I ragazzi bianchi della classe operaia “più resistenti al lavoro di trasformazione delle scuole”

Overwhelmingly, the parents who aren’t supportive of the school’s behaviour policy are the white working class ones. This leads to discontent on the part of the student and the parents as the school pushes back and asserts its rights to enforce those policies, leading to a vicious cycle of resentment and disengagement. When you’ve got parents telling their kids that they don’t need to listen to teachers or that the teachers are out to get them, that leads to real problems down the line.

At some point you have to throw away the optics of racism. This tip toeing around, helping white working class students more,, needs to stop and the long term plan put in place.

“white working class” is an outcome variable, not a demographic. If you 

1. select for kids whose parents work lower earning jobs and 

2. (by filtering for ethnicity) also filter out many people whose parents work lower earning jobs because they’re first generation immigrants 

Is it any real surprise that you are going to be left with kids that are statistically less likely to do well at school and have parents who don’t value education as much? Identity politics is still stupid when it’s done by or on behalf of white people, or by CBEs and MBEs.

Maybe education professionals don’t like to hear this but:

a) In any demographic that does well at school, parents do more of the early education of kids than schools do.

b) people who didn’t have attentive parents helping them learn as kids are unlikely to do the same for their kids without a lot of prompting 

c) a lot of the motivation to do well comes from comparing oneself with peers and seeking praise from parents.

d) teachers are too often hopelessly young folks with very little gravitas who simply can’t speak to parents with authority.

This is why I’m a major fan of bringing back the traditional grammar school approach.

An academic environment for the academic kids. A trade/practical environment for the practical kids. A plasterer is of equal value to society, but you create them in very different environments. A bricklayer doesn’t need to know computer programming, but similarly, a computer programmer doesn’t need to know how to mix mortar.

Sure, these skills are helpful, but the “academia first” approach disenfranchises so many people it’s unreal. My mum has a degree; my dad doesn’t. My dad ran a successful business for years, while my mum works as a nurse. My mum has cared for hundreds of kids, and my dad employed people so they could feed those kids.

Somewhere along the line, we decided everyone should go to university; rather than everyone should have the opportunity to go to university. Those two are *very* different things.

>Only 52 per cent of white working-class parents thought their child’s teachers “respected them by years 10 and 11”.

I would love to know the percentage of teachers who feel white working class parents respect them by years 10 and 11…

I briefly worked in a secondary school with children who required extra support needs and some of it I found really disheartening. The school had set up a small centre away from the school to cater for pupils with behavioural needs. These pupils did tend to be white working class boys who struggled with things like dyslexia and ADHD. They’d be brought over to the main school a few times a week for one to one support which generally was really productive, but they hated having to be at the main school because their different uniforms made them a target for bullying.

The sense I got was that they felt no one actually had time for them, they’d been shoved off to an off-site prefab and felt more like they were being punished than supported. I definitely got the sense that they were made to feel like they were a burden on the learning of other children. Working with them one-to-one was great because they were interesting and funny and more than capable. I found it was easy enough to engage them just through doing little things like letting them call me by my first name, speaking to them in the same way I’d speak to my adult colleagues, and being more flexible with my sessions so they could have input into how we’d learn things.

Admittedly I benefited from having the time to work one-to-one and unlike qualified teachers I wasn’t also teaching classes, marking work, or forced to stick to a structured curriculum. I feel like the message the boys consistently get is that they’re at fault for dragging down the school’s results or even results nationally. I don’t think much will change until there’s an approach that treats them with respect and doesn’t patronise them.

Was never like that 15-20 years ago… I wonder what could have possibly changed to bring the standard down? Couldn’t be people who don’t bother to learn English? Couldn’t be people who don’t bother to assimilate into culture and instead impose dark age laws? Couldn’t possibly be people who are not born here and instead take take take and act like victims when they’ve been saved from some third world horror country? Couldn’t possibly be racism against indigenous, ancient European people’s ?

It’s very much about what the teachers and educators think school is meant for. I’ve heard more than a few teachers say that pupils need to study otherwise they would end up in “dead-end jobs”, which I suppose are the jobs of the parents of many working class pupils. Teachers show disdain for the kind of jobs the parents of these kids do, even if those so-called dead-end jobs are often essential jobs that a country needs to function, and people can find fulfillment in those jobs. Teachers think their job is to turn pupils into lawyers, artists, managers, academics, etc. (a relatively small proportion of the population) and neglect those who don’t want to, or simply can’t do these jobs. I’m not surprise that these working class pupils are not receptive to teachers who are contemptuous of the work their parents do, and who try to push them into a direction they don’t want to go.