still worth while.
Some crap private schools survive because they're religious. Some survive because despite offering a mediocre education, they're "nice". Some survive because the parents are desperate (when your kid has been expelled from x schools...). Some survive because they are cheap, and the parents are snobbish enough/stupid enough to believe that a private education is always better. Some survive because the local state schools are really bad. And some schools; continual survival is a mystery to everyone.
ReplyDeletePlenty go under though.
"We class schools, you see, into four grades: Leading School, First-rate School, Good School, and School. Frankly," said Mr Levy, "School is pretty bad..."
ReplyDelete(Waugh's Decline & Fall, natch.)
Some survive because they are cheap, and the parents are snobbish enough/stupid enough to believe that a private education is always better.
ReplyDeleteThis certainly seems to describe the ones friends tried. They certainly proved to be worse than the available state school, which was, frankly, pretty bad.
My son's privately educated. We came for the academic selection, and were all genuinely (if naively) surprised to see just how many of his peers had come in large batches from schools with silly blazers, and - while quite good at the whole test-passing thing - didn't care too much for all that reading books and stuff. (I think they call them preparatory schools for a reason.)
ReplyDeleteThat school offers academic excellence & (perhaps more importantly) the unembarrassed pursuit of same, but it also offers supreme self-confidence and a habit of assertiveness. Lower-grade private schools probably get by quite nicely on turning thick rich kids into confident rich adults - cutting out the educational middle-man, as it were.
If Phil's second paragraph is correct -- it certainly accords with things I've heard lots of people say -- then it's pretty important evidence that schooling isn't just about facts and and the handling of knowledge and the absorption of valuable technical skills, but about managing social relationships...
ReplyDeleteWhich is obvious of course, and whoever doubted it* -- except that (again) this whole dimension doesn't seem very often to be part of the public discussion of education (except in a stupid "why can't we cane the bad ones?" sense...)
*Certainly not the proponents of the public school ethos in the age of High Empire -- as I think I said on an earlier comments thread, I did quite a lot of background reading about this a few years back for a book I was writing. The social sensibility was their primary interest; scholars were a nice occasional bonus, but they really REALLY weren't the main point of the 19th century public school...
The social sensibility was their primary interest; scholars were a nice occasional bonus, but they really REALLY weren't the main point of the 19th century public school...
ReplyDeleteA point made by the introduction to the copy of Tom Brown's Schooldays that I read many years back - very little of the book actually takes place in classes, and nobody seems too fussed about what they're actually supposed to be learning.
Belle:
ReplyDeleteactually I'd argue that technical skills is about the last thing schools should be teaching. Its an idiotic thing to teach kids. If you want to teach technical subjects, you teach problem solving/adaptation, with skills (not necessarily current ones) introduced as/when necessary to support it. I think its a sign of how stupid educational debates are in this country that anyone takes this idea seriously.
Yes, sorry, I was wording what I meant in a strange way -- by "technical skills" I was just trying to include the bits of subjects like maths and geography and French that aren't just the facts you have to learn when you're doing those subjects. "Techniques" would have been a better word-choice probably.
ReplyDeleteI'm merely an American outsider, but I did live in London for a year in 1987, and to an outsider, it always seemed as if a sadistic hostility towards the average citizen was the leading characteristic of the Thatcher Regime.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, it always spanking with the Tories. I will always treasure the memory of Harvey Proctor, the "Spanking MP from Billericay" who provided so much entertainment while I lived in London
I can't tell if this is devastating satire or a handy tool for property agents:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.asborometer.com/