‘Crisis’ in the Classroom?

As the assumed ‘crisis’ in childhood is perceived and portrayed as deepening, so the two institutions most closely associated with children’s lives-the family and the school-have become the primary targets for politicians, policy commentators and media editorial writers. Within popular discourse the images of children as unacceptably disruptive and disrespectful are matched by portrayals of schools infected by ‘progressive’ teaching methods and declining academic standards. Alleged ‘scandals’ such as that at William Tyndale Junior School during the mid-1970s, where staff were said to be in rebellion against governors, parents, the Local Education Authority (LEA) and politicians over curriculum content and classroom practice, are used to demonstrate chaos in classrooms and the education profession. As Chapter 2 shows, the muchhyped, mostly inaccurate, but highly publicized accounts of organized and collective violence by children at a Liverpool primary school were also immediately amplified as indicative of a ‘crisis in our schools’. This was reminiscent of headlines such as ‘Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child’ which dominated coverage of the 1980-81 inner city disturbances. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s successive prime ministers and their education ministers have railed against ‘leftie’ teachers and their ‘trendy’ methods. The inevitable assumption, particularly evident in the political outbursts which followed the killing of James Bulger, has been that schools fail to provide children with appropriate knowledge, necessary skills, behavioural markers or moral standards. If there is something rotten in society, its roots have been traced to the modern classroom.