The Scottish Tory party is suggesting lowering the school leaving age to 14.
My reactions are at war with each other. The main, and better, part of me is outraged. As an educator, I find it disgusting – throwing what will inevitably be working-class children back into society before they are anything like prepared for life in the real world.
Oh yes, we are told that they will have to continue in some kind of education or training; that the wee Scots will enjoy a ‘hybrid education that is better suited to their talents’, as Scottish MSP Russell Findlay claims.
But isn’t this just getting rid of the children who cause trouble in the classroom? Many children choose business or media studies as a GCSE option because they think it sounds grown-up and different. In the same way, won’t they choose to leave school – and become as bored and disillusioned as many of those children are by those ‘studies’?
Sending children (for that is what is what they still are) of 14 out to work isn’t far from sending them to Victorian factories or South-East Asian sweatshops.
And yet...
I have, once again, been panicking that I might be in line for a parental complaint. And if I get it, I might very well have to admit I deserve it. Even my colleagues, although they laughed and rolled their eyes, looked frankly nervous when I reported my misdemeanour.
I teach a boy whose laziness is beyond anything I have ever seen. He is not as bright as his mother believes (are they ever?) but, with some effort, he could pass his English and English literature GCSEs.
With only a couple of months to go before the final exams, I have had to admit to myself (and his mother) that there is no chance on earth he will succeed in the literature paper. But I’ve still been making an effort to push him on in language.
Until this week. I was step-by- stepping the class through one of the language papers: explain, write an example, explain again, ask them to write their own examples ... on and on it goes.
So I asked this young man a question. The usual shrug; the usual blank stare. Then more of the usual encouragement. ‘Look at that first paragraph,’ I urged. ‘Look at the first sentence. Find the one word that...’
‘I don’t want to.’ ‘You don’t want to what?’ ‘I don’t want to read it.’ I was honestly stumped. Usually, in
those circumstances, the child will make a cursory attempt to read and answer. I began to feel my blood boiling, but I was still under control.
I asked him why he came to school. He said he didn’t want his mother to be fined for his non-attendance.
‘So you love your mother?’ I asked. Yes, he does. ‘Excellent. So why don’t you love her a
little more and, as you’re coming here, make just a bit of effort and get some GCSEs?’
That shrug again.
I lost it. I did not shout and roar. I did not scream. But my voice did the scary (to me, never mind them) thing it does when I am really, really angry and dropped a couple of octaves.
‘Well, that’s fine. You’re right. You can wait for everyone else in this room to pass their GCSEs and go to work and pay their taxes, and you can sit on your arse for the rest of your life while they pay for your benefits.’
The boy stared at me. The class stared at me. I stared at the class.
The important thing when you know you have gone too far is to hold your nerve. Don’t let the enemy know for one moment that you know you’re in danger.
But if, at that moment, some Conservative Scotsman had come in and taken the boy away to work in a factory, I have to admit I would have been profoundly grateful.
