Political Economy

Well it would have to be since I am a teacher. I have taught for 20 years. I feel worried for the system I have been part of for all these years.I have seen what various administrations have tried to impose on education. I have seen the imposition of the National Curriculum. On the whole a good thing as it determined what should be taught. Good schools did it already. The only regret here is that it stopped with core subjects. Testing was needed to get the standards going in the right direction. But we should have prepared teachers and schools for picking it up and used resources available to develop this assessment. A missed opportunity in my view.

Many talk of initiative overload and to be fair they have a point. It is not so much the initiatives; it is that they are not joined up. On their own they seem like a good thing but they seem to exist in a single issue kind of world. Each one vying for time and favour independently. No wonder staff get confused.

Targets on the whole are a good thing. However what no one knew was that politicians and other mandarins did not understand that targets are what you aim for, they are aspirational. There is no recognition that if the targets are good and challenging enough then sometimes they will not be achieved. As a school you always need to meet your targets. Failure is bad. So a game is played. If the outcomes meet whatever the current criteria is then all is well. Forget the children.

Circumstances in school have changed over the past 20 years. I teach in a large comprehensive in a ‘inner city’ type environment. The nature of the students have changed. Families have changed in their composition. Children’s status in the family has changed. Parenting skills are lacking in many cases. Children are often lacking in emotional skills. We are however at least beginning to recognise that we need to support families if we are to support children better. We work with outside agencies to support the child. The Every Child Matters agenda is probably the best thing that has come out of the system in a long while. If all our efforts are child centred we will at last be able to educate children to be able to take part in the world of work.

However we are in transition between these two world views and this makes for difficulties. It takes time to change the traditional views of teachers, parents and the media. Authority in school is earned. (Just the same as it is in society) The safety in challenging unfairness is taken for granted. Everyone knows their rights. Teachers can no longer say ‘because I say so’ and hope to remain unchallenged. The family changes mean that children do not see their parents or other adults as remote beings. We need to re-think our ways of dealing with students who fall foul of the system in school. We need to understand that creating folk heroes (for bad behaviour) does not serve any one well. We are not in the punishment business but in the education business. Creating tomorrow’s future has always been what we are or should be about.

I am still excited about education and I can see what the future vision is about. I am worried that the current financial problems will put all this on hold for a long time. We will revert to a two tier system: those who can afford private/independent education will succeed; those who have to take a state route will face the luck of the draw with their school. All children deserve the best education we can give them. It is all our futures! I am desperately hoping that we will be able to support all that is good and not falter now.

What if the Law and the Constitution enshrine something that we know is morally wrong? What then?

In the Government of the People, by the People and for the People this question is  important, it is difficult and, in its propensity to bring about civil strife, it is dangerous. Abraham Lincoln asked this question and struggled with it for many years. His simple answer, that  no individual or community had the right to do what was wrong led to his selection as the Republican candidate for President. And as they say, “All the rest is history”.

For the rest of us the issues are never so great, but the result, when we fail to adopt Lincoln’s answer, can be just as significant in our lives as well as in the lives of others.

Two examples of a moral failure in this respect have recently been before us in the news. The first is the matter of MP’s expenses and the second was a the case of a man sent to a private clinic, by the National Health Service, for an everyday knee operation who died because the clinic had no blood supplies on hand.

In both cases the defence is the same, “I/We followed the rules. I/We are blameless”. Well, not if you are Mr Lincoln, you’re not, say the rest of us!

It must surely be obvious to the parties in cases such as these that if harm results then the excuse of following the rules is not admissible. The degree of accountability  depends on the degree of the error and the level of knowledge and responsibility at which the parties operate.

In the case of the MPs there had already been concern raised within the House.  The failure to recognise that, helping yourself liberally from the public purse is morally wrong, whatever the rules may be, is worrying. It points to our premiere legislative body consisting of people who, in the main, appear to be unable to make moral decisions. And if they cannot do this then they are not fit to rule us.

The case of the clinic is perhaps worse in that a man died, perhaps because of the clinic’s failure to put difficult moral questions to itself. The answer, to the reporter’s question that surely it should be obvious that if an operation is being carried out then blood may be required as a matter of extreme urgency, of “We followed all the rules”  is clearly a failure of moral sense. We expect the professionals who treat us to do so in a safe manner having regard to all the unfavourable events likely to occur and to the importance of the outcome. Surely death as an outcome is important in any moral society?

The willingness of what appears to be many important people, organisations and their leaders to act at all time, without respect to other peoples safety or their property, in other words to act without morality, is a cancer in the side of our present society. A cancer moreover inserted by those who far too frequently have been heard to make harsh judgments on other people, often poorer and less well educated than themselves.

The answer is to change the law, if indeed the law needs changing. We all need to know that the law requires of us to carry out, when the health and safety of others or their property is in question, at the level of competence it is reasonable to expect from us, an analysis of the  importance of outcomes and of their likelihood of occurrence irrespective of any rules or contractual agreements in force. If for some reason we do not like the answers or cannot implement them  then we should be expected to take the moral decision and not go ahead with what was intended.

In the meantime, whilst we wait for the civil authorities to make their minds up about wrong doing, we should surely expect those who have failed this moral test to do the moral thing. Apologise and make recompense!