Comments on: What do we want for ourselves?

By: Peter Mansfield

Peter Mansfield — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:17:24 +0000

What do we want for ourselves? Surely a coherent community culture, without which social inequality is inevitable.
It seems to me that the deepest schism is between families who cohere and function, and those who don’t. Parents who invest in their children start doing so before their birth, treat parenthood as a creative opportunity and pay close attention to every incident in the child’s growing life, playing back its significance into the child’s awareness and behaviour. This is full-time work, 24/7. It requires neither wealth nor formal education, but depends crucially on the integrity and moral strength of the informal culture learned at home.
What emerge from this kind of parenting are confident, self-respecting youngsters who are keen to explore and learn about every aspect of the world around them. And self-respect automatically entails other-respect.
It seems to me (who mostly deal with parents and children of this kind, but from all walks of life) that our full attention should focus on bringing all parents into this category. Unless children who share a school also share a substantial culture acquired pre-school, very little good can happen there. Teachers cannot achieve what parents do not at least attempt.
Our own children attended state schools throughout. They drew life-long benefit from “The Louth Plan”, sharing their primary and middle schools with all their neighbours. But they settled gratefully into the selective upper school where self-disciplined learning was the norm. They would never have achieved their full potential if the middle school environment had been the only one on offer.
We were glad to contribute fully at all levels, along with many other parents, but it did not stop the regime polarising retrogressively since.
The state should provide ample opportunity for all children to achieve their potential, whether academic or vocational. But we rely on parents to hit the ground running and function 110%, from the beginning. It is time to respect, celebrate and support those who do. They are the engineroom of health in all its manifestations, and health can be very infectious if we let it be.

By: Beth Cross

Beth Cross — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:17:04 +0000

I read Peter’s comments with great interest. Having worked within and researched projects that seek to increase parents’ invovlement in their children’s education, I am aware just how crucial the role of trust is. Often changing their child’s future requires parents to change their interpretation of their own past, an act that takes more courage than you might imagine. Book Start Plus projects around the country have put pleasure and confidence to explore back in the hands of young families. Many of these are examples of third sector projects creating advantage and more than profit. Yet they do not stand alone. The bridges they build to statuatory services have to lead somewhere both safe and useful to go. In not a few cases, empowering work at the local level is imperiled by agendas imposed from above. This raises the question for me, how does the building of local trust become factored into larger policy decision making processes? How is it made to count? How does it become respected and not trespassed across lightly? So many empowerment projects, whether they be community development, family support,or children’s citizenship create a hot house of limited good relations that bump up against a very disillusioning glass ceiling. I agree that the terms of the contract between people and public services need to be rewritten, but all the components of empowerment need to be examined without ringfencing the extent to which the flow of relations and ccnsequences is re-imagined.

By: Suzanne Clark

Suzanne Clark — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:16:43 +0000

Just read Matthew’s blog – would like to comment about independent, state-funded v. public schools. Have sent my own children to both types, have been a state-school primary and secondary governor; am about to join Teach First, a powerhouse for reform, addressing educational disadvantage through transforming exceptional graduates into inspiring and effective teachers and leaders – who will work in some of our most disadvantaged children. Until those who have had the benefit of the best of our education system are prepared to take their place in the trenches, or the chalkface, of our troubled cities – the divide will continue to grow.