Teachers driven to strike want pupils disciplined, yet teenagers respond to unorthodox leaders
Children are horrible. They pull the wings off flies, tell lies and hit each other. Gradually, as we grow up, we learn to be nasty in more discreet ways. We subtly undermine each other at work, bitch behind each other's backs, and perform whatever minor acts of selfishness we think we can get away with. In such a manner we prove that we are responsible adults.
Given that children are so overtly aggressive it's amazing that they have such a reputation for wide-eyed, tufty-haired innocence. This peculiar sentimentality can partially be blamed on the Victorians, who might, in turn, want to point the finger at the 18th-century romantic philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau is almost singlehandedly credited with inventing "childhood" as a special, sectioned-off part of life during which we exist in a purer, more natural state before the imperfect adult world comes and knocks us off kilter. His ideas about education are built on a belief in intrinsic human goodness and the innocence of children. The task of educators, according to Rousseau, is to help children follow their own curiosity about the world, and not to get in the way of their innate marvellousness. He was never the victim of happy slapping.
A slightly more pessimistic view of children, provided by psychoanalysis, is that they are full of sexual and aggressive drives. They gradually learn to drop behaviours that are unacceptable to the people around them only because they are afraid of not being loved. You may want to push your younger brother out of the window, but you realise your parents will probably hate you if you do. You are dependent on your parents for everything, so you get with the programme. For that same reason, you also learn not to touch your genitals in public, to offer guests the last biscuit and to leave the toilet in a decent state.
Of course, when you reach adolescence, you aren't quite so in need of your parents' love. In fact, you often can't wait to get away from those controlling bastards. You wonder whether all those rules they've instilled in you, using the finest emotional blackmail, carry any weight in the real world. So you start testing your teachers, not to mention store detectives, park attendants and any other passing authority figures.
Your peers become much more interesting to you than grown-ups. Studies estimate that the average adolescent spends nine times longer talking to friends than to adults. So groups are formed of young people who desperately want to test the world to find out which of all the things they've been told are useful or true. It's not hard to see why teenagers en masse can be so difficult to work with.
Rousseau's idealising beliefs have a continuing influence on modern education, where the emphasis is on exploration, questioning and expression, rather than rote learning and obedience to authority. That's all very well but in contemporary schools, which may contain hundreds of existentially experimental teenagers, you're probably not going to get very far if you expect everyone to be inclined to be good. But how can you rein in teenagers without going back to vicious, authoritarian practices?
Reading about Thursday's teachers' strike at Darwen Vale high school over pupil indiscipline, one of the most striking impressions was of the bogus-sounding chirpiness of the school's managers. It gave the impression that passing inspections was more important than actually running a good school. But what might a good school, or good teaching, depend on?
In their volatile, questioning state, teenagers become susceptible to charismatic leaders, be they rock stars, gang leaders or religious maniacs. While the old pillars of authority won't do, new ones become compelling. Bossy parents, boring teachers and school management committees don't really stand a chance. But it explains why films like Dead Poets Society and Dangerous Minds are so satisfying. When teachers are able to be unorthodox and authentic, they can sometimes get students to do extraordinary things.
Most people seem to agree that their best teachers were the charismatic ones who brought something idiosyncratic and real to the job. But in schools where the human element is undervalued, and the main thing that matters is presenting a fake sense of order with the aim of ensuring continued funding, it seems less and less likely that any interesting, lively person with a mind of their own would want to stay and work for you. In cases like Darwen Vale, it may be that it isn't either the teachers or the pupils who are fundamentally at fault but a desiccated management style that doesn't give proper value to human inventiveness and complexity.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/08/darwen-vale-teachers-strike-pupils
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