INSIGHT: Children are powerless in schools. We have a duty as adults not to exploit that

Various family members spent time in prison during Andy West’s childhood, including his siblings and father, and today he works as a teacher with The Philosophy Foundation within inner London schools.

So, he knows something about behaviour, schools and the type of communities that the ‘hyper-disciplined’ approach is supposed to help, and we are hugely grateful for his insight

There’s a false antithesis at the moment that if your children don’t go to an ultra-strict school then they’re going to be caught up in gang crime and teachers are going to have their car windows smashed in. But there’s actually a very significant excluded ‘middle’ between these two possibilities that should be considered…

The approach is ideological more than anything, harking back to Victorian virtues of temperance and discipline while turning education into a culture war. And what kind of jobs and workforce are we actually educating children for? If you look at the world we live in, it’s one that understands and appreciates mental health much more. And certainly in the UK, our economy actually relies on creativity. So this approach just seems so outdated and short term.

But it’s hard to overstate how nostalgic the UK is at the moment. The ‘present’ is incredibly scary, there’s a lot of uncertainties and young people represent a certain mindset: that today’s youth are wild and have less respect than ever. And so I think a lot of what drives this movement isn’t what’s effective as such, it’s more that this old-fashioned approach is familiar to a lot of people, and figures such as Katherine Birbalsingh have put a modern face on that.

Supporters of this approach reference the ‘bigotry of low expectations’ or the motto: ‘If we let you off we let you down’. In other words, if you let kids off for bad behaviour because they haven’t had breakfast or they come from adverse circumstances, you’re actually patronising them because that child deserves and can be held to the same standards as everyone else.

And that’s a common right-wing narrative: to not punish people is to be unfair to them somehow. There’s some incredible mental acrobatics you need to take to get there. Personally, I think it’s the hyper-disciplinary approach that reveals a bigotry, because it supposes that certain children are a bit like dogs, they need this Pavlovian treatment. And you have to wonder what elements of classism and perhaps racism are in there as well. 

An extreme disciplinary model creates a dependency, it doesn’t create independence and autonomy. It’s a short-term fix to behaviour problems. I’ve taught in prisons and have had plenty of family members spend time in prison – the ultimate disciplinary institution – and they could keep to a routine and structure inside that they could never then replicate outside.

I taught for a couple of years at a fee-paying special needs school, that had very small classes and a lot of adults. If a child was naughty, they would often be guided in a reflection about it. So it would be de-escalated, maybe taking the child out of the classroom, then there would be a kind of ‘scan’, where we’d ask the child: ‘What are you feeling right now? Are you angry? Are you sad?’ A way of helping them to get to know themselves, which is the first part of self-control and self determination. And you can grow and you can learn from this.

Whereas this hyper-discipline method just seems to be isolation, stigma, humiliation, and if you don’t learn from that then: goodbye. And even if you do learn from it, at what cost? It just means we’re going to have another generation of children that learn that you communicate through power exchange.  But after 10 years of teaching it’s still remarkable to me how powerless children are in schools. We have a duty as adults not to exploit that.

You can see a real lack of classroom habits in children around the age of seven and under right now: that generation of kids who grew up in lockdown and didn’t have a lot of structure. And there’s a lot of suspected ADHD or distraction or just bafflement in classrooms, but there’s ways of dealing with that. One is that you can go ‘nuclear’ and keep them in detention, or you can use the carrot and stick method.

So I’ve got a group of year twos at the moment and they’re cosmic and all over the place, and I just put a tally of three minutes on the board, and say: ‘This is our game time that we’re going to have at the end of the lesson. And if we listen to each other then we’ll add minutes, but if we shout out over each other, I’ll take minutes away’.

When you add a minute there’s absolute euphoria and when you take a minute away, there’s low mood, so you follow it up: ‘Let’s see if we can get a minute back’. So it’s about using scale to your advantage to make the small things become very significant.

Whereas, the idea that you’ll get a detention for not bringing in your pencil, that’s just an inversion of that approach; you’re making something trivial very significant. Someone leaning back in their chair doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not interested in maths. And sometimes the only form of power that’s available to you is protest, through non-engagement and apathy. I wouldn’t have lasted two weeks in a school like this, I would have been too oppositional or clownish or overwhelmed or something.

Find out more about The Life Inside: A memoir of prison, family and learning to be free by Andy West here