I lump them together because they are a very powerful combination; but I shall treat them separately as I continue my quest to identify the “Termites” in our Society, the ones standing in the way of necessary change because they are “programmed to build and defend their nests and are unable to move on.” (Revisit Post 1).
I must acknowledge that those who have been promoting Inclusion with legislation in Parliament and an administrative machine to implement it would hotly dispute that they were the Termites. They would accuse people like me of being one, of standing in the way of necessary change.
They would have an argument. That is what makes for the drama in “Death of a Nightingale”. You should read it, if you have not already done so. It puts their case.
Act One Scene 2
James Harrington, the Mandarin from London meets with David Harding, the Director of Education for Wexborough and Gerry Thompson a Special Educational Needs Controller in the regional office of Judy Fotheringham to discuss the closure of Brighouse School. A campaign by parents to keep it open is standing in the way of Inclusion.
JAMES HARRINGTON Good. That’s one of the things the Minister was very worried about. The other, of course, is how you get the show back on the road. We need that. You see I was at the UNESCO conference at Salamanca in ninety four.
Nearly a hundred countries all saying that children with special needs had a right to mainstream education. That certainly galvanised us into action. I’ve never seen Parliament move so fast, and so decisively. Don’t think that the Minister doesn’t realise that change can be a bit painful. He knows that in every good parent there is a Luddite trying to get out. In many cases they like what they have but they have no understanding of the world that we are trying to create for them and their kids. It’s your job Gerry to illuminate them, to show them the way to truth and light.
GERRY THOMPSON I know. I had a really good grounding at my university, under Professor Hopwood. A real visionary.
JAMES HARRINGTON Know him well. He has advised us a number of times.
DAVID HARDING Yes, we’ve used him too for training.
JAMES HARRINGTON Academia has been very supportive. They do know which side of their bread is buttered on. Anyway, the policy of Inclusion could not have a better provenance. Baroness Warnock led the way more than twenty years ago. That’s when it was very enlightened. Now there’s all party consensus. And it has the full support of all the leading disability organisations. Mind has been particularly helpful. Their President Lord Rix pushed hard for it. He and his daughter had a hard time of it, badly discriminated against by the old system. Blunkett, too.
GERRY THOMPSON There’s plenty of other parents that feel the same way. Feel their kids should get an equal chance in a mainstream comp.
DAVID HARDING Of course not all parents agree. That’s the basic problem.
JAMES HARRINGTON People like Gerry will win them over. You just have to. You see the Treasury has made up its mind that there are savings to be made here if they invest in it. You know the figures. Three per cent of children have special needs but they gobble up eight per cent of the total spend on education. That really isn’t equitable.
And in Notes & Quotes I set out the whole of the Salamanca Statement .
The Salamanca Statement
More than 300 participants representing 92 governments and 25 international organisations met in Salamanca, Spain in June 1994 to further the aim of ‘Education for All’. This was to consider what basic policy changes were needed to promote inclusive education so that “schools could serve all children, particularly those with special educational needs.”
THE SALAMANCA STATEMENT: NETWORK for ACTION on SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION Adopted by the World Conference on Special Needs Education: Access and Quality Salamanca, Spain, 7-10 June 1994. Organised by the Government of Spain and UNESCO,
The Salamanca Statement says that:
” every child has a basic right to education
” every child has unique characteristics, interests, abilities and learning needs
* education services should take into account these diverse characteristics and needs
*those with special educational needs must have access to regular schools
*regular schools with an inclusive ethos are the most effective way to combat discriminatory attitudes, create welcoming and inclusive communities and achieve education for all
* such schools provide effective education to the majority of children and improve efficiency with cost- effectiveness.
The Salamanca Statement asks governments to:
* give the highest priority to making education systems inclusive
* adopt the principle of inclusive education as a matter of law or policy
* develop demonstration projects
* encourage exchanges with countries which have experience of inclusion
* set up ways to plan, monitor and evaluate educational provision for children and adults
* encourage and make easy the participation of parents and organisations of disabled people
* invest in early identification and intervention strategies
* invest in the vocational aspects of inclusive education
*make sure there are adequate teacher education programmes
They certainly have a case. But there is a counter argument. Hence the drama of “Death of a Nightingale.”
In essence, did they research it beforehand? (Revisit Post 34 and reference to the recently published findings of Professor Jonathan Shepherd) Or did they promote for “every child” what they would have wanted for themselves without realising that that may not have been what other parents wanted for their children or the children wanted for themselves? Were they living in the real world or were they living in a fantasy-land? Were they just a bunch of well-meaning idealists and ideologues? I have posed these questions a number of times in these Posts.
And if they made the mistakes that are now showing up, the mistakes that have led Baroness Warnock to describe Inclusion as “possibly the most disastrous legacy of the 1978 report”, why did they make them in the first place? (Revisit Post 13)
The Mandarins should have kept them right. That is their job. Yes, make it possible for more children with special needs to be educated in mainstream schools, but not at the cost of vandalising and stigmatising special schools.
I can’t speak for other countries, but in the UK I sense two reasons why this was allowed to come about, one I set out here, the other in “Death of a Nightingale.”
Many Mandarins went to Oxbridge, reading Greats. For the uninitiated that means Latin and Greek. I don’t want to be too disdainful of these subjects. I was lucky enough to get a State Scholarship to Oxford with Latin and Greek from a Grammar School in Sunderland, and I read Jurisprudence, a degree course that I now see was tailor-made for termites.
It was only later in life that I entered the real world. I wonder whether some Mandarins have ever done so or whether, like Academia, they just work things out “in the libraries of their minds.” Yes, they are intellectually brilliant, an elite in fact. But like Asquith and his successors, they are flawed. They are amateurs in world that increasingly needs true professionals, with a care for detail, (Revisit Post 35) and they are “above the battle not in it.”
I shall give you an illustration of this, far away from the world of Inclusion.
Unlike Germany where they are all addressed as “Dr.” engineers have been downgraded in the UK for a long time. They didn’t like it, but they couldn’t do anything about it. Why? After all, engineers created the Industrial Revolution that gave Britain much of its wealth and its international standing. I suggest that it is because the Mandarin class educated in the Classics didn’t rate them. They then destroyed the Polytechnics that trained them intending that children could be as advantaged as they had been by going to a University. In the name of Equality they wanted to treat all children the same way, totally disregarding their different needs and the different needs of Society too. (Revisit Post 4 & 5)
We are paying a heavy price for this. That is why I was happy to endorse ukEdge in my last Post. Those responsible for that website are saying the same thing.
Here is another reason why Mandarins have so often got it wrong. You need to read the lines and between the lines in the following dialogue.
Act One Scene 2
This is at the beginning of the scene that I have already introduced you to.
JUDY FOTHERINGHAM (on the telephone) Yes, I did listen to the repeat of “Yes Minister”. I do admire Sir Humphrey.
James Harrington knocks and enters
JAMES HARRINGTON Are you talking about me?
JUDY FOTHERINGHAM (still on the ‘phone) God has just walked in. I’ll ring you back later. Bye (To James) Hello, good to see you again.
JAMES HARRINGTON Nobody’s ever said I had a divine presence before. Mind you they thought my father had when he was a District Commissioner in the Punjab. But people do turn to me for the occasional miracle. I don’t object to being called Sir Humphrey, but I do have to correct you about Yes Minister. We only like to think we’re wise and knowledgeable. I am not sure we always are.
JUDY FOTHERINGHAM Last night’s programme was really cruel. Did you see it?
JAMES HARRINGTON No, I missed it.
JUDY FOTHERINGHAM It was all about the Dome and Government waste. Hacker was lamenting the fact that the real problem was not the waste of £800m so much as the public view of it. He said the problem was not so much its viability as its visibility. He said it would have been much better if the project had been constructed underground connecting directly with the new Jubilee Line. The spend might then have been almost totally invisible. Then he went on to say that Hadrian was not so ill-advised as to say that twelve million people would visit his Wall in the year of its completion, and that that venture was a good deal more ambitious than the Dome.
JAMES HARRINGTON You really mustn’t allow yourself to be upset by the media. Whenever this arose my father – wise old bird if ever there was one – always said that the Pharaohs weren’t put off their grand design for the Pyramids by carping criticism in the Alexandria Times. I’ll tell you something else. Have you heard the Latin tag “Audi alteram partem”?
JUDY FOTHERINGHAM My Latin’s not very good these days. Doesn’t it mean something like “You have to listen to both sides of the argument”?
JAMES HARRINGTON Pity you didn’t have a classical education. In the civil service manual, it’s translated to mean that “you can drive your car on the wrong side of the road. ” Politicians watch our backs and we watch theirs. They provide the first line of defence to attack. They take the blame. They provide the safety valve for the system. Then ultimately, if the civil service gets it very badly wrong, they lose their seats. It works. Mistakes self-correct … as long as you are prepared to wait long enough.
(David Harding and Gerry Thompson knock and enter.)
DAVID HARDING hope we’re not interrupting.
JAMES HARRINGTON No we’re just acclimatising our minds to living in a very different world from the great British public. It’s just a pity they are not more appreciative of what we are trying to do for them.
……..
DAVID HARDING (with a smile) You know, James Harrington is totally, totally without shame.
JUDY FOTHERINGHAM I don’t agree. He’s probably a bit like me. I’m not immune to shame. Very, very occasionally I do take my conscience to bed with me, but when I do, and it isn’t very often, I leave it on the breakfast table the following morning. We’re always going to be upsetting somebody, not meeting their needs. It’s in the nature of our job. We’re interested in outcomes. Fortunately for us, most of those people who don’t like what we’re doing just sound off in the pub. Our life would be impossible if everyone was like the parents in your school.
GERRY THOMPSON I’m absolutely certain his visit won’t give him any sleepless nights at all. Most likely he’ll go back home, and open a bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild.
DAVID HARDING Well, Merlot Chateau Sainsbury for me. I’m sure you’re right.
GERRY THOMPSON We couldn’t do without people like Harrington. Nothing would get done. I’m sure that fella will go places.
DAVID HARDING In this world or the next? You know I believe his father was high up in the Indian Civil Service. That’s where he must have got his superiority complex. Tell me; is that a photo of your daughter?
Mandarins are “Termites” because they just do not understand although they believe that they do and some, I am afraid, never will.
And what about Lawyers without whom they could not exist, not in such numbers? I shall keep this relatively short.
From the Prologue
You have to be very careful how you use the word “right”. You need fine judgment and, as Professor Hart argued, a sense of fair play in deciding when and how to assert it. It is just as well to remember that while human rights may enable lawyers pronouncing on them to enjoy the fruits of Utopia; they allow the rest of us only a partial glimpse of it. In Professor Hart’s own words human rights are “the prime philosophical inspiration of political and social reform”. Often they are no more than that.
So, when you talk about the “right” to Inclusive Education you should recognise that some will want to assert it and may succeed and thrive. Some may assert it but be disappointed and wish they hadn’t. Some may want to assert it but be denied it. Finally, some may not want to assert it at all but be forced to accept it with no other realistic choice available,
and some may want to assert a different right altogether – the right to go to a special school. Remember that children without special needs have their rights too. This actually summarises how things are.
Act One, Scene 6
Margaret Williamson, the head teacher, is discussing with her friend Joan Errington, the English teacher, why Westborough’s Local Education Authority is pressing her to commend the closure of her school to parents.
JOAN ERRINGTON Some people think that rights grow on trees. Just pass a law and you’ve planted another tree.
MARGARET WILLIAMSON Weeping willows, more like.
JOAN ERRINGTON Trees or people?
MARGARET WILLIAMSON Politicians are all for human rights, but when it comes to delivering them, ah that’s another matter. There are too many social engineers in politics. They think that all you have to do to change society is to pass another law. You know, human rights sometimes are just dreams, very beautiful dreams, but dreams.
JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, if only it was easy to turns those dreams into reality.
MARGARET WILLIAMSON And when you wake up from your dream, what do you find? Your social engineer has put square pegs into round holes with epoxy glue.
JOAN ERRINGTON That is the nub of it. Some people just don’t realise that one person’s right can become another person’s restriction.
It gives me no pleasure to criticise my own profession and I have no wish to malign it in its entirety. I do not say that all lawyers are termites, but some are. Others are like the late C.N.Glidewell, my pupil master in Manchester and like the members of the Bar I knew in his Chambers. This is how I describe him:
In the Preface of Death of a Nightingale
On the Northern Circuit I was privileged to have as Head of Chambers, and as my pupil master, the late C.N.Glidewell, CNG to everyone who knew him. He was a man with old fashioned integrity. He was also a master of advocacy – particularly good when he showed up the ineptitude of local planners. He also had style. All of this was somehow encapsulated in his choice of car – a Bristol – a prestigious saloon engineered with traditional British quality in its design. In all ways CNG was a cut above the ordinary.
I just hope that he is not a dying breed. Part of my concern is that teachers are not the only ones who, as I write in the Prologue, “feel obliged to do some things they know they shouldn’t be doing, or not do things that they should.”
We really must move on, including the legal profession.
I am now going to give myself a two week break. You too. Please use the time to catch up on all the earlier Posts, and have a go at reading the play … if you have not already done so.
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