Education is in our hands. Let us hold hands
Gus John Speaks Out
Education expert attacks schools for failing black students.
Former Hackney education director Gus John accuses the education system of being 'institutionally silent for generations' on the issues of race, inequality and social justice.
Gus John, associate professor at the Institute of Education and the former director of education at Hackney, attacked the role schools have played in the burgeoning violence in the second anniversary lecture to commemorate the death of Liverpool schoolboy Anthony Walker, who was murdered in a racist attack three years ago.
John said schools fail to equip white and black young people with an understanding of their past and its connection with the present condition of Britain.
They also fail to "equip them with the knowledge, skills and understanding to take control of their own lives, understand the origin and genesis of the hard won rights they now enjoy, safeguard and extend those rights and own their responsibility for making the future they face the future they want for themselves and their children, and not leave that responsibility to the elites that the system creates while they continue to exist on the margins and to implode", he said.
"We bemoan their conduct and wring our hands when they slay one another, but don't insist on appropriate social conduct from them and demand a respect for other people's rights," John warned.
A group of 80 disaffected black 12- to 16-year-old school students, with whom John worked in Bristol last year, said what they feared most was being killed and "chillingly one another", John told the audience.
"When asked whether they felt their school was tackling that fear of violence and of death that worried them so much, most said that it was not the kind of thing on which teachers spent any time," he said.
According to John, schools are too focused on enhancing school effectiveness, raising achievement and government league tables. This led to "the destruction of hope, the death of aspiration, limited life chances and a burgeoning of the African presence in the prison population".
He urged schools to "attend as much to students' self-development needs and to their identity formation as to their SAT, GCSE and A-level grades".
"Let us demand that schools are organised and funded so that they treat children according to need and give them their entitlement to quality education that is not measured solely by their ability to gain five A to C grades at GCSE.
"And if that means having class sizes of no more than six, where the children's needs demand it, then so be it.
"It is far cheaper and more societally just in a liberal democracy to do that than to spend billions keeping far too many young people in jail or young offender institutions year on year."
John called on schools to do more for whole communities by running classes and groups in the evenings.
"It is increasingly the case that schools are not just excluding the young people who are the focus of attention in any response to knife and gun crime, they are excluding whole communities.
"Why not reclaim those publicly funded spaces and alter the image young people have of them, often because of the typically negative experiences with 'authority' they (and their parents before them) would have had within them?" he said.
John accused the education system of being "institutionally silent for generations" on the issues of race, inequality and social justice.
"Schooling and education has failed to tackle the issue of racism and its influence in shaping the identity of generations of white British people," John argued.
"Although the evidence persists of schools' institutionally racist practices - which lead to adverse educational outcomes for black students - Ofsted's approach is to apply a 'light touch' and not interrogate school's performance as far as eliminating discrimination and upholding the rights and educational entitlement of all students are concerned."
Anthea Lipsett
Guardian Newspaper.
Friday October 10 2008 10.19 BST
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