An interview with parents following an incident of fighting between pupils raised considerable questions for me as a teacher working in an inner city area. Among the questions raised for me was the role of the school in a specific community and the relationship between the personal and professional values of the practitioners and the communities they work in. Who has the right and responsibility to assert and demand the pursuance of specific values and behaviours?
A pupil who previously had a record of good behaviour was involved in a serious violent incident with another pupil. This is not a common occurrence in the school, which possibly is because there is a clear policy and set of procedures to deal with such incidents. Accordingly sanctions were imposed on the pupil and a discussion was held with his parents. It was the response of the parents that, on a personal level, stunned me and, on a professional level, made me consider some of my beliefs about the enterprise I am involved in a public education system.
The pupil’s parents were of the view that the pupil should not be punished, not because of his previous good behaviour but because he had learned to fight back, something they had been urging him to do. My immediate response was that this was unacceptable, that there were some basic principles that must be abided by in a social context and especially in one such as a school which has a role in the social and personal development of pupils. Further I also viewed this encouragement as gender stereotypical thinking in which this pupil was being encouraged to adopt the behaviours that are expected of boys. I was quite clear about my beliefs at this point. As Jackson (2002: 584) argues:
Many writers have expressed concerns that the dominant ways of expressing masculinities run counter to the goals of the education system, and that some boys ‘laddish’ behaviours act as impediments to their progress at school.
However, when the parents indicated their reasons for encouraging their child to fight back I had to question my beliefs. As the parents pointed out we teachers left at 4 o’clock and did not understand what it was like to live in the district nor did we understand what it was like to be a boy living on those streets. Fighting back was the only way to survive.
Looking at this initially I thought this a clash of values, and so there was the question of whose values were ‘right’? Both the parents and the teachers had the best interests of the pupils at heart. However, in this case the pupil was receiving mixed messages and no matter what course of action he took he would be punished either by his parents disapproval or by the school’s sanctions. I had interpreted this as a gender issue in which the pupil was being encouraged to behave in a stereotypical way displaying behaviour that might be tolerated or even encouraged in a boy. Partly it was. Certain expectations in the setting the pupil lived in demanded the display of aggression as part of being male. But to characterise this situation as a clash of values was too simplistic. There was an issue of the relationship between community and school values.
It seems to me now on reflection that it was not that the parents sanctioned violence but it was ultimately a way of protecting their child. The school’s aim is “to ensure a safe and secure environment for all members of the school community” and so our position was to reject all forms of violent behaviour no matter what the cause. But did this reflect the middle class culture and expectations of the teaching staff who - as the parents pointed out - left each evening to return to the city suburbs where ‘survival on the streets’ was not something they witnessed nor had to confront? From this point of view any acts of violence have no defence and the policy of the school put in place procedures where any aggressive behaviour is immediately punished without any real exploration of the causes - as was the case here.
In some respects what we have done in school as a response to this situation is a compromise. We still see the rejection of violence as core. Now we have taken steps to ensure that such incidents are examined and discussed with the pupils. Becoming less mechanistic and more responsive to individual situations is one element. At the same time we have defined the sphere of influence in which the school operates by articulating that specifically within the school there are rules and expectations of behaviour that we must demand otherwise we would be failing in our task as a school.
This situation also raised for me questions about the role of a school in a specific locality. My own view had been to this point that education was a ‘way out’, that it is through success in the educational system that a pupil could achieve a better job, better life chances and consequently move out of a disadvantaged environment. Part of my role, I believed was to support these pupils to achieve. However, this could only ever be a response to a proportion of the pupils in the school. For other pupils who could not ‘escape’ through education, the school seemed to be operating at the level of social control. A set of values - whether about social behaviour, about the ‘benefits of education’ - are being imposed and those who do not abide by these are ‘punished’ both immediately and in the longer term. At one level these values seem indisputable but the role of the school and the professionals asserting these has raised questions about the purpose of school education. As Heaney (1995) writes:
Even defenders of traditional schools have admitted that, if society is to hold together without the overt force of a police state, schooling must adapt learners to kinder, gentler controls: career choices (specialization), authority (dependency), and the good life (consumerism) (online source).
The situation that we found ourselves in seemed to be counter to our intentions of facilitating learning. Our role in creating policies with no real involvement of pupils or parents was running counter to our attempts to create a genuine learning environment where there needs to be, as Rogers (1983) argues, a climate or trust and genuine participation in decision-making. In education currently pupils, parents and members of the community have little power or influence in shaping the values and purposes of public services like schools. While I still feel education is critical in improving life chances and all pupils should have such opportunities to flourish, I have to question this idea of ‘escape’. We need to look more closely at a public education system that is not just located in a specific community but also acts as the means of empowering the pupils and the wider community to act. Dewey (1916) noted the intrinsic link between democracy and education and as Apple and Beane (1995:11) argue, we need to work towards empowering young people to bring about social change. In many ways, but their vision [in democratic schools] extends beyond purposes such as improving the school climate or enhancing students’ self-esteem. Democratic educators seek not simply to lessen the harshness of social inequities in school, but to change the conditions that create them.
