24 Comments on Family, character and class – the Cameron view

Pete B on Tue, 12th Jan 2010 5:52 pm


A very interesting post.

When Cameron talks about “a culture of children’s rights” I’m not sure he is sufficiently specific about what it is he’s referring to. He presumably doesn’t mean to suggest that children shouldn’t have any rights, but the way he phrases it gives us no clue as to how far he thinks their rights should extend. Cameron ought to tell us specifically which rights he thinks are currently afforded to children but which cause them to be “treated like adults.”

Incidentally, the paragraph that quote comes from is extremely similar to one in his speech at the Tory conference.

As for the rest, you’ve done a far better job of exposing the flaws in his reasoning than Toynbee did in this morning’s Guardian.

mas on Tue, 12th Jan 2010 5:56 pm


The let children be children and adults be adults is really good and potentially powerful. There is of course a stage in between childhood and adulthood though and a large percentage of those in that stage will not appreciate the idea of a forced citizenship service. Regardless of whether they do or don’t simple common sense would suggest that forcing rather than encouraging (an already motivated part of the population) to participate is not the best approach to motivating them further. That common sense is lacking with Labour too who have been suggesting a similar proposal for years now.

charlietims on Tue, 12th Jan 2010 7:51 pm


Sage points. This is a bit off the subject, but is the RSA planning anything for the TV debates? If not why not?! You must! Was thinking it would be good if you could watch it in one of the lecture rooms and then if there was a sort of panel discussion afterwards – a bit like that thing that baddiel/skinner used to do on ITV in the evening after Euro 96 (or was it France 98? – I can’t remember). That was brilliant. You could mix it up with a bit of stand-up, some music or something? It would be fun – much better than watching it on your own. I think you have to get it while its hot – it’ll be boring next time. I’d pay good money to go to something like that.

Liam Murray on Tue, 12th Jan 2010 9:24 pm


Great post. I’d like to think Alan Rusbridger has read this and contrasted it with the inferior version Polly Toynbee offered today. Granted her brief is to be more provocative etc. but we need more of this and less of the tribal scaremongering she’s so fond of (and good at to be fair).

Will offer more detailed thoughts on my blog in the next day or two….

Gareth on Tue, 12th Jan 2010 9:45 pm


Thanks for the insight and analysis. It often feels to me that when Cameron speaks on policy he is contradictory and ‘conflates arguments’. Nicely put.

Matthew Kalman on Tue, 12th Jan 2010 11:00 pm


Hi Matthew,

I was chatting to a Canadian child psychologist the other day and he mentioned an intriguing shift that an American friend of his had seen over the past few decades – when it comes to ‘troubled’ children.

This friend had long been working in some kind of remedial teen camps, or suchlike.

Thirty years ago most of the kids that ended up there had suffered prior abuse – I guess that’s largely what put them there.

The good news is that nowadays most of the messed up kids who end up at these camps have no longer been victims of abuse.

At least not abuse int the classic sense…

Apparently, these days it’s more the case that the children are ’spoilt’, that they lack boundaries, that they’ve had little in the way of discipline – and presumably never learnt to discipline themselves.

The bad news – which is indeed worrying – is that in this expert’s experience it is much easier to put right the kids who’ve been victims of straightforward abuse, than those who’ve suffered from weak and indulgent parenting.

I know this is purely anecdotal, but I thought I’d throw it in the mix…

Unfortunately I’ve not yet read Demos’ parenting report from a few weeks ago. I think it advocated a fairly firm – yet loving – form of parenting.

Is this at odds with what our culture tends (subtly) to promote, I wonder?

Not sure if the report goes into that…?

We hear these days about the ‘feminisation’ of schooling, the sidelining of competitive sport in schools, the self-esteem movement, and about teachers’ careers being ruined by the false allegations of newly-empowered children, who they are barely allowed to discipline. (Though you might struggle to find much about such topics in the Guardian, admittedly). Conservatives might also argue that the poverty trap also atrophies people’s self-responsibility and discipline.

I can’t help feeling that it’s in this moral and cultural domain that we can find the problem and the answers.

Your point that “the current Labour Government has massively expanded parenting provision” feels to me like a bit of a side-issue really, not the real driver…

Interestingly, adult lifespan development experts like Prof Robert Kegan find that the requirements on our individual minds of the 21st century professional workplace (as the OECD found too) and of modern parenting are the same: they both require a ’self-authoring mind’.

But as I’ve mentioned, the research suggests that 58 per cent of even an educated and middle-class sample has not stably achieved the stage of the ’self-authoring mind’ (aka modernism).

If we don’t start paying some attention to creating more deliberately ‘transformative’ education that can make self-authoring minds more common, our society’s professional future and parenting will be badly hamstrung. (Same goes for leadership too, of course – and everything that leadership impacts on!).

Kegan and Gardner must have had some interesting conversation at Harvard comparing the transformational approach of the former, with the latter’s ‘personalised learning’ approach (which even Gardner admits has been taken to unwarrranted extremes by some of its faddist fans, with their control over educational systems!).

Cheers,

Matthew

Joe Nutt on Tue, 12th Jan 2010 11:14 pm


Just to add a bit of information to the Demos research. The current government commissioned some research a few years ago on this: “The Impact of Parental Involvement, Parental Support and Family Education on Pupil Achievements and Adjustment: A Literature Review” by Professor Charles Desforges with Alberto Abouchaar. Typically it was largely eviscerated but below is it’s chief conclusion.

“In regard to using parental involvement research to inform attempts to close the social class achievement gap several lines of thinking commend themselves. The first is the very clear and consistent finding that when all other factors bearing on pupil attainment are taken out of the equation, parental involvement in the terms described earlier has a large and positive effect on the outcomes of schooling. This effect is bigger than that of schooling itself. Research consistently shows that what parents do with their children at home is far more important to their achievement than their social class or level of education. It would seem that if the parenting involvement practices of most working class parents could be raised to the levels of the best working class parents in these terms, very significant advances in school achievement might reasonably be expected. This inference from research cannot be said too often.”

It’s the use of “most” and “best” which I find so interesting. How any political party is actually going to stop the parents I recently witnessed, gaily taking their 5 and 6 year olds to see “Avatar” is the real challenge, as you point out Matthew.

mas on Tue, 12th Jan 2010 11:58 pm


@Matthew Kalman I was thinking exactly the same as your first points but didn’t know how to word it. I was supposed to be reviewing a book (which hasn’t turned up yet) which is based on that parents have been misguidedly pandering to their children, hence a lack of discipline and then subsequent problems (think it’s a US book) – certainly it’s something I’ve seen very frequently – that many parents now seem either reluctant to or unwilling to discipline their children (at least in public).

It’s worth stressing that discipline does not have to equal physical punishment – like so many of these things with children and young people it’s about developing relationships of respect – but that’s considerably harder for teachers and other practitioners if no concept of respect has been encouraged at home.

Personal responsibility is a huge issue too – just about all of the problems we hear of from youth groups are supposedly the responsibility of somebody else “the Governments fault” – and yet I do think it is Government that is largely responsible for that mentality and that’s perhaps where the ‘let adults be adults’ thing could be worthwhile.

Robert on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 8:54 am


Around me sure start is not working as parents would rather give the kids a key and tell them to look after themselves as the mother works in either Asda or Tesco or both, the father is either working part time in a factory and then doing part time in Tesco.

Kids are basically as i was in the 1960’s a latch key kid, my mother finished working at 6.30 PM my father worked afternoons in a factory and then worked nights as a security officer to keep us going.

We ran with a group of other kids OK we did not steal or get into trouble because we had a youth club, but these days it seems kids are now gang members or groups and they do press the police, with one lad being taken to court twenty six times and being leg go.

Life is a bit of a pig when your at the bottom, but I doubt the Tories or labour look that look in our society.

Ian Leslie on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 9:43 am


Your exposition of the unanswered questions at the heart of Cameron’s speech is succinct, and more damaging that Polly T’s attempt at demolition. DC has lost his bearings a bit, in this unfamiliar territory. But you’re right to give him credit for making the effort. Amidst the gloom about the coming year, it’s worth remarking that, this near to an election, the two party leaders are engaging on the question of how to fight poverty. When was the last time that happened? DC deserves credit for that – as indeed do GB and TB.

mas on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 10:10 am


@Robert – kids are being given keys at sure start age??

What I think has been weak about sure start is not the scheme itself (I think it’s very good), but that there’s still a void for children in the 6 – 13 age group – and then add to that, that youth services are still frankly a mess.

Julian Saunders on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 10:25 am


Middle-class parents have another option open to them which does not get mentioned. They may have an unhappy marriage, or spend all of their time working rather than being with their children, yet still produce good life chances for their children. They do this through outsourcing their child’s development to a private school. (Not an option for poor parents unless their child is a scholar) These schools simply take on more of the burden of parenting because they also know that part of their job is to take the hassle away from cash rich, time poor people. These schools are also more demanding of parental support and intolerant of disruptive pupils.

Sam McLean on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 10:27 am


Great post Matthew.

We need to give Demos their due. It’s a very good report but Reeves is not Einstein!

I’m also not sure how ground-breaking the study is. Child psychologists and psychoanalysts have been saying very similar things for a long time. And as the report also notes, the notion of ‘character’ was rather important to Aristotle!!

One of the things I like about Cameron’s speech is his emphasis on character as something that can be cultivated. This has important policy implications. It forms part of a coherent argument in favour of greater allocation of resources and support for child and family development in the early years where policy interventions are most likely to be successful.

But one of the things I don’t like – and Matthew you astutely pick up on this – is the way Cameron deals with the link between character, parenting and material inequality as if they could in some way be considered seperately. As you say, he notes the impact on materials conditions only to then retreat to a position that underplays the importance of economic inequality and undermines the force of much of what he said (e.g. we understand that poverty breeds a whole set of other negative factors – poor mental health, drugs etc).

As I think you suggest Matthew, reducing levels of poverty, improving parenting and cultivating the conditions and capabilities necessary for doing this are not and cannot be two separate strategies.

Matthew Kalman on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 10:49 am


Hi Mas,

Do let us all know the name of that book you plan to review, and whether it adds anything to this debate.

I did e-mail that child psychologist, to find out if he could point me towards anything more than anecdotal evidence. Not heard back though…

He was fairly scathing about the effect he felt the welfare state/poverty trap has on self-responsibility in the UK too – and wasn’t a little bit surprised at our high teen pregnancy rate etc.

I do wonder – when I read in Joe Nutt’s snippet about “the very clear and consistent finding that when all other factors bearing on pupil attainment are taken out of the equation, parental involvement … has a large and positive effect on the outcomes of schooling” – whether the factor of intellectual capability differences is even considered at all.

Charles Murray accuses us all of being ‘educational Romantics’ in our refusal to consider the factor of differences in educational ability (eg IQ).

Maybe all this research about parenting influence is just a respectable – if indirect – proxy for differences in educational ability and the great unmentionable of IQ…?

The unmentionablenss is understandable, as we quickly get to even more off-limits issues – like class and IQ. The academic Bruce Charlton got in trouble when he tried to talk about it in a THES article a year or two back.
Here’s some of his evidence re his belief that “given the overwhelming weight of evidence, we should now accept the reality of Social Class differences in IQ, and move-on to have a reasoned discussion of the implications”:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2008/05/social-class-iq-differences-and.html

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-class-and-iq-some-facts-and.html

My feeling is – these days – that the real solutions will often be unexpected hybrids, that take us outside of our comfort zones, force us to to engage dialectical thinking and stretch our ‘opposable mind’ (to borrow from the title of a book I’m reading).

If any Government conducts research that claims to cover *all* the salient factors, when it is in fact excluding one or two that could lead into politically inconvenient places, well, we ought to be brave enough to expose this – to help us reach sturdy solutions…

Matt

Joe Nutt on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 11:09 am


The great Dickensian lie is that poverty = crime, because anyone who has read Dickens will know that is not at all what his novels imply. They are crammed full of impoverished characters whose moral values would shame most of the current House of Commons. Just when I thought we were finally getting away from it at long last…

Sam McLean on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 11:38 am


Great commments.

Joe – I completely agree with what you say about the ‘great Dickensian lie’. Wonderfully put. I would take that point further and ask what sustains the lie? Is it not a lie driven by a kind of self-delusion on the part of the middle and upper classes (excuse the crude language) to assure themselves (and legitimate to themselves) their own sense of superiority? Not sure…

What do you mean precisely in the last sentence?

mas on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 11:38 am


dug it out (& thanks for making me do so because I hadn’t told them my new address!)

http://ow.ly/VXvM

I’m not clear on if it’s new or based on previous similar stuff that seem sto have been available for a while but I do remember the research it’s apparently based on seemed relevant to this.

I’m always surprised there isn’t more discussion about the parental role in education. I’ll say first up that I’m not a fan of homework which I generally view as imposing on the little time I have with my kids during the week. I understand the premise to encourage parents to take an interest in their childs learning – but……. surely the real issue is that many parents (and their parents) themselves had a negative experience of education.

For some that negative experience will be passed down either through disinterest or attitude and so creating a very different culture than fo example the very high value placed on education in developing nations.

Maybe more consideration to helping parents view learning/education as fun would be more successful than heaping homework on parents – it’s an argument that needs some refining I know – not least because it’s at total odds with the pushy parents I see begging for more homework for their 6 year olds.

Robert on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 12:03 pm


Kids are being given keys , no but the other kids in the family are, where i live five year olds are looking after them selves as the parents work.

Joe Nutt on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 12:22 pm


Sam,
Thanks, and what I meant was that there seemed to be so many signs in recent months, certainly in the field in which I work, education, that people have had enough of the excuses culture. They have finally started to grasp that if you tell a child or a teenager, there is a reason beyond themselves that might excuse their poor, irresponsible, anti-social or immoral behaviour, they will of course think it excuses them and give up.

I’ve always wanted to write that book, “The Great Dickensian Lie” but it will have to wait, at least until I’ve finished with Milton, whose repressive puritanism is driving me mad at the moment because it is so redolent of Balls and others!

Matthew Kalman on Wed, 13th Jan 2010 12:45 pm


Hi Mas,

That book you’ll be reviewing – Nurtureshock: Why Everything We Thought About Children is Wrong – certainly sounds intriguing. (Amazon says it won’t appear until early Feb).

I love the line about it being ‘the Freakonomics of childhood and adolescence’!

Though I must admit I’m a wee bit wary of journalists writing rather as if they’re scientists of some sort (see my past comment about Gladwell making up nonsense to attack Charles Murray with – which just detracts from the real criticisms…).

I started reading “The Sexual Paradox: Troubled Boys, Gifted Girls and the Real Difference Between the Sexes” by Susan Pinker a while back – another interesting book around this area – and Pinker actually is a developmental psychologist, or something like that.

Re homework…

My other’s half’s going to have a chat with my older son’s teacher on Friday, as he’s not that keen on doing that many of the learning to read exercises he’s meant to be doing at home.

He’s only 4 – but is meant to be reading 100 words by the end of this school year, I think.

Yikes.

Maybe he should do a year or two’s sledging before he learns to read…?

A la Scandinavians…?

Matt

Matt on Thu, 14th Jan 2010 5:32 pm


Surely the point is that it is no good JUST giving people money to drag them a tiny bit above the poverty line, there are social issues around child-rearing and education that are just as important. If you give some (and I stress some) poor parents more money they will not spend it on books and read to their children. But it turns out that reading to your children is massively important developmentally.

Now, making parents read to their children may be no business of the state. But the New Labour idea that you can turn kids around by spending money on their education/employment training whilst ignoring the social harms of bad parenting and bad socialisation is utterly bankrupt – hence youth crime is up and social mobility is down. These social harms are life-changing and entrench inequality.

It’s a difficult problem to solve this, but it is a social as well as an economic problem, and a large part of socialisation is parenting. Welcome to social policy in the 21st century!

mas on Thu, 14th Jan 2010 5:44 pm


@Matt – I’m just starting work on a new project based around encouraging children/young people to read to younger siblings/friends – it’s very early days so can’t give much detail yet but if anyone’s interested in that please get in touch via info[@]yomo.co.uk – I was looking to list it on the RSA networks projects thingy but that seems to have disappeared – or have I missed it?

Matthew Kalman on Thu, 14th Jan 2010 9:27 pm


Hi Mas,
Just wondering if you are in touch with Miranda McKearney at the Reading Agency or Jonathan Douglas at the National Literacy Trust?

I’d certainly recommend them both – inspiring and energetic people, who might be able to help you, somehow…

Matthew

mas on Thu, 14th Jan 2010 9:39 pm


Hi Matthew – no I’m not and we’re going to need all the contacts we can get so thanks for those. At this stage I have 26 willing volunteers from a previous project I ran and we’re having lots of frantic conversations online. Things are taking shape rapidly though so I’ll be looking to rack peoples brains and build links in the very near future.

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