How do you change criminals, the anti-social, offenders, people who cause conflict? Perhaps you can't with some, and we have locked most of them up in prison just in case. And prison has not improved them. Also, what part does the victim play in the justice system? Nothing, they are entirely sidelined. The offence against them personally, and the compensation that ought to be their due is hijacked to become an offence against the state. The adversarial way the case is heard might mean the best barrister wins and the guilty offender is declared innocent, sometimes to terrorise the victim. So, all is not well in the so-called justice system.
Restorative Justice seeks to make restoration by attempting to resolve the conflict caused by the offence and as much as possible 'restoring' the situation as close as possible to how it was before the offence took place. The offender meets with the victims in the company of a facilitator. Having ascertained the facts from both offender and victim, the facilitator asks the offender firmly and persistently who has been affected by the offence, and how. The victims are asked the same question. Then the offender is asked how the harm can be repaired, and an agreement is made. If this agreement is broken, then the case moves out of restorative justice and into court. It can be used from low level nuisance to violent crime. Research show a high satisfaction rate for victims - 85% - and much lower rates of reaffending. The perpetrator often for the first time understands that his victims have been hurt and can no longer block this out.
In schools, conflicts can be dealt with similarly, by establishing the facts, discussing who has been affected and how, and making an agreement to put right the harm. This turns a situation of conflict and confrontation into a learning experience for the perpetrator, who then has a chance to apologise and make restoration, and build a new relationship with the victim. It is the opposite of a soft option - it destroys any defensive front that perpetrators have been used to hide behind. It makes them very vulnerable, and by doing so enables them to build new values.
The principles of restorative justice can be used to discuss everyday practice - how to behave in a fair and equitable way. There does not need to be an offence, simply the context which allows young people to imagine a scenario and discuss the implications. This would then merge naturally into restorative justice, since this style of questioning simply is applied to any minor conflict that takes place, resolving an issue quickly and without confrontation.
At a conference in Swindon hosted by the Mayor and led by Sir Charles Pollard of Restorative Solutions, supported by headteachers, the police and community justice, applications were discussed and research data given. The importance of adopting this approach in the justice system, and in schools, was described as a 'no brainer' - there are only benefits, in success rates, costs and community cohesion. The only impediment is a conservatism that prefers vengeance and punishment to reconciling the conflict with a long term solution.
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Girls' Education
A Commonwealth Foundation report opens with the statistic that 75 million children are “denied their right to an education” and that most of these are girls, using a World Bank report to emphasise the importance of girls’ education. The Millennium Development Goals include one (no.3) to establish equity between girls and boys in primary and secondary education by 2005. This report features four commonwealth countries which are off-target – Cameroon, India, Pakistan and Papua New Guinea. Significant players in these places identified factors which are contributing to the lack of success.
Systemic issues include better access to education (especially having more reachable girls’ schools); the need for more gender-sensitive qualities throughout education; the need for free or affordable education; better infrastructure; more suitable and suitably trained teachers; and the need for a degree of compulsion. Societal issues include parental perceptions; socio-cultural demands for girls to do housework and childcare; security of travel to school; and poverty. A final issue was defined as “the misinterpretation of religion” (p.41), that is keeping girls from school on misplaced religious grounds. Each country is then assessed in depth through the questionnaire returns. Two central issues throughout are poverty and socio-cultural norms. In other words long term solutions need to involve economic and educational components, taking people out of marterial deprivation and ignorance.
These international issues have implications for schooling in Britain – and for secondary schooling in particular. When girls from some ethnic and religious backgrounds reach secondary age, domestic help and childcare are deemed by some families to be more practically useful than schoolwork, so these counter pressures affect progress at school and in qualifications. Early marriage may be encouraged, so girls could be married and pregnant while still at school – which again runs counter to school progress. The knowledge that they will be married at 16 upsets concentration and motivation – the girl barely thinks of the necessity of a career and therefore the relevance of qualifications. The local presence of a girls’ comprehensive can encourage these girls to progress to age 11 and beyond, but the lack or loss of such schools can throw these girls into an educational black-hole if parents do not allow them to attend mixed education. Legal pressures can be averted by sending the girl abroad to family. They simply go missing from social and educational records. This is an unknown and unrecorded failure to comply with the Millenium Development Goal within the UK itself.
Rectifying this situation is partly the responsibility of local authorities to consider adequate provision, and partly the responsibility of the family and community to give a high priority to girls’ education. The World Bank affirms benefits to health, nutrition, mortality figures and family education as immediate social benefits likely to stimulate change. This is apart from issues of general equity between people. Religion can impede progress and so there is a responsibility of religious leaders to represent their faith without prejudice, and the role of the whole community to monitor what is being said and done in the name of the religion. There is thus a need both for the education of children and of their parents and community. Perversely, and under-reported in western news, education for girls in the contested Pakistani hills is seen as western influence so a girls’ schools is burnt down most days, the resulting fear denying children the education that has been provided.
There is a fundamental need for educational quality. The world does not need compulsory inappropriate schooling at great expense. Children deserve appropriate enriching education. Where alternative education is provided by the community, this needs to be appropriate to educational needs rather than being relegated to an instruction into a particular point of view – so even these schools should be exspected to deliver a broad relevant curriculum. The enhancement of education and schooling worldwide, both in terms of spread and quality, is one of today’s greatest development issues. British education is by no means exempt from the lessons to be learnt.
Systemic issues include better access to education (especially having more reachable girls’ schools); the need for more gender-sensitive qualities throughout education; the need for free or affordable education; better infrastructure; more suitable and suitably trained teachers; and the need for a degree of compulsion. Societal issues include parental perceptions; socio-cultural demands for girls to do housework and childcare; security of travel to school; and poverty. A final issue was defined as “the misinterpretation of religion” (p.41), that is keeping girls from school on misplaced religious grounds. Each country is then assessed in depth through the questionnaire returns. Two central issues throughout are poverty and socio-cultural norms. In other words long term solutions need to involve economic and educational components, taking people out of marterial deprivation and ignorance.
These international issues have implications for schooling in Britain – and for secondary schooling in particular. When girls from some ethnic and religious backgrounds reach secondary age, domestic help and childcare are deemed by some families to be more practically useful than schoolwork, so these counter pressures affect progress at school and in qualifications. Early marriage may be encouraged, so girls could be married and pregnant while still at school – which again runs counter to school progress. The knowledge that they will be married at 16 upsets concentration and motivation – the girl barely thinks of the necessity of a career and therefore the relevance of qualifications. The local presence of a girls’ comprehensive can encourage these girls to progress to age 11 and beyond, but the lack or loss of such schools can throw these girls into an educational black-hole if parents do not allow them to attend mixed education. Legal pressures can be averted by sending the girl abroad to family. They simply go missing from social and educational records. This is an unknown and unrecorded failure to comply with the Millenium Development Goal within the UK itself.
Rectifying this situation is partly the responsibility of local authorities to consider adequate provision, and partly the responsibility of the family and community to give a high priority to girls’ education. The World Bank affirms benefits to health, nutrition, mortality figures and family education as immediate social benefits likely to stimulate change. This is apart from issues of general equity between people. Religion can impede progress and so there is a responsibility of religious leaders to represent their faith without prejudice, and the role of the whole community to monitor what is being said and done in the name of the religion. There is thus a need both for the education of children and of their parents and community. Perversely, and under-reported in western news, education for girls in the contested Pakistani hills is seen as western influence so a girls’ schools is burnt down most days, the resulting fear denying children the education that has been provided.
There is a fundamental need for educational quality. The world does not need compulsory inappropriate schooling at great expense. Children deserve appropriate enriching education. Where alternative education is provided by the community, this needs to be appropriate to educational needs rather than being relegated to an instruction into a particular point of view – so even these schools should be exspected to deliver a broad relevant curriculum. The enhancement of education and schooling worldwide, both in terms of spread and quality, is one of today’s greatest development issues. British education is by no means exempt from the lessons to be learnt.
A touching neurosis?
Heather Piper and Ian Stronach have just produced an interesting boot called Don’t Touch. The Educational Story of a Panic. It deals with the “moral panic” about touch in school education. It makes a strong case that this panic has sexualized, even fetishised touch, as even the 99+% of innocent adult staff are left questioning their own and their colleagues’ motives. The result is that the child who needs the consoling cuddle is denied one; and also that older children play on sexual possibilities, misunderstanding or misinterpreting a normal gesture, or making malicious accusations. The panic has played havoc with proper educational practice. Inappropriate fear of risk causes professionals to fear for their careers, and play safe to the extent of creating an emotionally sterile educational environment.
Research ethics committees ‘police’ research but can come to unethical decisions by rejecting research which is potentially beneficial to children, on spurious grounds of child safety coming from a notion of the child as victim. The criminal records bureau activities demonstrate that there are more restrictions on helping children than for buying explosives. Restrictive school and local authority guidelines make irrational and disproportional responses. Then follows case studies from nursery, primary, secondary and special education, and then Summerhill School, the ‘progressive’ democratic independent school. This draws on empirical data from interviews and observations. These give examples of taboos on touch being worked through professional contexts. There is evidence of a mix of defensive and protective behaviours (being accompanied, leaving doors open) and heroic resistance to “the chokechain” (p.7), especially by early years workers. The Summerhill example is interesting in that the openness of the school is declared to be a nightmare for paedophiles. Everything is discussed and debated openly, and positive relationships are promoted. In Ofsted’s concern to close the school down as non-compliant to national standards, one inspector called in the social services when a teacher was observed openly giving a girl pupil a shoulder massage. Such officious behaviour is styled corrupting, making spontaneity in relationship building (within appropriate boundaries) much more difficult, making the good seem evil.
The concluding chapter recommends that touch should be considered as part of relationships. Just as we need ‘good behaviour policies’ instead of focussing on bad behaviour, so we need ‘good relationships policies’ instead of ‘Don’t touch guidelines’ which criminalises innocent touch. Rather, the concern should be to encourage appropriate relationships, child to child and adult to child, in a context of openness to discussion. Most current guidance to schools is viewed as wholly inappropriate, as it treats touch as a problem in itself and not part of a larger concern for good relationships. The democratic and open practice of Summerhill School is presented as the best model for schools to follow.
Most people would agree that paedophiles and other dangerous individuals should not have easy or uncontrolled access to children in school. It is a far cry from this to get to a situation, described in this book, that professionals are not only deeply worried about false unsubstantiated accusations, and begin to question their own motives behind their care of and affection for their charges. This is having the effect that children are denied the physical contact and emotional warmth they need for confidence and consolation, and are becoming part of a generation which sexualises touch, brought up to believe that adult-child touch must always be by definition sexual. Summerhill School is given as a shining example of the opposite approach, where relationships come first and democratic empowering discussion give pupils the skills and understanding to understand when something is wrong, and to take appropriate action.
The tendency to maintain emotional distance between children and unrelated adults brought about by a Don’t Touch culture impedes the development of their relationships with other adults. This diminishes empathy and sympathy for others; this emotional distance makes it easier to victimise and even murder. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child report (October 2008) complains of negative attitudes to children and adolescents in the UK promoting a punishment culture through ASBOs and detention. These things are linked. Helping children improve relationships with others should be a top priority for education, schools and society at large, which should over time reduce anti-social behaviour. That is, educational and school policies need to be positively proactive rather than negatively reactive, raising intrinsic motivation over punishment as the strategy of choice. This book explores one aspect that will make a difference and should be read by both professionals and policymakers. I applaud it. (Full review on http://escalate.ac.uk/4868).
Research ethics committees ‘police’ research but can come to unethical decisions by rejecting research which is potentially beneficial to children, on spurious grounds of child safety coming from a notion of the child as victim. The criminal records bureau activities demonstrate that there are more restrictions on helping children than for buying explosives. Restrictive school and local authority guidelines make irrational and disproportional responses. Then follows case studies from nursery, primary, secondary and special education, and then Summerhill School, the ‘progressive’ democratic independent school. This draws on empirical data from interviews and observations. These give examples of taboos on touch being worked through professional contexts. There is evidence of a mix of defensive and protective behaviours (being accompanied, leaving doors open) and heroic resistance to “the chokechain” (p.7), especially by early years workers. The Summerhill example is interesting in that the openness of the school is declared to be a nightmare for paedophiles. Everything is discussed and debated openly, and positive relationships are promoted. In Ofsted’s concern to close the school down as non-compliant to national standards, one inspector called in the social services when a teacher was observed openly giving a girl pupil a shoulder massage. Such officious behaviour is styled corrupting, making spontaneity in relationship building (within appropriate boundaries) much more difficult, making the good seem evil.
The concluding chapter recommends that touch should be considered as part of relationships. Just as we need ‘good behaviour policies’ instead of focussing on bad behaviour, so we need ‘good relationships policies’ instead of ‘Don’t touch guidelines’ which criminalises innocent touch. Rather, the concern should be to encourage appropriate relationships, child to child and adult to child, in a context of openness to discussion. Most current guidance to schools is viewed as wholly inappropriate, as it treats touch as a problem in itself and not part of a larger concern for good relationships. The democratic and open practice of Summerhill School is presented as the best model for schools to follow.
Most people would agree that paedophiles and other dangerous individuals should not have easy or uncontrolled access to children in school. It is a far cry from this to get to a situation, described in this book, that professionals are not only deeply worried about false unsubstantiated accusations, and begin to question their own motives behind their care of and affection for their charges. This is having the effect that children are denied the physical contact and emotional warmth they need for confidence and consolation, and are becoming part of a generation which sexualises touch, brought up to believe that adult-child touch must always be by definition sexual. Summerhill School is given as a shining example of the opposite approach, where relationships come first and democratic empowering discussion give pupils the skills and understanding to understand when something is wrong, and to take appropriate action.
The tendency to maintain emotional distance between children and unrelated adults brought about by a Don’t Touch culture impedes the development of their relationships with other adults. This diminishes empathy and sympathy for others; this emotional distance makes it easier to victimise and even murder. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child report (October 2008) complains of negative attitudes to children and adolescents in the UK promoting a punishment culture through ASBOs and detention. These things are linked. Helping children improve relationships with others should be a top priority for education, schools and society at large, which should over time reduce anti-social behaviour. That is, educational and school policies need to be positively proactive rather than negatively reactive, raising intrinsic motivation over punishment as the strategy of choice. This book explores one aspect that will make a difference and should be read by both professionals and policymakers. I applaud it. (Full review on http://escalate.ac.uk/4868).
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