Post-Covid Schooling: Future Alternatives to the Global Normal (Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education) 3030878236, 9783030878238

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION

Post-Covid Schooling Future Alternatives to the Global Normal

Clive Harber

Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education

Series Editors Helen Lees Independent Researcher London, UK Michael Reiss UCL Institute of Education London, UK

This series emerges out of a recent global rise of interest in and actual educational practices done with voice, choice, freedoms and interpersonal thoughtfulness. From subversion to introversion, including alternative settings of the state to alternative pathways of the private, the series embraces a diverse range of voices. Common to books in the series is a vision of education already in existence and knowledge of education possible here and now. Theoretical ideas with potential to be enacted or influential in lived practice are also a part of what we offer with the books. This series repositions what we deem as valuable educationally by accepting the power of many different forces such as silence, love, joy, despair, confusion, curiosity, failure, attachments as all potentially viable, interesting, useful elements in educational stories. Nothing is rejected if it has history or record as being of worth to people educationally, nor does this series doubt or distrust compelling ideas of difference as relevant. We wish to allow mainstream and marginal practices to meet here without prejudice as Other but also with a view to ensuring platforms for the Other to find community and understanding with others. The following are the primary aims of the series: • To publish new work on education with a distinctive voice. • To enable alternative education to find a mainstream profile. • To publish research that draws with interdisciplinary expertise on pertinent materials for interpersonal change or adjustments of approach towards greater voice. • To show education as without borders or boundaries placed on what is possible to think and do. If you would like to submit a proposal or discuss a project in more detail please contact: Rebecca Wyde [email protected]. The series will include both monographs and edited collections and Palgrave Pivot formats. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15489

Clive Harber

Post-Covid Schooling Future Alternatives to the Global Normal

Clive Harber School of Education University of Birmingham Birmingham, UK

Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education ISBN 978-3-030-87823-8    ISBN 978-3-030-87824-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87824-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface: The ‘New Normal’?

Work on this book began during the Covid global pandemic in 2020–2021. In the UK, where I am based, and elsewhere globally, pressure was on governments to get children and young people back into school as quickly as possible. Schooling was deemed to be such a good thing that this happened despite widespread evidence that both teachers and pupils (and thus parents) were being infected as a result. Indeed, in the UK, outbreaks of the virus in schools began shortly after pupils returned in September 2020. When school had to be closed because infection rates were too high, there was widespread consensus amongst politicians and in the media that this was a bad thing. One motive for this was, of course, the need for children and young people to continue their education and miss as little schooling as possible. On the other hand, with children not at school many parents cannot go back to work and thus their labour and their human capital are lost to the economy. However, this desire to get back to ‘normal’ in relation to schooling isn’t necessarily straightforward, as the nature of contemporary everyday

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schooling can be anything but normal and is often deeply problematic. For example, Hyman had this to say about ‘normal’ or everyday schooling in the UK in relation to the Covid pandemic: It’s tempting to crave a return to life before this horrible pandemic struck…But inside we know a simple truth: “normal” was not right. Normal for schools had become unbalanced, at times unhinged. Tunnel vision. A pressure that was unhealthy, often toxic; Ofsted inspections, high-stakes exams, the crowding out of creativity. Normal was vindictive: 30% labelled as failures each year, after 12 years of education, to satisfy the normal distribution of the GCSE exam bell curve. Normal meant too many committed and creative teachers battling against the odds: 40% leaving the profession within five years. Normal could be dispiriting, with growing mental health problems in young people. Normal was scarred by deep inequalities, now further exposed by Covid. And in the compelling words of Andreas Schleicher of the OECD, normal meant educating people to become “second-class robots”, rather than developing the human skills that are increasingly what will matter most. (Hyman, 2020)

Just as the economic emphasis in a post-Covid world must alter towards greener forms of economic development to combat climate change, so schooling should not necessarily just be a return to the same way of doing things. The purpose of this book is therefore to describe and critically analyse the nature of contemporary schooling. In particular it is concerned with looking at evidence on the daily, ‘normal’ or prosaic features of schooling that are often taken for granted or not sufficiently questioned or seen as problematic. The aspects of schooling that pupils experience every day on a routine basis may well be more controversial— and indeed negative and at odds with democracy and human rights— than it at first appears. Throughout this book, in addition to academic and research evidence, I will intersperse the text with occasional personal reflections on my own educational history to illustrate a wider point I am trying to make about what other evidence and research are suggesting in relation to the nature of contemporary schooling. So, let us start by going back over 50 years in time to an ordinary day of normal schooling. It was a weekday in 1965 and I was 14 years old. My day started by having breakfast, putting on a

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school uniform, taking two buses across south London. It then involved going into the school buildings before a time set by the school (making sure I wasn’t caught being late by prefects), going to religious-based assembly, attending a series of timed lessons in which different subjects were taught (often stifling boredom), having a school lunch, mixing with other boys in the school playground, attending more lessons, regularly being reminded that the content of the lessons was important for the exams the following year, avoiding punishment for breaking school rules, going home and doing homework. This was a normal day and I was doing things most parents and young people regarded as normal, inevitable and to a large extent uncontroversial. In essence little has changed since and these routines, structures and practices are still everyday reality for millions of young people, parents and teachers in most countries of the world. Such ‘normal’ routines matter and are of significance. Shortly after my average day of 1965, in 1968, the first chapter of a classic study of everyday life in schools in America (Jackson, 1968) was entitled ‘The Daily Grind’ and began: On a typical weekday morning between September and June some 35 million Americans kiss their loved ones goodbye, pick up their lunch pails and books, and leave to spend their day in that collection of enclosures (totaling about one million) known as elementary school classrooms…The school attendance of children is such a common experience in our society that those of us who watch them go hardly pause to consider what happens to them when they get there. (Jackson, 1968, p. 3)

Jackson argues that parents tend to be more interested on highlights or unusual events at school rather than the ordinary and that teachers are more likely to focus on specific acts of misbehaviour or accomplishment, even though such acts occupied but a small fraction of the student’s time: And the student is no less selective. Even if someone bothered to question him or her about the minutae of the school day, they would probably be unable to give a complete account of what had happened…yet from the standpoint of giving shape and meaning to our lives these events about

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which we rarely speak may be as important as those that hold our listener’s attention…The daily routine, the “rat race”, and the infamous “old grind” may be brightened from time to time…but the greyness of our daily lives has an abrasive potency of its own. Anthropologists understand this fact better than do most other social scientists and their field studies have taught us to appreciate the cultural significance of the humdrum elements of human existence. (1968, pp. 3–4)

Dutro (2009) has drawn attention to the importance of examining the everyday experiences of pupils in schools and in particular to what she terms ‘critical witnessing’, that is the testimonies of children about their experience of schooling. Even though they may seem an uncontested and ‘natural’ phenomenon because of ingrained assumptions, schooling and the routines that go with it are not inevitable or set in stone. They are socially constructed by the many actors involved globally, nationally and locally. This is important because many of the taken-for-granted daily behaviours and practices associated with schooling are much more controversial than they may first appear and may well have significant aspects that are negative for the pupils, teachers and societies involved. For example, in March 2019 a picture of children in an Indian school appeared in The Guardian newspaper alongside an article about Pakistan returning an Indian pilot who had been shot down over Pakistan (Safi & Zahra-Malik, 2019). The picture showed Indian schoolchildren in school uniform praying for the return of the pilot. The picture immediately raises political issues of uniform, uniformity and colonial heritage as well as nationalist political socialisation and using an educational institution to reproduce a religion—indoctrination—rather than educate about religions. The article made no comment about any of these. As has been argued elsewhere (Harber & Mncube, 2012, Ch. 1) the essence of politics is disagreement and, although not necessarily or immediately appearing so, there is much that is controversial and to be disagreed about in the daily, routine practices of schooling. However, the daily experience of schooling for pupils may be uncomfortable and difficult as well as controversial. Thus, one study of pupils’ views of schooling in the UK commented that

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for many children, school represents a difficult territory that they have to negotiate from the bus journey at the beginning of the day to the completion of homework at the end…what is strongly conveyed is a sense of vulnerability. Children feel small; the school environment is hard, especially when you fail; space is limited; toilets are unwelcoming or inaccessible; sick bays are inadequate; buildings are noisy; corridors are hectic; the school bus is a daily ordeal; bullies threaten; teachers shout and seem not to listen; belongings can be lost or stolen; bags are heavy; lockers are damaged; minority students feel victimised and marginalised. There is enormous pressure to conform; to be different is dangerous. (Burke & Grosvenor, 2003, pp. 108–9)

More recently, a survey and report by the Children’s Society found that children in the UK have the lowest levels of life satisfaction, well-being and happiness across Europe and one key factor in this was fear of failure, including fear of failure at school. A linked factor was the high levels of school work expected from pupils at UK schools. As the article comments: ‘Data for the report was collected before the coronavirus pandemic struck, suggesting things may now be significantly worse for the UK’s young people’ (Topping, 2020). The day before children and young people in the UK were due to go back to school in March 2021 an article in The Observer newspaper (Jayanetti, 2021) reported that, while many parents were desperate for their children to return to school after months of home-learning away from friends, some children with special needs were facing the end of the best educational experience they have had in years. Many had flourished, freed from school environments that did not suit them. One parent of a 12-year-old boy with autism said her son was depressed about going back to school: After teachers at his former primary school started to restrain him when he displayed signs of anxiety, his attendance fell sharply, and when he started secondary school last September, he found the experience overwhelming and began withdrawing after a couple of weeks. (Jayanetti, 2021)

The boy much preferred using online lessons at home and wouldn’t be returning to school on the due date. The article notes that

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Fran Morgan, founder of Square Peg, which campaigns for more flexible schooling for children who struggle in classroom environments, pointed to government data showing that around 200,000 Send [Special Educational Needs] children were persistent absentees before the pandemic. “These families are often desperate for access to online educational provision, which was suddenly made available in a matter of weeks when the pandemic hit,” she said. “For those children who thrived in lockdown, with the pressure of enforceable mandatory school attendance removed, next week will probably see their anxieties return with a vengeance.” (Jayanetti, 2021)

These concerns were dismissed by the government spokesperson who simply said: ‘The classroom is the very best place for education, including for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities’ (Jayanetti, 2021). One study of schooling in 110 autobiographies in America (Bjorklund, 2004, p. 290) noted that schooling’s Proponents argue that it helps liberate individuals from blind enslavement to instinct, habit, custom, and superstition. Education for all promotes individual social mobility, develops human capital, and keeps the class structure open. Universal education nobly serves the democratic ideal by producing informed citizens. It offers the promise that our diverse population with a continual influx of new immigrants will be given a common foundation of knowledge and values. And, finally, universal education can help solve social problems.

However, despite an expectation that the American autobiographers would therefore have nothing but praise for their schooling. she found that instead, across all types of autobiographers, they rarely had anything good to say, many being contemptuous or dismissive. She quotes Henry Adams, for example, who in his famous account focusing on his own education scoffed that ‘the chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught’ (2004, p. 290). Two key criticisms were the role of school in enforcing conformity and the need to resist indoctrination (2004, p. 299). Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that there has always been pupil resistance to formal schooling in the forms of disaffection, boredom, truancy, voluntary home-based education (not induced by Covid) and school

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‘phobia’ (Harber, 2004, pp. 12–14). Though in a minority, there has also been academic criticism. For example, John Taylor Gatto, an American critic of modern formal schooling wrote this at the turn of the twenty-­ first century: Let no school exceed a few hundred in size. Even that’s far too big. And make them local. End all unnecessary transportation of students at once; transportation is what the British used to do with hardened criminals. We don’t need it, we need neighborhood schools. Time to shut the school factories, profitable to the building and maintenance industries and to bus companies, but disaster for children. Neighborhoods need their own children and vice versa; it’s a reciprocating good, providing surprising service to both. The factory school doesn’t work anywhere—not in Harlem and not in Hollywood Hills, either. Education is always individualized, and individualization requires absolute trust and split-second flexibility. This should save taxpayers a bundle, too. Measure performance with individualized instruments. Standardized tests, like schools themselves, have lost their moral legitimacy. They correlate with nothing of human value and their very existence perverts curriculum into a preparation for these extravagant rituals. Indeed, all paper and pencil tests are a waste of time, useless as predictors of anything important unless the competition is rigged. As a casual guide they are probably harmless, as a sorting tool they are corrupt and deceitful. A test of whether you can drive is driving. Performance testing is where genuine evaluation will always be found. There surely can’t be a normal parent on Earth who doesn’t judge his or her child’s progress by performance. School can never deal with really important things. Only education can teach us that quests don’t always work, that even worthy lives most often end in tragedy, that money can’t prevent this; that failure is a regular part of the human condition; that you will never understand evil; that serious pursuits are almost always lonely; that you can’t negotiate love; that money can’t buy much that really matters; that happiness is free. (Taylor Gatto, 2000, p. 24)

In fact there are three ways of looking at how school might affect individuals and the wider society. One is that it is a force for good and that it contributes to the improvement of society. And it is true that for many children schooling, in whole or in part, can be a positive experience. It can offer young people a place of safety and new experiences, learning

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and opportunities that may not be available at home or in the community. Indeed, the latter part of my own secondary education at school was a largely positive experience. However, this positive role of schooling, while only partially true, is also nevertheless the overwhelmingly dominant global narrative concerning formal education. The second way is that it simply reproduces society as it is, including existing inequalities. The third, much more inconvenient truth, is that it has a negative role and actually harms young people and the wider society. I would argue that the role of formal schooling is complex and often contradictory and that all three roles have some truth in them. It is just that the first, positive, role has tended to get much more public and academic attention then the second and, particularly, the third, which concerns the social, mental and physical harm regularly and consistently perpetrated by schooling. Nevertheless, in many countries schooling has become compulsory, with many seeing schooling as being the same as education, though this isn’t necessarily the case. Moreover, in many countries that have not achieved universal schooling there has been an enormous effort, coordinated internationally by bodies such as UNESCO, to increase access to schooling—often referred to as Education For All. Thus, every year UNESCO publishes an Education For All Global Education Monitoring Report, which summarises progress towards achieving universal primary education. Within this drive to achieve at least primary schooling for all is an assumption that schooling is automatically a good thing for individuals and societies. However, the positive role of schooling, while partially true, is also nevertheless the overwhelmingly dominant global narrative concerning formal education. Most debates concern making schools more effective at what they already do in terms, for example, of improving literacy and numeracy and the exam results that go with them. Yet schooling today manifests many negative practices and problematic characteristics in its everyday life, even if these are not always immediately recognised as such because they are often seen as ordinary and normal and thus taken for granted. Indeed, in many ways the everyday routines of schooling fail to meet the physical and psychological needs of individual students as human beings. Yet despite these negative aspects and

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shortcomings young people are encouraged and compelled to go to school and, indeed, are controlled when they get there. In China, for example, where a huge emphasis has been placed on the importance of formal education, Wu’s (2012) ethnographic research in a rural area found considerable disillusionment with schooling. Part of this was its perceived irrelevance to the context, but other negative everyday factors were education as confinement, boredom and a recurring sense of failure, a difficult and uninteresting curriculum and repetitive drilling for tests. Also, important is that the present book has also tried to examine more everyday, taken-for-granted aspects of schooling. In doing so it has tried to use evidence from studies on pupils’ perspective on schooling wherever possible. However, it is important to note The paucity of research considering education and schooling from the perspectives of children, in either developed or developing countries, largely reflects the traditional and conservative structures which shape educational systems internationally. Until very recently, research has given little more than cursory attention to children’s views regarding their experiences of education, and seldom does such feedback have a significant influence on educational change and policy. (Phelps et al., 2014, p. 34)

Covid spread so rapidly because the globe has become so interconnected and will only come under control if the social and medical success is truly global. Schooling too is a global phenomenon—schools as organisations are essentially the same or certainly more similar than different around the world and there are historical reasons for this that are explored in the book. The main argument of the book is that the schools that we send children and young people back to globally for five days a week in term time need to change in a more positive direction. This book uses three analytical frameworks to examine the nature of everyday schooling globally—schooling as social control, schooling as social and economic reproduction and schooling as violence, and these are discussed in more detail in Chap. 1. Birmingham, UK

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References Bjorklund, D. (2004). School as a Waste of Time? Complaints About Schooling in American Autobiographies. The Journal of American Culture, 27(3), 290–302. Burke, C., & Grosvenor, I. (2003). The School That I’d Like. RoutledgeFalmer. Dutro, E. (2009). Children’s Testimony and the Necessity of Critical Witness in Urban Classrooms. Theory into Practice, 48, 231–238. Harber, C. (2004). Schooling as Violence. RoutledgeFalmer. Harber, C., & Mncube, V. (2012). Education, Democracy and Development: Does Education Contribute to Democratisation in Developing Countries? Symposium. Hyman, P. (2020, July 5). Our School System Are Broken. Let’ Grab This Chance to Remake Them. The Guardian. Jackson, P. (1968). Life in Classrooms. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Jayanetti, C. (2021, March 7). Special Needs Pupils in England Living in Dread of Returning to the Classroom. The Observer. Phelps, R., Graham, A., Nhung, H.  T. T., & Geeves, R. (2014). Exploring Vietnamese Children’s Experiences of, and Views on, Learning at Primary School in Rural and Remote Communities. International Journal of Educational Development, 36, 33–43. Safi, M., & Zahra-Malik, M. (2019, March 1). Pakistan Set to Free Captured Indian Pilot to Defuse Crisis. The Guardian. Taylor Gatto, J. (2000). Nuts and Bolts: Breaking out of the Modern Schooling Trap. Food and Water Journal, 10/1, 24. Topping, A. (2020, August 28). Children in UK Are the Unhappiest in Europe. The Guardian. Wu, J. (2012). Disenchantment and Participation Limits of Compulsory Education: Lessons from Southwest China. Compare, 42(4), 621–646.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank my long suffering wife, Mary Harber, for proofreading the manuscript—as she has done for all the books I have written since retiring—with only a very small amount of complaining. I’d also like to thank Helen Lees and Michael Reiss for their feedback on the manuscript. Finally, I’d like to thank the unknown woman I heard making an off-hand comment about how nice school uniforms looked for planting the seed in my mind that grew into this book.

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Contents

1 Everyday Schooling: Preserving the Status Quo or Worse?  1 2 School as an Organisation: Compulsion, Control and Corruption 37 3 Daily Rules and Routines 71 4 Punishment 97 5 Examinations and Testing121 6 School Uniform and Uniformity139 7 Journey to and from School163 8 School Buildings (and Grounds)185

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9 Post-Covid Schooling?223 References229 Index249

1 Everyday Schooling: Preserving the Status Quo or Worse?

In this chapter we examine ways in which schooling currently does two things in relation to the wider society. First, how it acts as an institution that conserves social arrangements through its role as (a) an agency of social and political control and (b) a facilitator of existing socio-economic reproduction and inequality. Second, how it often makes matters worse for individual pupils and societies through (c) its active perpetration of violence. Thus, there are three key analytical themes that permeate the book. The first is schooling as social and political control—how the historical purposes of schooling mean that one of its key modern functions is of encouraging conformity, obedience and docility through its primarily authoritarian organisational structures and top-down daily rules and routines. The unequal exercise of power is woven into the organisational fabric of schooling. Thus the daily reality of schooling for many, if not most, pupils globally is not one of participating in decision-making either about school organisation or their own learning. Ironically, and as we shall see below, this is often despite public policy claims in countries such as Sweden, Canada, Ireland, South Africa, Iceland, America and the UK that schooling is about educating critical citizens for participation in a democracy. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Harber, Post-Covid Schooling, Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87824-5_1

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The second analytical framework is how schooling is an institution that conserves social arrangements as they are through its role as an agency of socio-economic reproduction of inequalities based on, for example, class, race or gender. As the Nelson Mandela Foundation in South Africa once put it, For many, education cannot compensate for much deeper economic and social inequalities—it is not ladder out of poverty, it simply confirms one’s status in life. (Nelson Mandela Foundation, 2005, p. 142)

The third analytical framework is how school often makes matters worse through either its active perpetration of violence (e.g. through corporal punishment or teacher-initiated sexual harassment) or, equally importantly, its reproduction of violence by omission where it doesn’t do something it should do to protect young people and keep them safe. Examples of violence by omission include failing to keep pupils safe by ignoring pupil-to-pupil bullying, insufficient attention to the safety of school buildings or placing schools where traffic and pollution are a known hazard. Evidence—including, wherever possible, research evidence based on pupils’ views of schooling—is provided throughout the book to support the idea that schooling does all three of these things in its everyday, normal structures and practices.

 History of Schooling as Social A and Political Control Sometimes the role of schooling in social and political control is obvious and clear cut. The content of textbooks, curriculum and use of slogans and symbols in the Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa are historical examples of this. This quotation is from a novel called The Bookseller of Kabul, based on experience in Afghanistan just after the Taliban were removed from power in 2001:

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When the schools open this spring there will hardly be any textbooks. Books printed by the Mujahdeen government and the Taliban are useless. This is how first-year schoolchildren learn the alphabet: J is for Jihad, our aim in life, I is for Israel, or enemy, K is for Kalashnikov, we will overcome, M is for Mujahdeen, our heroes, T is for Taliban…War was the central theme in maths books too. Schoolboys—because the Taliban printed books solely for boys—did not calculate in apples and cakes but in bullets and Kalashnikovs. Something like this: Little Omar has a Kalashnikov with three magazines. There are twenty bullets in each magazine. He uses two thirds of the bullets and kills sixty infidels. How many infidels does he kill with each bullet? Books from the Communist period cannot be used either. Their arithmetic problems dealt with land redistribution and egalitarian ideals. Red banners and happy collective farmers would guide children towards Communism. (Seierstad, 2004, pp. 62–63)

Clear-cut forms of schooling as political control are not confined to history, however. For example, in 2021 it was announced that all pupils in Hong Kong, starting as young as six, would be taught the national security law. Notices sent out required schools to prevent participation in political activities, to increase monitoring of employees and teaching materials, to remove books and flyers deemed to endanger national security and to report to authorities if necessary. The changes to the school curriculum were part of moves by the government to crack down on dissent and increase control of the political leanings of residents of Hong Kong beyond activists and opposition figures. In 2020 the city’s leader, Carrie Lam, blamed the liberal studies curriculum for fuelling the 2019 pro-democracy protests and vowed to overhaul the education system. The government warned teachers that there was ‘no room for debate or compromise’ when it came to national security and that they should ‘cultivate students’ sense of responsibility to safeguard’ it. Work plans and self-compiled teaching materials must be retained for at least two years to allow for inspection by school management or the education department (Davidson, 2021). Even less sinister daily rituals such as saluting the flag, singing the national anthem and saying a national pledge can also be seen a form of imposing a political agenda of national unity. However, here the concern is more with how schooling as social and political control became deeply

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embedded in the organisational nature of schooling globally, even if the societies that originally produced the organisational model have subsequently undergone major changes. During the nineteenth century, modern schooling took on most of its key and recognisable characteristics—it spread widely and became increasingly perceived as compulsory. It took place in separate buildings called a ‘school’, uniforms were introduced and an examined curriculum developed. As Miller (1989, pp.  156–7) puts it: Sometimes earlier, sometimes later, but above all in the last third of the nineteenth century, systems of compulsory schooling were established in most countries of the Western world. Between 1869 and 1882 alone, schooling was made compulsory in Ontario, British Columbia and Manitoba in Canada, in 14 of the American states, in Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and New South Wales in Australia, In New Zealand, Scotland, the 15 crow lands of the Austrian Empire, in the Netherlands and Switzerland, and in France and England…what was significant was an international acceptance of the rational, compulsory-­ schooling model, a commitment of substantial proportions of public funds to the schooling enterprise and, over three or four decades (a brief period in historical terms), irreversible breakthroughs in the actual enforcement of what came to be understood as the one model of efficient schooling. This process revolved around the attempted standardization of curricula, school architecture, teaching practices and school behavior; the regularization and enforcement of school attendance of all children of what came to be understood as school age.

Green (1994) attempted to explain why such a wide range of countries introduced systems of mass formal schooling during the nineteenth century. He argues that the key social factor was state formation: The major impetus for the creation of national education systems lay in the need to provide the state with trained administrators, engineers and military personnale to spread dominant national cultures and inculcate popular ideologies of nationhood; and so to forge the political and cultural unity of burgeoning nation-states and cement the ideological hegemony of their dominant classes. (1994, p. 312)

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Thus, The nineteenth century education system came to assume a primary responsibility for the moral, cultural and political development of the nation. It became the secular church. It was variously called upon to assimilate immigrant cultures, to promote established religious doctrines, to spread the standard form of the appointed national language, to forge a national identity and a national culture, to generalise new habits of routine and rational calculation, to encourage patriotic values, to inculcate moral disciplines and, above all, to indoctrinate in the political and economic creeds of the dominant classes. It helped construct the very subjectivities of citizenship, justifying the ways of the state to the people and the duties of the people to the state. It sought to create each person as a universal subject but it did so differentially according to class and gender. It formed the responsible citizen, the diligent worker, the willing tax payer, the reliable juror, the conscientious parent, the dutiful wife, the patriotic soldier and the dependable or deferential voter. (1994, p. 313)

It is clear that social control has been a key function of formal education right from its origins. As Green put it in his study of the origins of formal schooling in England, France, the US and Prussia, The task of public schooling was not so much to develop new skills for the industrial sector as to inculcate habits of conformity, discipline and morality that would counter the widespread problems of social disorder. (1990, p. 59)

Taylor Gatto (2009), examining the historical roots of American schooling, also notes the influence of Prussian education in America and writes that modern schooling emerging in the early twentieth century was designed as a counter to the threat of rising democratic forces threatening to give peasants and workers a voice at the bargaining table: Modern industrialised, compulsory schooling was to make a kind of surgical intervention into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass

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of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole. (2009, p. vviii)

Toffler further argued that Mass education was the ingenious machine constructed by industrialism to produce the kind of adults it needed…the solution was an educational system that, in its very structure, simulated this new world…the regimentation, lack of individualisation, the rigid systems of seating, grouping, grading and marking, the authoritarian style of the teacher—are precisely those that made mass public education so effective as an instrument of adaptation for its time and place. (1970, pp. 354–5)

Johnson (1970), for example, shows how in Britain from the early nineteenth century schooling was seen as a way of ‘civilising’ and controlling the potentially disruptive and rebellious lower orders who were increasingly living in towns and cities as a result of increased industrialisation. Thus, as one Victorian author of a report on the South Wales coalfield put it, ‘A band of efficient schoolmasters is kept at much less expense than a body of police or soldiery’ (H.L. Bellairs, cited in Williams, 2003). Religious and moral education would play a large part in this for, even as the state took on an increasing responsibility for formal education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, religion continued to influence the nature of provision (Miller, 1989, p. 174). Shipman (1971) writes on the role of schooling in social control in some detail in regard to Britain, arguing that by the mid-nineteenth century schools were staffed by teachers who saw their job as full-time and used monitors and prefects to maintain order and stability. He states that Children were being exposed not only to a curriculum governed by religion and the class interests of their benefactors, but increasingly to organisations that were large scale, disciplined and, as in the factories, geared to regular and punctual attendance. (1971, p. 132)

Shipman also notes that there was no dispute about the role of religion in school, only over which version, and states that the primacy of the

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control function of schooling in this period has been documented by many writers so that The role of the school is best seen as part of the total machinery of coercion that was used to limit disturbance and inculcate a new social discipline. (1971, p. 134)

He asserts that the clearest official statement of the social control function of school came in the Elementary Code of 1904, which laid down the duty of schools to fit children into the discipline and life of work and to implant in the children habits of industry, self-control and courageous perseverance in the face of difficulties (1971, p. 160). Spring (1973) adds in relation to America that by the beginning of the twentieth century industrialisation and urbanisation had eroded the influence of the family, church and community on individual behaviour so school was substituted as a primary instrument of social control in order to maintain social order. Indeed, He cites an American sociologist writing at the end of the nineteenth century, and echoing the Bellairs quotation above, referring to schooling as an inexpensive form of police. Spring argues that the school increasingly became responsible for the whole child, which meant expanding its custodial function to the child’s entire social life, including play, dancing and hobbies. Schooling was not only used for social control and socio-economic reproduction in the newly industrialised countries of Europe, North America, Japan and Australia. During the nineteenth century colonialism further spread schooling around the globe. By the 1930s colonial powers controlled over 84.6% of the land surface of the world (Loomba, 1998, p.  15). After early missionary educational activity, the colonial state increasingly attempted to use schooling as a form of social control to keep local populations in their place by teaching the superiority of the culture of the colonising power (often referred to as ‘civilising’ local populations), by emphasising loyalty to the colonial power and by supplying the subordinate personnel necessary for the effective functioning of the colonial administration (Whitehead, 1986; Altbach & Kelly, 1984). Lord Macaulay put it in regard to education in colonial India that

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We must at present do our best to form a class of persons Indian in blood and colour but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, in intellect. (cited in Black, 2010)

Kelly (1984, pp. 24–27), for example, shows how the colonial curriculum in French Indochina, and especially Vietnam, was considerably more negative about local institutions and culture than in Francophone West Africa because establishing colonial schools in Vietnam was related to establishing French control over a more oppositional culture than existed in West Africa. In Vietnam there already existed a pre-colonial school system and the French were well aware of the political potential of these schools in terms of resistance to colonialism. The curriculum sought to detach pupils from affective ties to their nation and service to it by belittling it. In Francophone Africa, unlike Vietnam where a large nation-­ state already existed, there were a multitude of relatively small-scale societies posing less direct threat to French colonialism. Schooling was no less about political control, but the aim was to use education to develop loyalty among the selected few that attended school and to woo an African elite and prepare them for local leadership under French overall rule. The ultimate fear of the colonial state that Western education— through greater literacy in English and thus access to wider ideas—would open the doors to an incipient nationalism was eventually realised. The use of schooling as a mechanism for social control is limited when the very (imposed colonial) basis for its existence is seen as unjust and unnecessarily restricted. If the very existence of the colonial state was seen by local populations as illegitimate, then the schooling provided would find it difficult to control the lives of the people as regards independence in the long term. However, despite their role in helping to facilitate independence, ironically the very school structures and practices bequeathed by colonialism have often persisted in the post-colonial period as they have often proved useful to post-colonial governments in facilitating political control. Sometimes, as in Ghana under Nkrumah, for example, or Malawi under Banda, political control has been clear and explicit. However, its main strength and durability lies in its implicit,

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taken-for-granted nature and the way that it is built into what is seen as the ‘normal’ power structure of the school: Also, while the more racist and culturally controlling elements of colonial education may have disappeared…colonial education nevertheless continues to influence post-colonial education. This is because the basic ways in which a school operates including, for example, school management and organisation, teacher-pupil relationships, discipline and assessment were bequeathed by the colonial model and have not changed significantly since. (Harber, 2017, p. x on sub-Saharan Africa)

Thus, in a study of the ex-British colony of Trinidad and Tobago, for example, London argues that Schooling was intended to inculcate into the colonised a worldview of voluntary subservience to the ruling groups, and a willingness to continue to occupy positions on the lowest rungs of the occupational and social ladder. A number of effective strategies were used in the process, but the most significant among these was the instructional programmes and teaching methodologies used in colonial schools…Values, attitudes and behaviour were highlighted such as the habits of obedience, order, punctuality and honesty. (2002, p. 57)

Some of the characteristics of colonial schooling in Trinidad and Tobago outlined by London include mindlessness, verbatim repetition, character development, mastery of rules as a pre-requisite for application, use of abstract illustrations, monotonous drill, inculcation of specified norms for cleanliness and neatness and harsh discipline. He concludes by arguing that schooling is one of the places where colonial forms and practices have persisted and remained essentially the same throughout the post-colonial period. Commenting on primary schooling in both England and colonial India, Alexander writes, Both were rooted in a concept of order in which the counterpart of dominance was acquiescent subordination, or that very English condition of “knowing one’s station”. The good life enjoyed by the minority was

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­ reserved by forms of education for the majority and which secured obedip ence, conformity and respect for property. (2000, p. 92)

He further adds, Under colonial rule, primary teachers became “meek dictators”, preserving their traditional classroom authority…this state of affairs remained largely untouched by Independence. (2000, p. 97)

In the post-colonial period schooling has been seen as essential to ‘modernisation’ of the economy, society and polity through its organisational teaching and learning of the values and practices of bureaucracy. This is partly because the pupil at school learns new skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic so that he or she will be able to ‘read directions and instructions and to follow events in the newspaper’ but also because of the bureaucratic nature of the hidden curriculum, School starts and stops at fixed times each day. Within the school day there generally is a regular sequence for ordering activities: singing, reading, writing, drawing, all have their scheduled and usually invariant times. Teachers generally work according to this plan…Thus, principles directly embedded in the daily routine of the school teach the value of planning ahead and the importance of maintaining a regular schedule. (Inkeles & Smith, 1974, p. 141)

Indeed, Kendall (2009) argues that this near-hegemonic, bureaucratic model of formal, Western-style and state-provided schooling defines and constitutes ‘education’ for development in the twenty-first century—as sanctioned at the global Education for All movement supported by the United Nations, particularly in the shape of UNESCO. The essential features of this taken-for-granted model of modern education are that children learn primarily from adults about high-stakes academic subjects, on a fixed schedule, in an indoor setting that includes particular features (desks, chairs, chalkboards/whiteboards, written teaching and learning materials).

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As a result of this history, a large element of social control is inherent in modern forms of schooling. Shipman argues that the school occupies a central place in the maintenance of social order and that The school operates as any other agency of social control, not only in enforcing values such as honesty, obedience, loyalty and industry, but in actively defining deviance and merit, selecting and labelling delinquents and successes, and using these distinctions to reinforce internal order. (1971, p. 52)

and adds that Personal happiness and emotional stability remain dependent on satisfactory family life. Punctuality, quiet orderly work in groups, response to orders, bells and timetables, respect for authority, even tolerance of monotony, boredom, punishment, lack of reward and regular attendance at place of work are the habits to be learned at school. (1971, pp. 54/55)

This element of control in schooling can be found in the everyday experience of material objects in schools. In the 1950s Denmark, for example, participants on one research study remembered the use of ink and pens: Ink and pen trigger memories of submission in the disciplining subject of writing. In their recollections, the schoolmistress is an unnamed and unquestioned authority, and the descriptions of ink and pen also involve the specific seating order in the class—with desks where two pupils sat next to each other, sharing the same inkpot. The interviewees remember the struggle to prevent the ink from dripping and the efforts to get the letters right in the collective instruction of ‘down stroke, down stroke, down stroke’. The small material changes, e.g. the new types of pens, seem to have brought about new issues of discipline, with demands to master new writing skills under the same collective instruction. (Rasmussen, 2012, p. 118)

More recently, Brown-Martin (2014, cited in Monibot, 2017) also argues that contemporary schools were originally designed to produce

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the workforce required by nineteenth-century factories and that the desired product was workers who would sit silently at their benches to produce identical products and submitting to punishment if they failed to achieve the requisite standards. Collaboration and critical thinking were thus discouraged. Monibot comments, As far as relevance and utility are concerned, we might as well train children to use a spinning jenny. Our schools teach skills that are not only redundant but counter-productive. Our children suffer this life-defying, dehumanising system for nothing. The less relevant the system becomes, the harder the rules must be. One school’s current advertisement in the Times Educational Supplement asks: ‘Do you like order and discipline? Do you believe in children being obedient every time? If you do, then the role of detention director could be for you’. Yes, many schools have discipline problems. But is it surprising when children, bursting with energy and excitement, are confined to the spot like battery chickens? (Monibot, 2017)

Thus, throughout schooling globally, and even in states that style themselves democratic, there is a strong element of social control present in the everyday, normal experience of contemporary schooling. This is explored in more detail in subsequent chapters but essentially manifests itself in the lack of control or say that pupils have over their experience of schooling in relation to, for example, what they learn, when, where and how; how they are tested and examined; what rules govern their behaviour and appearance and how they are enforced; how and when they can move around the school and, indeed, whether they go to school or not. However, it is important to note that, while schooling as a social organisation clearly has its origins in forms of social and political control, it is also important to bear in mind that pupils have agency and historically and currently there has always been resistance to compulsory schooling both in an organised way through mass resistance and in the more everyday way of individual or small-scale misbehaviour in class and the wider school (Harber, 2004, p. 1; Tanggaard & Nielsen, 2013).

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 chooling as Socially Divisive S and Socially Reproductive The effectiveness of an education system, or even a particular school or class within a school, can only really be judged in terms of the goals that have been set and the extent they have actually been achieved—the outcomes. A good quality education is therefore one in which the inputs to, and the process of, education have been well suited to the goals set for education and thus the goals have been achieved in terms of outcomes. These overt goals often include values such as democracy, equality of opportunity and human rights as well as more conventional outcomes such as examination results, literacy, numeracy, better health and employability. Yet schooling is also a socially and economically reproductive organisation as much as it is a meritocratic one. Life chances are affected by which type of school an individual pupil attends and by the socio-­ economic and cultural capital a pupil brings with him or her to school from home (Harber, 2014, Ch. 3; Harber, 2009, Ch. 15). Moreover, not only might schooling not help to achieve the positive outcome of a fairer and more meritocratic society, it can also directly result in negative outcomes in two senses. First, in the sense that schooling has directly had a negative effect on the learner, such as fear and anxiety resulting from examination pressure or boredom, anxiety, pain, embarrassment, lack of confidence and anger from the daily experience of the competitive and hierarchical structures and practices of schooling. Second, in the sense that school has failed to prevent negative and unequal social attitudes from developing in young people and thus in the wider society. For example, in Britain, despite universal primary and secondary education and a high level of participation in higher education, survey data suggests that seven in ten minority ethnic people have faced racial discrimination in their lives. In February 2019, 76% of ethnic minority respondents said that they had been a victim of racial abuse by a stranger. The survey also reported that 50% of the people saw racism on social media on a day-to-day basis (Booth, 2019). Another survey found that two thirds of respondents in Britain say racism has got worse or stayed the same during their lifetimes. Their opinion was that there is a ‘fair

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amount’ or ‘great deal’ of racism in contemporary British society but black respondents were twice as likely to say the problem is widespread, and When asked about their personal experiences, large numbers of black, Asian and other minority-ethnic people reported incidents of racial abuse—both verbal and physical—with many experiencing attacks regularly. (Asthana, 2020)

Schools themselves are not necessarily innocent in this regard. Chakrabortty (2020) reports on teenagers in the UK recounting the racism they face in everyday schooling. He comments, Assembled into a dossier they comprise a horrific indicator of the abuse and even assaults dished out to black and Asian children by their peers and sometimes teachers in English schools. (2020)

The dossier contained accounts from black schoolboys told by teachers to stop hanging out together ‘because we looked threatening in a gang’ and the Muslims warned by staff not ‘to congregate in large groups’, supposedly to prevent terrorist radicalisation: Then there’s Appy, a black girl who goes to her Midlands grammar with natural hair, only to be told by senior staff it’s against “governmental regulations”. She is marched to a storeroom, given a roll of blue fabric and ordered to sew her own headscarf. In a different classroom, a teacher interrupts his presentation with a slide from a Ribena ad—a cartoon of a fat, purple blackcurrant with outsized facial features. He spends the next five minutes calling the only two black students “the Ribena boys”. When one of them writes “the entire class laughed”, you feel the heat of his shame. (Chakrabortty, 2020)

As the journalist writing the article admits, This dossier doesn’t pretend to be science. It is a self-selected sample of students telling their side of the story, although no school we put allegations to denied them. As a gauge of the scope or scale of racism in schools,

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this collection is useless—but so is everything else. Academics at the University of Manchester note that the only record is those incidents that schools log with police as hate crimes. What this collection gives instead is rare indeed: a record by minority-ethnic students of their daily humiliations, the sort of thing that teens don’t tell their parents, out of guilt or a sense of isolation. (Chakrabortty, 2020; italics added)

Certainly older members of the British population who were schooled in the 1940s to early 1970s may well have experienced an education that did little to critically evaluate British imperial history and its often racist underpinnings (Claeys, 2018). Yet such racist attitudes obviously persist and on a personal, but anecdotal, note, and as someone who worked with postgraduate international students for many years, I can vouch for the racism experienced by many of the students as they went about their daily lives. Not a universally positive recommendation for the outcomes of the British education system. While there is considerable literature on the role of schooling in reproducing the existing inequalities of society and failing to mitigate unequal attitudes and behaviours, the main focus here and throughout the book is on some of the ways in which this can manifest itself in the daily practices, priorities and routines of schooling and thus how schools fail to achieve wider goals of greater equality of opportunity that might be expected of it. An interesting example of this is an ethnography of a school in Catalonia (Rios-Rojas, 2014), which investigates the everyday realities of immigrant youth. Despite a prevalent official liberal discourse of inclusion and belonging, she found instead a discourse of power—‘a taken-for-granted system of knowledge and action premised upon the production and disciplining of differences that worked to organize school and social life for immigrant youth’ (2014, p. 3). The school articulated values of tolerance and respect and strived to be integrating, pluralist and open. Yes, teachers saw diversity as problematic and as demanding time and energy and as ‘exhausting’. They were prepared to be tolerant as long as the number of immigrants didn’t go above a (low) threshold. They were critical of social practices of immigrant pupils around the school but not so of Catalan pupils doing the same thing. Immigrant children who came from certain countries (Argentina and Chile) were more welcome

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by Catalan pupils and staff because they were perceived as being ‘more like us’ and The category of European, equated with intelligence. An openness to others, intrinsic motivation, and a natural facility and willingness to learn and speak Catalan, was one constructed in polar opposition to the category of immigrant, often imagined in tragic and deficit terms. (Rios-Rojas, 2014, p. 14)

Rios-Rojas concludes that the study ‘reveals a profound tension: an inherent conflict between its ambitions of multicultural tolerance and diversity and its role in tracking, managing and marking immigrant youth in a manner that placed them on the margins of school life’ (2014, p. 16). An ethnographic study of a school’s introductory programme in Swedish as a Second Language for newly arrived refugee and immigrant students noted that while it ostensibly aimed at inclusiveness in Swedish society, despite the fact that many of the students in the SSL classroom strive to do exactly what is expected of them—namely to qualify for regular programmes by adapting to the school system, learning the Swedish language and to pass as ‘regular’ or ‘mainstream students’—they are continuously addressed as ‘students with ethnicity’, whose perceived cultural belonging is treated as their essential and authentic identity, and as something that requires to be recognised and talked about. In other words, the position as a ‘regular student’ seems not really to be an option for them. (Ahlund & Jonsson, 2016, p. 172)

Indeed, there is an institutional narrative which needs the ethnic Other in order to display its celebration of diversity. We conclude that this is crucial for the school’s performance of inclusion. Therefore, SSL student positions are not a matter of what the students themselves prefer to perform in the classroom. Instead their positions emerge in everyday school life dependent on: (i) how they are addressed as ethnic students with an ascribed different culture

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and (ii) how they answer, contradict or reproduce those interpellations. The SSL students are thus invited into the inclusive school, but above all as ethnic Others. This, then, is the paradox: the institutional construction and reproduction of an open and fair, inclusive Swedish school draws on a discourse of Otherness, and a form of exclusion, undergirded by institutional politics, in which the student’s voices are invited but seem to be ignored. (Ahlund & Jonsson, 2016, p. 173)

Daily school routines, and the social control implicit in them, can also be profoundly gendered but be part of the daily ‘normality’ within school. The following is a summary of some key findings from a study of the gender dimension of everyday life in six junior secondary schools in Botswana and six in Ghana (Dunne, 2007). The study found that staffrooms were gender-segregated with minimal teacher interaction across the gender boundary. The view of most female teachers was that male teachers were more often consulted and given decision-making roles, leaving them in subordinate positions. Female teachers tended to carry out social tasks such as greeting visitors and offering seats whereas male teachers took responsibility for sports, school grounds, sanitation and tasks that required physical exertion. Male teachers also tended to deal with discipline, especially corporal punishment. Around the school high-­ status duties such as assemblies and ringing the bell between lessons were carried out by boys—these duties were almost never carried out by a girl. There was also a tendency for male prefects to be responsible for male pupils and female prefects for female pupils. In terms of general school duties, in all schools in both countries girls were usually responsible for cleaning classrooms and offices and for fetching water. Boys did weeding, picking up litter, cleaning windows and tree cutting. Seldom were boys seen with brooms or mops. Whereas girls sometimes helped boys in their tasks, the reverse was not observed. In some cases teachers used pupils, especially girls, to carry out private duties for them such as cleaning their house or running errands. Boys who swept or did ‘female’ duties were ridiculed by both other boys and girls. Rather than being passive, the girls were active in colluding with the gender order, thereby helping to sustain it.

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Whenever pupil lines were formed, for example in assembly or when entering the school in the morning, they were gender-segregated and this gender segregation also occurred among the teachers. In both countries the dominant pattern of seating in the classroom was for boys to sit at the back and along the sides as if surrounding or controlling the girls and teachers rarely intervened in the seating arrangements. A misbehaving boy would be made to sit amongst the girls as a discipline strategy. Boys dominated communication in the classroom by being most vocal, by shouting answers to teachers, by verbally harassing girls who attempted to answer questions and by ridiculing them if they got the wrong answer. This had the effect of discouraging participation by girls. Intimidation of girls by male teachers in question-and-answer sessions was observed in both countries. Corporal punishment was common in both countries and those who carried out were male teachers and those who received it were more often male pupils. Female teachers used less-demonstrative forms of violence such as pinching and verbal abuse, the latter being described as more damaging and violating by the pupils. Within the classroom and informally around the school, male teachers communicated with female pupils in a more personal, sexist and even sexually suggestive way. Gender stereotypes and sexist behaviour presented in textbooks in both countries tended to be left unchallenged by teachers. Boys engaged in routine intimidation of girls, and older boys snatched money or other property from girls. It was also common for boys to sexually harass girls by pinching or touching their breasts or buttocks. However, in all the schools negative gendered behaviour was not seen as a matter of concern as it was seen as ‘natural’ so that complaints from girls about sexual harassment and verbal abuse were largely ignored or trivialised, being regarded by teachers as a normal part of growing up. Everyday routines in schools can even be gendered in schools which label themselves as ‘rights respecting’ in line with the UNICEF initiative of Rights Respecting Schools. These are schools which are supposed to have children’s rights, equality and democracy at the heart of their policies and practices in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, in an ethnographic study of gender in one such primary school in England, Webb (2019) found that there were limits to this in

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different contexts in the school. In one context, the school corridor, boys were quite happy to claim their right to do their own thing but, in exercising subversive masculine behaviour, to disregard their responsibilities to others not in their male groups—girls and other boys that are more at ease with girls. The boys are actively constructing a situation where they themselves act ‘as master, powerful and independent of the teacher’s controlling gaze and blasé—apparently—as to their effect on other children’ (2019, p. 264). In another context of the school council, it is boys who speak and girls who listen. The seven-year-old boy performed—at length—with considerable panache, confidence and acumen; the older boy responded to ‘Any Other Business’ and solicited the reactions of the girls around him who then posited solutions to the problems that he posed…The boys encourage, and are encouraged, to speak up and perform a masculinity with which they identify. This masculine performativity is readily apprehended and taken up by the Head teacher, who does not seem to notice the gendered performances being played out before him in the name of Pupil Voice. I witnessed little of what had been described to me by one teacher as ‘the power of the Student Council…which is all part of the RRS policy of giving all children opportunities to take part and be heard…It is the boys who constitute the pupil voice of participation’. (Webb, 2019, p. 267)

Webb makes an important point about the ability of using ethnography to understand the reality of taken-for-granted, everyday school practices, especially in schools which have adopted a rights respecting discourse: Herein lies the value of ethnography to ‘notice’ beyond the assumed everyday of schooling: moments such as those within corridors, or beyond the strictures of the classroom, or the structure of the taught curriculum. (Webb, 2019, p. 271)

A major evaluation of UNICEF’s Child Friendly Schools Programme in Nigeria, South Africa, the Philippines, Guyana and Nicaragua (Osher

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et al., 2009, p. 29) also found that perceptions of gender inclusivity and equality were much less marked among pupils than teachers and heads. A lack of inclusion can also be a barrier to educational achievement for children with special educational needs. In African schools there can be issues of overcrowding, which means it is difficult for children with orthopaedic needs to move around or that a crowded classroom is too noisy for a child with a hearing impairment to hear the teacher. In Senegal, many children with disabilities lack the devices (canes, crutches, hearing aids, glasses, etc.) necessary to facilitate functioning in school (Drame & Kamphoff, 2014, pp. 78–80). Classroom overcrowding is also a factor hindering successful access to schooling for disabled pupils in Ghana (Ametepee & Anastasiou, 2015, p. 151). In Zimbabwe a survey of teachers found that half of them believed in educating pupils with disabilities together with their peers without disabilities but half didn’t (Chitiyo et al., 2016, p. 10). Two further cultural barriers to access by, and inclusion of, children with disabilities in Ghana are cited by Ametepee and Anastasiou (2015). These are that parents of children without disabilities threaten to remove their children from classrooms when children with disabilities attend regular classrooms and that some individuals refuse to associate with students with disabilities because of the belief that disabilities are caused by spirits. Moreover, Ghana’s Ministry of Education has reported that teachers in mainstream schools often pay less attention to children with disabilities compared to their peers and that this is also due to the widespread belief that disabilities are caused by spirits (Ametepee & Anastasiou, 2015, p. 151). The role of the schools in reproducing social and economic inequality can contribute to another negative feature of everyday schooling—violence. Indeed, there is considerable evidence linking greater inequality and poverty to increased chances of violence, both within the wider society and in schools, with schools in poorer areas having a greater incidence of violence (Debarbieux, 2003). Those with a stake in society and a perceived successful future are less likely to feel excluded and angry than those who lack, or have the prospect of lacking, good incomes, status and respect.

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In their book The Spirit Level, Wilkinson and Pickett (2010, Ch. 10) provide evidence of a link between inequality and physical and psychological violence in the societies of OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries—the higher the level of economic inequality, the higher the level of violence. They also point out that, while it is generally young men that are violent, most young men are not but those that are tend to be poor and from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. They argue that acts of violence are attempts to ward off feelings of shame, humiliation, lack of respect and loss of face and status. Status is important to men as they regard it as essential for success in sexual competition for women. Reckless, even violent behaviour comes from young men at the bottom of society, deprived of all the markers of status, who must struggle to maintain face and what little status they have, often reacting explosively when it is threatened. (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010, p. 134)

In the next section we shall examine some of the ways in which everyday schooling perpetrates violence.

Violent Schooling: Another Inconvenient Truth Schooling is predominantly portrayed by the media and in academic writing in a positive light, hence the urgency to get children back into school despite being in the midst of a pandemic. However, while schooling can and does make positive contributions to learning, it can also be both negative and directly violent and harmful to children in the form of reproducing as well as perpetrating violence. I have provided detailed evidence for this, and discussed the reasons for it, elsewhere (Harber, 2004, 2009; Harber & Mncube, 2017). The purpose of the present chapter is to act as a salient reminder that for many children globally violence in school, and directly and indirectly caused by school, can be part of their regular experience. The remainder of this chapter will therefore set out a short series of examples of how schooling is directly and routinely involved in either encouraging violence in the wider society or directly

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causing violence towards pupils in school. However, as noted earlier, it is also important to bear in mind that schooling is indirectly implicated in violence through omission, that is, when it doesn’t do something it should to protect children, for example, failing to prevent pupil-to-pupil sexual harassment, not providing a safe learning environment in the school or encouraging or insisting on school attendance when journeys to and from school are not safe. Schooling and Violent Conflict Historically, schooling has often played a negative role in the vilification of the ‘other’, thereby fuelling hatred and violence in and between societies. Particular groups are negatively stereotyped using political socialisation and indoctrination via schooling. Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa, Rwanda, Cyprus, Israel/Palestine are five examples among many from relatively recent history (see Harber, 2004, Ch. 6). This continues today. In Pakistan, for example, UNESCO (2018, p.  220) notes that school textbooks have been criticised for normalising militarism and war and including biases and historical errors and distortions. Prominent Pakistanis other than military heroes and nationalist movement leaders are often excluded from textbooks, which have also perpetuated a narrative of conflict between Muslims and Hindus rather than discussing the potential for conflict resolution and reconciliation. Vanner et al. note in relation to Sri Lanka that academics, NGOs and teachers from the minority group report that textbooks are often culturally exclusive, teach negative stereotypes and demonize the Other…for example, Sinhalese textbooks have portrayed Sinhala kings as heroes defeating the Tamils, who are represented as filthy invaders…The official Sri Lankan textbooks have now undergone revisions but continue to receive criticism for representing one perspective or community and avoiding mention of ethnicity and conflict. (2017, pp. 44–45)

Physical Violence Corporal punishment is a form of violence still regularly used against young people despite the fact that there is no evidence that it improves behaviour or academic achievement and may well do the opposite (PLAN, 2008) and has overwhelmingly negative consequences for physical and mental health (World Health Organisation

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(WHO), 2002, pp. 69–70). Indeed, in an earlier book I described corporal punishment as a form of terrorism, as Terrorism can be defined as the use of violence to achieve political ends. Schooling involves the use of power and physical violence to impose political ends of control and authority. (Harber, 2004, p. 76)

Deb et al. (2017, p. 61) cite Human Rights Watch in defining corporal punishment as any punishment involving physical force intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort. Indeed, as recently as 2017 corporal punishment of various types using various objects continued to be used in a third of the countries of the world and was legal in 69 countries (Gershoff, 2017, pp.  224, 226). Nineteen states in America still allowed corporal punishment in schools (Gershoff, 2017, p. 227). Even schools ostensibly involved in peace education in Kenya have been observed using corporal punishment (Lauritzen, 2016). Gershoff further notes that School administrators report that they reserve corporal punishment for serious student infractions, such as fighting with fellow students …, yet interviews with students make clear that corporal punishment is used more widely. Children in India, Republic of Korea, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, the US, and Zambia have reported being subject to corporal punishment for a range of behaviours, including not doing their homework, coming late to class, bringing cell phones to school, running in the hallway, sleeping in class, answering questions incorrectly, having an unacceptable appearance, using bad language, writing in a text book, failing to pay school fees, making noise in class, and being absent… Students also report that an entire class may be subject to corporal punishment for the misbehaviour of a single student or because an entire class or school performs poorly on examinations. (2017, p. 225)

Deb et al. (2017, pp. 61–62) further cite evidence of the use of corporal punishment in Egypt, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea and the US.  In their own sample of over 500 secondary school students in India, almost two thirds of the students reported having experienced corporal punishment over the last year. Research in Zambia in which the current author

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was involved found that beating of children was widespread and routine in schools (Harber & Stephens, 2009, pp. 54–56). Bullying One of the major problems with schools in relation to bullying is when they know there is a problem with pupil-to-pupil bullying but fail to do anything about it. This is a widespread problem (Harber & Mncube, 2017, pp. 32–33). Bullying within schools becomes more direct when it is the bullying of learners by teachers. In America a study of 50 students at alternative schools found that 86% reported at least one incident of adult physical maltreatment and 88% reported at least one incident of adult psychological maltreatment while they were in mainstream schools. Almost twice as many students reported that an adult rather than a peer was involved in their worst school experience. The authors commented that ‘these findings indicate that students are being bullied by teachers to a surprising degree and in a wide range of destructive and harmful ways’ (Whitted & Dupper, 2008). Interviews carried out with 40 first-year university students in Russia about their experience of school found that teachers called pupils a wide range of insulting words if they did not learn fast enough; used their classroom pointers as tools of punishment and intimidation; destroyed school accessories if they did not comply with school regulations; threw various objects at pupils and physically attacked them by hitting their heads, pushing them or banging their heads against the blackboard (Zdravomyslova & Gorshkova, 2006). Controversy around the use of isolation booths in UK schools as a form of punishment in 2020, discussed in detail later in Chap. 4, may well be categorised by many as bullying. A study of schools in Yucatan, Mexico, looked at verbal violence by teachers (negative nicknames, badmouthing, threats, ridicule and disrespect) as well as physical violence (hitting, pinching, pulling hair, physical aggression). Over 90 of the students in the sample reported instances of violence by teachers towards students (Peña et al., 2018, p. 2903). However, some have argued that it is the power structure and ethos of schooling that is itself conducive to bullying among the pupils. As Duncan (2007, p. 134) puts it, Imagine being made by law to attend an institution six hours a day, five days a week where you were controlled in everything you do, for no pay

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nor worthwhile outcomes for you personally. Imagine you were so controlled in this environment that you were punished for speaking without permission, for not sitting in a particular position, for laughing out loud, for whispering. Imagine being told to do things you had no interest in, and then being harassed for not doing it as well as that person thinks you can. Imagine your ability or performance being constantly measured and compared against your peers. Imagine being told what to wear down to the tiniest detail, being forbidden expressions of personality such as jewellery or make-up. Imagine being forced to cut or grow your hair until it met with someone else’s approval. Imagine being so controlled in every way that even your bodily functions are at someone else’s discretion and you need permission to eat, drink or go to the toilet.

Indeed, a study of four schools in India found in relation to pupil-to-­ pupil bullying that Students were found to have identified the dominance of hierarchy and power, which resulted in students carrying the concept of power dynamics into their everyday school life. Students were hence found to be testing their new learned understanding of dominance relations with their peers. Students perceived to be physically weak were subjected to bullying and were beaten by peers who perceived themselves to be stronger—either on counts of their physical strength, academic performance or the implicit understanding that they belonged to a higher SEP (socio-economic position). Education in these schools not only reinforced social inequalities in school, but also presented students with social models that demonstrated power dynamics and hierarchy thus reproducing inequalities among students. (Sawhney, 2018, p. 604)

Sexual Violence and Harassment Again, like bullying, sexual violence and harassment on female pupils by male pupils is a serious problem in schools in many countries and is often ignored or not tackled by teachers (Harber & Mncube, 2017, pp.  34–35). However, sexual violence and harassment can also be carried out by teachers on pupils. Before discussing this at a more global level I am going to begin at a local level in the UK. In Britain over a decade ago ministers ordered urgent action to tackle sexual bullying and harassment in the classroom (The Guardian,

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6/12/2008) while the chief executive of the General Teaching Council said that it was preparing itself for ‘an upsurge in the number of teachers being publicly accused of unacceptable sexual conduct’ (Times Educational Supplement, 7/9/2007). However, while it has always been a problem historically, the issue is still very much with us. This is an article from The Guardian in full published in December 2020: People who carry out child sexual abuse in schools often have reputations as perpetrators, with their behaviour frequently an open secret, according to a report by the independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales. Research based on the accounts of 691 victims and survivors also found that 42% of people who were sexually abused in the context of schools were aware of other victims in the same school. The majority of perpetrators were male teachers or other educational staff, who often manipulated and groomed children, staff and parents in order to facilitate the sexual abuse. They often had good reputations with staff and parents or were seen as “cool” by pupils. Patrick Sanford, 68, a theatre director who made an autobiographical play and film, Groomed, about his experience of abuse at primary school in the 1960s, was one of those who shared his experiences. He told the Guardian the abuse began when he was nine and his teacher put his hands down his shorts and abused him as he was reading to the class from behind a desk at the front of the room. “This would happen on a regular basis for a period of a year till by chance I had to leave that school,” he said. “He groomed me by always making me top of the class, by telling my mother that I was a brilliant little boy.” He said the abuse escalated during break times and after school. On one occasion another teacher walked in on them but his abuser explained it away as tickling. “I went into school every day in terror that he was going to ask me to read in front of the class,” said Sanford. “And of course, some days he didn’t, some days he asked other children, and I know because I heard a girl talking in the playground, she said to her friend: ‘If [he] puts his hand up my skirt again, my dad says he will come and bash him.’ So I know that that man was not just abusing me.” Having lived with the effects ever since, he said his overwhelming feeling with respect to the inquiry was that at last “somebody is taking it seriously”.

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Males made up the majority (55%) of those who reported abuse in the context of schools to the inquiry’s Truth Project, which allows victims and survivors the chance to share their experiences. The proportion of males rose to 76% and 78% of those who experienced abuse in the context of independent and special schools respectively, and fell to 45% among state school pupils. Twenty-nine per cent of accounts from victims and survivors came from independent schools, despite fewer than 8% percent of all pupils attending them from the 1950s onwards, the report says. Special schools and residential schools were also over-represented. Suggestions to tackle abuse in schools included imposing a legal responsibility on them to investigate sexual abuse allegations, educating children on relationships, sex and abuse from a young age, and providing school staff with better child protection training. The report’s principal researcher, Dr Sophia King, said: “Schools should be somewhere that children feel safe and protected, but this report shows a very different picture. Some victims thought they were in love with their abuser and were conflicted for many years into adulthood, with lasting impacts on their education, employment and social life.” (Siddique, 2020)

UNESCO (2015, p. 180) reports a study of female adolescent victims of sexual violence in Ecuador which found that 37% of the perpetrators were teachers and small-scale studies in South and West Asia that revealed sexualised behaviour by teachers towards girls. Writing of female pupils in general in Guinea, Coleman notes that Sexual harassment and even rape is a very large concern for parents when sending their children to school…Teachers often demand sexual favours for a passing grade, even if the grade has already been merited by the student’s academic work. (2017, p. 268)

Datzberg and Le Mat (2018, p.  62) further note the unpropitious nature of schooling in northern Uganda in that gender-based violence in schools seems to be tolerated and normalised and often perpetrated by teachers. They also add in relation to Uganda as a whole that it is estimated that 74.3% to 80% of children have experienced physical punishments such as caning and slapping by adults or teachers in school. It

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was also found that 77.7% of interviewed primary school children, and 82% of secondary school children have been sexually abused at school. Teachers were repeatedly reported to be the major perpetrators of abuse (68% of children indicated they were sexually harassed by male teachers) followed by peers. Notably, boys and girls are at equal risk of experiencing violence or sexual abuse in schools. Of the participants in the sample study, 40% of girls and 39% of boys reported sexual abuse. (2018, p. 65)

In research in one school in Zambia in which the present author was involved five girls and five boys from grade 6 were selected to do the risk-­ mapping exercise. They stated their teachers beat them a lot, for everything. They also said they were beaten when somebody else had done something not approved of by the teacher. When asked if there were some secret things going on in the school, they confirmed it. They looked embarrassed and admitted to teachers doing things to girls which they should not do. When the Education Support Officer was asked about it, she said that she was not surprised, ‘It is as expected’ (Harber & Stephens, 2009, p. 54). A South African Case Study South Africa is a country where violence in schools is widespread. For example, the National School Violence Study carried out by the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention found that the level of violence in schools had not changed much between 2008 and 2012 but that more than a fifth of learners had experienced violence at school (CJCP, 2013, p. xi). In another study of school violence in six provinces (Mncube & Harber, 2012) 55% of learners responded that they had been victims of violence in schools. Moreover, some of this violence is perpetrated by the school against the pupils. DSD (Department of Social Development) et  al. (2012, pp. 22–23), for example, note a number of studies that have found that corporal punishment is still widespread in South African schools despite being illegal. The Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention (CJCP) report on violence in South African schools found that more than a quarter of school principals said that they had received reports of verbal violence by teachers and more than a tenth of physical violence by teachers—and educators were often victims of verbal and physical violence by students (CJCP, 2013, p. xii). In a 2012 National School Violence survey, just

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under 50% of learners claimed to have been beaten by an educator or principal—varying between 22.4% in the Western Cape to 73.7% in KwaZulu Natal (CJCP, 2013, p.  30). Hunt (2007), using observation and interviews, found that corporal punishment was still used in three out of four of her case study schools in the Cape Town area and that learners were subjected to incidents of verbal insult and humiliation. While much of the bullying referred to in schools is pupil-to-pupil bullying, as has been noted above, teachers can also bully pupils. For example, a study of violence in schools in one province of South Africa found that of the sample of 800 teachers 43% had threatened one or more learners over the period of a year, whereas 17% had attacked or assaulted one or more learners in their school during the same period (de Wet, 2007). A further study across six provinces in South Africa also found that teacher verbal and physical abuse of pupils was widespread (Mncube & Harber, 2012). In terms of sexual harassment and violence, in 2012 DSD noted that part of the cause of this, particularly in contexts of poverty, is transactional, with sexual acts with educators taking place in exchange for money, goods or marks (pp. 21–22). It is perhaps not surprising then that in 2006 the then Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, simply stated outright that schools were ‘not safe’ for girls (cited in Motala et  al., 2007, p. 93). Why Is School Violent Towards Pupils? The above are simply some examples of a larger problem of violence in schools but the question has to be asked, why are schools violent towards learners? In Harber and Mncube (2017, Chs. 1, 3 and 5) we discussed three main reasons. The first was the role of school in reproducing social and economic inequality when there is considerable evidence that the more unequal a society, the more violence there is. The second was the role of dominant or hegemonic forms of masculinity which are predicated on strength, toughness and violence and which are insufficiently challenged and even reproduced by schooling. The third reason is directly relevant to a key theme of this book—the predominantly authoritarian nature of schools as organisations and their historical and current role as institutions of surveillance, punishment and social control:

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One further and important answer to why violence occurs in and by schools that are supposed to nurture learning in a safe and caring environment is that, despite most countries having signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, for the majority of pupils schooling is an essentially authoritarian experience. They are institutions where curriculum and management priorities are set by those above the learners—in Ministries of Education, in local or regional authorities and by the school head teacher and staff. The voice of learners is not heard or not sufficiently heard. As a result the priorities, needs, rights and feelings of learners can be ignored, downplayed or supressed. It is also difficult for teachers or pupils to act independently and to critique and challenge dominant social and political orthodoxies, including those that lead to violent behaviour and conflict. Authoritarian schools are therefore schools that reproduce and perpetrate—not only the socio-economic and political inequalities of the surrounding society, including gender relationships, but also the violent relationships that often go with them… In this authoritarian situation of relative powerlessness and neglect of their human rights pupils can be mistreated violently or be influenced by potentially violent beliefs because the dominant norms and behaviours of the wider society are shared, not challenged, by many adults in the formal education system. (Harber & Mncube, 2017, pp. 47–48)

The subsequent chapters of this book provide much evidence of how this authoritarianism and one-sided power hierarchy is deeply embedded in the day-to-day, routine fabric of schooling. The evidence seems to continue to support the ideas of Michel Foucault (1977), who argued that the regulatory practices of contemporary institutions—including schools— are even more oppressive than traditional society because they are more subtle and hidden. Schools, as other forms of modern institution, control through their bureaucratic, routinised authoritarianism—constantly measuring, categorising, ordering and regulating so that control and surveillance becomes accepted by the majority as normal and natural. The desired result is increased docility and obedience—the bells, timetables, rules, hierarchies and punishments that form part of daily reality in most schools internationally today. (Harber, 2004, p. 65)

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Conclusion The purpose of the present chapter was to set out three general ways in which day-to-day schooling is at odds with a democratic, equitable and peaceful society through its role as an institution of social control, its role in reproducing inequality and its role in perpetuating and perpetrating violence. The chapters that follow this one will examine evidence on a number of key everyday features of the conventional, taken-for-granted model of schooling. They will show that the pre-Covid routine nature of schooling could be pernicious and not necessarily or automatically beneficial to children or the wider society. The next chapter begins this process by asking what kind on an organisation school is.

References Ahlund, A., & Jonsson, R. (2016). Peruvian Meatballs? Constructing the Other in the Performance of an Inclusive School. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 6(3), 166–174. Alexander, R. (2000). Culture and Pedagog: International Comparisons in Primary Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Altbach, P., & Kelly, G. (1984). Education and Colonialism. Transaction Books. Ametepee, L., & Anastasiou, D. (2015). Special and Inclusive Education in Ghana: Status and Progress, Challenges and Implications. International Journal of Educational Development, 41, 143–152. Asthana, A. (2020, July 17). Most Britons Feel Racism in UK Is Still Rife, Survey Finds. The Guardian. Black, C. (2010). Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden (Lost People Films). Booth, R. (2019, May 21). Revealed: Big Rise in Public Racism Since Brexit Vote. The Guardian. Brown-Martin, G. (2014). Learning (Re) Imagined. Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishers. Chakrabortty, A. (2020, July 23). How a Grieving Teenager Has Exposed Racism in Our Schools. The Guardian. Chitiyo, M., Hughes, E., Changara, D., Chitiyo, G., & Montgomery, K. (2016). Special Education Professional Development Needs in Zimbabwe.

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International Journal of Inclusive Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360311 6.2016.1184326 CJCP (Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention). (2013). School Violence in South Africa: Results of the 2012 School Violence Survey. CJCP. Claeys, A. (2018). Britannia’s Children Grow Up: English Education at Empire’s End. History of Education, 47(6), 823–839. Coleman, R. (2017). Gender and Education in Guinea: Increasing Accessibility and Maintaining Girls in School. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 13(4), 266–277. Datzberg, S., & Le Mat, M. (2018). Just Add Women and Stir? Education, Gender and Peacebuilding in Uganda. International Journal of Educational Development, 59, 61–68. Davidson, H. (2021, February 6). Hong Kong Security Law to Be Taught in Schools. The Guardian. De Wet, N. N. (2007). Free State Educators’ Perceptions of the Causes and the Scope of School Violence. Education as Change, 11(1), 59–85. Deb, S., Kumar, A., Holden, G. W., & Rowe, L. S. (2017). School Corporal Punishment, Family Tension, and Students’ Internalizing Problems: Evidence from India. School Psychology International, 38(1), 60–77. Debarbieux, E. (2003). School Violence and Globalisation. Journal of Educational Administration, 41(6), 582–602. Drame, E., & Kamphoff, K. (2014). Perceptions of Disability and Access to Inclusive Education in West Africa: A Comparative Case Study in Dakar, Senegal. International Journal of Special Education, 29(3), 69–81. DSD, DWCPD, & UNICEF. (2012). Violence Against Children in South Africa. Department of Social Development, Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities and the United Nations Children’s Fund. Duncan, N. (2007). Bullying in Schools – Or Bullying Schools? In G. Richards & F. Armstrong (Eds.), Key Issues for Teaching Assistants: Working in Diverse and Inclusive Classrooms. Routledge. Dunne, M. (2007). Gender, Sexuality and Schooling: Everyday Life in Junior Secondary Schools in Botswana and Ghana. International Journal of Educational Development, 27(5), 499–511. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Vintage Books/Random House. Gershoff, E.  T. (2017). School Coporal Punishment in Global Perspective: Prevalence, Outcomes, and Efforts at Intervention. Psychology. Health and Medicine, 22, 224–239.

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Green, A. (1990). Education and State Formation. Macmillan. Green, A. (1994). Education and State Formation Revisited. Reproduced in R. Lowe (2000) History of Education: Major Themes (Vol. II). RoutledgeFalmer. Harber, C. (2004). Schooling as Violence. RoutledgeFalmer. Harber, C. (2009). Toxic Schooling: How Schools Became Worse. Educational Heretics Press. Harber, C. (2014). Education and International Development: Theory, Practice and Issues. Symposium. Harber, C. (2017). Schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policy, Practice and Patterns. Palgrave Macmillan. Harber, C., & Mncube, V. (2017). Violence in Schools: South Africa in an International Context. UNISA Press. Harber, C., & Stephens, D. (2009). From Shouters to Supporters: The Quality Education Project. Save The Children. Hunt, F. (2007). Schooling Citizens: A study of policy in practice in South Africa. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis: University of Sussex. Inkeles, A., & Smith, D. (1974). Becoming Modern. Heinemann. Johnson, R. (1970). Educational Policy and Social Control in Early Victorian England. Reproduced in R. Lowe (2000) History of Education: Major Themes (Vol. II). RoutledgeFalmer. Kelly, G.  P. (1984). Colonialism, Indigenous Society and School Practices: French West Africa and Indochina. In P. Altbach & G. Kelly (Eds.), Education and Colonialism. Transaction Books. Kendall, N. (2009). International Development Education. In R.  Cowen & M.  Kazamias (Eds.), International Handbook of Comparative Education. Springer Science. Lauritzen, S. M. (2016). Building Peace Through Education in a Post-Conflict Environment: A Case Study Exploring Perceptions of Best Practices. International Journal of Educational Development, 51, 77–83. London, N. (2002). Curriculum Convergence: An Ethno-Historical Investigation into Schooling in Trinidad and Tobago. Comparative Education, 38(1), 53–72. Loomba, A. (1998). Colonialism/Postcolonialism. Routledge. Miller, P. (1989). Historiography of Compulsory Schooling: What Is the Problem? Reproduced in R. Lowe (2000) History of Education: Major Themes (Vol. II). RoutledgeFalmer. Mncube, V. S., & Harber, C. (2012). The Dynamics of Violence in South African Schools. UNISA.

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Monibot, G. (2017, February 15). In the Age of Robots, Schools Are Teaching Children to Be Redundant. The Guardian. Motala, S., Dieltiens, V., Carrim, N., Kgobe, P., Moyo, G., & Rembe, S. (2007). Educational Access in South Africa: Country Analytic Review (Project Report). Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity—CREATE. Nelson Mandela Foundation. (2005). Emerging Voices. HSRC Press. Osher, D., Kelly, D., Tolani-Brown, N., Shors, L., & Chen, C.-S. (2009). UNICEF Child Friendly Schools Programming: Global Evaluation Final Report. American Institutes for Research. Peña, Y.  O., Carvajal, A.  S., Puc, L.  C., & Rodríguez, R.  O. (2018). School Violence in Contexts of High Social Marginalization and Ethnic Population of Yucatan, Mexico. Psychology, 9, 2897–2908. PLAN. (2008). The Global Campaign to End Violence in Schools. PLAN. Rasmussen, L. R. (2012). Touching Materiality: Presenting the Past of Everyday School Life. Memory Studies, 5(2), 114–130. Rios-Rojas, A. (2014). Managing and Disciplining Diversity: The Politics of Conditional Belonging in a Catalonian Institute. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 45(1), 2–21. Sawhney, S. (2018). Understanding the Play of Tacit Social Modelling in Classroom Interactions: A Qualitative Analysis. Compare, 48(4), 590–607. Seierstad, A. (2004). The Bookseller of Kabul. Virago. Shipman, M. (1971). Education and Modernisation. Faber. Siddique, H. (2020, December 17). Child Sexual Abuse in Schools an Open Secret, Says Inquiry. The Guardian. Spring, J. (1973). Education as a Form of Social Control. Reproduced in R. Lowe (2000) The Children Felt That History of Education: Major Themes (Vol. II). RoutledgeFalmer. Tanggaard, L., & Nielsen, K. (2013). School Memories Situating School. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 57(1), 71–88. Taylor Gatto, J. (2009). Weapons of Mass Instruction. New Society Publishers. Toffler, A. (1970). Future Shock. Bodley Head. UNESCO. (2015). Education for All Global Monitoring Report: Education for All 2000–2015: Achievements and Challenges. UNESCO EFA Global Monitoring Report. UNESCO. (2018). Accountability in Education: Meeting Our Commitments. UNESCO EFA Global Monitoring Report.

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Vanner, C., Akseer, S., & Kovinthan, T. (2017). Learning Peace (and Conflict): The Role of Primary Learning Materials in Peacebuilding in Post-War Afghanistan, South Sudan and Sri Lanka. Journal of Peace Education, 14(1), 32–53. Webb, R. (2019). Being Yourself: Everyday Ways of Doing and Being Gender in a ‘Rights-Respecting’ Primary School. Gender and Education, 31(2), 258–273. Whitted, K., & Dupper, D. (2008). Do Teachers Bully Students?. Education and Urban Society, 40(3), 329–41. Whitehead, C. (1986). Education in British Colonial Africa 1919–1939. Reproduced in R. Lowe (2000) History of Education: Major Themes (Vol. IV). RoutledgeFalmer. WHO (World Health Organisation). (2002). World Report on Violence and Health. WHO. Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2010). The Spirit Level. Penguin. Williams, H. (2003, July 23). Cheaper Than the Police. The Guardian. Zdravomyslova, O. , & Gorshkova, I. (2006). The Usual Evil: gender violence in Russian schools. In F. Leach & C. Mitchell (Eds.), Combating Gender Violence in and Around Schools. Stoke On Trent: Trentham Books.

2 School as an Organisation: Compulsion, Control and Corruption

School Attendance There is an important fact about a student’s life that teachers and parents often prefer not to talk about, at least not in front of students. This is the fact that young people have to be in school whether they want to be or not. (Jackson, 1968, p. 9)

In the midst of the problems of enforced home schooling during the Covid pandemic it is sometimes forgotten that attending pre-Covid schooling was not always a universally popular experience for young people. Indeed, when asked about what they miss about school, many young people I have seen interviewed reply ‘my friends’. One factor in this is the element of compulsion or pressure to attend in many societies. John Cosgrove, a deputy head teacher with over 20 years’ experience in English primary and secondary schools, has also commented on the forced nature of some schooling systems and the connection with authoritarian power relationships inside schools: Let’s not kid ourselves. Even in the easiest, best motivated schools, many of the pupils, much of the time, would rather not be there. Children do not © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Harber, Post-Covid Schooling, Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87824-5_2

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choose to go to school. The choice is made for them. Once in school, more or less unwillingly, pupils are presented with activities chosen for them and they are given no option about attempting them. There do exist schools where pupils have a free choice about which lessons to attend, and whether or not they complete assignments, but such institutions are as rare as primroses flowering on an English New Year’s Day…For the most part schools make children do things. (2000, p. 51)

Why do children go to school? Largely because during the twentieth century school became seen by governments, parents, teachers, pupils and politicians as an unquestionably desirable thing and inevitable and normal way of life for children and young people. Thus, it increasingly took the place of learning in the family, the library, the trade union, the community, the internet and at work and was increasingly seen as being desirable to make schooling universal and compulsory or as near as possible. Where countries do not achieve full rates of attendance this is seen as a matter of regret in terms of global efforts at Education For All, while in other countries parents and children are cajoled and compelled into school attendance. The pejorative term ‘truant’ is used to describe nonattendance and attendance can be rigidly enforced and penalised, even when absence is supported by parents. Figures from the UK Department for Education for 2017–2018 show that local authorities issued 260,000 penalty notices to parents for unauthorised absences during the state school year, an increase of 110,000 compared with the previous year. Some 223,000 penalties were issued because of unauthorised absences alone as head teachers have been told they can only authorise term-time absences in ‘exceptional’ circumstances such as funerals. Parents are fined for such unauthorised absences (Adams, 2019), thus indicating the importance of schooling and school attendance to the state. Compulsory schooling is justified for many reasons, for example in terms of literacy, numeracy, science and arts, but it is also compulsory because it helps to shape future citizens and workers. Thus, the introduction of compulsory schooling resulted in childhood being spatially compartmentalised, and children’s lives and identities being increasingly regulated and shaped by the interior life of the school. Individual

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children could be judged according to their degree of fit with prevailing theorisations and, at the same time, in order to participate in adult–child encounters in school, children had to become aware of the normative regime of expectations. (Burke & Grosvenor, 2003, p. 93)

Sherman (1996, Ch. 1) asked five-year-olds at five primary schools in the UK why they went to school and I summarise some of her findings here. It quickly became apparent to Sherman that the children felt that they had no choice but to attend school. They said that they went to school because when they grew up they would need to earn money, so that they would be ready for bigger school, so that mum can have some peace and quiet. Even at five the children were clearly cognisant of school as a preparation for the workplace. They were also aware that this was connected to learning how to read and write. Parents were the predominant choice about who made them go to school, but there was awareness that there was a larger authority ensuring that mummy and daddy sent them to school. Sherman comments: While the children’s discussions of the future workplace remains child-like in its understanding, it is clear that these children are undergoing the constant socialization into the accepted definition of a school and its essential place in the preparation for life…They knew they had to attend school and that it was important as preparation for their future. (1996, p. 5)

Interestingly, the word ‘work’ was the label used by all five teachers at all five schools to describe the activities they ascribed to the children. As a result the children also referred to work as any activity assigned by the teacher that was mandatory. In general, work was not fun, but it was what you were at school to do. Work did not include free choice and was different from playing. Sherman quotes Mark Twain to the effect that ‘Work is whatever a body is obliged to do and play is whatever a body is not obliged to do’ (1996, p. 6). Play activities were rarely referred to as work even though a great deal of productive learning was taking place, so much so that an attitude of trivialness seemed to have reached the children. This is also despite the existence of a great deal of research indicating the benefits of play to individual development. Sherman argues that

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work is taken more seriously because it is part of the school’s social control function of beginning to sort (and rank) people into the categories they will occupy in later life as a result of education. In a further study of pupils’ views of schooling in the UK, Burke and Grosvenor (2003, p. 67) add: Children take ‘work’ home; the ‘worksheet’ is ubiquitous at all levels and across all subjects of the curriculum; pupils are expected to develop ‘work’ habits. ‘Get on with your work’ is a phrase most often used by teachers in addressing pupils. Classrooms are ‘managed’ and teachers are assessed for their management skills and are rewarded for their ‘productivity’. The metaphor of the factory which accompanied the development of state education from its beginnings at the end of the nineteenth century has gradually been replaced by the metaphor of the corporation, company or firm. Parents ‘invest’ in their children’s future, looking for a good return on their outlay. The language of the corporation or business is all about results, on turning out a product, on quantifying improvement.

Thus, as Jackson argues, the habits of obedience and docility engendered in the classroom have a high pay off value in other settings. So far as their power structure is concerned classrooms are not dissimilar from factories or offices, those ubiquitous organisations in which so much of our adult life is spent. Thus, school might really be called a preparation for life, but not in the usual sense in which educators employ that slogan. (1968, p. 33)

What Kind of an Organisation Is Schooling? While many pre-Covid workplaces have moved on in their organisational form, the nineteenth-century origins of schooling in social and political control have meant that the dominant organisational model of contemporary mass schooling remains essentially bureaucratic and hierarchical. While many modern companies and workplaces are more flexible, fluid, participant and ‘flatter’ than those of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the ‘modern’ organisational model of schooling bequeathed by

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history shares many of the characteristics of the German sociologist Max Weber’s classical model of bureaucracy. Weber argued that bureaucracies had the following characteristics (Albrow, 1970, pp. 44–45): 1. Staff are personally free, observing only the impersonal duties of office. 2. There is a clear hierarchy of offices. 3. The functions of the offices are clearly specified. 4. Officials are appointed on the basis of a contract. 5. They are selected on the basis of a professional qualification. 6. They have a money salary and pension rights. The salary is graded according to position in the hierarchy. 7. The official’s post is his or her sole or major occupation. 8. There is a career structure and promotion is possible either by merit or seniority and according to the judgement of superiors. 9. The official may appropriate neither the post nor the resources that go with it. 10. The official is subject to a unified control and disciplinary system. The working organisation that children and young people experience in their daily lives at school still reflects the values and practices of a bygone era, certainly one preceding the advent of mass democracy and its increasing recognition as the most desirable form of government and political development globally (Harber & Mncube, 2012; Harber, 2014, Ch. 5). On the face of it we might expect twenty-first-century schools to demonstrate the characteristics that a democratic society might find desirable and which are reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)— democracy, human rights, participation, respect, kindness, dignity, flexibility, critical awareness and dialogue, for example. Yet, there is overwhelming evidence that schools globally are in essence not only bureaucratic but also essentially authoritarian institutions. The situation has been summarised thus: It is not that democratic schools can’t and haven’t existed because they have, just that in reality there are very few of them. They are very much the

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exception rather than the rule. Education for and in democracy, human rights, critical awareness and open and balanced political discussion is not a primary characteristic of the majority of schooling for the majority of children globally. While the degree of harshness and despotism within authoritarian schools varies from context to context and from institution to institution, in the majority of schools power and authority over what is taught and learned, how it is taught and learned, where it is taught and learned, when it is taught and learned and what the general learning environment is like is not in the hands of pupils. It is predominantly government officials, head teachers and teachers who decide, not learners. The voice of learners is not heard or not sufficiently heard. (Harber, 2019, pp. 18–19)

Evidence strongly suggests that schools are primarily authoritarian and that these top-down, non-participant relationships permeate the daily, everyday life of schools across a wide range of diverse countries. In ‘developing’ countries, for example, this is certainly the case (Harber & Mncube, 2012, Ch. 4; Harber, 2014, p. 71, Ch. 5; Harber & Mncube, 2017, Ch. 3). Indeed, a review of evidence on school organisation and management in over 40 post-conflict developing countries that I carried out concluded that In terms of the governance and management of schools in post-conflict developing societies, the above evidence would strongly suggest that democratic reform exists more at the policy level than in reality in everyday school leadership and management. Evidence suggests, with the exception of some individual schools, a bigger picture that demonstrates the persistence of top-down, centralised and authoritarian structures with participants—especially learners themselves—having only a very limited say in school decision making, if at all. (Harber, 2019, p. 109)

A study of schooling in twentieth-century Denmark, for example, also argued that Schools today are bureaucratic organizations, and this structure influences how we perceive processes of learning and knowledge…Bureaucracy is characterized by standard procedures and methods, often quantified,

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r­ egularly implemented, and with an emphasis on written communication and impartiality, with formal rules of decision making. Bureaucratic conceptions have dominated modern education, the philosophy of science and psychological research on learning. Cognitive psychological descriptions of learning have similarities to what could be described as “mental bureaucracy.” Learning, understood as little more than remembering, has been conceptualized as placing and retrieving knowledge in an inner mental apparatus, with “bookkeeping models” of impersonal processes as central, retrieving memory traces located in a hierarchy of memory boxes or filing cabinets. Through this perspective, schools are perceived as a-historical and impersonal institutions concerned mainly with transmitting knowledge from teachers to pupils as effectively as possible. Educational discussions have primarily taken the form of discussions about applying various teaching techniques…The practical consequence of this line of thinking is that…we become blind to the everyday experience of schooling and the reciprocal relation between being a pupil and going to school. (Tanggaard & Nielsen, 2013, p. 73)

Jackson, in his classic study of everyday life in school classrooms (1968, pp. 28–33), argued that the key feature of such bureaucratic and hierarchical schooling is that pupils must become accustomed to unequal power and authority with teachers. In the primary school classroom, pupils must learn to take orders from adults who do not know them very well—‘For the first time in the child’s life, power that has personal consequences for the child is wielded by a relative stranger’ (1968, p.  29). Jackson asserts that one way of looking at this is that the teacher’s plans for action are substituted for those of the pupil. As he notes, The teacher, with prescriptive dicta and surveillance over the student’s attention, provides the missing ingredient that makes work real. The teacher, although they may disclaim the title, is the student’s first “boss”. (1968, p. 31)

However, as Jackson also points out, unlike work a student cannot simply walk away or resign:

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If a third grader should refuse to obey the system of bells that tell when to enter and when to leave the classroom, the wheels of retributive justice would begin to grind. And the teacher would sound the alarm that would put them in motion. This fact calls attention to an important aspect of the teacher’s use of authority. As has been pointed out, schools resemble so-­ called total institutions, such as prisons, mental hospitals, and the like, in that one subgroup of their clientele (the students) are involuntarily committed to the institution whereas another subgroup (the staff) has greater freedom of movement and, most important, has the ultimate freedom to leave the institution entirely. Under these circumstances it is common for the more privileged group to guard the exits, either figuratively or literally. (1968, p. 31)

If this analysis of schooling as a basically authoritarian organisation is valid, we would expect that it would be supported by research and scholarship from a range of national contexts. The remainder of this section will therefore examine such evidence. America These elements of obedience and compulsion in contemporary schooling have been noted by Chomsky (2003, pp. 27–28) in relation to America: the basic institutional role of the schools, and why they’re supported, is to provide an ideological service: there’s a real selection for obedience and conformity. And I think the process starts in kindergarten…what matters is discipline, not figuring things out for yourself, or understanding things that interest you… that’s pretty much what schools are like, I think you’re supposed to obey, and just proceed through the material in whatever way they require…Some people go along with it because they figure, “Okay, I’ll do any stupid thing…because I want to get ahead”, others do it because they’ve internalised the values.

He also notes that he himself went to a progressive, democratic school where children were encouraged to challenge things and think things through for themselves. He particularly noted the difference when he went on to the city high school which was very competitive and where everybody was ranked, which was a good way of controlling people as you concentrated on looking after yourself. However, having been to

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both types of school—conventional, authoritarian and non-­conventional, democratic—he realised that the first wasn’t inevitable but was a social construct ‘to train people for obedience and conformity, and to make them controllable and indoctrinated—and as long as schools fulfil that role, they’ll be fine’ (2003, p. 29). Most children globally do not go to avowedly or consciously democratic schools, and even with more democratic schools some cautions need to be exercised, for, as Jackson points out, Again, teachers may not like this description and may, in protesting insist that they operate “democratic” classrooms, but in a very real sense their responsibilities bear some resemblance to those of prison guards…even in the most progressive environments, the teacher is very much in control and pupils usually aware of the centrality and power of their position. Even the first grader knows an absent teacher requires a substitute, whereas an absent student does not. (1968, pp. 31–32)

In the 1980s Rothstein (1987) studied newcomers in an urban junior high school in America and published an article as a result called ‘The Ethics of Coercion’. He notes: No attempt was made to alleviate their sense of apprehension and confusion; every attempt was made to emphasise the differences between students and teachers in the school. Children were made aware that, in the school situation, they would not be able to control their bodily movements and that these movements (and behaviours) would be subject to continuous evaluation by staff members. (1987, p. 54)

The student had to adjust to the needs and demands of the school as a mass organisation rather than the school meeting the needs of individuals: In order to gain approval students often had to adjust their opinions and behaviour so that they conformed more closely to the requirements of the situation as it was defined by custom, tradition and the legitimate authority persons in the school…the school was strongly biased towards conformance and compliance from those learning and working in the building. (Rothstein, 1987, p. 55)

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Moreover, the social structure of the school ‘resulted in teacher behaviour that was uncritical, conforming and dependent on administration’ (1987, p. 55). Rothstein describes an everyday situation in a corridor where the teacher commences an interaction with a student by shouting ‘You! Yes you! Come here!’ and then proceeds to reprimand him about an unsigned pass card. He comments that it would be unthinkable to envisage the encounter taking place the other way around because the teacher was clearly the sole one in charge of order and control procedures and whose mode of conversation was ‘that of the coercive enquirer’ (1987, p. 60). Moreover, he adds that this was just one of many incidents that took place each day: They made students aware that, in the school, they were persons who needed to be controlled, persons who were not fit to move around freely. The correction-invitation form of questioning was similar to policemen in questioning suspected law violators; and children were expected to respond in ways that justified their presence. This was in contradistinction to normal human communication that consists of speaking and listening. (1987, p. 60)

Rothstein contrasts the way other professions (doctors, lawyers, etc.) focus of the stated needs of voluntary clients as opposed to these teachers who imposed their definitions of the school and classroom on captive and coerced audiences. Talking of the students, he adds that their relationships with teachers were meant to be training for the world of work— ‘It prepared youth to be respectful and to do meaningless, boring work without questioning its efficacy or importance’ (1987, p. 67). Rothstein describes the culture of the school as ‘constant surveillance, regimentation and depersonalisation’ (1987, pp. 70, 72). This is not so different from the situation described by Michael Moore in a book published 14 years later, in 2001. In Stupid White Men former pupil Michael Moore is less than complimentary about his schooling in America. His description of his primary schooling contains phrases such as ‘My dislike of schooling started somewhere around the second month

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of first grade’ and ‘I was bored beyond belief ’ but it got even worse at junior secondary school: High school, as we know, is some sort of sick, sadistic punishment of kids by adults seeking vengeance because they can no longer lead the responsibility-­free, screwing around lives young people enjoy. What other explanation could there be for those four brutal years of degrading comments, physical abuse…those running the public high school system had one simple mission: “Hunt the little pricks down like dogs, then cage them until we can break their will or ship them off to the glue factory”. Do this, don’t do that, tuck your shirt in, wipe that smile off you face, where’s your hall pass, THAT’S THE WRONG PASS! YOU –DETENTION!! (Moore, 2001, Ch. 5)

Day Langhout (2005) further studied a school in America that serves predominately African American and low-income students. She describes how, although students have various forms of resistance, Observational and interview data indicate that children are disciplined into invisibility by treating them stereotypically and consequently demanding uniformity in their behavior as a way to control their mostly colored bodies. (2005, p. 123)

Moreover, Children’s identities, especially the identities of boys of color, are threatened via control and discipline. Here, children are rendered silent through controlling and disciplining their bodies in the hallways, through the classroom behavior management system, and by teachers literally demanding silence. (2005, p. 151)

One aspect of this control or lack of student involvement can be the constant daily emphasis on examinations, grades and success at the expense of other matters. In America Denise Clark Pope (2001) carried out research on pupils’ views of schooling in what is widely considered to be a ‘good’ high school with caring teachers, innovative programmes and

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strong leadership and where 95% of the pupils go on to higher education. While there is evidence of success everywhere in the school, Listen to the students, though, and you’ll hear a different side of success. To keep up her grades, Eve sleeps just two to three hours each night and lives in a state of constant stress. Kevin faces anxiety and frustration as he attempts to balance the high expectations of his father with his own desire to ‘have a life’ outside the school. Michelle struggles to find a way to pursue her love for drama with compromising college prospects. And both Teresa and Roberto resort to drastic actions when they worry that they will not maintain the grades they need for future careers. All of them admit to doing things that they’re not proud of in order to succeed in school. (2001, p. 3)

The students explain that they are busy at what they call ‘doing school’. They realise that they are caught in a system where achievement depends more on ‘doing’—going through the correct motions—than thinking deeply, engaging in discussion or investigating topics which interest them. One of the students she studied says, People don’t go to school to learn. They go to get good grades which brings them to college, which brings them the high-paying job, which brings them to happiness, or so they think. But basically, grades is where it’s at. (2001, p. 3)

Values normally espoused in school such as honesty, diligence and teamwork necessarily come into question when the students have to choose between them and getting top grades. Passion and engagement were rare, and the daily grind of the school day took its toll on health and happiness. Some of the students, like Teresa and Michelle, suffered frequent colds and illnesses due to such a harried pace, a lack of sleep and poor eating habits. Others, like Eve and Berto, who studied “every minute” experienced great stress that led to anxiety, stomach problems, even a possible ulcer (for Eve). These students wished they could get more hours of sleep and improve

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their health, but their busy schedules, including school, family, and work obligations did not allow this change. (Pope, 2001, p. 155)

The teachers, too, seemed trapped by the realities of an overcrowded, impersonal, bureaucratic and competitive school system. There were too many students to get to know, too many individual needs to be met, and too little time, money, or support from administrators to accomplish…goals. (Pope, 2001, p. 161)

One result of such schooling can be the suppression of innate curiosity and a desire to engage. Berliner (2020), for example, notes that researchers in America found that when it came to ongoing good school performance, the ability to stay focused and, for example, not be distracted was more important than curiosity. So, for example, when a thunderstorm occurred, concentrating on the existing lesson was more important than the questions children might have about that storm. Berliner cites research carried out by Susan Engel, a professor of developmental psychology, that found that questioning falls dramatically once children start school. She found the youngest children in an American suburban elementary school asked between two and five questions in a two-hour period but as they got older the children gave up asking altogether. There were two-hour stretches in fifth grade (year 6) where 10- and 11-year-olds failed to ask their teacher a single question. In one lesson she observed, a ninth grader raised her hand to ask if there were any places in the world where no one made art. The teacher stopped her mid-sentence with ‘Zoe, no questions now, please; it’s time for learning.’ Berliner quotes Engel as saying, When you visit schools in many parts of the world it can be difficult to remember they are full of active, intellectual children, because no one is talking about their inner mental lives. How well they behave, and how they perform seem much more important to many people in the educational communities. Often educational bureaucracies have shunted curiosity to the side. (cited in Berliner, 2020)

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Berliner adds that when teachers teach young children not to ask questions, it is not surprising that high-performing students studied by American researchers in 2013 were found to be less curious, because they saw curiosity as a risk to their results. The questions they asked were aimed at improving their results, whereas the questions asked by more curious students were aimed at understanding a topic more deeply. Berliner acknowledges that, of course, some teachers do encourage and enhance curiosity and that Engel says that in every school she visits there tends to be one teacher who is managing it. But it is usually down to an individual rather than a systematic approach (Berliner, 2020). Indeed, Berliner (2020) notes that there is further evidence that curriculum, learning and teaching actually stifles or kills off pupils’ sense of curiosity about the world. She states that researchers from the University of Michigan CS Mott Children’s Hospital and the Center for Human Growth and Development investigated curiosity in 6200 children, as part of the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: The researchers gauged levels of curiosity when the children were babies, toddlers and preschoolers, using parent visits and questionnaires. Reading, maths and behaviour were then checked in kindergarten (the first year of school), where they found that the most curious children performed best. In a finding critical to tackling the stubborn achievement gap between poorer and richer children, disadvantaged children had the strongest connection between curiosity and performance. (Berliner, 2020)

Stahl’s (2020) ethnographic research in a case study charter school in America provides further evidence of the authoritarian nature of school organisation. He argues that the organisation of charter schools is characterised by a rigidly structured environment that is part of the formula the school believes produces success along with enforcing a strict “no excuses” classroom culture where the student body is consistently monitored, rewarded, and punished. This no excuses philosophy, combining high academic expectations of students with strict behaviour rules, focuses on competition, order and efficiency and has been criticised for contrasting with democratic notions of critical pedagogies grounded in free speech, diversity, collaboration and cultural sensitivity (2020, p. 182). Stahl states

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that the daily culture and practices of the school reflect an overall neoliberal ideology where student test scores are treated as profit and any infringement to profit is quickly eliminated. Moreover, ‘Daily emails are peppered with language of “ownership,” “aims,” “no short cuts,” “get it done” and “positive mind-set”’ (2020, p. 186). Indeed, Stahl’s notes on the first two weeks of the school year identify ways in which the school exercised social control and punishment: we required the staff members to lead students through strict locker and hallway routines, compelling their bodies to remember certain codes of conduct, similar to the military. While I carried out the duties of monitoring how precisely staff policed the behavior of students (e.g. from how they held their pencils to the pace of how they walked in a hallway)…My field notes show that I questioned how such drills continue a tradition of educational practices that sought to disempower and control students’ bodies. I still recall one day when, while shifting two classes of students from the fifth floor to the basement cafeteria, we punished them for talking by making students stand in the dark, sweaty, and claustrophobic staircase until we had absolute silence. (2020, p. 187)

In addition to a culture of exactness regarding routines and decor, there broadly existed a vigilant culture of urgency for staff at the school, concerned with ‘delivering on deliverables’ and ‘getting better faster’: ‘Here we see the logic of neoliberalism—with its promotion of “efficiency,” “productivity,” and “targets” alongside rhetoric of “risk” and “choice”—in action’ (Stahl, 2020, p. 188). Based on corporate models of staff ranking and performance in the private commercial sector, in school leadership meetings we spoke at length about strategies we would use to create a consistent culture of anxiety for staff in order to heighten performativity and “keep ’em on their toes.” Anxiety was fostered in five main ways: rapid schedule changes; telling teachers explicitly what they needed to do to improve; the culture of urgency; a constant leadership presence in the hallway and in classrooms where staff would often be observed a handful of times a day; firing underperforming staff. (2020, p. 190)

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so that what I witnessed…was a lack of traditional bureaucratic restrictions (non-­ union, increased autonomy, etc) but, in their place, a model in which surveillance and accountability are foundational, designed to structure subjectivities and encourage the internalisation of certain neoliberal norms. (2020, p. 191)

Such schools, Stahl argues, go beyond just teaching values as abstractions to routinely telling students exactly how they are expected to behave, and their behaviour is closely monitored, with real rewards for compliance and penalties for non-compliance: This prescriptive tendency is, arguably, undemocratic in that it inculcates students with a respect for authoritarian forms of discipline and control, rather than with the full breadth of critical thought necessary to sustain a healthy and engaged democratic society. (2020, p. 194)

Australia The authoritarian organisational nature of schooling, historically based on social control, also means that curricular reforms potentially seen as ‘transformative’ can rapidly become part of the daily, normalised routine of conventional top-down schooling. In Australia, for example, it has become a common, mundane and everyday practice in school classrooms to expect pupils to bring their own smartphone or equivalent devices into the classroom (Selwyn et al., 2017). Such one-to-­ one access to the internet in classrooms has ‘been celebrated along the lines of democratising classroom processes, diversifying pedagogical practices and fostering forms of student-centred learning’ (Selwyn et  al., 2017, p. 290). However, as the authors of this empirical study of three schools in Australia also note, the use of personal devices is shaped considerably by pre-existing structures of school and schooling. These range from the highly bounded nature of school ‘time’ and school ‘work’ to pre-established (unequal) social relations between students and staff…rather than constituting a radically ‘transformational’ mode of schooling, our investigations illustrate how the mass presence of personal technologies quickly becomes subsumed into existing

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conditions and arrangements of school organisation and control. (Selwyn et al., 2017, p. 305)

Indeed, the authors go on to point out that device use was highly ordered and patterned—determined through dominant aspects of the social organisation of school such as rulemaking, hierarchical relations between teachers and students, material arrangements of classrooms, and spatio-temporal organisation of the school day…Far from being a source of substantially different practices, the one-to-one presence of personal digital devices seemed largely to support the reinforcement of established ways of ‘doing’ school. (2017, p. 306)

The key finding of the research in terms of teaching and learning was not transformation but the ‘continuation of the status quo’ (2017, p. 306) and that One of the notable silences in our data was the sustained accounts of how devices were supporting and/or stimulating students’ learning…Devices are being used in classrooms in order to complete assignments, coursework, homework, and other planned learning activities set by teachers. Devices were clearly integral to students’ ability to prepare, write up, and then submit their work. These task-based activities are understandably core elements of the ‘job’ of being a school student, but have little correspondence with the dynamic practices that often drive enthusiasms for the highly social, collaborative, and connected learning potential of digital devices…Thus much of what students were using devices for in classrooms related to the rather mundane practices that are required to be ‘successful’ at school, not least taking individual responsibility for completing set work…with regards to procedural rather than creative or critical outcomes…As such, students were using their devices in ways that replicated a dominant ‘transmission’ culture of teaching and learning…Devices were used most for ‘getting on’ with set work with little of the spontaneity and/ or flexibility often associated with personal digital technology use. (Selwyn et al., 2017, p. 306)

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Britain A survey of 15,000 British pupils carried out by The Guardian newspaper in 2001 on the topic ‘The School I’d Like’ (later published in Burke & Grosvenor 2003) found that pupils felt that schools were not happy places, that pupils’ views were not listened to, that they weren’t treated and respected as individuals and that schools were rigid and inflexible institutions. In a study of the views of primary school pupils about their schooling in Scotland, the children saw themselves as occupying a low position in the school hierarchy and Decisions about what and how the children learnt were not made by them, but by the teachers and other adults. The children saw themselves as being able to make some relatively trivial decisions, but the important ones were seen as being taken by the head teacher or by people outside the school, within the Council. (Allan & I’Anson, 2004, p. 125)

The pupils were not always happy with this state of affairs: the students also expressed the view that teachers made too many decisions. One teacher, for example, was criticised for instructing the children where to sit, which “is not very nice cos you end up sitting beside your worst enemy”. The head teacher, according to one group of students, could not always be relied upon to make fair judgements about the children’s behavior or the appropriate sanctions: “[the head teacher] can sometimes under-estimate people—like some people say, em, that they didn’t do anything when they actually did and they blame it on somebody else and they didn’t do a thing but they have to stand up, get a row, get detention, come back, sit down and the other one gets away with it.” (Allan & I’Anson, 2004, p. 125)

Another study of pupil participation in primary schools, this time in England, using visual images as part of action research was notably tentative about what was possible: However, one important finding emerging from the research was that children and teachers felt constrained by invisible parameters about what they could or should discuss in meetings and by assumed hierarchical relationships. There was a tendency for school councils to deal with playground

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issues and fundraising, for example, rather than to discuss teaching and learning…Our research revealed the influence of power relationships between students and teachers and between children…It seemed that more fundamental changes in the existing culture of teaching and learning would be required for the visual strategies to take full effect. (Cox et al., 2006, pp. 11/12)

As I noted elsewhere (Harber, 2010, p. 58), in a report on pupil participation in English secondary schools (Davies et al., 2006) what is striking is that in the case study schools pupils get to have a say on toilets, the canteen, food, lockers, fund raising, the school newspaper and special events but, while these are important in terms of pupil motivation and self-esteem (and with the exception of some sixth formers), very little on the curriculum itself unless it was how to deliver it better e.g. through peer tutoring, homework policy, ICT or classroom seating.

A further study of pupils’ views of schooling in England an America also found that there is one concern that the young people in this study are expressing about which there is consistency across all schools and within all groupings of students: they feel that they do not have a say…They are not asking to be the primary decision-makers; merely to be involved in decision-making….All they are asking is that they are permitted to express their views; that due consideration is given to their perspectives and that a system of decision-­ making exists, which permits adults to act on their views. (Osler, 2010, p. 107; original emphasis)

Robinson (2011) studied student voices in two schools in England and came to similar conclusions. Her university worked with a number of schools in a local authority which shared the aim ‘to put students at the heart of decisions which affect their lives’. A team from the university worked with primary, secondary and special schools to help develop school councils and facilitate workshops for teachers to help them develop listening skills, and they supported staff in developing and facilitating students to develop and conduct student-led research projects within

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their schools. This was in the context of implementing Article 12 of the UNCRC which is concerned with children being given the right to express their views freely and for their views to be given due weight in matters affecting them. She found that a key factor inhibiting genuine student voice was the built-in, everyday power imbalance between teachers and pupils: While both schools on which this paper focuses aimed to genuinely listen to, and act upon, the voices and opinions of students and, implicit within this aim, to implement Article 12 of the UNCRC, the extent to which this has been achieved is questionable. Aspects of the schools’ hidden curriculum transfer implicit moral messages and expectations to pupils, which in turn influence the way pupils think and act within the school to an extent where such influences may inhibit pupils thinking as independent individuals. If Article 12 of the UNCRC is to be fully implemented, there must not be situations where the schools’ hidden curriculum favours those with a language and culture similar to those of the adults within the school, and all students must feel able to voice their opinions without fear of reprisal or rebuke. (Robinson, 2011, p. 449)

Canada Cherubini (2009) studied the perceptions of students in initial teacher education about school organisation in Canada after they had done a teaching practice. Whereas prior to their teaching practice placements the students had seen schools as social inclusive organisations, their experience in schools undermined this. They also perceived a disconnect between the idea of school visions and goals being informed and enacted collectively and those that, in reality, represent the principal’s paradigms and are reflective of hierarchy and control. As Cherubini comments, Participants’ responses perpetuate the more traditional belief that school goals and vision is the product of the individual at the top of the educational hierarchy—the principal. This is certainly not reflective of the literature that suggests organizational commitment stems from the collective construction of a vision and goal that are relevant and meaningful to all staff. (2009, p. 224)

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Another disconnect or contradiction was between the student teachers’ expectations that the school organisation would facilitate professional development opportunities to further teachers’ practice and allow members to exert their influence across the organisation and their experiences during the teaching practice. The latter experience instead suggested a lack of routine professional development and collaboration. The students observed that collaboration in schools seemed more dependent upon the individual teacher’s willingness to engage in sustaining collegial networks than it did on it being a structured organisational practice. Student participants in the research concluded that some teachers became directly involved in collaborative endeavours while others were more reluctant in their commitments: Participants expected school organization to structure professional development practices that would foster collaboration and further student learning. The characteristics of sustainable school organization, such as goal-directedness and shared meaning for all its members, to name only two, were scarcely apparent…School organization was perceived by participants as a series of fragmented routines and relatively isolated practices that were not readily associated to a common vision. (Cherubini, 2009, p. 225)

Cherubini also notes that, according to the literature, school organisations that facilitate collaboration amongst colleagues and respect the collective expertise of their teachers invite their active involvement in meaningful decision-making strategies and that such organisations are also attentive to the fairness and equity of their decisions. However, the research participants’ observed realities were very much located in the hierarchical structure of school organisation. As a result overall ‘Participants’ experiences during their teaching-practicum assignments had a significantly adverse effect upon their expectations of school organization’ (2009, p. 225). Iceland Iceland reflects Nordic educational legislation in general, which maintains the importance of student agency in everyday classroom practices, including the belief that teachers should ‘ensure that all students have real influence on the work, methods, work structures, and

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educational content’. Indeed, legislation in Iceland states that students shall have the right to express their views on the study environment, learning arrangements, the organisation of schooling and any other decision concerning them. However, research in nine schools in Iceland found a gap between policy and practice with students generally taking a more passive role than that set out in legislation (Bjarnadottir & Geirsdottir, 2018, pp. 631–2). In line with research cited above, the students in Iceland had considerable influence on the organisation of social life within the school but not on more academic matters. In the majority of student groups, participants had not thought about, or believed they had no opportunities to influence their education…Students not only experience themselves in a clearly defined hierarchical role as students but also see their teachers as being regulated to strictly adhere to the syllabus. The syllabus, an example of a regulating tool of the pedagogic discourse, is not questioned by students, who also assume that teachers are controlled by the same means…These findings indicate that the organisation of the schools does not include student influence as a common practice, leaving individuals responsible for expressing their voices within the school context…students’ attempts to exert influence and express their views on their schooling were experienced as having been improper and unwelcome. They felt that they were not being heard and trying to influence would not be worthwhile. (Bjarnadottir & Geirsdottir, 2018, pp. 636–7)

Every year secondary school students in Iceland are expected to fill in an internal evaluation form but students did not identify participation in the internal evaluation of the schools as an important way to express their views. They considered this procedure to be tokenism, since they were not sure what was done with the results or what impact this had on school practices. A common thread through the data is that students have come to expect and accept that they are not supposed to influence pedagogic practices, either through representative procedures or within the informal arena of the classroom. However, one of the nine schools in the study (Odinn) did operate in a more democratic and participatory manner, and students felt they had a real influence of what went on in the school in relation to academic and

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pedagogical issues as well as social ones. This demonstrates that traditional, authoritarian structures of social control in schools can be challenged and reformed but that it is difficult and requires a united and concerted commitment and effort from government, staff and learners, which is also why democratic schools are a small minority. As the authors conclude, We argue that if schools want to take seriously the aim of creating an environment where students can exert influence, and thereby practice citizenship, certain conditions and discussions need to take place. The idea of students’ active participation and influence needs to be understood, discussed, and framed within the schools. Everyone must understand what it means, why it is important and how pedagogic practices can support such influence in a socially just way. This is an important process if these ideas are to be embedded into the pedagogical discourses of schools. Traditional power structures need to be challenged… if these procedures are to be taken seriously. The case of Odinn demonstrates that such a transformation can be successfully undertaken. (Bjarnadottir & Geirsdottir, 2018, p. 644)

Ireland In another politically democratic country, the Republic of Ireland, a study of primary school children’s views of schooling (Devine, 2003, p. 138) found that in general, the children defined their relationships with teachers in terms of control and regulation…school was experienced as something that was done to them and over which they exercised little control…The children’s talk was replete with examples of adult power. They remarked on the absence consultation with them over curricular, pedagogical and evaluative practices in schools…adults decided what and how children would learn. (Devine, 2003, pp. 138–40)

Devine notes that one theme that emerged repeatedly in the children’s accounts was their absence of control over how their time and space were organized in the school. School was experienced as something done to them over which they exercised little control…That children have no choice but to be

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at school, to become subject to this power, ensures that the institutionalization of their lives through schooling is a key characteristic of the structuring of childhood in modern society. The children’s talk was replete with examples of adult power. They remarked on the absence of consultation with them over curricular, pedagogical and evaluative practices in school. Each school was a hive of activity, where teachers and children worked busily to an agenda that emphasized work over play, effort over idleness, obedience over disobedience. Control of this agenda was firmly in adult hands, both at national level through the prescription of the curriculum and at local level in its implementation, as adults decided what and how children should learn. The very organisation of school space reflected these dynamics of power as the children drew contrasts between the physical resources available to themselves and teachers, as adults, in school. (2003, p. 140)

South Africa As we have seen above, even in countries where there is an overall overtly democratic policy environment for schools, in reality pupils can lack opportunities to participate in decision-making about their lives at school. Another such country is South Africa. Research on rural schooling in South Africa took into account the views of learners as well as parents and teachers (Nelson Mandela Foundation 2005). Despite significant democratic reform of educational policy since the end of apartheid (Harber & Mncube, 2012, Ch. 5), the situation on the ground in rural areas remains stubbornly authoritarian. Comments from the pupils provide a very clear picture of the realities of schooling in this context and strongly suggest that lessons are still mainly teacher centred and the pupils are expected to be passive. According to the pupils’ classroom activity is dominated by three modes: reading, writing and correcting. So, even in South Africa where post-apartheid education policy has favoured pupils having more say in the running of schools, there remain serious tensions and contradictions between official policy and the reality in schools (see Harber & Mncube, 2012, Ch. 5 for a detailed discussion of the role of pupils in relation to post-apartheid educational reform). School as Prison? The above evidence does not paint a picture of schooling as a democratic, participant organisational experience for most pupils, even in societies where there is macro-level policy support for a democratic political system. It is perhaps not surprising then that some

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writers on schooling have made an analogy between schools and prisons. Jackson, for example, writes, students have something in common with the members of two other of our social institutions that have involuntary attendance: prisons and mental hospitals. The analogy, though dramatic, is not intended to be shocking, and certainly there is no comparison between the unpleasantness of life for inmates in our prisons and mental institutions, on the one hand, and the daily travails of a first or second grader, on the other. Yet the school child, like the incarcerated adult, is, in a sense, a prisoner. They too must come to grips with the inevitability of the experience. They too must develop strategies for dealing with the conflict that frequently arises between their natural desires and interests on the one hand and institutional expectations on the other. (1968, p. 9)

Charles Handy, at the time a professor of business organisation, studied British secondary schools and compared their organisational style to prisons. This was because the inmates’ routine is disrupted every 40 minutes, they change their place of work and supervisors constantly, they have no place to call their own and they are often forbidden to communicate with each other. However, he also suggests that schools are like factories and the pupils like products which are inspected at the end of the production line, sometimes rejected as substandard and then stamped ‘English’, ‘History’ or ‘maths’ (Handy, 1984).

School as a Corrupt Organisation I first came across widespread corruption in schooling during my doctoral research on schools and political socialisation in northern Nigeria (Harber, 1989, Ch. 7). However, corruption is still a negative feature of educational organisations, including schools, in many ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries. Corruption is harmful to both pupils and the wider society because when education is corrupt it loses its impartiality, quality and fairness. UNESCO (2009, pp. 138–9) notes that

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Tackling corruption in education is important for the sector and for society in a broader sense. Education receives a large share of public expenditure— in most countries it is the largest area of government activity and the largest public employer. Efforts to limit corruption in general are not likely to succeed if they do not address the education sector in particular. Moreover, lack of integrity and unethical behaviour within the education sector is inconsistent with one of the main purposes of education itself, which is to produce ‘good citizens’ respectful of the law, human rights and of fairness…Corruption has adverse consequences for efficiency and equity. Efficiency suffers because corrupt practices mean part of the benefit of public investment is captured in the form of private rent. Equity suffers because corruption acts as a regressive tax that hurts the poor the most.

There are many possible ways of explaining in some detail why corruption takes place both in the wider society and in educational institutions (see, e.g., Harber, 2014, Ch. 14; Sabic-El-Rayess & Mansur, 2016). However, here we are more concerned simply with what is wrong with normal schooling and thus that corruption exists in schools and what it can and does look like. Rumyantseva (2005, cited in Sabic-El Rayess & Mansur, 2016, pp. 21–22), for example, suggest that educational corruption emerges in various forms, including, but not limited to, ‘favoritism in procurement, favouritism in personnel appointments, ghost teachers, selling admissions and grades, private tutoring, and skimming from project grants’ (p.  84). She notes that the types of corruption occurring within the administration do not impact the values, beliefs, and future life path of students as directly as the types of corruption most explicitly involving students. Offering an overview of types of corruption, Rumyantseva focuses on the individual gains and consequences rather than collective benefits and shared motivations of those involved in the corrupt activities. In fact, it is such an issue globally that Hallak and Poisson (2005, pp. 5–6) have usefully set out the following analytical framework of categories of educational corruption:

2  School as an Organisation: Compulsion, Control and Corruption  Areas School building, rehabilitation

Corrupt practices • Fraud in public tendering • Embezzlement • School mapping

Equipment, Textbooks, Food

• Fraud in public tendering • Embezzlement • Bypass of criteria

• Favouritism • Nepotism • Bribes • “Ghost teachers” • Bribes (for school entrance, exams, assessment, private tutoring, etc.) Examinations and • Selling of information diplomas • Favouritism • Nepotism • Bribes • Academic fraud Information systems • Manipulating data • Selecting/suppressing information Teacher appointment/ management Teacher behaviour

Specific allowances (fellowships, subsidies, etc.)

• Favouritism • Nepotism • Bribes • Bypass of criteria

Finances

• Transgressing rules/ procedures • Inflation of costs and activities • Opacity of flow • Leakage of funds

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Impact on education Access Quality Example: bad location of schools; too high or too low use; demand for places unattended Equity Quality Example: school meals free to the rich and not available for the poor; lack of consistency between textbooks and curricula Quality Example: less qualified teachers appointed Equity Ethics Example: disparity in staffing by schools; discrimination against the poor Equity Ethics Example: unjustified credentials available to students who can afford to pay bribes Equity Ethics Policy priorities Example: omitting data on repetition/dropout; less priority on quality improvement Access Equity Example: inflating enrolment figures to increase financial transfers Access Quality Equity Policy priorities Example: less resources for quality improvement: textbooks, materials

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The following are some brief examples from Harber (2014, Ch. 14): • In relation to Lebanon, Vlaardingerbroek et al. (2011) discussed what they term ‘open cheating’, that is, cheating with the compliance of invigilators who are all themselves teachers. They found in roughly a quarter of the examination events that they studied that invigilators turned a blind eye to cheating and in 10–15% invigilators were reported as quietly assisting individual candidates. Also, in about 15% of the cases invigilators reportedly allowed candidates to discuss questions among themselves in conjunction with a high incidence of wilfully ignoring obvious cheating. Invigilators made some candidates assist others, took answer books from strong candidates and gave them to weak ones and gave out answers. • Choe et al. (2013) investigated the extent to which corrupt teachers and schools in Bangladesh used procedural or bureaucratic methods to gain financially from what should be free educational services. Examples include paying to have a child admitted to a school, paying for extra tuition, paying to influence exam results and paying to receive a stipend for their child and payment of extra fees without a receipt. • Atashak (2011) writes of corruption among teachers in Tehran, Iran, in the areas of recruitment, appointment and promotion, which are based on subjective criteria and involve practices such as payment of bribes; fake diplomas; a position being already filled but declared vacant by head teachers in order to get more teachers; women faking marriage in order to get a transfer; misallocated teachers; teacher exchanges between regions, based on private agreements and involving payments; teachers seconded without official clearance from teaching to administrative duties; illegal replacement of teachers based on private agreements and involving payments; payment of bribes to be admitted to in-service training programmes; incorrect or double salary payments; teachers having to pay back part of their salaries to the person in charge of giving it to them—either local administrators or head teachers; ghost teachers; forging of documents and bribing of officials by educational staff to secure larger retirement cheques than they are entitled to and/ or to retire before the customary age; and teachers taking leave and have not returned to their jobs but are still paid.

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• Sobhy (2012) notes that in Egypt members of the Ministry of Education curriculum-setting committee are often also private textbook authors who then write much better private textbooks while at the same time authoring poor official textbooks, thereby forcing students to rely on the private books and buy them. It has been estimated that Egyptians spend 1.5  billion Egyptian pounds on such books each year. • UNESCO (2009, p. 139) provides two interesting examples of large-­ scale misappropriation of funds from Central/South America. In Nicaragua the monitoring of six major school upgrades and repair projects compared buildings before and after completion, which revealed widespread irregularities. Substandard materials and overpricing contributed to substantial financial losses. In Brazil about 13% of a fund meant for teacher salaries and training was lost in the course of transfer from the federal budget to municipal bank accounts, rising to 55% for some municipalities. This was caused by the inability of local councils charged with monitoring the grants to ensure that they were properly received and used. However, as suggested above, corruption in education is not confined to schools in ‘developing’ countries. Pat Thompson of Nottingham University has collected 3800 reports of corrupt practices in English schools but also from other countries where market forces have been injected into the education system revealing a story of nepotism, fraud and cheating (Lightfoot, 2020). She has published a book on her findings (Thompson, 2020). She notes in her book that, although most people work ethically in a corrupted system, there are many opportunities for less than honest, self-interested practice. She cites the examples of the boss of an academy school telling teachers to cheat in tests and the widespread removal of pupils from school registers to improve schools’ results. Further examples include the bullying of staff by heads buckling under pressure to improve results at any cost, the head who gave a contract to his mother’s firm and the academy trust that claimed hundreds of thousands of pounds for school repairs it didn’t carry out. Lightfoot also adds that

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included in her hit list of bad practices are failed government initiatives that deprive schools of badly needed cash. Malmesbury school in Wiltshire, for example, had to pay £40 a month for “managing” a canteen bench bought by PFI [Private Finance Initiative], on top of installation costs. With 13 years of the contract still to run, it works out at £6240 just for its “management”…[Thompson argues that] the scandalous costs of PFI are corruption, citing the new school in Liverpool built with private finance that failed to attract enough pupils and closed, but continued to cost £12,000 a day, with Liverpool council facing a £25m bill to buy itself out of the PFI contract. A teacher tells her how “management” of a new sink has cost the school £88 a year for the past 14 years. With nine years left on the PFI contact, that one sink will have cost £2024. (Lightfoot, 2020)

In her book, Thompson attempts to explain this corruption by looking at its root causes. Raising money for buildings and repair through PFI, with its expensive ongoing costs borne by schools, and bringing market forces into education through contracting out resources and services once provided by democratically elected bodies have created opportunities for fraud, she argues.

Conclusion In this chapter we set out evidence and arguments about the nature of schooling as an organisation in which the world’s children spend their everyday lives for most of the year. The organisational model of schooling experienced by most pupils most of the time is one based on compulsion and control—the bureaucratic and authoritarian nature of much of schooling means that in practice there is little room for children and young people to have much say about what goes on in schools. The stipulation in the UNCRC that children should have the right to express their views freely in all matters affecting them is widely ignored or underemphasized. Moreover, not only is schooling not necessarily a good role model in terms of democracy and human rights, it can also set a poor role model for the types of citizen it purports to want to foster. When there is corruption in a schooling system, then talk of producing honest, reliable

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and diligent citizens has a hollow ring. However, one key way in which pupils experience school organisation is through the rules and routines that shape and regulate the school day, and these are further discussed in Chap. 3.

References Adams, R. (2019, March 22). Record Number of Parents Are Fined for School Pupil Absence. The Guardian. Albrow, M. (1970). Bureaucracy. Macmillan. Allan, J., & I’Anson, J. (2004). Children’s Rights in School: Power, Assemblies and Assemblages. The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 12, 123–138. Atashak, M. (2011). Identifying Corruption Among Teachers of Tehran. Social and Behavioural Sciences, 29, 460–463. Berliner, W. (2020, January 28). School Is Killing Curiosity. The Guardian. Bjarnadottir, V.  S., & Geirsdottir, G. (2018). You Know, Nothing Changes. Students’s Experiences in Influencing Pedagogic Practices in Various Upper Secondary Schools in Iceland. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 26(4), 631–646. Burke, C., & Grosvenor, I. (2003). The School That I’d Like. RoutledgeFalmer. Cherubini, L. (2009). Teacher Candidates’ Perceptions of School Organization: Fundamental Inconsistencies Between Expectations and Experiences. McGill Journal of Education, 44(2), 213–228. Choe, C., Dzhumashev, R., Islam, A., & Khan, Z. (2013). The Effect of Informal Networks on Corruption in Education: Evidence from the Household Survey Data in Bangladesh. Journal of Development Studies, 49(2), 238–250. Chomsky, N. (2003). The Function of Schools. In K. Saltman & D. Gabbard (Eds.), Education as Enforcement: The Militarisation and Corporatisation of Schools. RoutledgeFalmer. Cosgrove, J. (2000). Breakdown; The Facts About Stress in Teaching. RoutledgeFalmer. Cox, S., Currie, D., Frederick, K., Jarvis, D., Lawes, S., Millner, E., Nudd, K., Robinson-Pant, A., Stubbs, I., Taylor, T., & White, D. (2006). Children Decide: Power, Participation and Purpose in the Primary Classroom. University of East Anglia/CfBT. Davies, L., Williams, C., & Yamashita, H. with Ko Man-Hing, A. (2006). Inspiring Schools: Case Studies for Change. Esmee Fairbairn and Carnegie UK.

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Day Langhout, R. (2005). Acts of Resistance: Student (In)visibility. Culture and Psychology, 11(2), 123–158. Devine, D. (2003). Children, Power and Schooling Stoke on. Trentham Books. Hallak, J., & Poisson, M. (2005). Ethics and Corruption in Education. Journal of Education for International Development, 1(1), 1–16. Handy, C. (1984). Taken for Granted? Looking at Schools as Organisations. Longmans. Harber, C. (1989). Politics in African Education. Macmillan. Harber, C. (2010). Long Time Coming: Children as Only Occasional Decision-­ Makers in Schools. In S. Cox, A. Robinson-Pant, C. Dyer, & M. Schweisfurth (Eds.), Children as Decision Makers in Education. Continuum. Harber, C. (2014). Education and International Development: Theory, Practice and Issues. Symposium. Harber, C. (2019). Schooling for Peaceful Development in Post-Conflict Societies: Education for Transformation? Palgrave Macmillan. Harber, C., & Mncube, V. (2012). Education, Democracy and Development: Does Education Contribute to Democratisation in Developing Countries? Symposium. Harber, C., & Mncube, V. (2017). Violence in Schools: South Africa in an International Context. UNISA Press. Jackson, P. (1968). Life in Classrooms. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Lightfoot, L. (2020, January 14). Ban the Booths: When School Is a Cubicle Where You Can’t Look Left or Right. The Guardian. Moore, M. (2001). Stupid White Men. Penguin. Nelson Mandela Foundation. (2005). Emerging Voices. HSRC Press. Osler, A. (2010). Students’ Perspectives on Schooling. Open University Press. Pope, D. C. (2001). Doing School; How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic and Miseducated Students. Yale University Press. Robinson, C. (2011). Children’s Rights in Student Voice Projects: Where Does the Power Lie? Education Inquiry, 2(3), 437–451. Rothstein, S. W. (1987). The Ethics of Coercion: Social Control Practices in an Urban Junior High School. Urban Education, 22(1), 53–72. Rumyantseva, N.  L. (2005). Taxonomy of Corruption in Higher Education. Peabody Journal of Education, 80(1), 81–92. Sabic-El-Rayess, A., & Mansur, N. N. (2016). Favor Reciprocation Theory in Education: New Corruption Typology. International Journal of Educational Development, 50, 20–32. Selwyn, N., Nemorin, S., Bulfin, S., & Johnson, N.  F. (2017). Left to Their Own Devices: The Everyday Realities of One-to-One Classrooms. Oxford Review of Education, 43(3), 289–310.

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Sherman, A. (1996). Rules, Routines and Regulations. Educational Heretics Press. Sobhy, H. (2012). The De-Facto Privatisation of Secondary Education in Egypt: A Study of Private Tutoring in Technical and General Schools in Egypt. Compare, 42(1), 47–67. Stahl, G.  D. (2020). “We Make Our Own Rules Here”: Democratic Communities, Corporate Logics, and “No Excuses” Practices in a Charter School Management Organization. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 49(2), 176–200. Tanggaard, L., & Nielsen, K. (2013). School Memories Situating School. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 57(1), 71–88. Thompson, P. (2020). School Scandals: Blowing the Whistle on the Corruption of Our Education System. Policy Press. UNESCO. (2009). Overcoming Inequality: Why Governance Matters EFA Global Monitoring Report. UNESCO. Vlaardingerbroek, B., Shehab, S., & Alemeh, S. (2011). The Problem of Open Cheating and Invigilator Compliance in the Lebanese Brevet and Baccalaureate Examinations. International Journal of Educational Development, 31(3), 297–302.

3 Daily Rules and Routines

All those who are affected by social institutions must have a share in producing them and managing them. The two facts that each one is influenced in…what he becomes by the institutions under which he lives, and therefore he shall have in a democracy a voice in shaping them, are the passive and active side of the same fact. —John Dewey, cited in Carr and Hartnett (1996, p. 60)

School Rules The potential for formal education to contribute to a more democratic and inclusive society has long been a theme of writing on education, as has the gap between rhetoric and reality (e.g. Harber & Mncube, 2012, chaps. 2 and 4). Indeed, as we saw in the previous chapter the dominant form of school organisation is authoritarian rather than democratic. An important everyday way in which pupils experience this is through the operation of school rules. As Thornberg (2008b, p.  25), writing on Sweden, points out,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Harber, Post-Covid Schooling, Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87824-5_3

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School and classroom rules exist in every school and function like miniature constitutions or codes of law and are usually established verbally, either orally or in written form, by an authority figure, who usually is the teacher or the school staff.

Thus, the social control function of schooling, as opposed to any democratic function of schooling, is often manifested in its daily rules and routines. There are many good arguments, and much supporting evidence, for schools being organised in a more democratic manner, including pupil participation in rule making. However, as I have previously asked, ‘Children’s voice: why is nobody listening?’ (Harber, 2010). Indeed, Thornberg (2008b) cites Schimmel (1997) to the effect that schools usually violate what we know about good teaching in their practice of developing and teaching their everyday rules. According to Schimmel, most often school rules are (a) negative, restrictive and unexplained; (b) authoritarian—that is, handed down in a dictatorial manner—often viewed by students as arbitrary and illegitimate; (c) developed without student participation; (d) written and distributed in a formal and legalistic rather than educational manner, void of a process for assessing whether students understand them and (e) lacking in standards or procedures that allow students to challenge or question the fairness of specific rules or their implementation and whether they are unnecessary, irrelevant, discriminatory, ambiguous or inconsistent. Little seems to have changed. In reflecting on his detailed empirical five nation study of culture and pedagogy, Alexander (2000) was struck by the pervasive sense of control in all five schooling systems—America, England, France, India and Russia. The controlling function is exercised at different levels: At national level (or state level in the United States) governments devise policies and structures, allocate budgets, determine goals, define curricula and institute mechanisms for assessing and policing what goes on at the system’s lower levels. At regional and local levels such systems may be replicated or, depending on the balance of control over what goes on in the classrooms, they may simply be implemented. At school level, heads exercise varying degrees of influence or direct control over what goes on in

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classrooms; and at the end of the line, in classrooms, children are every day subjected to the pedagogic controls of teaching and curriculum. These controls extend into the furthest recesses of task, activity and interaction, and are mediated through routine, rule and ritual. Comparative macro-micro analysis illuminates the way these stack up and cumulatively impact on the child. (Alexander, 2000, p. 562; italics added)

In a study of secondary schools in Ontario, Canada, Raby (2008, p. 77) found that school codes of conduct are frequently presented as fostering responsibility, respect and self-­ discipline, yet rules are top-down and hinge on mute obedience. It is rare for a code of conduct to discuss students’ involvement in shaping school rules or even to include an appeal process. Arguably, many such codes of conduct attempt to create a docile student body unpracticed in democratic citizenship.

She concludes from her own empirical research that, paradoxically, school rules frequently attempt to foster self-discipline through punishment and exhortations to obedience. She notes the further paradox between the existing use of school rules and the potential that they have for educating for more democratic citizenship: On the one hand, school rules do seem to foster a degree of docility and conformity. Rules are experienced as arbitrary and imposed. Participation and appeal are commonly unimaginable. Parents encourage them to ‘suck it up’ so that they can smoothly pass through the system, fostering apathy and strategic compliance over participatory engagement. Overall, students’ predominant attitude towards their own regulation within the schools seems to be resignation. On the other hand, students are constantly negotiating details of rules with teachers and principals. Occasionally they even disrupt individualizing systems to act as a collective. They are willing to overtly challenge them, particularly when they conceptualize themselves as established, legitimate persons in the present. Their interest in creating school rules and their persistent attempts to shape school rules even in the face of such resignation suggests not only the feasibility but the imperative of their participatory involvement in schools and their further constitution as agentic subjects. (Raby, 2008, pp. 94–95)

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In another study of school dress and discipline codes in the Toronto and Niagara regions of Canada, Raby also concluded that school rules attempt to get pupils to internalise responsibilities through self-respect, self-regulation and self-discipline, as well as obedience to authority which includes regulation of dress, space and time, emphasises the productivity of work and links responsibility to respect for nation and property. She argues that a docile, productive citizenry is thus envisioned, with those Others who fail to self-govern (or to display prescribed self-respect) disciplined through more sovereign applications of tools such as the zero tolerance policy. Such a shaping of the lives of adolescents is justified on the grounds that they are in the process of becoming citizens and therefore need the guidance of rules. Yet there is little in these rules to suggest an active citizenship based on involvement in decision making, challenge to the status quo or authority, independent thought, equality, or genuine democracy. (Raby, 2005, p. 84)

Raby (2005, p. 84) notes that there are schools that are more democratic and which involve collaborative rule making but despite these being viable and feasible alternative she also points that in reality these are few and far between. Thornberg (2008a, p. 418) also notes that schools can take either an authoritarian and traditional approach to rule-making by not explaining them nor letting pupils participate in rule-making, or they can take a more pedagogical, democratic and collaborative approach in which rules are explained and constructed together with pupils. Writing on Sweden, he puts it that in reality the first alternative predominates and children in school are daily ‘regimented and involuntarily subjected to mass routines, discipline and control’ (2008a, p.  418). Thornberg carried out ethnographic research in primary schools on pupils’ views of school rules in Sweden, and his findings concluded that pupils criticise some school rules, distrust teachers’ explanations of particular school rules, perceive some school rules and teachers’ interventions as unfair and inconsistent, perceive no power over the construction of school rules, and express false acceptance and hidden criticism. (2008a, p. 418)

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The research further found that pupils think that many school rules are good, in spite of the fact that their opportunities for participating in real democratic rule-making are very small. The pupils said that teachers are the ones who create and make decisions about school rules, which his observations confirmed. Hence, ‘school rules reflect the adult view of the incompetent child and the taken-for-granted power asymmetry between adults and children in our society’ (Thornberg, 2008a, p. 425). Thus, In school, children sooner or later discover that their academic achievement, as well as their behaviour, is judged on the basis of how well they have adopted the cultural values of the school. Thus, the school can be seen as an institution…which forces the pupils to conform to the school’s rules and routines or to accept the consequences of deviance in terms of being punished and negatively labelled. It is reasonable that this cultural pressure in school, at least in part, can explain pupils’ false acceptance and hidden criticism in my study. (2008a, p. 426)

And the process of pupils learning to conform to school rules begins early. As Sherman (1996, p. 10) states in relation to her study of schooling for five-year-olds, ‘Routines and schedules play an important part in the daily lives of institutions, and schools are no different…social conventions and attitudes are introduced and reinforced at school.’ The children’s routine started with a meeting in the quiet area which included registers and the assignment of work. This was followed by work and ‘hall’ or ‘assembly’ then playtime, more assigned work then lunch followed by a similar routine. Day after day was the same in each of the five schools. Sherman comments: The most alarming revelation about routines was the way that the children were so accepting of the fact that the routine that they followed every day was the best way, in fact the only way, to complete a day in school. Deviation from the routine was not allowed. The routine was school. (1996, p.  11; original emphasis)

When asked if anything could be done to change the routines, the answer from the children was an emphatic ‘no’. Yet the teachers regularly interrupted the children’s activities so that they could themselves take a

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break. Classroom teaching also tended to take on a routine format. Sherman notes the advantage of helping children to establish patterns of organisation but also the danger that a single routine can become boring and monotonous and the classroom is one that is controlled by the teacher’s habits and never by a child’s spontaneous suggestion. On the whole, very little choice was available to the children, and Sherman argues that this coupled with a large amount of enforced routine does not encourage decision-making skills in the children. She adds: The routines and choices given to the children were all part for the structure of the classroom that helped maintain the social order in each class. Some strategies controlled the number in a given group, the number in the house corner, the number out in the corridor, these strategies all controlled the number of children where there might be potential for disruption. The teacher maintained control. (Sherman, 1996, p. 14)

While some of the rules that the children were subjected to were there for safety, others were for control and encouraged compliance. In no instance did the children say that they had a hand in deciding what the rules for their classroom would be. Indeed, the children felt they had very little influence to change or decide anything. Commenting on the basically authoritarian nature of the classrooms she observed and heard about through interviews with the pupils, Sherman states that the teachers in her study were pleasant people who were genuinely interested in and caring towards their pupils but As teachers our intentions may occasionally differ from our actual practices… Whatever the teacher’s intentions, however, what has been described by the children is the children’s reality of what goes on. It is a case of actions speak louder than words. These students were firm believers in the “teacher knows best” attitude and assume that what they describe their teacher doing also went on in other classrooms. (1996, p. 20)

In her study of student perspectives on schooling in America and the UK, Osler (2010, pp.  63–64) noted that a number of students raised problems with school rules and felt that they were irrelevant while others suggested that school rules would be more effective if negotiated with

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pupils in the first place, and the observation that teachers don’t usually listen to students was one that was made again and again. Thornberg quotes evidence from the US, Ireland and Canada on lack of pupil involvement in the formulation of school rules and concludes that in our Western societies, children are still usually expected to show more or less unquestioning obedience and loyalty to their parents and teachers in everyday life. They are dependent on adults and subordinated to adult control. In school, children are regimented and involuntarily subjected to mass routines, discipline and control… Children are subject to many sets of power relations, at home and at school, and are positioned as minors with few decision-making rights. (2009, pp. 396–396)

Thornberg (2009) did an ethnographic study of two primary schools in Sweden. He points out that teachers in Sweden are told to use a democratic approach in everyday work—the teachers should develop rules for work and social life in classroom together with pupils, and prepare pupils for participation, shared responsibilities and those rights and duties which characterise a democratic society. The democratic principles of having a say, taking responsibility, and pupil participation should include all pupils. Pupils should be able to influence the content and to participate in rule making and revision. (2009, p. 393)

In his study of two Swedish primary schools, however: The findings clearly show that the adults in the two schools make almost all decisions about school rules (even if some of them are brought up in so-­ called “school democracy” meetings). Pupils are seldom given any opportunities to create, modify or abolish formal rules through open negotiations. This confirms earlier research… When pupils enter the school, there is already a set of explicit rules, which they are expected to comply with and which teachers to a great extent attempt to uphold by assertion. Moreover, because of the dominance of assertion and the low frequency of authentic and open negotiations in everyday school life, teachers’ work with school rules can also be related to the authoritarian approach of rule-making. (2009, pp. 407–408)

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Even when teachers explain rules, they communicate teacher authority and power as well as pupil subordination. In their explanation practice, they attempt to teach pupils the “right” answers or the “correct” way of thinking regarding the question why the particular school rule exists… This is also the case when they ask pupils instead of giving the answers themselves. In the same way teachers control pupils and their knowledge acquisition of school subjects in lesson settings by asking questions to which teachers want a particular answer and going on doing so until they get that answer or until they decide to provide it themselves… Teachers here are not asking for opinions or information unknown to them. As in school subject lessons, teachers know the point they are trying to make, and therefore, they know the answer they want to hear from the pupils. Pupils have to figure out the “right” answer and teachers openly judge their answers. As in the case of knowledge and authority in school pupils are socialised into a world in which morality or “good” manners or actions are bound to and dependent on authority figures. Moreover, explanation is much less common than assertion and when it is used, it is more often used in relation to rules that pupils value as important, such as rules about how to treat each other, e.g., don’t bully, fight, tease, or name-call, when compared to other rules. According to my observations, teachers never or almost never explain rules that pupils value as least important or non-important, such as no caps indoors, no swearing, and no chewing gum at school. In addition, preparation seems to be something teachers use in their attempts to develop pupils’ skills in following rules. It is not about preparing pupils for democratic participation, argumentation, or critical thinking in relation to rules. (Thornberg, 2009, p. 408)

Thornberg quotes Alderson (2008, p. 91) to the effect that concealed within daily taken-for-granted routines are endless decisions that have already been made and are no longer seen as decisions: ‘we always do it this way’; ‘that is the rule’; ‘there is no alternative’; ‘don’t be silly’; ‘because I say so’. (2008, p. 91)

A further ethnographic study of three elementary schools in Sweden which aimed to investigate children’s views and experiences of democracy and pupil participation in relation to everyday school life concluded:

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Our study provides an in-depth examination of young pupils’ experiences of democracy, participation and trust in school. Their position is subordinated, their voice is often suppressed, and the value of their voice is minimized. The findings remind us of the gap between political intentions…and school practices by voicing schoolchildren’s views and experiences of everyday school life regarding democracy, influence, and power. Our empirical results describe a hidden curriculum in everyday school life that counteracts the formal intention of democratic citizenship education. (2012, p. 52)

In South Africa, a study of rural schooling (Nelson Mandela Foundation, 2005, pp.  17–18) involving pupils’ views found that one key routine of schooling was for pupils to clean the school on a daily basis, though the pupils also commented on regular experience of control and punishment as well. Indeed, in rural South Africa the daily routines of family life in agricultural contexts (e.g. seeing to cows and chickens before school) do not necessarily correspond to the routines and rhythms of school life and therefore children were often punished for being late for school (2005, pp. 44–45). In a study of a school in Mexico which examined school discipline, it was claimed that there was an informal policy of leniency because many students came from difficult home backgrounds, often had heavy domestic or work commitments and often could not afford to buy the correct equipment for school. Teachers claimed that they would often turn a blind eye to students who turned up late or with bits of their uniforms missing or the wrong style or colour. However, Filed school disciplinary reports and the researcher’s own observation showed that students were, in fact, frequently reported, singled out and reprimanded or even sent home because of faulty uniforms or late arrival… Moreover, teachers’ outward concession to leniency seemed to be ­undermined by their perception of adolescence as a difficult, unruly life stage characterized by unpredictability, rebellion and confusion, and requiring a firm hand. (Blasco, 2004, p. 377)

In line with other studies on pupils’ perspective on schooling (see, e.g., Meighan & Harber, 2007, chap. 2), the students in the Mexican study

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were not opposed to discipline per se and in fact they responded well to teachers who maintained order in the classroom, as long as they combined this with fairness, sympathy and respect for students… Over three-quarters of all students wrote that they liked a particular teacher and his or her class best because they were: ‘more like friends than teachers’; good listeners; gave advice to help students solve their problems or were ‘understanding, nice and a good laugh’. Students also performed better academically with teachers who took an interest in them as people, and did not relate exclusively to their ‘academic’ side… They also bitterly resented disciplinary procedures that they regarded as petty or unreasonable, such as stringent rules regarding uniform and appearance, or being denied what they saw as their basic ‘rights’, such as going to the toilet. (Blasco, 2004, p. 378)

However, schools are also often marked by a culture of one rule for us (the pupils) but another rule for them (the teachers). When I was at secondary school, pupils were not allowed to smoke but teachers smoked all the time, including in the classroom. In his research on Tanzanian primary schools, for example, Van Der Steen (2011, p. 235) found: • Both teachers and pupils were expected to be in school on time but while only a quarter of teachers managed this there were no consequences whereas pupils were punished. • School rules stated that pupils were to abstain from abusive language but he regularly heard teachers making derogatory remarks about, and to, pupils in lessons—and teachers made such remarks about each other as well. • Pupils were supposed to keep their uniform neat and tidy. A boy who had lost his brother to AIDS had drawn the AIDS awareness symbol on his school shirt and was severely and unlawfully beaten by a teacher for having done so. • Pupils were not supposed to do any business in school (such as selling food or water) yet pupils were sent on errands by teachers during school time such as delivering messages, collecting water, lighting the charcoal burner for making tea, washing up and cleaning. • During the showing of a UNICEF promotion film on children’s rights after school hours, pupils who tried to watch without paying were caned by the organisers.

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However, it is not necessarily only pupils who are not involved in making the school rules. Research in schools in Turkey found that teachers break the school rules because they are not involved in the rule-making process; the rules are largely made by school administrators (Demirkasimoğlu et al., 2012, p. 245).

Toilet Rules One basic everyday human physical need is the need to go to the toilet. However, the mass organisational nature of schooling often makes this problematic. Writing on Sweden, Lundblad et al. (2010) note that school should be a healthy place for social interaction, learning and working but ‘School children often base their toilet habits on behavioural and social reasons. Bladder emptying problems, urinary tract infections and constipation are common health problems which are also associated with irregular toilet habits’ (2010, p. 219). In interviews with pupils aged 16–19 in five schools Lundblad et al. found that it was individual teachers, rather than the schools as a whole, who made rules about going to the toilet. Most of the teachers were of the opinion that visits to the toilet should be carried out during recess as it was disruptive and wasted time but The short 10 minute recess could be experienced as far too short to go to the toilet. During the break it was quite common for the pupils to have to change books in their lockers, to then find a new classroom which could be situated in another part of the school. The children also wanted to be able to talk and play with their friends. (Lundblad et al., 2010, p. 221)

The pupils also noted the difficulty in planning visits to the toilet at recess time. The children meant that they didn’t know when the need to go to the toilet would appear and that it was easy to forget that they needed to go to the toilet when playing or doing some other activity. When more than one visit to the toilet was requested during a lesson, an exhaustive explanation was required or more than one visit to the toilet was not allowed. Moreover, the prevalent perception was that the

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toilets were unclean and smelly and were an unsafe environment to be in. While the pupils felt it was better and safe to go to the toilets during lessons because they felt they were being watched less, To raise hand and in front of fellow pupils and verbally convey the need to go to the toilet could be experienced as both awkward and embarrassing: ‘Everyone gets to know that I need to pee’, ‘It’s really embarrassing, I should be able to go without everyone’s eyes on me’. (Lundblad et al., 2010, p. 222)

The rules about going to the toilet were made by the teachers; they were not formulated in writing and not always clearly communicated to the children. The rules had, first and foremost, the purpose of making sure the teacher’s needs were met and were thus an expression of power. Lundblad et al. note that children in this study were aged between nine and sixteen, with the majority in their teens and that The teenage years are for most children an emotional and socially sensitive development period. With the advancing development of puberty the need for personal integrity and protection of this becomes more and more central. Despite this the children were often forced, with the risk of infringement on their integrity to reveal for their classmates that which was most private; their toilet needs. (2010, p. 222)

Their overall conclusion was that The rules for going to the toilet came from the teachers’ need for maintaining order in the classroom and were not adapted to the children’s physical and developmental needs. To violate the integrity of children can affect their willingness to go to the school toilet which in turn affects their wellbeing during school time. (2010, p. 219)

Religion, Routines and Rituals Globally everyday schooling consists of patterns of routines and rituals— for example, entering school, having attendance registered, assemblies, entering classrooms, seating and behaving in classrooms, organisation of

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break times and meals, and leaving school. Chappell et al. (2011, p. 70) call these ‘rituals of the habitual’ and use photographs of various ceremonies in schools—coming-of-age ceremonies, patriotic rituals and ceremonies, and degradation rituals and ceremonies over time in America—to explore what they say about the nature of school as an institution. They conclude that such rituals and ceremonies tend to have a conservative and reproductive role and do not facilitate change: schools often function as institutions that conserve rather than transform social values. Reformers from many perspectives often ignore the reproductive quality of schooling rituals and ceremonies, which may circumvent the effectiveness of school reform efforts. There are those who seek to reform schools to leverage emergent technologies and provide better trained workers and those who seek open, democratic, and critical reforms. Yet conservative and progressive educational reform proposals do little to address the deep “hidden in plain view” social practices discussed in this article. Through an analysis of school photographs, we have identified some ways that schools reproduce social ideologies and roles for behaviour while raising questions about who is advantaged or disadvantaged by these values, beliefs, and actions. (2011, p. 71)

However, despite their traditional and conserving nature and function such everyday routines and rituals are themselves difficult to change because they are rarely questioned: Because they are normalized through re-performance, they maintain unspoken norms and structures and disallow transformative questioning of “the way things are done at school.” Even teachers and administrators seldom stop to think about the origins and functions of such rituals and performances. They are done because they are done. (Chappell et  al., 2011, p. 71)

One daily routine and ritual in the school is the school assembly. As Silbert and Jacklin (2015, p. 326) say, School assemblies are rituals that celebrate and mark the school community. They carry messages of allegiance and belonging that are disseminated

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both verbally and nonverbally. Although verbal messages are explicitly stated, nonverbal messages are conveyed through subjection to habits, rules, and orders…and are exercised via silent and invisible instruments, such as spatial arrangements and bodily practices. Because a typical school’s discursive formations are articulated through the strategies it uses to regulate behavior…, the school assembly can be seen as a disciplinary and normalizing ritual that shapes the individual’s conduct towards a desired end.

School assemblies often have a close relationship with religion. Both the primary and secondary school I attended were overtly Christian schools. When I turned 16, I opted out of daily religious assemblies along with a small minority Hindu, Jewish and Moslem pupils because I had become (and still am) an atheist and humanist. The head teacher referred to us as the pagans. I objected to being told in an educational institution that something that was faith or belief was fact or evidence rather than opinion. It occurred to me, even then, that no part of the school curriculum would be treated in the same way. You couldn’t sit an economics or physics exam and simply write ‘because I believe it to be so’. School assemblies, when they are religious in nature, are often a form of religious reproduction or socialisation into a particular religion rather than genuine religious education about a range of religions. In Silbert and Jacklin’s (2015) study of two schools (Glen Ridge and Ubuntu) in South Africa they found that assemblies in both schools were used for discipline, reward and punishment. At one of the schools in particular (Glen Ridge) surveillance was supported by the hierarchical organisation of space, predisposing the pupils of the school to a social structure delineated by categories of rank, hierarchy and privilege—and an unspoken recognition of the individual’s position therein: During the Glen Ridge assemblies, the organization of space was tightly regulated, demonstrating a clear demarcation of rank both on the stage and in the hall. On the stage, the seating arrangements were delineated according to levels of authority: the principal, who wore a black academic gown, occupied a leather chair and was seated at the front of the stage. Behind him the deputy principals were seated, also on leather chairs. The management team sat behind the deputies with the head boy and girl at the end of the row, all of whom were seated on the same types of chairs. The rest of

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the teachers sat on plastic chairs behind the management team… The organization of the Glen Ridge assemblies: their routine, spatial arrangements, ranking, and habitual sequencing had become a naturalized event in the daily life of the school. These multiple disciplinary structures remind us of the ways in which the school creates and reinforces the bounds of what it means to be normal. (Silbert & Jacklin, 2015, pp. 332–333)

Western religious-based norms pertaining to morality, virtue, reason and conscience were transmitted to the learner, and at one of the schools Christian teachings were explicitly foregrounded. Silbert and Jacklin argue, ‘These kinds of religious practices function as disciplinary mechanisms through which affiliation among the school, institutionalized religion (beyond the school), and the community is established’ (2015, p. 334). Moreover, Alongside the verbal Christian-based discursive practices enlisted in both contexts, additional spoken and silent discourses pervaded the assemblies: In the case of Glen Ridge these related to excellence, productivity, individualism, investment, and participation in a range of activities. At Ubuntu these were restricted to discipline, respect, and hard work with a narrower focus on the formal academic curriculum. (Silbert & Jacklin, 2015, p. 342)

At Glen Ridge both the surveillance uniformity aspects and the social control function of school assemblies were clear and explicit: The uniform rules specified that blazers had to be worn during assemblies and that students were only allowed to remove them if permission was granted. Although learners in other grades were sometimes allowed to remove their blazers during assemblies (e.g., during very hot periods), the Grade 12 students were expected to wear their blazers during all a­ ssemblies, irrespective of the weather… As with the dress code, general behavior during assemblies was closely monitored by the prefects and teachers. Students were not allowed to speak or make a noise as they entered the hall and were expected to remain standing as the principal walked onto the stage. Anyone found to be speaking or misbehaving during the assembly was identified by name and the instruction “fall-out” was given. This meant that the offender

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had to leave the body of students and stand at the side of the hall for the rest of the assembly. The student at fault was then required to attend an afternoon detention session. In this way, the student is addressed simultaneously in relation to her inner comportment, or “soul” (by the devotions) and her body, through regulation of dress and physical position—and punishment takes the form of temporary incarceration in detention. (Silbert & Jacklin, 2015, p. 336)

The disciplinary and control function of religious assembly is also clear in Jordan: all schools must hold daily morning exercises as part of the effort to build patriotism and loyalty among Jordanian youth. The morning exercises, known as the taboor in Arabic, involve the entire school body, from the administration and faculty to the students… Students are given instructions through a microphone connected to the school PA system. The students are assembled in columns by grade level and are rapidly led through calisthenics, school announcements, student poetry and Qur’an reading, nationalist speeches, and the singing of the Arab nationalist anthem, ‘Mawtani’ (My country). Students are not permitted to speak during the taboor, except for specific instances in which they are expected to respond en masse or to sing. In order to ensure ‘good’ conduct, teachers walk among the columns of students to monitor their actions, some holding wooden rods or lengths of white plastic pipe as a visual determent against disruptive behavior. (Shirazi, 2011, p. 288)

Religion can still be taught in schools in an uncritical, faith-based way even when it may well be a cause of violent conflict in a country. Fontana (2016), for example, examined religious education in three post-conflict societies—Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Macedonia. She found that religious education had a remarkably similar function in all three contexts: it tends to reproduce separate and mutually exclusive communities. Religious education contents and pedagogy reflect the assumption that children belong to one of several mutually exclusive and clearly demarcated confessional groups. Thus, curricula aim to teach, and sometimes practice, the faith children were born into. (Fontana, 2016, p. 827)

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However, even in relatively peaceful, multi-faith and no faith societies such as the UK, religious socialisation/indoctrination can be part of the taken-for-granted fabric of everyday school life for many children, even though such overt indoctrination/socialisation into other specific values systems, such as political ones, would be forbidden. Smith and Smith note in relation to the UK that Assemblies are significant occasions in the lives of schools. They are opportunities to express and celebrate the cultural and ethical norms which underpin a local school community. A head teacher will know that important work in forming and shaping a school ethos can be undertaken in assembly time… However, assemblies have also been described as a ‘nightmare’. (2013, p. 5)

This is because legislation requires assemblies wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character. Yet the UK is a multi-cultural and multi-­ religion (and none) society. Thus schools face a dilemma. Smith and Smith’s (2013) research in four primary schools found that schools often get round this by teaching about virtues such as friendship, courage, loyalty and generosity, which can be interpreted accordingly by any religious or non-religious background. However, their impression was that different virtues are taught with different emphases depending on the location of the school. In particular, a stress on perseverance and resilience was observed in a school in a low socio-economic area that was not apparent in schools in high socio-economic areas. (Smith & Smith, 2013, p. 15)

The assemblies were not always free of religion. At two of the four schools while the content of the assembly may have been concerned with virtues, they were not free of the transmission of religious values as there was a strong tradition of religious songs and hymns: The lyrics were well-known by the pupils. These lyrics referred to God and often to Jesus. We heard the children sing about the love of God, the saving work of Jesus and God’s work in Creation. In school C, the stories used in the assemblies did not always have a religious content, however, the use of

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familiar songs and hymns, together with a time of prayer which ended with the word ‘Amen’. (Smith & Smith, 2013, p. 16)

Hemming (2018) points out the prevalent authoritarian model of schooling in the UK where children’s voice rarely results in any significant change to teaching and learning and also points out that all English and Welsh schools are expected to provide for pupils’ spiritual development and hold a daily act of worship that is ‘wholly or mainly of a Christian nature’, though this requirement was criticised in a monitoring report of the United Nations as potentially contradicting Article 14 of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. He also notes that state-­funded faith schools, according to government figures, make up approximately 35% of all schools in England and 17% in Wales (Hemming, 2018, pp. 154–155). Hemming notes: At the two schools in my research, pupils regularly took part in religious practices during assemblies and collective worship or church services, including listening to Bible stories and teachings about values, participating in prayers and singing, lighting candles and celebrating achievement. Assemblies were often supported by visits from church ministers, who took an active role in leading the proceedings. A large proportion of the collective activities at the schools had a religious flavour, including seasonal events such as Harvest Festival, Remembrance Day and Christmas celebrations. The prominence given to religious activities was particularly evident at Fringefield, which held a daily corporate assembly. (2018, p. 164)

Interestingly, not all children were convinced about Christianity despite the nature of the schooling they experienced, but The most concerning finding was that many of these children were under the impression that they were required to pray in order to avoid being disciplined by teachers and some gave examples of when this had occurred previously at different points in their school career. In their eyes, pupils were being asked to participate in compulsory prayer. As such, religious practices were perceived to be intertwined with school rules and behaviour management. (2018, p. 166)

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Rules, Routines and Academic Priority A teacher in a school in a very poor, deprived area of an American city asks a child, ‘How many legs does a grasshopper have? ‘Oh man’, the child replies. ‘I sure wish I had your problems’ (joke originally cited in Postman & Weingartner, 1971). Daily rules and routines also indicate school priorities. Globally, the dominant day-to-day emphasis in schools is on the academic, Western-­ inspired curriculum of separate school subjects and their testing and examination. Not only can this emphasis on the academic make the school curriculum seem remote and irrelevant to pupils as in the joke above but the academic, competitive and exam-focussed ethos is given priority over possible priorities such as, for example, the pastoral care of children and their emotional and social development. This academic and exam-based focus can and does have negative consequences in terms of the mental and physical harm experienced by pupils as is further explored in Chap. 5. However, here we are concerned more with what it means for the everyday experience of schooling. One country in which this academic, exam-focussed emphasis is very clear in the daily lives of schools is South Korea. In South Korea (where corporal punishment is still used in schools) pupils cannot choose their own hair style or their look, and random inspections of students’ belongings take place. Indeed, one recent study found that in all high schools in South Korea that the researchers visited students were expected to stay still and concentrate on what teachers say. The students were expected to spend a large amount of time and energy on memorising large chunks of knowledge but are not taught to think critically about what they learn or about current social problems (Kwon et  al., 2017). The authors argue that their research shows that teachers and students are held in thrall by an invisible, institutionalised control mechanism and state that Teachers typically mention “basic rules” to observe. Teachers use the term control but they strongly believe that what they do and think is a matter of visible, formal regulation and management for the school community’s good. Moreover, teachers urge that students must learn about following rules and getting rewards or punishments accordingly in order to learn to

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live as adults in society. The control mechanisms link to actual classroom teaching and learning practices, too, but there they are more hidden and covert. Students think that a good teacher is one who highlights crucial points in the textbook, which will then appear in examinations. A teacher who does not observe this covert “rule” is seen as a perpetrator of implicit violence against students…students and teachers seem accustomed to control and they both perceive efforts to tone down overt control mechanisms as even more oppressive. (Kwon et al., 2017, pp. 210–211)

As the authors conclude, educational traditions in South Korea have created certain systematic norms which seem infused deeply into students’ everyday school lives. Even the best students hardly question whether teachers should have power or authority over them…students have accommodated the mindset that indoctrination and oppression constitutes the most effective pedagogy for the purpose at hand. These data suggest that pedagogy is critical in perpetuating indirect mechanisms of control and restraint. Here, once students get used to indoctrination masquerading as pedagogy, it then justifies the examination system, which basically aims to train students to become actively complicit in the perpetuation of societal control mechanisms. (Kwon et al., 2017, pp. 213–214)

One consequence of the competitive, individualised nature of modern schooling that has been noticed is the contrast between some traditional cultures and that of the school: Traditionally, we were taught kindness and compassion…but now with development everyone sends their children to school. With modern schooling the old values of cooperation and compassion are starting to decline…the traditional ways of helping one another, of kindness and cooperation are dying out. (Woman from Ladakh, India, speaking in Black, 2010)

Another consequence is the downplaying of the pastoral/affective role of caring for pupils because teachers and schools are under such pressure to deliver good examination results and often to do well in league tables. In Britain, for example, where pupils are heavily tested at school, it has

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been suggested that OFSTED (the school inspectorate) should radically change its approach on how it assesses schools to put less emphasis on exam results and more emphasis on including and supporting young people socially and emotionally so that they don’t get involved in gangs dealing in drugs (Marsh, 2019). In America, it has been argued that the phenomenon of rampage school shootings in schools is not just a problem of the activities of individual pupils, however socially isolated, but essentially results from the organisational failings of schools. In each case the pupils had a troubled history, including bullying, but the schools failed to act upon their own records because of an ambivalence about the key purposes of the school. As a result of this ambivalence, traditional academic concerns win out as a priority over emotional and social development, both teachers and counsellors are not properly trained to identify and deal with personal problems and there is a dearth of resources devoted to such concerns. The pupils who eventually went on to shoot fellow pupils and teachers were not disruptive and so were not noticed. In loosely coupled systems like schools, we argue, serious personal problems are allowed to fester because they do not impede the dominant organisational goals: order and minimum academic standards. Our study of Heath and Westside suggest that school shooters go unnoticed because many are not behaving in ways that interrupt the functioning of their schools and hence their behaviour is not interpreted as indicative of a potential for violent behaviour or of social and emotional problems. (Fox & Harding, 2005, p. 82)

A study of a school in Mexico found that school counsellors (orientadores) who should be there to provide pastoral support and care for students were instead seen as available to be used as school dogsbodies for whatever errands needed running or to cover for absent teachers. This meant that they were not available for students to visit them whenever they needed to. The researcher notes that

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Rigid school organization does not help in this respect, as one orientador explained: There have been times when girls have come to see me saying ‘I’ve come to say goodbye’, and I say ‘That’s nice, so you’re moving home?’ and they say ‘No, I’m going to kill myself tonight’, but the prefects are pacing up and down outside my office going ‘Come on, hurry up, you’ve had long enough, go back to your classroom’, putting pressure on us and making me nervous. Second, orientadores are typically assigned the task of punishing children channelled to them by teachers because of behavioural problems, low grades or erratic attendance. (Blasco, 2004, p. 381)

Echoing the above discussion, Blasco concludes: In this way, the school’s hierarchical organisation and academic imperatives crowd out affective matters, although it is clearly highly improbable that a worried or upset child will be able to concentrate on her studies. More seriously, since students with ‘behavioural problems’ or low grades often come from the worst-off families, or broken homes, they are the ones who usually end up being ‘punished’ by a visit to the orientador. In this way, poverty and social problems are, indirectly, stigmatized and attributed to an individual failing on the part of the student. The orientadores’ punitive function and the other constraints mentioned above currently prevent them from fulfilling a more pastoral role towards their students. (2004, p. 382)

Another consequence of the routine priority given to the academic and examinations can be boredom. A teacher is didactically teaching a class in a school in Ladakh, India, in a film made in 2010. She is talking about xerophytic vegetation. The class look puzzled and bored. The teacher asks the class, twice, why do we call it xerophytic? Nobody responds. Outside the school buildings, nature abounds (Black, 2010). John Taylor Gatto begins his book on schooling in America thus: I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they were bored, they always gave the same answers: they said the

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work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it…their teachers were every bit as bored as they were… Of course teachers themselves are products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students. (2009, p. xiii)

Sherman (1996, p. 12), writing on the UK, argues that boredom and monotony could be exactly the point of the school drudgery bound up with regular routines and regimentation: As children are socialized into accepting boredom and monotony as a way of being, they expect boredom and monotony in return for rewards. In the case of school, this is in the form of grades and marks. Eventually they will accept boredom and monotony in the workplace in exchange for pecuniary rewards.

Adding to this was the fact that the children were sometimes forbidden and in others not encouraged to talk in the classroom, whatever the cost might be in terms of confidence building and the development of communication (Sherman, 1996, p. 17). Overall, however, the routines and rules of schools as institutions do at least lead to the virtue of patience: Lacking that quality, life could be miserable for those who must spend their time in our prisons, our factories, our corporation offices and our schools. In all of these settings the participants must “learn to labour and to wait”. They must also, to some extent, learn to suffer in silence. They are expected to bear with equanimity, in other words, the continued delay, denial and interruption of their personal wishes and desires. (Jackson, 1968, p. 18)

Conclusion The ‘normal’ schools that politicians and others are keen to get most children and young back into in a post-Covid world are very far from the idealised institutions they are often portrayed as. Their everyday normality exemplified in the ways schools’ rules and routines are constructed and enacted, and what they have to say about the priorities of schooling

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as a system is in fact controversial, problematic and antipathetic to democratic values and practices. However, when there are rules there are always rule breakers and they have to be punished—or do they? Chapter 4 discusses punishment at school.

References Alderson, P. (2008). Young Children’s Rights: Exploring Beliefs, Principles and Practice (2nd ed.). Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Alexander, R. (2000). Culture and Pedagog: International Comparisons in Primary Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Black, C. (2010). Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden (Lost People Films). Blasco, M. (2004). Teachers Should Be More Like Second Parents: Affectivity, Schooling and Poverty in Mexico. Compare, 34(4), 371–394. Chappell, D., Chappell, S., & Margolis, E. (2011). School as Ceremony and Ritual: How Photography Illuminates Performances of Ideological Transfer. Qualitative Inquiry, 17(1), 56–73. Demirkasimoğlu, N., Aydın, I., Erdoğan, C., & Akın, U. (2012). Organisational Rules in Schools: Teachers’ Opinions About Functions of Rules, Rule-­ Following and Breaking Behaviours in Relation to Their Locus of Control. Educational Studies, 38(2), 235–247. Fontana, G. (2016). Religious Education After Conflicts: Promoting Social Cohesion or Entrenching Cleavages? Compare, 46(5), 811–831. Fox, C., & Harding, D. (2005). School Shootings as Organisational Deviance. Sociology of Education, 78, 69–97. Harber, C. (2010). Long Time Coming: Children as Only Occasional Decision-­ Makers in Schools. In S. Cox, A. Robinson-Pant, C. Dyer, & M. Schweisfurth (Eds.), Children as Decision Makers in Education. Continuum. Harber, C., & Mncube, V. (2012). Education, Democracy and Development: Does Education Contribute to Democratisation in Developing Countries? Symposium. Hemming, P. (2018). ‘No Offence to God but I Don’t Believe in Him’: Religion, Schooling and Children’s Rights. Ethnography and Education, 13(2), 154–171. Jackson, P. (1968). Life in Classrooms. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Kwon, S., Kristjansson, K., & Walker, D. (2017). Misery in Dark Shadows Behind the High Achievement Scores in South Korean Schooling: An Ethnographic Study. Educational Review, 69(2), 201–2017.

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Lundblad, B., Hellstrom, A.-L., & Berg, M. (2010). Children’s Experiences of Attitudes and Rules for Going to the Toilet in School. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 24, 219–223. Marsh, S. (2019, February 14). County Lines Report Calls on Ofsted to Prioritise Inclusion. The Guardian. Meighan, R., & Harber,C. (2007). A Sociology of Educating. London: Continuum. Nelson Mandela Foundation. (2005). Emerging Voices. HSRC Press. Osler, A. (2010). Students’ Perspectives on Schooling. Open University Press. Postman, N., & Weingartner, C. (1971). Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Penguin. Raby, R. (2005). Polite, Well-Dressed and on Time: Secondary School Conduct Codes and the Production of Docile Citizens. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 42(1), 71–91. Raby, R. (2008). Frustrated, Resigned, Outspoken: Students’ Engagement with School Rules and Some Implications for Participatory Citizenship. The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 16, 77–98. Schimmel, D. (1997). Traditional Rule-Making and the Subversion of Citizenship Education. Social Education, 61, 70–74. Sherman, A. (1996). Rules, Routines and Regulations. Educational Heretics Press. Shirazi, R. (2011). When Projects of ‘Empowerment’ Don’t Liberate: Locating Agency in a ‘Postcolonial’ Peace Education. Journal of Peace Education, 8(3), 277–294. Silbert, P., & Jacklin, H. (2015). “Assembling” the Ideal Learner: The School Assembly as Regulatory Ritual. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 37(4), 326–344. Smith, G., & Smith, S. (2013). From Values to Virtues: An Investigation into the Ethical Content of English Primary School Assemblies. British Journal of Religious Education, 35(1), 5–19. Taylor Gatto, J. (2009). Weapons of Mass Instruction. New Society Publishers. Thornberg, R. (2008a). ‘It’s Not Fair!’—Voicing Pupils’ Criticisms of School Rules. Children and Society, 22, 418–428. Thornberg, R. (2008b). A Categorisation of School Rules. Educational Studies, 34(1), 25–33. Thornberg, R. (2009). Rules in Everyday School Life: Teacher Strategies Undermine Pupil Participation. International Journal of Children’s Rights, 17, 393–413. Van Der Steen, N. (2011). School Improvement in Tanzania: School Culture and the Management of Change. PhD Thesis, London University Institute of Education.

4 Punishment

Bad and Odd Punishment We have already seen that in some countries parents can be punished for not sending their children to school. Inside schools around the world if rules (usually established by teachers) are not obeyed, then the consequence is usually some form of punishment. As discussed in Chap. 1, in many schools in many countries this takes the form of violence against children by caning, beating and hitting—corporal punishment—with a wide range of negative physical and psychological consequences. We also discussed how the school’s origin in social control and its authoritarian form of organisation permitted such violence. However, even when corporal punishment is not used, the present nature of schooling as a system and organisation means that there are serious issues concerning other unacceptable punishments used in schools. Shukla (2018), for example, comments that Almost all of us have received some kind of punishment in school as a kid. But the form of punishment today is supposed to be less severe than before as our education system continues to evolve. But sometimes teachers and schools take things just too far. The worst school punishments are not just © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Harber, Post-Covid Schooling, Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87824-5_4

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physical; they are also mental and psychological. Here are some of the worst school punishments kids have experienced.

Shukla (2018) then goes on to provide the following ten examples from America. Child sentenced for threatening with bubble gun A five-year-old kindergarten student in Pennsylvania received a ten-­ day sentence for threatening a peer with her bubble gun. She was accused of being a terrorist. A school authority happened to overhear the conversation and searched through her backpack. Even after finding that the child was carrying no deadly weapon, she was sentenced for ten days for carrying a terrorist weapon (a bubble gun) to the class. Juvenile arrested for burping Most kids have no idea that they could find themselves in jail (or juvenile hall) for burping. In 2011, a teacher in Albuquerque called the cops because one of the students had the audacity to burp in school. The kid was taken down to the juvenile hall for testing. Autistic child stuffed into the ‘Therapy Bag’ Christopher Baker, a nine-year-old autistic student in Kentucky, was stuffed into a duffel bag for misbehaving in class. According to the Huffington Post, the teacher even pulled the drawstring tight and tied up around him. Though the school claimed Christopher was in the ‘Therapy Bag’ for no more than 20 minutes, his mother was shocked to hear her child’s voice coming from a tied-up duffel bag when she came to pick him up. The involved teachers have since been fired. Locking students in ‘child-eating’ Monster Closet Most children believe in monsters and some think a monster might be hiding in a closet. Some kindergarten teachers in Houston, Texas, instilled fear in four-year-old students that the janitor’s closet was a Monster

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Closet. They would often lock the unruly kids in the Monster Closet and tell them that a monster was going to eat them. An untold number of students suffered this horrendous crime. Lesbian girls sent to fake prom A school in Fulton, Mississippi, prohibits same-sex couples from attending the prom and other school functions. A student named Constance McMillen petitioned school officials to let her and her girlfriend attend the prom, but the school was not in the mood to change their policy. Eventually, the court ruled in Constance’s favour, and the school cancelled the prom. The prom was held at a later date, but it was kept a secret from people like Constance. She and her girlfriend were sent to a separate, fake prom. Later, Constance was harassed to the point that she ended up changing school. Girls asked to pull their panties down According to Elitereaders, an all-girls school in Japan has a horrible way of punishing students even for petty things such as arriving late or not doing homework. Girls are asked to stand up and pull their panties down to the knees while others stare at them. Put on the cone of shame Florida is notorious for punishing students in most humiliating ways. One teacher would discipline students by making them wear dog cones around their neck. It is the same cone that is used to keep dogs from licking or chewing away their stitches following a surgery. It is one of the worst school punishments in the world. Kneeling on frozen pea Recently, a photo went viral which showed the legs of an Asian girl who was forced to kneel on frozen peas for a long period of time. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the student was expelled for clicking pictures of the pea damage. Other students are made to kneel on rice, corn and

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cheese graters. This form of punishment has become more and more common in Asian countries. Forcing kids to eat food off the floor This happened in Charles Sumner Elementary School in New Jersey in 2009. A student accidentally spilled a water jug on the lunchroom floor. When the school vice-principal Theresa Brown saw the incident, she made 16 students eat their lunch off the floor for 10 days. Parents later learned about Theresa Brown’s unethical tactics. They filed a lawsuit against the school and won $500,000 in settlement. Autistic student told that everyone hated him Five-year-old Alex Barton suffered from high-functioning autism. When he disrupted the class one time too many, he was taken to the assistant principal and made to promise that he wouldn’t disrupt the class again. Then he was sent back to the class. When he returned to the classroom, teacher Wendy Portillo held a class discussion about why she and all other students hated Alex. Worse, the five-year-old autistic child was made to sit and listen to why everyone hated him. It is also interesting to consider what children are punished for in schools and whether they would be punished for the same behaviour outside school. Some time ago Dreeben (1968) in his classic study On What Is Learned in School noted that school is a place where pupils learn that there are tasks that they must do alone and unaided—and do in a particular way. One such behaviour is ‘cheating’, which he pertains primarily to instructional activities and which he defines as ‘acts in which two or more parties participate when the unaided action of only one is expected’ (1968, p.  67). The examples of cheating he gives are where parents collaborate with children to produce homework, where pupils help each other in an exam, where one pupil copies from another, where crib notes are used in an exam or plagiarism where work is copied wholesale from another source. These, he argues, are all forms of assisted performance when, in school, unaided performance is expected. However, he then notes that

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The irony of cheating in school is that the same kinds of acts are considered morally acceptable and even commendable in other situations. It is praiseworthy for one friend to assist another in distress, or for a parent to help a child; and if one lacks the information to do a job, the resourceful thing is to look it up. In effect, many school activities called cheating are the customary forms of support and assistance in the family and among friends. (Dreeben, 1968, p. 68)

Punishment and Inequality Not only can school punishment be cruel and arbitrary it can also reinforce the social and economic inequalities discussed in Chap. 1. Sawhney’s (2018) study of four primary schools in India found that not only was corporal punishment used in all four schools (thus another example of school-initiated violence following on from Chap. 1), despite avowedly not being used in two of the schools, but pupils were also punished differently according to their socio-economic position (SEP). Sawhney states about one of her case study schools, a prestigious school and one that professes to offer excellence in education while promoting the spirit of national integration among its students, one of the most striking findings of this study is the discrimination and humiliation that ‘certain students’ encounter as part of their daily school experiences. Teachers have been found to assign students to different SEPs on the basis of which teachers alter their interactions and disciplinary practices. Schools in a democratic country should be democratic institutions that offer equal opportunities and equity to students from diverse socio economic backgrounds. However, schools are complex social institutions, and this study shows that academic achievement and students’ schooling experiences are determined by factors such as students’ social backgrounds as well as the social and cultural capital they and their parents exhibit. (2018, p. 604)

Moreover, students in this study who were perceived to have low- or middle-SEPs were students who did not bring with them the social and cultural capital

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that would help them excel in schools… The differentiated interactions and disciplinary practices exhibited by teachers in this study were in fact leading to a differential distribution of knowledge among the students… This study shows how SEP differences are filtered through classrooms and how the classroom discourse in the form of disciplinary practices and interactions can potentially maintain if not amplify the differences between students from different sections of the society. (2018, p. 604)

In British schools one punishment that exists is exclusion: In July last year, government figures showed that temporary (or “fixed-­term”) exclusions in English schools in the year 2018–19 had reached a 13-year high of 438,300, up 7% on the previous year—a rise partly driven by pupils being repeatedly excluded. Permanent exclusions were almost unchanged on the previous year, but up 60% on five years before. (Harris, 2021)

Harris (2021) thus comments that ‘But by any measure, exclusions are now an integral part of life in thousands of schools, and a regular experience of pupils and their families.’ But school exclusions are not distributed evenly and are part of a pattern of reproducing social inequality discussed in Chap. 1: pupils with black Caribbean heritage are nearly three times as likely to be permanently excluded as white children. In 2018–19, two groups had the highest rates of exclusion: those from Gypsy and Roma families, along with those classified as “Traveller of Irish heritage”. Across all categories, boys vastly outnumbered girls. Many people who work in schools also talk about a strong class dimension, and point out that children with special educational needs are particularly likely to face exclusion. (Harris, 2021)

Thus exclusions disproportionately affect black and ethnic minority children and young people and are often the first step down a path to crime and imprisonment. Most exclusions are the result of zero-tolerance behavioural codes common to a huge number of schools, whereby answering back or refusing to follow an instruction can take someone from a relatively trifling punishment to exclusion in short order. Some pupils who are excluded are sent to pupil referral units (PRUs), places that deal with children who have been excluded from state schools. Harris

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reports that, ironically, the units, they say, are always of interest to the drug trade because they provide a supply of drug runners for the dealers. Harris talked to one teacher who had worked in a PRU: At the PRU where she worked, she says, only three out of 15 members of staff were qualified teachers. She met children who were “naughty, but bright”, and who often felt “a sense of hopelessness”—especially if they were in year 10 or 11 and approaching the end of school. “There was no learning,” she says. “Kids with headphones on, or playing cards; kids turning up when they wanted. It was like a bad youth club.” (2021)

As Harris notes, there are a number of factors that help to explain the rise in school exclusions but the main ones are certainly the overwhelming focus on success in exams, ‘outstanding’ ratings from school inspectors and what politicians call ‘discipline’. He concludes by stating: What to do with kids who serially misbehave, stray into breaking the law, or lose interest in education is an eternally valid question. But so is the way we treat those who might be traumatised, living with special needs, colliding with adolescence, or at the receiving end of other people’s prejudices. As things stand, many other young people risk having their lives ruined by policies, systems and decisions that fulfil the demands of “discipline”, but fail when it comes to care, and basic humanity.

He quotes one of his respondents (who is a director of learning at a school that takes a much more constructive and supportive approach to try to do everything they can to keep pupils in the system) as saying, ‘Let’s say that 80% of kids in a school respond really well to a zero-­ tolerance, no-excuses policy… Well, what about the other 20%? Do we accept them as collateral damage—or do we improve our systems so we’re getting nearer to 100%?’ He also quotes a mother of four who is also a secondary school teacher: “The education system is wonderful when children toe the line”…“but the second you deviate from the norm, there’s too little support. And kids get damaged.” (Harris, 2021; italics added)

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Not So Splendid Isolation School exclusions are closely related to the use of ‘isolation units’ within British schools, in which pupils are forced to spend days of ‘internal’ exclusion, usually in sealed-off booths. In Britain in 2018 it was reported by the BBC that more than 200 pupils spent at least five straight days in isolation booths in schools and more than 5000 children with special educational needs also attended isolation rooms at some stage (Titheradge, 2018). Isolation rooms, or internal inclusion units, are facilities pupils are sent to when it is thought they need to be removed from a classroom during the school day. They vary in their nature significantly. Many include so-called isolation or consequence booths, partitioned desks in which children typically face the wall and work in silence. Occasionally schools use ‘seclusion’ units, rooms where children sometimes remain on their own, while others place pupils in more conventional classrooms to work in silence. The article notes that The BBC sent Freedom of Information requests to more than 1,000 secondary schools and academy chains across the UK asking how they use isolation and around 600 responded. It learned that more than 200 schools in England used isolation booths, with 12 in Wales and six in Scotland but none in Northern Ireland. While the majority had rules for children spending a maximum of one, two or three continuous days in isolation, 225 pupils in England and one in Wales spent a whole week in isolation booths as a single punishment last year. (Titheradge, 2018)

Dozens of the children put in isolation rooms had education, health and care plans (EHCPs) provided for children with complex needs. The article quotes the then Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, as saying that school isolation can be ‘distressing and degrading’ and she is concerned it is being used ‘as a gateway to excluding and off-rolling’, where pupils are removed from a school’s register. It adds that the BBC also discovered that • more than 5000 pupils with special educational needs in England spent time in isolation; • children with autism and ADHD have attended isolation;

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• one school had five separate isolation rooms, each permanently staffed at an annual cost of more than £170,000; • some schools prevent pupils from using the playground during the day and the dining hall at lunch; • two schools, which included a bathroom as part of the facility, do not allow pupils to leave the unit all day. The article cites Paul Dix, who visited many more isolation facilities and is a behavioural consultant in schools across England. The article states that Dix has seen 50 children at one time in isolation in one school and children with Asperger’s syndrome and ADHD in isolation rooms and met one child who said they had spent 36 days in isolation in one school year. “That is not education, it is a custodial sentence,” he said. “Where’s the regulation around it, where’s the reporting, where is the accountability?” He said he has heard of pupils being placed into isolation for not bringing a pen or wearing the right shoes. Paul says disruptive pupils may need to be removed from classrooms but believes they should be returned after a short period and a discussion of their behaviour with an experienced teacher—“That is the intelligent way. Isolation is desperation,” he said. (Titheradge, 2018)

In a report on a conference to be held on the topic of isolation booths in schools in the UK (Lightfoot, 2020), it was noted that one pupil had been banned from talking to other pupils or looking left or right, and with just three toilet breaks in a day to stretch his legs. This stems partly from mass schooling’s inability to deal with individual needs and concerns. Lightfoot adds, In his last term, in 2018, his mother finally managed to get him assessed by an educational psychologist. “She said he found it hard to process information unless it was written down and he couldn’t sit in an enclosed space for more than 45  minutes,” his mother says. “He would get up and walk around the school to ‘reset’ himself and that’s why he ended up in isolation”. Once in isolation, he kept failing it because he would get up and walk around, so in he went the next day—he was in isolation for six weeks one term—and those in the booths had to stay an extra hour after school as a punishment as well. (2020)

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As the article notes, behind the issue, however, is the bigger question of how schools should respond to pupils with challenging behaviour: The growing popularity of “zero tolerance” has led to children with special educational or emotional needs being sent into isolation. In some schools, children are sent into isolation for turning up in the wrong colour shoes or socks. The Ruth Gorse academy school, for example, has a list of rules on its website and warns: “Students with inappropriate hairstyles will be placed in isolation.” One primary headteacher was called by his 11-year-­ old daughter’s school to say she was in isolation for forgetting to bring in her planner “but if I brought it in she could come out”. He said it was an hour-and-a half round trip to go home to collect it, and he was in a meeting. “The school said bring in £5 for a new planner and she can come out. It’s ridiculous, having to pay a ransom to get your daughter out of ‘prison’ just because she forgot her planner for the first time ever,” the headteacher says. Later, the issue was resolved and the school is now reviewing its isolation policy. (Lightfoot, 2020)

In one state school in the UK, over half the pupils were excluded from the school premises as a punishment in one year. One teacher said he witnessed pupils being excluded for what he said were minor offences such as wearing jewellery or having eyebrows deemed too dark. The same teacher said this derived from a one size fits all approach, which is ‘kind of militaristic’ (McIntyre, 2019).

Collective Punishment When I was 15 and at secondary school, the whole class was beaten with a cane because somebody had done something wrong and not owned up. I have been angry about this indiscriminate retribution and violence ever since as I personally did nothing wrong and didn’t know who had. This form of punishment is described by Thomas (2019) as collective punishment in schools and is when a group of students, for example a whole class or a whole grade, is punished for the actions of a few. An extreme example would be where whole villages or towns were destroyed by Nazi forces in the Second World War as an act of revenge or warning to Resistance fighters.

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Thomas notes that such collective punishment is used in Australian schools because it appears to be immediately effective in promoting compliance—‘For instance, making the whole grade pick up rubbish instead of having free time is likely to result in a clean yard, and probably less rubbish the next day.’ Also, he argues, collective punishment may be seen to be even more effective due to peer pressure. Collective punishments take some of the pressure off the teacher and place it on the peers to impose social sanctions: ‘No one likes the kid who takes away their lunchtime.’ A final reason teachers might use collective punishment is, ironically, to promote a stronger sense of cohesion in the class. The idea is that by the whole group taking responsibility for each individual’s actions, the group will be brought closer together. However, Thomas (2019) persuasively argues that there are two main reasons why such collective punishment is a bad idea and I cite his reasons in full: First, it’s morally questionable and second, it’s unlikely to produce more positive behaviour in the long run. The idea a group should be responsible for the actions of an individual is fundamentally at odds with the theories of individual responsibility in western, liberal societies. Legally and morally, each individual has ownership for their own actions and must bear the consequences of those actions individually. On a more basic level, it is not fair or reasonable to punish one child for the actions of another. Both of these moral concerns would not be acceptable in wider society, so why would they be acceptable in a school environment? Second, there is now clear evidence punishments are not effective in improving problematic behaviour. Research suggests punitive responses actually increase future problematic student behaviour. A student often misbehaves when they feel disengaged and disengagement can come from feeling excluded from peers and teachers. The negative peer pressure associated with collective punishment compounds the likelihood of further social exclusion exacerbating the transgressing student’s disengagement. One imagines this would especially be the case for students being punished for something they didn’t do. (2019)

Instead, Thomas suggests that student engagement needs to be promoted and increased as engagement improves students’ sense of belonging, enjoyment in class and the value they place on education:

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Ways to promote engagement include prioritising individual student well-­ being, explicitly designing classes to be interesting, and creating a safe and enjoyable learning environment. If a student wants to be at school, he or she is much more likely to behave well. (2019)

Thomas suggests that teaching practices such as universal design for learning (which includes giving students various ways to acquire knowledge) and inquiry-based learning (where students are helped to make meaning out of what they learn) and cultivating an inclusive, positive school climate may result in fewer behaviours that come from disengagement. Here are two examples from my own early career in the 1970s which support Thomas’s argument. In 1975 I was a new teacher teaching at a large secondary school in the UK. I was asked to teach European Studies to a group of 14-year-olds who were considered not suitable for learning a modern European language. Quite a number of the young people in the class had reputations for bad behaviour in the school. I decided that I would let them decide what to do as long as it was roughly (very roughly) in the area of studying Europe. Over the previous summer I devised a wide range of individualised work folders on European topics so that the pupils could work on what they wanted at their pace, but I also said that they could work on individual projects if they wished to do so and I would help with resources and ideas if they wished. I also had access to various audio-visual aids but I only ever suggested that if they might like a break from their work then we could watch something and I always got the agreement of the class first. My role with this class was advisor and facilitator. Work could be assessed by way of providing constructive written feedback as a kind of dialogue rather than in a judgemental way as there was no formal qualification at the end. Despite my trepidation at the beginning and the fearsome reputation of some individuals, the group were a pleasure to teach all year. They were doing what they had chosen to do and could thus see the relevance of it. I didn’t have to even consider punishing one of them and they produced good work. This taught me a lot. A second example would be the experience of a teaching practice at what was then a progressive secondary comprehensive school in Leicestershire, UK, called Countesthorpe. At this school the students were treated as individuals and teachers were free to work with students on their interests. A great deal of effort was put into teaching relevant and

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interesting topics and pupils also had a say in the making of the school rules (Harber & Meighan, 1989). There was no school uniform. If students wanted to do or say anything, they could easily approach a member of staff (who were themselves very approachable) and discuss what could be done. In essence there was very little us and them and very little for pupils to kick against. ‘Discipline’ problems thus disappeared. Only on one occasion did I witness a teenage boy being difficult, but the other pupils were genuinely puzzled and themselves took him to task for being difficult for no reason. However, and it is a large however, the problem in many contemporary education systems is the predominance of a centrally prescribed, detailed and rigid national curriculum, a highly competitive examination and regular testing system, ranking by results and authoritarian and uniform school structures. These tend to remove the freedom and professional autonomy of teachers and thus their ability to meet the needs of their students in such an individualised, personalised and negotiated way. Thus the reality in many schooling systems globally is that pupils are seen to need to obey rules made by others and punished when they don’t because the preventative forms of teaching that minimise behaviour problems are very difficult to put into practice due to the dominant characteristics of the education system. The freedom to avoid problems arriving before they become a problem is much more difficult than it was and thus an emphasis on punishment over prevention. One example of this is the ‘zero tolerance’ criminalisation of school discipline that has occurred in America.

Punishing Pupils as Criminals In America there is a growing trend of criminalisation of student misbehaviour. School discipline cases concerning matters such as violations of the school dress codes and being loud and disruptive in school are increasingly being sent to the courts and the juvenile justice system rather than being handled by the principal’s office. The following two examples were cited in Harber (2008, p.  458). One girl who refused to abide by the dress code was handcuffed by a city police officer and taken into a police car to a detention centre. In Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky and Florida

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juvenile court judges are complaining that their courtrooms are at risk of being overwhelmed by student misconduct cases that should be handled in schools. One juvenile court judge talked of the ‘demonising of children’ (Rimer, 2004). A head teacher in South Carolina resigned amid public pressure after agreeing to a commando-style police raid in which officers stormed classes, guns drawn, handcuffing and pinning students to the floor in a futile drugs search (Phillips, 2006). This doesn’t seem to have changed. Ramey has argued that the everyday management of student behaviour in schools is increasingly influenced by the criminalisation and medicalisation of social control: These models of social control are particular evident in how American schools define and manage student behavior. Public schools utilize the surveillance (metal detectors and random searches), supervision (school resource officers and police officers in school), and deterrence (zero tolerance policies and exclusionary discipline) measures of the criminal justice system everyday… At the same time, American children are diagnosed and treated for behavior disorders at unprecedented rates… While they do not diagnose and treat children, schools help to identify medically recognized behavior disorders in students and craft curricula and discipline policies. (2020, p. 2)

Ramey states in relation to the criminalisation of school discipline and punishment that schools have adopted many of the surveillance methods and supervision strategies used in crime control as part of the daily educational setting; including metal detectors, closed-circuit cameras, police officers on school grounds, and random locker searches for contraband… Analogous to mandatory minimum sentencing in the criminal justice system, school zero tolerance policies mandate school removal for a litany of violent and drug offenses…and many school districts extended such policies to more minor offenses such as truancy or disruptive behavior… Mirroring increases in incarceration over the same period…the number of children experiencing suspension or expulsion for school misbehavior increased steadily between 1970 and 2012. (2020, p. 3)

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He also notes that The implementation of crime control strategies in schools has led to a number of negative consequences. Research connects school punishment experiences to weaker bonds to school…lower self-esteem…poor academic performance…and a failure to complete high school… These factors increase the likelihood that punished children will be involved with the criminal justice system during adolescence and adulthood. (Ramey, 2020, p. 3)

As regards medicalisation Ramey argues that There are several reviews of medicalization as social control…and a means of constructing childhood and child behavior… Medicalized social control refers to the adoption of medical terminology to describe a social problem and the use of medical technology and interventions to treat and control that problem… For children with perceived behavior problems, this includes defining behavior such as disrupting the classroom, daydreaming during lessons, or disrespecting administrators and teachers as symptoms of medically recognized disorders such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or conduct disorders… Typically, medical or psychological professionals will diagnose children suspected of showing a given disorder’s symptoms and providing treatment to control symptoms of the disorder. In the U.S., this usually entails some combination of therapy and medication. (2020, p. 4)

However, there are two ways of looking at the medicalisation of social control in schools and Ramey notes that sociologists do disagree. On the one hand medicalised social control offers schools tools to regulate common behaviour problems and improve concentration, attention and performance in the classroom. On the other hand, Many scholars argue that medicalized child social control is as problematic as criminalized child social control. For example, children diagnosed with ADHD or similar disorders are more likely to have to repeat a grade… In some cases, the requirement that children receiving services leave the classroom may compound feelings of social isolation and exclusion from peers… Similar to punitive social control, children who are diagnosed and

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treated for behavior problems risk being labeled a deviant or “troublemaker”… Because behavioral treatments are often open-ended and long-­ term, early medicalized social control experiences are more likely to lead to lifetime involvement with mental health professionals and continued use of medication to control behavior throughout adolescence and adulthood…, making it more difficult to shed deviant labels associated with medicalization. (2020, p. 5)

Mowen (2017) went beyond the impact on the pupils themselves and examined the impact or collateral consequences of the criminalisation of school punishment in America on the parents and families of disadvantageous pupils as these are the ones most likely to experience school punishment. He concludes: Interviews with primarily poor, single, Black mothers, reveal that as a result of school discipline, parents reported important collateral consequences including negative financial outcomes such as losing their job, negative emotional consequences including depression and emotional turmoil, and a decrease in future expectations for their child. Respondents highlighted that these consequences were largely attributable to social disadvantage and a lack of social capital. (Mowen, 2017, p. 832)

Moreover, Mallett (2016) further argues that the ‘zero tolerance’ policy widely adopted across America’s school districts significantly limited school personnel’s disciplinary alternatives for students who break rules on campus. This, he argues, has resulted in millions of primary and secondary age students experiencing suspension, arrests and, for some, expulsion, and such school punishments are significant risks, if not direct referrals, for juvenile court involvement. This in itself further contributes to the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ and allows no flexibility in terms of alternative forms of discipline such as Schoolwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS), socioemotional learning, professional (teacher) development and restorative practices which may well actually improve the school environments and make schools safer for all students. Mallett concludes that

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The school-to-prison pipeline captures many already vulnerable children and adolescents, beginning with inflexible and punitively focused state and school district policies, leading often to juvenile court involvement. Being disciplined in school through suspensions and expulsions is often a recidivist cycle that these young people have much difficulty ending. It is the responsibility of the school districts and schools to incorporate rehabilitative responses within their discipline codes to minimize school student removal. Keeping students in school improves not only the individual success outcomes, but makes schools safer and the learning environment more productive for all students. (2016, p. 301)

One example of a more positive and less punitive approach to school discipline that is being increasingly used internationally is termed ‘restorative justice’. Cremin et al. (2012, p. 422) describe this as involving an impartial third party facilitating a process whereby somebody who has caused an offence against another is held accountable and makes some form of reparation to his or her victim. The victim is given the opportunity to express the ways in which he or she has been affected and to ask questions about the offence, such as Why me? Am I safe? Sometimes there is a face-to-face meeting, although sometimes there is shuttle mediation by the third party. They also comment that ‘It has been positively evaluated, and shown to be very effective in diverting young people away from crime’ (2012, p. 422) and that It has been seen as a very effective behaviour management strategy in schools, and may well result in a reduction in exclusions…it can have a positive effect on pupils who are confronted for the first time with the consequences of their actions, and that it can provide new insights for teachers into the complexities of bullying and conflict between peers. It can also enhance feelings of empowerment, emotional literacy, and respect among teachers and pupils. It has been shown to improve the quality of relationships, and to restore friendships, or enable young people to simply learn to live with each other or keep out of each other’s way. (2012, p. 423)

However, Deakin and Kupchik (2016) did research in both British and American state schools and found that the widespread culture of competition and the priority on judging schools primarily by

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examination results led to an emphasis on school exclusion, despite concerns about the connections between school exclusion and the growth of a school-to-prison pipeline described above. Indeed, one of their conclusions was that If schools were positively evaluated for the implementation of restorative justice principles, rather than evaluated only on test scores and disciplinary incidents, then mainstream schools might be more likely to see its value and more fully incorporate restorative practices into their day-to-day practices. (2016, p. 296)

Do We Need School Punishment? Clearly, many of the punishments outlined above, as well as their consequences, are unacceptable in the framework of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Nevertheless, some education philosophers (e.g. Hand, 2020) have argued that, while it is not true that all school rules must be backed by punishment, there is an important subset of rules that do require this backing and that subset includes at least some of the rules governing social interaction in schools. However, others have argued that even routine, taken-for-granted punishments in schools have a more negative side than we often care to admit. Thus, Kohn (2006) argues: Our predilection for euphemism has allowed us to avoid seeing punitive practices for what they are. Thus, we incarcerate students but describe it as “detention”. We exile them from the community and refer to it as “suspension”. We forcibly isolate small children and call it by the almost Orwellian name “time out”. (2006, p. 24)

Moreover, pupils in schools are not even allowed control over their own bodies such as in what position they wish to work or when they want to go to the toilet. Many ordinary punishments can have negative consequences—giving pupils additional or longer assignments as a punishment, for example, sends a powerful message that learning is aversive, something someone would never actively want to do (Kohn, 2006, p. 25).

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An exercise I used to do with pre- and in-service students of education involved discussing the purpose of schooling—what the ideal person would be as a result of schooling. The list would usually include such things as critical thinker, tolerant, kind, generous, enquiring, self-­ motivated, self-disciplined, responsible, democratic and cooperative. We then compared this list to their own experience of schools as pupils and teachers, and every time the result was a glaring gap between the two. As Kohn, who has done similar exercises argues, no educator—or parent for that matter—has ever said that his or her long term goal for students is to know how to solve an equation with two variables, or remember the explorers of the New World…no one says “I want my kids to be compliant and docile”. (2006, p. 61)

In a detailed analysis Kohn (2006) raises the whole issue of whether there is really any need or justification for discipline and punishment in schools (often also described as ‘classroom management’). The book starts by citing John Dewey from Democracy and Education: The chief source of the “problem of discipline” in schools is that…a premium is put upon physical quietitude; on silence, on rigid uniformity of posture and movement; upon a machine-like simulation of the attitudes of intelligent interest. The teachers’ business is to hold pupils up to these requirements and to punish the inevitable deviations that occur. (Kohn, 2006, p. vii)

The gist of this argument then, and of Kohn’s, is that it is the very nature of schooling itself that creates most ‘discipline’ problems which the system then feels it must punish. It is one where ‘expectations, rules, and consequences are imposed on students. And it is typically driven by a remarkably negative set of beliefs about the nature of children’ (Kohn, 2006, pp. xii– xiii). He argues that most discipline programmes designed for schools are aimed essentially at control—getting the students to comply with whatever the adult demands and that students (and perhaps people in general) must be tightly regulated if they are to do anything productive. Kohn (2006) thus appropriately asks the question of who makes school and classroom rules and whether many are really necessary, because if you have rules people haven’t agreed to they will be broken

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and then will need to be punished. But then who decides what is ‘misbehaviour’—is it really necessary or reasonable for children to sit quietly and not move for a long period of time? Is it really necessary to raise your hand before speaking, to line up before entering or leaving the class or to wear a uniform prescribed by others? And if needlessly imposed rules are broken the teacher has to deal with the problem, taking time away from learning activities. Similarly with classroom behaviour it has a lot to do with what children are being asked to learn. As Kohn says, and of direct relevance to my own experience related above, any number of teachers can tell stories about students who stopped misbehaving as soon as something happened that made them feel competent—a more suitable task or something more interesting to them. Conversely, my sister-in-law who was a special educational needs teacher has complained bitterly about the behaviour problems with her students when she was forced to teach Shakespeare in a prescriptive way. Kohn’s book goes into considerable detail about the negative effects of enforcing compliance in terms of what it teaches about the use of power as opposed to reason, how it harms school relationships and impedes the ethical development of children. He also examines a wide range of (not very good) reasons of why schools punish children—because it is quick and easy, because it can get temporary compliance, because teachers experienced these regimes as children, because it is expected by various constituencies, including children themselves, because it makes us feel powerful, because it satisfies a basic desire for some sort of justice and because otherwise we will be seen as soft (Kohn, 2006, pp. 30–31). Moreover, punishment can only achieve temporary compliance at best, and the fact that some children get punished over and over again should raise questions about the effectiveness of punishment. Rather than imposing rules on children it would be far better, Kohn (2006, p.  71) argues, to ask children to create the rules. Davies et  al. (2005, Unit6) offer advice on drawing up both codes of conduct and classroom learning contracts in conjunction with pupils. This has certain important implications for teachers. One is consistent behaviour and setting a role model—treat others as you would be treated yourself. If you

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want pupils to behave in an adult and responsible manner, then they need to be treated as responsible adults. All in all, school systems should practice what they preach when they signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: State Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child. (Article 12, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, signed by every country in the world except America and Somalia)

As Kohn concludes, misbehaviour will diminish when children feel less controlled. Kids tend to be more respectful when their need to make decisions is respected; they are likely to be better behaved when there is no need for them to struggle to assert their autonomy…a safe school environment is one where students are able to really know and trust—and be known and trusted by—adults. Those bonds are ruptured by a system that’s based on making kids suffer when they do something wrong. (2006, pp. 81, 139)

Conclusion While schools continue to mainly control, and not work with pupils, discipline problems and punishments will continue to be a routine part of school life, contributing to an ‘us and them’ atmosphere not matching purported goals for education. However, even if punishments are used, they should be non-violent, proportionate and not arbitrary or cruel—a phrase used in South African education when I worked there is the late 1990s was ‘discipline with dignity’. Restorative justice would be one such approach. However, one of the key factors that makes school the way they are today globally is the emphasis on examinations and testing, and it is to this topic that we turn in Chap. 5.

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References Cremin, H., Sellman, E., & McCluskey, G. (2012). Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Restorative Justice: Developing Insights for Education. British Journal of Educational Studies, 60(4), 421–437. Davies, L., Harber, C., & Schweisfurth, M. (2005). Democratic Professional Development. CIER/CfBT. Deakin, J., & Kupchik, A. (2016). Tough Choices: School Behaviour Management and Institutional Context. Youth Justice, 16(3), 280–298. Dreeben, R. (1968). On What Is Learned at School. Addison-Wesley. Hand, M. (2020). On the Necessity of School Punishment. Theory and Research in Education, 18(1), 10–22. Harber, C. (2008). Perpetrating Disaffection: Schooling as an International Problem. Educational Studies, 34(5), 457–467. Harber, C., & Meighan, R. (1989). The Democratic School. Education Now. Harris, J. (2021, January 30). A Class of Their Own. The Guardian Weekend. Kohn, A. (2006). Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community. ASCD. Lightfoot, L. (2020, January 14). Ban the Booths: When School Is a Cubicle Where You Can’t Look Left or Right. The Guardian. Mallett, C. A. (2016). The School-to-Prison Pipeline: From School Punishment to Rehabilitative Inclusion. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 60(4), 296–304. McIntyre, N. (2019, August 31). School in Academy Chain Suspends More Than Half Its Students in a Year. The Guardian. Mowen, T.  J. (2017). The Collateral Consequences of “Criminalized” School Punishment on Disadvantaged Parents and Families. Urban Review, 49, 832–851. Phillips, S. (2006, February 6). Less Tolerance for Drug Raids on Pupils. Times Educational Supplement. Ramey, D. M. (2020). Recent Developments in School Social Control. Sociology Compass, 14, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12743 Rimer, S. (2004, January 5). Unruly Students as Delinquents. International Herald Tribune. Sawhney, S. (2018). Understanding the Play of Tacit Social Modelling in Classroom Interactions: A Qualitative Analysis. Compare, 48(4), 590–607.

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Shukla, V. (2018, December 10). Top 10 Worst School Punishments: Sometimes Teachers Go Just Too Far. ValueWalk. Thomas, J. (2019, July 12). Group Punishment Doesn’t Fix Behaviour – It Just Makes Kids Hate School. The Conversation. Titheradge, N. (2018, November 12). Hundreds of Pupils Spend Week in School Isolation Booths. BBC.

5 Examinations and Testing

The most highly ritualized technique of disciplinary power in school is the examination (Foucault, 1975). It serves to categorize and classify students by their success and failure in a narrow form of ability that is frequently misused and often inaccurate as a measurement of actual learning, application, critical thinking, problem-solving or long-term knowledge retention…Foucault writes that “the examination is the technique by which power…holds them in a mechanism of objectification. In this space of domination, disciplinary power manifests its potency, essentially by arranging objects. The examination is…the ceremony of its objectification (1975, p. 187). (Vanner, 2018, p. 44)

Examinations and Testing for Whose Benefit? Examinations and testing are ‘normal’, routine features of most, if not all, schooling systems globally. Schooling’s relationship with higher education and the labour market has meant that it has always been associated with competition, selection and measurement. As Broadfoot argues,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Harber, Post-Covid Schooling, Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87824-5_5

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We live in a world obsessed with data; with the collection and dissemination of performance indicators, statistics, measures, grades, marks and categories. In a world which it is assumed that quality can be defined, compared and certified. And a world in which what cannot be perceived, explained and measured is deemed either unimportant or non-existent, so that measurement not only dominates the means we choose to achieve our ends but the end itself. (2000, p. 199)

However, it is an interesting question as to whether the emphasis on examinations and measurement is beneficial to pupils themselves, such as diagnostic analysis of progress or identifying areas where help is needed, or whether this is more about ranking individuals and schools in terms of performance so that there are ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ and graded categories of each. Indeed, some think that regular tests and examinations are bad educationally. Bruno della-­Chiesa, senior analyst in charge of the learning sciences and brain research project being run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, for example, has said, Take exams. They are a completely useless way of ensuring that a child develops a skill. The exam system is not at all brain friendly. It doesn’t take into account the way the brain works. Yet in every education system I know, the exams dictate how the system, the teachers and the students work. He added that in some countries there was a desire to go back to the 1950s when teachers frightened children but that when a child is scared the part of the brain that routes short-term memories to the cortex for thinking and longer term memory simply shuts down. So if neuroscientists were designing an education system, fear and cramming would go and in their place would be fun, approval and recognition (Northern, 2005). Kohn (1993, chapters 8 and 11) also provides a detailed critique of the regular use of tests and grades using research evidence to support his argument that they demotivate pupils, harm the nature of learning that takes place, encourage cheating, damage the relationship between the teacher and learner and induce blind conformity. However, the emphasis on competitive examinations and testing in schooling systems worldwide is also a form of violence against many pupils because it harms them directly both physically and emotionally. Moreover, the problem may be

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hiding in plain sight because it is so taken for granted that testing and examinations is what school systems naturally do. For example, as we shall see below, self-harm and suicide are outcomes of examination pressure in some societies. Yet, a systematic search of 19 databases that produced 10,105 primary data research studies to assess the role of schools in self-harm and suicide concluded that schools do not recognise this as a problem in their midst and thus fail to do something about it when they could. This is therefore a form of what has been described earlier in this book as ‘indirect violence’ or violence by omission by schools. The authors of the study state: Schools recognise that self-harm and suicide is a problem, amidst fears that the pressures of modern society is contributing to a youth population with ever deteriorating well-being. However, the notion of ‘othering’ is inherent to discussion and debate, whereby schools focus on the classification of those who are different, whilst simultaneously distancing themselves from these ‘others’. Therefore, despite recognition of the phenomena of ­self-­harm and suicide at the abstract, population–level, schools often view it as happening in other schools, amongst other students. This can lead to these behaviours being rendered invisible within their respective setting, with two key processes amplifying this invisibility. Firstly, self-harming behaviours are socially constructed and must be definitionally brought into being before they can be acknowledged. Often only the most severe forms of self-harm are defined as such by school staff, and thus many behaviours are rendered invisible. Secondly, structural barriers, in terms of the time that staff can allocate to individual students, minimises opportunities for detection and disclosure. The ‘unseen’ nature of these behaviours ensures that the prevalence of self-harm is significantly underestimated by staff. As a result, it is not prioritised, with the resourcing of prevention and intervention activities reflecting the perceived scale of the problem. (Evans & Hurrell, 2016, p. 9)

However, another, even more important, conclusion from the review of over 10,000 studies was that education systems were also more directly involved in encouraging self-harm:

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Anxiety and stress associated with school performance may encourage engagement in self-harm and suicide. Academic pressure was reported across both primary and secondary schools, where self-injury was a mechanism for coping or regaining control. (2016, p. 8)

The following, therefore, are a series of country case studies that provide examples of how exams and testing can be bad for the health of children; the more the competition, the worse the consequences.

‘No Country for Young People’: The UK In the UK the National Health Service (NHS) has a website ‘Help your children beat exam stress’ (https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-­anxiety-­ depression/coping-­with-­exam-­stress). It states: Children and young people who are stressed may: • • • • • • • • •

worry a lot feel tense have headaches and stomach pains not sleep well be irritable lose interest in food or eat more than normal not enjoy activities they previously enjoyed be negative and have a low mood feel hopeless about the future

The site contains all sorts of useful tips for parents about how best to help and support young people through examinations but this is tackling the symptom rather than the cause, which is the nature and practices of schooling itself. Another website—Mark in Style (https://markinstyle. co.uk/exam-­stress-­statistics/)—contains what it terms are 25 plus alarming (and source referenced) UK exam stress statistics for 2020, and these do not relate to problems with examining during the Covid pandemic but rather during normal times. Here are a selection:

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• 15% of GCSE [General Certificate of Secondary Education] students may fall into the category of being ‘highly test anxious’. • 30% of children and young people talked to Childline about their mental or emotional health in 2018/19. • According to 82% of teachers, tests and exams have the biggest impact on pupils’ mental health. • 73% of teachers believe student mental health has worsened since the introduction of the reformed GCSEs. • 55% of teachers believe that mental health has worsened among students since the reforms of the A-Level exams. • 16.4% of the post-secondary students reported themselves to be ‘highly test anxious’. • 81% of school leaders worry more about pupils’ mental health during assessment periods than they used to. Indeed, an NHS (2016) report cites a study, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, which analysed in detail 130 teenage suicides and found that a significant major cause (along with bullying and bereavement) was examination stress. The study showed that 27% of those who died had experienced exam stress or other academic pressures. A year later The Guardian newspaper (Campbell, 2017) reported that an inquiry had concluded that suicides among children and young adults in the UK peak at the beginning of exam season, adding to fears that pressure to get good results is harming their mental health: Exams are sometimes the final straw that lead to someone under 25 taking their own life, according to a major inquiry. While experts pointed out that the causes of suicide are always complex, they said academic problems could play a significant role. In England and Wales on average, 96 people aged under 25 take their own lives every year in April and May, while the next highest number—88—do so in September, when new students start at university.

Sarah Brennan, the chief executive of the charity Young Minds said, ‘Ministers should rebalance the education system to ensure that students’

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wellbeing is given as much priority as their academic performance’ (Campbell, 2017). A survey of teachers for the National Education Union in the UK in 2018 found that pupils were self-harming and expressing suicidal feelings due to exam stress and pressure. More than two in three teachers said their school or college is having to provide significantly more support to students with mental health issues than five years ago. More than half (56%) of school staff said youngsters had been self-harming or thinking of self-harming. More than a quarter (27%) said mental health issues have led to pupils killing themselves, or attempting suicide, according to a poll of more than 700 school staff (Busby, 2018). In Wales Wightwick (2018) reports that a teaching union has warned that pupils are self-harming and expressing suicidal feelings due to stress. Moreover, in the UK it is now the law to stay in education till 18. Yet, there is still a major examination called the General Certificate of Secondary Education at 16, which used to be the school-leaving age for some. In an article entitled ‘No Country for Young People’, one person who had recently been through GCSE wrote, My first major issue with these exams and the one that I think makes GCSEs so harmful is their recorded impact on mental health. For example, according to a study conducted by the University of Manchester, almost 1 in 3 suicides in people under the age of 20 were by people facing imminent exams or imminent exam results. It was the second biggest contributory factor they uncovered. And when you look at that statistic in the context of all the recorded cases of GCSE-induced mental health conditions and suicides, you can see that GCSE students are among those most at risk. I find that absolutely staggering. If it were a weapon or a drug that was contributing to the deaths of young people on this scale, wouldn’t we ban it? If so, surely, we have a duty to scrap GCSEs. (Matheson, 2018)

He argues that, despite causing considerable harm, GCSEs serve little concrete purpose. Some students use them to apply for part-time jobs between the ages of 16 and 17, some use them to apply to colleges and apprenticeships. But both of those needs can be met without GCSEs. I’ve spoken to many employers about what they want from poten-

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tial employees that are between 16 and 17 and they really aren’t interested in most GCSEs, they just want to know that you have good maths and English. This is corroborated by the fact that in 2015, the then head of the CBI, which represents 190,000 employers in the UK, called for GCSEs to be scrapped because, in short, they don’t serve their purpose…Scrapping GCSEs would provide us with a tremendous opportunity. Students could start spending more time learning more things, without needing to cram quotes for English essays or memorise convoluted exam technique for biology 6 markers. The new maths and English exams could take up as little as 25 per cent of teaching time. By scrapping GCSEs and reducing the endless testing in schools, the opportunities to improve education in the UK would be immense. (Matheson, 2018)

Of course, crowded exam halls and Covid do not mix well. So, paradoxically, the Covid pandemic in the UK meant that, after years of emphasising the importance of final examinations based on memory at ages 16 and 18, in 2021 the UK government was forced to backtrack and rely much more on teacher assessment and coursework.

South Korea Lee et  al. (2010, p.  534) sum up academic research on the effects of examination competition in South Korea: Suicidal high school students in (South) Korea reported the most significant stressor in their life to include difficulties with career choice, low academic achievement, amount of academic work and lack of rest…In addition, receiving results on the university entrance examination was reported as a major trigger for suicide attempts from 1994 through 1999…It is also reported that poor academic performance contributes to depression and suicidal ideation among adolescents…One study found that depressive symptoms stemming from academic stress lead to suicidal ideation among adolescents.

In South Korea the ‘Suneung’ or College Scholastic Ability Tests (CSAT) take place on the third Thursday in November, after 12 years of

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hard work by school pupils. It is the main gateway to universities and some people take the exam up to five times: As competition is intense, extra private tutoring is common and in 2016, 83.6% of five-year-olds and 35.5% of two-year-olds attended private academies according to a survey by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education, so that on avarage Korean 15-year-olds who sit the OECD’s PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] test, have already taken 6.4 years of extra courses. (Whiting, 2018)

Perhaps not surprisingly, ‘According to the OECD’s triennial PISA report, more than 20% of Korean 15-year-olds in 2015 reported they were not satisfied in their life, compared to less than 4% of students in the Netherlands’ (Whiting, 2018). Every year, the pressure surrounding the exam is blamed for a number of student suicides. One survey by the Korea Youth Counseling Institute suggested that up to 48% of students have contemplated suicide (The Korean Herald, 23/11/2010). Indeed, the news channel Al Jazeera states, rather paradoxically, that ‘Korea has one of the best education systems in the developed world, but student suicide rates remain high.’ The article quotes one pupil as saying ‘Korean education is like a jungle. There is a lot of competition, you eat and get eaten’, and goes on to say, But now, critical voices are being raised about South Korea’s educational system, which they blame for high stress levels, problems with bullying and the highest suicide rates in the developed world. The number of students who considered suicide varies. According to the National Youth Policy Institute in Korea, one in four students considered committing suicide in 2012 while the Korea Health Promotion Foundation states that one in eight students considered suicide in the same year. (Sistek, 2013)

In fact global mass media contains articles about the ill, even deadly, effects of the examination system in South Korea every year but nothing seems to change.

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Egypt El-Sheikh (2018) has this to say about the secondary school certificate examination in Egypt: Nervous breakdowns, depression, fainting, anxiety, tension, lack of sleep, fear, intensive preparations and studying, and sometimes committing suicide. Those are just some examples of what happens to students during the annual “thanaweya amma” (secondary school) exams season. The agonising situation continues in 2018, despite many requests by families and students to improve the secondary education system in a way that could decrease the pressure and burdens on students. Thanaweya amma students rely, throughout the whole year, on taking private tutoring classes, as the majority of those studying in governmental schools do not attend their classes. Private tutoring could lead a family to pay over EGP 20,000 over a single year.

Farid (2018) quotes one Egyptian professor of psychiatry as saying that ‘suicide can be seasonal and referred in particular to the general secondary comprehensive exams, the Egyptian equivalent to the baccalaureate, based on which university admission is determined’. The professor further said that Baccalaureate students feel that their entire future relies on the grade they get in those exams and parents keep putting pressure on their children to get the highest grades…some cannot take this pressure or cannot deal with their failure to get the desired grade so they commit suicide. (cited in Farid, 2018)

China A four-year longitudinal study of secondary school pupils in Hong Kong (Shek & Li, 2016) found that adolescents’ perceptions of their school performance and life satisfaction dropped significantly from Secondary 1 to Secondary 4, whereas hopelessness increased over the same period. They also noted that as the depth and breadth of knowledge advances with each school grade, achieving good school performance becomes

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more difficult for adolescent students. As a result, students’ perceptions of their school performance decline as the demands on them at school increase. Shek and Li further state that In addition to the decline in perceived school performance, adolescent life satisfaction also showed a decreasing trend and their sense of hopelessness increased accordingly. The decrease in life satisfaction and increase in hopelessness experienced during adolescence lend credence to the findings of a European study, in which both male and female adolescents showed a significant declining trend in personal well-being. (2016, p. 929)

Moreover, Because the importance of school success in Chinese society is undisputed…students’ sense of hope is influenced to a great extent by their perceived school performance…Due to the dominant status of study in adolescent life, if students have poorer perceptions of their school performance, they are more likely to feel hopeless…because negative emotions increase in response to stressful life events. (Shek & Li, 2016, pp. 930–1)

This hopelessness and negative emotions can have serious consequences, particularly in relation to a key aspect of school success—examination success. Ash (2016) describes China’s gaokao final school exam as ‘brutal for the less successful’ as A high or low mark determines life opportunities and earning potential. That score is the most important number of any Chinese child’s life, the culmination of years of schooling, memorisation and constant stress.

John Holt in How Children Fail argued that one of the things that children learn in school is how to cheat. He noted that that the pressure for high test scores created ‘a kind of cheating; teachers are not supposed to cram children for these tests, but most of them do, particularly in schools that make a fetish of high test scores—which they call “high standards”’ (Holt, 1964, p. 153). Cheating in the gaokao exam is also a big issue leading to the criminalisation of education:

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With so much to gain or lose, cheating is a big problem. Spy cameras, radio devices and earpieces that transmit questions and receive answers have been found hidden in jewellery, spectacles, wallets, pens, rulers and underwear. Most examination rooms install CCTV cameras, and some use metal detectors…Fingerprint and iris-matching has been used to verify the identity of students. Exam papers are escorted to schools by security guards and monitored with GPS trackers, while the examiners who draft them are kept under close scrutiny in order to avoid leaks. This year, new regulations came into effect that could sentence cheats to up to seven years in prison. (Ash, 2016)

As elsewhere, the consequences of such competitive examinations can be fatal: It is no surprise that, for many students, the pressure heaped on them by parents, teachers and themselves is overwhelming. It is possible to retake the exam one year later, but if a student continues to fail there is no safety net or alternative path to university. Suicides are a regular feature of every exam season; a 2014 study claimed that exam stress was a contributing factor in 93% of cases in which school students took their own lives. Last year, a middle school in Hebei province fenced off its upper-floor dormitory balconies with grates, after two students jumped to their deaths in the months leading up to the gaokao. And the academic stress starts early—in July a 10-year-old boy tried to kill himself in oncoming traffic after fighting with his mother about homework. But still the study mill grinds on. (Ash, 2016)

India Arun and Chavan (2009) note in their study of stress and suicidal ideas in India that school students in India have a high stress level and high rate of deliberate self-harm. In their study of 2402 school students: 1078 (45.8%) had psychological problems, half (1201 students) perceived problems in their role as students, 930 (45%) reported academic decline, 180 (8.82%) students reported that life was a burden, 122 (6%) reported suicidal ideas and 8 (0.39%) students reported a suicidal attempt. (2009, p. 281)

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This is perhaps not surprising given the examination pressures they face. Kale (2018) describes the intense competition among school pupils in India to get into one of the prestigious but vastly oversubscribed Institutes of Technology in order to become dentists, doctors or engineers. To prepare, school students from across India travel to the city of Kota, spending months or even years away from their family and home for private coaching and intense cramming prior to the entrance exams. Of course, because of the very competitive nature of entry to these elite institutions, for most candidates all this is futile despite the stressful preparation and this leads to both psychological problems and suicide. From 2014 to November 2017, 45 Kota students committed suicide. At the time Kale wrote the article at least three people had taken their lives in 2018. Sharma (2019) describes how a petition filed in the Indian Supreme Court revealed that more than 400 students under 18 years of age committed suicide in the national capital of Delhi between 2014 and 2018. Sharma quotes Aruna Bordoloi, a consultant at the Fortis Stress Helpline run by the hospital chain’s department of mental health and behavioural sciences in Delhi, who said the pressure of examinations and results is a huge reason for youngsters to be stressed. We do get a lot of calls from young people and the numbers increase during exams and results. Students call us saying that they are stressed and under pressure. Other than this, relationship-related calls are also very common from young people. (cited in Sharma, 2019)

In 2019 the BBC reported that at least 23 teenagers in southern India had killed themselves since receiving their school-leaving exam results in April: More than 320,000 students in the state of Telangana were told they failed their school-leaving exams, sparking a spate of mental health issues. But after a re-mark of the “failed” papers in May, 1,137 of the students had their results revised and were declared successful in the exams. By this time it was too late for some. One girl consumed poison on the day she found out she had failed her final exams. (Brewis, 2019)

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Bhutan A study of youth and young adult suicide in neighbouring Bhutan found that pressures to succeed in school and then higher education plus limited opportunities both within schooling and after were contributing factors and that ‘Pressure from family to succeed is only augmented by pressure from teachers and peers…Academic competition and an exam-­ based system can leave students in Bhutan with experiences of shame and few choices of their own’ (Lester et al., 2020, p. 136). Even for youth who are able to complete higher secondary school, job opportunities with the government are too few, and the remuneration for jobs with private companies is too low for the cost of living in cities. The authors note that feelings of lack of control and powerlessness have been shown to contribute to suicide risk and that it is easy to see how they might develop among Bhutanese youth with such limited career opportunities. They observe a contradiction inherent in development and modernisation in Bhutan: The overarching context of these struggles is the fast pace of Westernization and modernization in Bhutan. In a developing nation with education out of step with other elements of change, poverty and poor living conditions remain common, with Bhutan’s poverty rate reported at 8.2%…Youth in Bhutan experience an increasing tension between the slow-paced traditional way of living and the modern fast-paced and competitive influence of Western culture. (Lester et al., 2020, p. 136)

Kenya Vanner (2018) explores in some detail the everyday relationships between gender violence—corporal punishment, bullying, peer victimisation and sexual violence and harassment—and examination pressure in two schools in Kenya. She found that gender violence continues to be perpetuated by an education system that prioritises hierarchy, testing and order. Performance in high-stakes tests remained the overwhelming determinant of what constitutes a ‘good’ student or school. Moreover,

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In both schools, the prevalence of gender violence either directly or indirectly related to the prominence of examination pressure. Corporal punishment is not only exercised by teachers and school administration but is used instrumentally to increase students’ fear of failing examinations, with the intent of increasing their examination scores. The emphasis on competition and ‘beating’ other students permeates student peer relationships, resulting in increased victimization of both high and low performing students. Finally, school level efforts to prevent sexual violence, such as encouraging students to travel during daylight and implementing ­empowering extracurricular programs, are pushed aside in favour of longer days to study and prepare for examinations. (Vanner, 2018, p. 43)

She adds that the examination system played a significant role in social and economic reproduction, as discussed in Chap. 1: The classification system by which multiple choice questions produce superior and inferior students, teachers and schools had a dramatic influence on all the teaching and learning processes I observed. The school system’s orientation toward discipline and order was reflected in the process of measuring learning and achievement that enables the system to compare students easily without considering the larger elements of the person, their development and their ability to apply knowledge outside of the examination context. Students were reduced to their ability to produce examination results that will benefit the school, reinforcing an inequitable system that uses examinations to identify ‘good students’—usually from higher socioeconomic backgrounds—to proceed to better quality national secondary schools. The process categorizes student ability and thus determines the future of lower achieving students to either go to public day secondary schools or to leave the school system entirely. In this way, the class structure and system of hegemony are maintained, sorting students into the categories that will determine their future socioeconomic status and conditioning them to accept and expect these outcomes. (2018, p. 44)

While Vanner explains in considerable detail the ways in which the over-emphasis on examinations caused gender violence, she summaries the situation thus:

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The prevailing discourse dictates that examination results, order and discipline are the most important objectives of the primary school system. As a result, the gender violence that permeates the school environment is considered regrettable but ultimately less important and subsequently ignored. (2018, p. 44)

Conclusion This selection of evidence from around the world shows examinations at their current level and in their current form cause harm to pupils and, in too many cases, serious harm and death. Do schooling systems really need the level of examination and testing they currently have? Whose interests do they serve? There are many ways in which assessment can, for example, be more spread over time, diversified to test a greater range of skills, knowledge and understanding, and made less pressurised and more helpful to both pupils and teachers. This would not only help to reduce the harm done but might also help to create less-authoritarian classrooms freed from the enforced reliance of rote, retention and regurgitation in order to pass memory-based examinations. It is ironic that the PhD, the highest qualification in many education systems, is based on individual research, enquiry, reflection, critical scholarship and understanding. If such qualities are important why are they not assessed (which they most certainly can be) lower down the schooling system as well as, instead of so much reliance on high-stakes cramming and memorisation? One possible answer is that schooling is about mass instruction for (unequal) societal and political needs rather than individual needs or personalisation, and it is to this uniformity that we turn in Chap. 6.

References Arun, P., & Chavan, P. (2009). Stress and Suicidal Ideas in Adolescent Students in Chandigarh. Indian Journal of Medical Sciences, 63(7), 281–287. Ash, A. (2016, October 12). Is China’s Gaokao the World’s Toughest School Exam? The Guardian.

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Brewis, H. (2019, July 19). ‘At Least 23’ Indian Students Kill Themselves After Receiving Incorrect School Exams Results. Evening Standard. Broadfoot, P. (2000). Assessment and Intuition. In T. Atkinson & G. Claxton (Eds.), The Intuitive Practitioner. Open University Press. Busby, E. (2018, April 10). Pupils Self-Harm and Express Suicidal Feelings Due to Exam Stress and School Pressure, Warn Teachers. The Independent. Campbell, D. (2017, July 13). Suicides by Young People Peak in Exam Season, Report Finds. The Guardian. El-Sheikh, S. (2018, June 5). Students Narrate Ongoing Thanaweya Amma Exams ‘Nightmare’. Egypt Daily News. Evans, R., & Hurrell, C. (2016). The Role of Schools in Children and Young People’s Self-Harm and Suicide: Systematic Review and Meta-Ethnography of Qualitative Research. BMC Public Health, 16(401), 1–16. Farid, S. (2018, October 10). Why Are More and More Egyptians Committing Suicide? Al Arabiya. Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Vintage Books/Random House. Holt, J. (1964). How Children Fail. Penguin. Kale, S. (2018, April 20). In India, High-Pressure Exams Are Creating a Student Suicide Crisis. Wired. Kohn, A. (1993). Punished by Rewards. Houghton Mifflin. Lee, S., Hong, J. S., & Espelage, D. (2010). An Ecological Understanding of Youth Suicide in South Korea. School Psychology International, 3(5), 531–546. Lester, S., Sacra, M., Durham, J., & Nirola, D. (2020). Youth and Young Adult Suicide in Bhutan: A Stress and Resilience Approach. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling, 42, 132–146. Matheson, J. (2018, September 6). No Country for Young People: 1  in 3 Suicides in Under 20s Caused by Exam Stress. Shout Out UK, The Voice of the Next Generation. NHS. (2016, May 26). Exam Stress Linked to Teen Suicide. https://www.nhs. uk/news/mental-­health/exam-­stress-­linked-­to-­teen-­suicide/ Northern, S. (2005, February 25). Enjoy an Intellectual Orgasm. Times Educational; Supplement. Sharma, K. (2019, August 19). 443 Delhi Students Committed Suicide in 5 Years, Exam Stress and Failed Relationships to Blame. The Print. Shek, D., & Li, X. (2016). Perceived School Performance, Life Satisfaction, and Hopelessness: A 4-Year Longitudinal Study of Adolescents in Hong Kong. Social Indicators Research, 126(2), 921–934.

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Sistek, H. (2013, December 8). South Korean Students Wracked with Stress. Aljazeera. Vanner, C. (2018). ‘This Is a Competition’: The Relationship Between Examination Pressure and Gender Violence in Primary Schools in Kenya. International Journal of Educational Development, 62, 35–46. Whiting, K. (2018, November 15). Why South Korea Falls Silent Once a Year for Its Students. The World Economic Forum. Wightwick, A. (2018, April 27). Is Exam Stress Driving Our Children to Mental Illness and Even Suicide? Wales Online.

6 School Uniform and Uniformity

Uniformity School…is a mere method of discipline which refuses to take into account the individual…a manufactory for grinding out uniform results. (Rabindranath Tagore, 1913, Nobel Prize winner for literature) A general state education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, it establishes a despotism over the mind leading to a natural tendency to one over the body. (John Stuart Mill, ‘On Liberty’—both quotations cited in Black, 2010)

One of the key criticisms of the mass production model of global modern schooling exported by industrialised countries to ‘developing’ countries through colonialism is its emphasis on uniformity—a similar, largely academic, one size fits all curriculum is taught as a way of preparing young people for jobs in the modern urban sector even if the result is simply more people who are both educated and unemployed or underemployed. This is because, with the changed expectations that result from

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formal schooling, the relatively small and modern urban sectors of the economy often cannot absorb them. A key factor in the emphasis on uniformity and standardisation—corresponding lack of emphasis on the individual—in schooling is often the sheer numerical size of schools and classrooms. Indeed, in a book on small schooling that examined these arguments some 25 years ago, I described my own initial experience as a teacher in a large secondary school: My first teaching job was in a very large comprehensive school of 2,400 students. It was of course impossible to know more than a fraction of the students and more than a small proportion of the staff…as I became more familiar with the bureaucratic and mass organisational nature of the school, the problems of communication…and keeping track of students became more obvious. Not surprisingly, the school experienced considerable problems of truancy and deviance. (Harber, 1996, p. 2)

Indeed, Lee and Burkam (2003) in their research in America found a relationship between lower school dropout and small school size, and they suggest that this has to do with the less impersonal quality of relationships in smaller schools and that such findings indicate that there may be other social benefits that accompany smaller size—including organizational trust, members’ commitment to a common purpose, and more frequent contact with people with whom members share their difficulties, uncertainties, and ambitions. (2003, p. 285)

One common and everyday visual and linguistic indicator of this uniformity in schools in many countries is the enforced wearing of a school uniform.

School Uniform as Problematic The overall assumption, widely accepted in education, is that school uniform policies are well-intended and have positive implications on school discipline and uniformity. This assumption has disinterested many from researching the issue in depth. (Sabic-el-Rayess, 2020, p. 1128)

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I was once helping to show a party of Ghanaian educators around schools in the UK and I asked them: how do I know those youngsters over there are from a European country and not British? They were puzzled by the question, but the simple answer was that they were of school age and not wearing school uniforms. In Malaysia, and influenced by British missionaries in the nineteenth century, the government has used school uniform as a tool of political socialisation in attempts to foster and encourage national unity and national identity: As part of a national school uniform policy, all primary and secondary school students in Malaysia are required to wear a standardized uniform when attending school. Although specific badges identify the school that each student attends, and there are different versions for males as well as Muslim and non-Muslim females, students all over the country are required to wear essentially the same outfits. (Woo et al., 2020, pp. 1–2)

But Britain, and ex-colonial societies historically part of the British Empire, are not the only countries with school uniform. Alexander (2000, p. 10) describes a school in Russia: The children play…but their manner changes the instant they are summoned into the classroom for the first of their 40 minute lessons. Warm coats are removed, and the crisp, clean and relatively formal attire is in marked contrast to the jeans, trainers and designer clothing we have seen in France. The children stand by their desks, sit only when instructed by their teacher to do so, quickly and efficiently arrange books, book rests and pens in a preordained pattern and await their instructions.

School uniforms are said to have certain benefits: School uniforms are said to encourage a sense of collective membership, helping young people value togetherness and democratic ideals of equality, promoting unity. Uniforms encourage social mobility since they reduce class differences between peers. There is no pressure to dress in a particular way and consequently one less reason for social exclusion. In practical terms, there are likely to be fewer incidents of lateness too given students can get dressed quickly in the morning. (Owen, 2017)

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There are, of course, immediate problems with these supposed benefits. One is that, as argued with evidence in this book and elsewhere, almost every other experience of schooling is not democratic, thus contradicting the democratic ideals espoused above. The second is that, as argued in Chap. 1 of this book and with solid evidence elsewhere, schooling is a major engine in facilitating the social and economic reproduction of the existing order rather than equality of opportunity, uniform or no uniforms. Thus to pretend that all pupils’ life chances are equal because they wear the same uniform is a way of disguising the truth behind a façade of uniform clothing, though often this façade is thin as the uniform of poorer children is in a very different condition to that of richer children. Third, I went to a school where pupils wore uniform and, for various reasons which had nothing to do with uniform, pupils were repeatedly late every day, sometimes being caned for it. Most importantly, there is no evidence that school uniform improves academic attainment. Indeed, analysis of research by The Education Endowment Foundation in the UK found no robust evidence that school uniform by itself would improve academic performance, behaviour or attendance. For every school that succeeded in raising attainment by introducing a uniform policy, another has failed (Mroz, 2018; Elliot & Higgins, 2017). Osler’s study of pupils’ views of schooling in England found that students thought that school uniform seriously hindered the primary business of the school, namely teaching and learning as it was said to cause unnecessary tension between students and teachers so that students advocated either relaxing uniform rules or abandoning it altogether (Osler, 2010, pp. 65–66). One of the most successful countries in the world in terms of the quality of education and pupil achievement is Finland, and politicians from other countries often visit to try to uncover the secret of their success. So it is indeed odd that in Finland, which scores consistently well at the top of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) international league table, there are no school uniforms (Weale, 2019). The American ProCon website has an interesting page setting out the pros and cons of school uniform (ProCon.Org, 2020). The website points out that

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David L.  Brunsma, PhD, Professor of Sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), co-authored a study that analyzed a national sample of 10th graders and found “no effects of uniforms on absenteeism, behavioral problems (fights, suspensions, etc.), or substance use on campus” and “no effects” on “pro-school attitudes, academic preparedness, and peer attitudes toward school.”… Brunsma also found a “negative effect of uniforms on academic achievement,” and later found that uniforms were equally ineffective on elementary students and eighth graders. A peer-reviewed study found “no significant effects of school uniforms on performance on second grade reading and mathematics examinations, as well as on 10th-grade reading, mathematics, science, and history examinations… [I]n many of the specifications, the results are actually negative.” (ProCon, 2020; original emphasis)

The ProCon website notes that one argument in favour is that school uniform may deter crime and increase student safety. Unfortunately, in South Africa where school uniform is widely worn, this is very far from being the case, and any reduction in violence at school is far more likely to be associated with better school and classroom organisation (Harber & Mncube, 2017). Moreover, the website adds that Tony Volk, PhD, Associate Professor at Brock University, stated, “Overall, there is no evidence in bullying literature that supports a reduction in violence due to school uniforms.” A peer-reviewed study found that “school uniforms increased the average number of assaults by about 14 [per year] in the most violent schools.” A Texas Southern University study found that school discipline incidents rose by about 12% after the introduction of uniforms. According to the Miami-Dade County Public Schools Office of Education Evaluation and Management, fights in middle schools nearly doubled within one year of introducing mandatory uniforms. (ProCon, 2020)

The website also notes that the First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees that all individuals have the right to express themselves freely and that it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. It also observes that in Sweden, the School Inspectorate

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determined that uniforms were a human rights violation because ‘dress and appearance should be considered an individual expression, decided by the students themselves’. The website adds: Uniforms take away the ability to use clothing as means of expressing support for social causes. Students at Friendly High School in Prince George’s County, MD, were not allowed to wear pink shirts to support Breast Cancer Awareness Month and 75 students received suspensions for breaking the school’s uniform restrictions. (ProCon, 2020)

A study of pupils’ views of schooling in the UK also found that The imposition of school uniform was for many children an affront to individuality, a determination to produce ‘superficial sameness’. Where children accepted that a uniform was a leveller, they invariably also produced drawings and new designs to make what was ‘outdated’ more tolerable. (Burke & Grosvenor, 2003, p. 95)

Rather than meaning that students were less focussed on what they were wearing it is equally possible to argue that school uniforms promote conformity over individuality: Chicago junior high school student Kyler Sumter wrote in the Huffington Post: “They decide to teach us about people like Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony and Booker T. Washington… We learn about how these people expressed themselves and conquered and we can’t even express ourselves in the hallways.”… Troy Shuman, a senior in Harford County, MD, said the introduction of a mandatory uniform policy to his school would be “teaching conformity and squelching individual thought. Just think of prisons and gangs. The ultimate socializer to crush rebellion is conformity in appearance. If a school system starts at clothes, where does it end?” (ProCon, 2020)

However, there are other problems with school uniform. One is exclusion based on cost. In many ‘developing’ countries indirect costs such as school uniforms are one of the factors reducing access to schooling and therefore increasing exclusion and inequality (Harber, 2014, chap. 2;

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UNESCO, 2015). Duflo et  al. (2006) note in relation to Kenya, for example, that school children are still unable to afford the $6 cost of school uniform in a nation where the GDP is $360 per year (Duflo et al., 2006). Sabic-el Rayess et al. cite Kremer et al. (2003) on a randomised study to estimate differences between children who received free uniforms and a control group who did not. The study examines the impact of a textbook and uniform provision programme on randomly selected schools in Kenya and finds that students in treatment schools remained enrolled ‘an average of 0.5 years longer and advanced an average of 0.3 grades further than their counterparts in comparison schools’. However, the same study also suggests that there is a reason why pupils who cannot afford a school uniform in Kenya are excluded: Because the overall low performance of a school affects the placement of headmasters, headmasters have an incentive to keep poor children, who are perceived to be both low performing and also not owning uniforms, out of school. (Sabic-el-Rayess, 2020, p. 1128)

In such countries, some pupils will wear school uniform to school while others will not, and this can also affect the inclination of poorer students to drop out of school. However, as Sabic-el-Rayess et  al., for example, also notes, Poor students’ inability to afford school uniforms as compared to their peers produces a sense of exclusion, but only if and when the majority of students is wearing school uniforms. The poor drop out from school when their symbolic association with the majority is visibly broken through their inability to afford and wear school uniforms. (2020, p. 1124)

In their own study of school uniform in Mongolia, Sabic-el-Rayess et  al. (2020) found that school uniform significantly affected school dropout rates of pupils from a poor background, as self-esteem and inclusion are adversely affected by not having a school uniform: poor students internalise the impact of whether their peers wear school uniforms or not. If a student attends a school where 50–75% of his/her peers wear uniforms, surveyed students believe that students in their school

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are 9.006 times more likely to drop out due to the high cost of school uniforms as compared to those students who attend a school where nearly everyone can afford school uniforms. If students see more than half of the student body wearing uniforms, they do not want to be singled out as the socioeconomic minority and seen as the bottom echelon that cannot afford to buy school uniforms. (2020, p. 1134)

Ironically, a study of the provision of free school uniform on school attendance targeted at poor households in Ecuador found that it actually reduced school attendance. The authors explain this rather surprising result thus: A part of it is likely to be due to some students who were promised a uniform but didn’t receive it (on time) not having a uniform when the school starts or being disappointed with school. The results from the two provinces in which the implementation of the program failed and where no uniforms were delivered, point to that. This, however, cannot explain the entire negative effect in the three provinces where the program was properly implemented. A possible explanation for the finding in these provinces is that parents who pay for their children’s school uniforms (those in the control group) feel more committed to the school than parents whose children get the uniforms for free (the treated) and therefore do not allow their children to miss classes too easily. (Hidalgo et al., 2013, p. 48)

An article in The Economist (Anonymous, 2020) notes that state schools in England have been branding everything from shirts to scarfs. Such items have to be bought in specific shops, and the absence of competition allows retailers to bump up prices and parents have objected to these monopolies. Ironically, this even includes Covid face masks: For some schools, no opportunity to extend the range of uniform items goes unmissed. Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School in Cheshire has made covid-19 facemasks compulsory. Their navy blue masks must be bought from their uniform supplier, Sam Dale & Son, at £3 a pop. (Anonymous, 2020)

The article also notes that, despite these cost implications,

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The Education Endowment Foundation looked at the costs and benefits of 35 measures which might, or might not, enhance children’s performance. Uniforms were among the least effective. (Anonymous, 2020)

In 2019 it was reported that schools in Wales will be made to offer cheaper, gender-neutral uniform options from September, as the Welsh government seeks to tackle the rising costs of school clothing for families. The statutory guidance issued by the Department for Education means Welsh state schools that are revising their uniform codes will need to avoid exclusive deals that force parents to buy from a single supplier and must ensure that uniform items are widely available, avoiding expensive logos and designs. The new rules also mean schools can no longer have separate uniform codes for boys and girls, so that trousers or shorts, for example, will be available for either to wear. The new rules will also apply to PE and sports kit, which are often among the most expensive items that families need to buy. According to some estimates, school uniform can cost more than £300 per child at secondary school, with that cost rising if expensive blazers or hi-tech sports kit has to be included (The Guardian 10/7).

Conform to the Uniform In a study of the role of school uniform in Iran, Baradarankashani et al. (2020) note that social space in Iran is governed by a dominant ideological approach, which has a predetermined framework for understanding and interpreting various aspects of society and which seeks to institutionalise certain beliefs in the society. Thus, they argue, school is an ideological system that shapes the mentality of students based on Islamic ideology and the experience process reproduces dominant beliefs and values. The study examined the role of school uniform in this context of social control. It concluded that females took two main approaches to school uniform, which they saw as imposed on them. Some female students compromised and accepted the rules concerning uniform and appearance, even though they didn’t like doing so but others showed their dissatisfaction through a strategy of resistance and disapproval. But in both

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cases school uniform was perceived as an imposition to infantalise and control them. However, too much resistance was difficult because in a situation where power is not with the students the result can be social isolation and alienation. Park (2013) examined the history of school uniforms in South Korean schools and the attitudes and habits of students in relation to their uniforms and concluded that school uniforms and appearance restrictions do not improve grades and create a financial burden for parent. However, they can deny students the expression of individuality and creativity. Indeed, Park is concerned that since Korean students wear their uniforms almost every day and for the majority of their day, and since clothes are one of the most direct methods of self-expression, school uniforms play a role in restricting the creativity of students. (2013, pp. 160–161)

Park notes that in South Korea adolescents spend about 13 hours a day in their school uniforms, that school uniforms generally tend to look alike and that Korean schools have additional personal appearance restrictions regarding everything from hairstyle to make-up, shoes and accessories. Most South Korean middle schools and high schools do not allow students to grow their hair past a certain length, perm or colour their hair, or wear any hair products such as hairspray, gel or wax. She also argues that this control and uniformity reflects other aspects of the South Korean schooling system: Students sit at desks that are lined up in a uniform way facing the blackboard; there are rarely discussions in class, students mostly listen to the teacher and take notes, and are accustomed to memorizing everything when studying for exams in almost all subjects. (Park, 2013, p. 162)

Park did focus group interviews with students who wore uniform at school and found that none were satisfied with it and all made alterations to it in some way. One student said. We’re not allowed to wear any accessories; we can’t grow our hair longer than past our collar although this isn’t as harsh as 4  cm maximum, for

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example. We are not allowed to alter our uniforms, but we all do anyway. I think restrictions are natural in Korea, but if I could change school rules I would get rid of the uniform and all restrictions and make school a comfortable place like in other countries. With so many rules, we are so restricted that it is difficult to make our own decisions. (Park, 2013, p. 171)

The same student said that he did not like that everyone looked the same, and instead of a sense of belonging, he felt trapped. He added that he believes wearing school uniforms decreases creativity in students, making them less creative than students who do not wear uniforms, and that students could probably develop in a more creative way if they did not wear uniforms: How can we be expected to grow into creative adults if we are not even allowed to express ourselves in a creative way? We don’t really do art in art class or music in music class, we just memorize everything in the book. The least we should be allowed to do is wear our own clothes and accessories so we can experiment with visual things in daily life. (2013, pp. 171–172)

Another student said, What clothes you wear and what you do with your hair or face is part of your freedom. I hate that the school tries to take away my basic freedom. Each individual is different, and I am so unhappy with how little I can express myself that it distracts me from focusing on schoolwork. (2013, p. 173)

Mahlangu provides another interesting example from Indonesia of the downside of school uniforms: According to Moser (2016) in Indonesia because of uniform rules some students arrived at school wearing a batik shirt, their most formal school uniform worn on national holidays. Others wore their regular formal uniform used for the Monday flag ceremonies. Some wore their school tracksuits, prepared for Senam Pagi Indonesia, the Friday morning calisthenics. Others were dressed in their Saturday uniforms of traditional Malay wear, also a symbol of Muslim faith. These students realised that they are all wearing different uniforms and asked teachers as they arrived in the school

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yard what the proper uniform was for that day. Teachers were unsure and waited until the principal arrived, who announced that during the month of Ramadan it was compulsory for all students to wear traditional Malay costumes. Many students went home to change, and one boy wearing a tracksuit lived too far away from the school and could not go home. He sat on the ground in the corner of the yard humiliated and crying while he was teased by other students for being bodoh (stupid, ignorant) for wearing the wrong uniform. (2017, p. 125)

Even in a country largely without official school uniform such as America, there can be a dress and general appearance code enforced to spell out what is acceptable and what is not. Aghasaleh (2018, p. 104) notes that Critical theorists agree that in most schools, the hidden curriculum socializes students to be passive and directed by others and to follow orders by taking the rewards and punishments of authorities seriously. They learn to care about things they do not care about, and they are impotent to affect their situation. Although teachers lecture about democracy, schools are undemocratic places, and so democracy is rarely part of school culture.

Aghasaleh then draws on Foucault to argue that through compulsory dress codes students are socialised to regulate their bodies as docile and, therefore, be good citizens both in the school and in society. School’s dress code is essentially juridical, centred on statements of the law and the operation of taboos, which makes punishments for dress code violations seem normal and reasonable. Aghasaleh goes on to argue that School dress codes are enforced to battle distractions of student culture that are assumed to interfere with the school’s mission of academic achievement and competency… In the past few decades, as a reaction to crime and gang violence, public schools are increasingly implementing dress codes… Some rationales for enforcing dress codes include prevention of gang-­ related violence, prevention of clothing theft, and the imposition of discipline. (2018, p. 98)

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However, this can mean that dress codes act in ways that discriminate against bodies that do not fit in, such as black, brown, female or working class, and wish to dress in a different way: Dress code means some bodies are more privileged over the other. Dress code is to regulate and maintain the normative gender, sexuality, race, and class. Halter-tops, tube tops, one shoulder tops, muscle shirts, see-through, or mesh tops are not to be worn. Blouses, shirts, or tops that reveal bare backs, midriffs, undergarments, or that have spaghetti straps or revealing necklines are also described as inappropriate at school. School administration is simply worried that revealing too much skin by girls attracts the male gaze and distracts them from academics. Similarly, acting Black and wearing clothes of working-class is disruptive for education. Furthermore, it foregrounds some bodies over their intellectual abilities. (2018, p. 102)

In England, schools have been accused of unfairly punishing black students for their hairstyles, wearing bandanas and ‘kissing teeth’ because of racial bias (Busby, 2020). It is argued that black students are being disproportionately targeted by ‘draconian’ zero-tolerance behaviour and uniform policies in schools, as well as subconscious negative stereotypes held by teachers. Busby points out that experts have warned that a government push to increase ‘academies’—which are state schools independent of councils—may have worsened the experience of black pupils as there is less scrutiny by elected local authorities. The campaign group No More Exclusions, which is predominantly led by black and minority ethnic teachers and parents, says black girls are frequently being sent home for having braids in their hair and other black students have been suspended for kissing teeth—the sound of sucking air through the teeth through pursed lips, a sound common in African and Caribbean culture. Busby (2020) states: Zahra Bei, founder of No More Exclusions and a teacher of 20 years, has suggested that black students are sanctioned more harshly by some teachers because of a lack of understanding about cultural traits. The former teacher recently witnessed black male pupils with very short hair being placed in isolation in an academy, but she claims white pupils with similar length hair were not penalised in the same way. “A black child that kept coming

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in for his short hair said to me, ‘Miss, my family can’t afford to have my hair cut often so I have to have it short so it lasts longer,’” Ms Bei said. “These are very draconian ways to punish kids.”

A study of race in British schools by Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly (2018) examined the everyday minutae of social control in schools by focussing on the issue of hair: Centering Black hair as a site of social control, and using a contemporary case study to illustrate, this article argues that it is through such forms of routine discipline that conditions of white supremacy are maintained and perpetuated. Whilst our entry into a ‘post-racial’ epoch means school policies are generally thought of as race-neutral or ‘colorblind’, we draw attention to how they (re)produce and normalise surface-level manifestations of anti-Blackness. Situating Black hair as a form of ‘racial symbolism’ and showing Black hairstyles to be significant to Black youth, we show that the governance of hair is not neutral but instead, acts as a form of social control that valorises whiteness and pathologises Blackness. (2018, p. 219)

In a nutshell the issue is highlighted in the case study described in the opening paragraph of the article by Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly: In September 2017, 12-year-old Chikayzea Flanders arrived for his first day at Fulham Boys School in London, England. With the school deeming his dreadlocked hair to be in breach of its uniform policy, he was placed in ‘isolation’—a disciplinary measure typically used to place ‘disruptive’ ­students in an area away from other students for a limited period of time… Additionally, he was threatened with suspension from the school, unless he cut his dreadlocked hair. The approach adopted by the school was considered by Chikayzea’s family and protesting members of the public to be an example of racist school policy: the targeting of racially minoritised students because their physical appearance does not conform to (white) norms and expectations around self-presentation. (2018, p. 219)

However, his mother was dissatisfied with the school’s handling of her complaint, particularly its failure to understand the religious meanings ascribed to dreadlocked hair by Rastafarians. Finally her lawyers secured

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a settlement from the school in County Court in September 2018. Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly (2018, p. 219) comment that ‘Chikayzea is not the first Black student to be subjected to school uniform policy that operates to limit the expression of Blackness’. Moreover, This is not confined or particular to England, but rather, an iteration of white supremacy that has global manifestations, from the United States…to South Africa…Kenya…Australia…Ghana…and no doubt a plethora of other countries across the globe. (2018, p.  220—supporting references provided in the original text)

In British schools the authors quote Graham (2016, p. 132) in terms of the maintenance of the superiority of a white view of the nature and appearance of schooling that the practicalities of adhering to the often incredibly specific rules on hairstyle are onerous (and discriminatory) due to the nature of Afro hair. But failures to comply can result in a range of disciplinary measures. It is not uncommon for pupils to be placed in internal exclusion units or sent home for wearing the wrong hairstyle, an exclusion that may last until the hairstyle grows out. (Joseph-Salisbury & Connelly, 2018, p. 223)

Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly go on to argue that though schools may not be explicitly racist and opt for a ‘race-neutral’ approach, in this more subtle way schools control black pupils through their hair and appearance: Yet, new racisms flourish behind the façade of race-neutral policy and practice that is universally applied to all students, and hide the fact that ‘a racial order is in place that benefits a racial group. (2018, p. 231)

Mahlangu (2017) also notes that advocates of school uniform suggest that uniforms can minimise dress-related problems such as promoting an effective climate for teaching and learning, increasing school security and promoting school unity and pride. However, the opposing argument is that school uniform and appearance policies can violate students’ human

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rights in schools. And there are other downsides to them and Mahlangu provides an interesting example. In a study of a high school in Pretoria, South Africa, it was reported by the majority of black students interviewed that as a black student’s hair does not grow downward like a white student’s hair, and that it grows up, it was difficult to create rules to regulate it. Indeed, some educators at the school confirmed that the issue of hair was a very sensitive issue at the school as a result.

(Military) Uniform? One of the other major institutions of the state that insists on the wearing of a uniform is the military, and school uniform is one, though not the only, link between schooling and the military. Describing the beginning of a primary school day in India, the film Schooling the World (Black, 2010) opens with school children in Ladakh, India, wearing school uniforms and marching in military style: ‘Children march into the courtyard, a class at a time,…children march out, a row at a time.’ An article on school uniforms in the UK quoted Halla Beloff, a social psychologist at Edinburgh University, as arguing that We all know deep in our hearts that wearing uniform is a method of control. One of the aims of school is to get you used to the idea of obeying orders and to make you biddable. Sitting in rows, getting there on time, changing activity every 40 minutes, were useful if you were going to be cannon fodder or factory fodder or office fodder. But it isn’t so useful these days, when there is more call for creativity. (Times Educational Supplement Friday 3/10/2003)

Often school uniforms come with insignia of rank such as prefect, monitor or house ‘captain’. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that school uniform symbolises the similarity between school organisation and military organisation. Indeed, Spring (1973, p.  57), writing on America, also observes many points of similarity between the school and the army:

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The army and the school are, of course, similar organisations., In a school, the superintendent sits as commander of the armies, the principal acts as field commander, the teachers as lesser officers, and below this command is a vast number of pupils. Orders flow from above and pupils, like soldiers, receive privileges but lack rights. Both organisations handle large numbers of recruits, which requires discipline and obedience to instructions.

John Holt has this to say: School is the army for kids. Adults make them go there, and when they get there, adults tell them what to do, bribe and threaten them into doing it, and punish them when they don’t. (quoted in Meighan, 1994, p. 10)

It is interesting that Shipman refers to elementary school buildings that still survive as ‘solid, multi-storeyed barracks’ (1971, p. 152). But the implications of the connections between schools and the military are not restricted purely to similar organisational forms and power relationships and their physical symbols such as uniform. Riggan (2020, p.  644) argues that Schools are deeply implicated in processes of militarisation. These forms of militarisation may be quotidian, routine and may appear banal. However, even in situations where conflicts are prolonged, intermittent, frozen, far away or ‘cold’, banal militarism can evoke passions for war, draw on or construct notions of enmity, or legitimise the benevolence of the state in powerful ways… Much of the research on schooling and nationalism, especially in times of war, focuses on how teachers serve as mouthpieces who produce a sense of state legitimacy and benevolence. Teachers are often assumed to inflame the senses and produce passionate wartime nationalisms thereby embodying, reifying and reinforcing notions of enmity and identity… In Turkey, where high-school students take a national-security class taught by a soldier in uniform, Ayşe Gül Altinay notes that school and army are ‘the nation’s two fronts’ and that the school is an army and the army a school.

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Also, Saltman (2007, p. 28) notes in relation to America: Public schools in the United States have increasingly come to resemble the military and prison systems with their hiring of military generals as school administrators and heavy investment in security apparatus—metal detectors, high-tech dog tag IDs, chainlink fences, and real-time Internet-based or hidden mobile surveillance cameras—plus, their school uniforms, security consultants, surprise searches, and the presence of police on campuses. (italics added)

Often the organisational nature of schooling and classrooms has facilitated recruitment into military movements and rebel armies (see, e.g., Harber, 2004, chap. 9 on Sierra Leone). Frisancho and Reatagui make this point clearly in relation to the civil war between the Shining Path guerrillas and the government in Peru: a traditional approach to education (based on rote learning, routine and obedience), which is still pervasive in Peruvian education, coincided with the intellectual style of Maoism and of the particular messianic and mechanistic interpretation of Maoism tailored by the Shining Path’s founder and supreme leader, a former philosophy professor named Abimael Guzmán Reinoso. In fact, the CVR (i.e. the Peruvian post-war Truth and Reconciliation Commission) investigation found that the Shining Path took advantage of some institutions in the educational system to expand its proselytising, seeing an opportunity in the teachers’ authoritarian style to offer young people a utopia that provided them with a total identity… Classroom pedagogy remained heavily dependent on repetition of content and its memorisation by students. The notion of a successful performance in the classroom was closely associated with the capacity to produce ready-­ made responses to the teachers’ questions, a practice that has a twofold significance: it rewards repetition and routine as opposed to critical and independent thinking; and it commends obedience to an uncontested authority as a desirable pattern of social existence.

Indeed, as Paulson (2011, p.  130) has also noted in relation to the 20-year violence, the Shining Path guerrilla army had a great deal of support membership among teachers and ‘It helped that Shining Path indoctrination mirrored the authoritarian, didactic and unquestionable

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pedagogic style that had long characterised teaching and learning in Peru’s state schools.’ In a study entitled The Struggling State: Mass Militarization and the Education of Eritrea Riggan (2016, p. 17) describes how in Eritrea educational institutions were directly implicated in the making of soldiers through the auspices of a dramatic educational reform. In 2003, as part of a comprehensive educational reform package, the Ministry of Education announced that the education system would be expanded from grade 11 to grade 12, but all grade 12 students from the whole country would have to attend school in one boarding facility located in Sawa—the nation’s military training center. Military training would begin in the summer before grade 12. Additionally, as part of the same package of reforms, the government announced a shift from a system of highly selective promotion in Senior Secondary Schools (grades 9–12) to a system of mass promotion. Thus, the same year in which it was announced that everyone would attend grade 12 in Sawa, it was also announced that everyone would pass.

Thus, everyone was trained to serve in the military. In Eritrea not only is the preparation of children for military conflict part of fast tracking them into the military straight after school but schooling also plays a part in legitimising militarised violence in the wider society. As Gordon (2010, p. 393) notes, Legitimisation of violence within the school setting also helps to enforce a culture where resolving issues through violence is seen as inevitable… Teaching styles often mirrored the government’s approach of centralised control and guidance in which any dissent was dealt with swiftly… Students were also encouraged to assist. Each class had monitors and for the enthusiastic ones (the older, larger male students tended to be picked), this meant wielding sticks as a further instrument of violent control imposed by the classroom teacher.

Riggan (2020, p. 640) confirms this: teachers complained about the use of excessive force and discipline by military actors against their students; however, teachers themselves often used harsh discipline and violence on students who misbehaved.

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There are also strong connections between the military and schooling in the UK as well. Chadderton (2014) talks of the Troops to Teaching (TtT) programme introduced in England in autumn 2013, for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) would fast-track ex-armed service members to teach in schools, without necessarily the requirement of a university degree. This initiative, she argues, both stems from, and contributes to, a system of social privilege and oppression in education. Despite appearing to be aimed at all young people, the planned TtT initiative was actually aimed at poor and racially subordinated youth. Rather than a critical education, for those subordinated along lines of class and race, a military education is to be provided—patriarchal, hierarchical and authoritarian. This, Chadderton thought, was likely to further entrench polarisation in a system which already provides two-tier educational provision: TtT will be a programme for the inner-city disadvantaged, whilst wealthier, whiter schools will mostly continue to get highly qualified teachers. She also notes that in Germany there have been activities at schools involving teachers, students, parents and members of the community, including a small number of demonstrations outside schools, which have had varying levels of success but have always raised public awareness. At a party political level Die Linken (The Left Party) have actually petitioned parliament to prevent military ­involvement in schools, although their petition was rejected by all other German parties, including the Social Democrats and the Greens. (Chadderton, 2014, p. 424)

Indeed, schools are often directly involved in military training as part of their curriculum (Harber, 2004, chap. 9, 2009, pp. 136–139). Here is but one example. In Poland, for example, despite not having been at war for over 60 years, all 15- and 16-year-olds must take a war survival course that teaches them how to put on a gas mask, shoot a gun, throw a grenade, identify guns and army ranks and use bunkers. The author of the article describing this course comments:

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Still, current students might consider themselves lucky. Only 20 years ago, children had to learn how to march. I can remember as a schoolchild being assessed on my gas-mask skills. I mastered every move to perfection but I didn’t get the top mark. When I asked the teacher why she marked me down, she said: “You took a deep breath before putting on the mask. In the real situation you’d be dead by now”. (Kaczmarek, 2008)

Conclusion In many countries wearing a school uniform, and control of appearance, is a taken-for-granted part of the school day, despite the lack of evidence that it contributes to learning, supposedly the main purpose of schooling. While it may have some other benefits it also reflects the three main analytical themes of this book in relation to schooling—social control through enforced uniformity, the reproduction of inequalities and connections to violence and war. One of the times I felt most uncomfortable wearing a uniform when I was young was on the journey to and from school, and it is to the hazards of such journeys that we turn next.

References Aghasaleh, R. (2018). Oppressive Curriculum: Sexist, Racist, Classist and Homophobic Practice of Dress Codes in Schooling. Journal of African American Studies, 22, 94–108. Alexander, R. (2000). Culture and Pedagog: International Comparisons in Primary Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Anonymous. (2020, August 29). The New School Tie. The Economist, 436, 9209. Baradarankashani, Z., Kermani, M., & Fouladian, M. (2020). Social Semiotics of School Uniforms in the Narratives of Mashhad Young Girls. Jāmiʻah′shināshī-i kārburdī, 3(1), 91–108. Black, C. (2010). Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden (Lost People Films). Burke, C., & Grosvenor, I. (2003). The School That I’d Like. RoutledgeFalmer.

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Busby, E. (2020, January 13). Schools Unfairly Punish Black Students for Hairstyles and ‘Kissing Teeth’ Amid Racial Bias, Teachers Say. The Independent. Chadderton, C. (2014). The Militarisation of English Schools: Troops to Teaching and the Implications for Initial Teacher Education and Race Equality. Race Ethnicity and Education, 17(3), 407–428. Duflo, E., Dupas, P., Kremer, M., & Sinei, S. (2006). Education and HIV/AIDS Prevention: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Western Kenya. World Bank. Eliot, L., & Higgins, S. (2017). Is school uniform a good or a bad thing?. Times Educational Supplement, 20(10). Frisancho, S., & Reategui, F. (2009). Moral Education and Post-War Societies: The Peruvian Case. Journal of Moral Education, 38(4), 421–443. Gordon, C. (2010). Reflecting on the EFA Global Monitoring Report’s Framework for Understanding Quality Education: A Teacher’s Perspective in Eritrea. International Journal of Educational Development, 30(4), 388–395. Graham, K. (2016). The British School-to-Prison Pipeline. In K. Andrews & L. Palmer (Eds.), Blackness in Britain. Routledge. Harber, C. (1996). Small Schools and Democratic Practice. Educational Heretics Press. Harber, C. (2004). Schooling as Violence. RoutledgeFalmer. Harber, C. (2009). Toxic Schooling: How Schools Became Worse. Educational Heretics Press. Harber, C. (2014). Education and International Development: Theory, Practice and Issues. Symposium. Harber, C., & Mncube, V. (2017). Violence in Schools: South Africa in an International Context. UNISA Press. Hidalgo, D., Onofa, M., Oosterbeek, H., & Ponce, J. (2013). Can Provision of Free School Uniforms Harm Attendance? Evidence from Ecuador. Journal of Development Economics, 103, 43–51. Joseph-Salisbury, R., & Connelly, L. (2018). ‘If Your Hair Is Relaxed, White People Are Relaxed. If Your Hair Is Nappy, They’re Not Happy’: Black Hair as a Site of ‘Post-Racial’ Social Control in English Schools. Social Sciences, 7, 219–232. Kaczmarek, J. (2008, January 24). Class of ’08, Spirit of 45. The Guardian, G2. Kremer, M., Moulin, S., & Namunyu, R. (2003). Decentralization: A Cautionary Tale (Poverty Action Lab Paper No. 10). Poverty Action Lab.

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Lee, V. E., & Burkam, D. T. (2003). Dropping Out of High School: The Role of School Organization and Structure. American Educational Research Journal Summer, 40(2), 353–393. Mahlangu, V.  P. (2017). Implementation of School Uniform Policy and the Violation of Students’ Human Rights in Schools. In Current Business and Economics Driven Discourse and Education: Perspectives from Around the World BCES Conference Books, 2017, Volume 15 (pp.  122–127). Bulgarian Comparative Education Society. Meighan, R. (1994). The Freethinkers’ Guide to the Educational Universe. Educational Heretics Press. Moser, S. (2016). Educating the Nation: Shaping Student-Citizens in Indonesian Schools. Children’s Geographie, 14(3), 247–262. Mroz, A. (2018, July 6). Let’s Not Skirt Around the Fact that School Uniform Is Pointless. Times Educational Supplement. Osler, A. (2010). Students’ Perspectives on Schooling. Open University Press. Owen, C. (2017, September 4). The Problems and Potential of School Uniforms. Huffpost. Park, J. (2013). Do School Uniforms Lead to Uniform Minds?: School Uniforms and Appearance Restrictions in Korean Middle Schools and High School. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, 17(2), 159–177. Paulson, J. (Ed.). (2011). Education and Reconciliation: Exploring Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations. Continuum. ProCon.Org. (2020, January 20). Should Students Have to Wear School Uniforms? https://school-­uniforms.procon.org/ Riggan, J. (2016). The Struggling State: Mass Militarization and the Education of Eritrea. Temple University Press. Riggan, J. (2020). The Teacher State: Navigating the Fusion of Education and Militarisation in Eritrea and Elsewhere. Compare, 50(5), 639–655. Sabic-El-Rayess, A., Mansur, N. N., Batkhuyag, B., & Otgonlkhagva, S. (2020). School uniform policy’s adverse impact on equity and access to schooling. Compare, 50(8), 1122–1139. Saltman, K. (2007). Education as Enforcement: Militarization and Corporatization of Schools. Race, Poverty and the Environment, 14(2), 28–30. Shipman, M. (1971). Education and Modernisation. Faber. Spring, J. (1973). Education as a Form of Social Control. Reproduced in R. Lowe (2000) The Children Felt That History of Education: Major Themes (Vol. II). RoutledgeFalmer.

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UNESCO. (2015). Education for All Global Monitoring Report: Education for All 2000–2015: Achievements and Challenges. UNESCO EFA Global Monitoring Report. Weale, S. (2019, September 28). Model for Labour? Why Finland’s Schools Are the Best in the World. The Guardian. Woo, J. M., Tam, C. L., Bonn, G. B., & Tagg, B. (2020). Student, Teacher, and School Counselor Perceptions of National School Uniforms in Malaysia. Frontiers in Psychology, 11(Article 1871), 1–9.

7 Journey to and from School

As schools are situated in a specific physical location, children have to travel to and from them. If we are so keen for children to return to school as quickly as possible after Covid, then we need to both recognise the problematic nature of, and lack of safety in, the daily school commute. Indeed, as we shall see, sometimes the journey to and from school can be more dangerous to children and young people than Covid itself. Yet Gristy (2019, p.  286) makes a comment specifically in relation to bus journeys to and from school that has validity for school journeys more generally: Bus journeys to school lie in the shadows of schooling and in the spaces between government departments, research disciplines and between children, their families and schools and so receive little attention. In this neglected space of bus journeys to school, there are implications for rural children, schooling, communities and socially just and sustainable futures.

This chapter therefore pays some attention to this ‘neglected space’ that is a daily feature of life for many children globally.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Harber, Post-Covid Schooling, Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87824-5_7

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 he School Commute as Control—And T Unpleasant to Experience Long and difficult journeys to and from school in remote and rural areas of the world can be a major disincentive for attending school in the first place (Harber, 2014, p. 29). However, first it is important to note that even though school journeys by definition take place outside school, they are not beyond the social control function of schooling discussed in Chap. 1 and returned to throughout this book. Ross (2007, p. 383), for example, argues that travel to and from school is an extension of the social control role of the school and puts it in relation to a study of school journeys in Scotland: School journeys can be constructed as power-laden geographies, an exercise in self-discipline, of the correct deployment of the body through time and space. Some children related very precise timings, confirming school journeys to be highly ordered and regulated. One girl conveyed very clearly the carefully timed regularity of her school journey routine, ‘I leave home at 8:35 so I get to school about 8:42 to meet my friends early and they get to school about 8:45’. Some parents discussed their children’s school journey routines in terms of discipline, as in the following quotation: ‘They walk up and down there in all weathers, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing … it’s probably a conscious decision that I don’t want to drive them. I want them to walk. I don’t know why, probably because it’s just discipline (mother, village, Cupar area)’.

Ross also notes, despite some pupil resistance and disruption, the element of surveillance and monitoring inherently involved in everyday school journeys: School journeys are visible, subject to the casual surveillance of others, known and unknown adults living or working nearby, neighbours, teachers, parents, and other children, and as a consequence children’s behaviour may be liable to monitoring. (2007, p. 383)

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The journey to and from school can be an unpleasant and uncomfortable one for pupils and one that doesn’t encourage school attendance. A study of pupils’ views of publicly funded school buses in one rural area of Scotland found various issues. This is one example: The journey to secondary school took 45 min from my village. We had to wait for the bus outside the village social club. There was no shelter, only the wall of the club that you could put your back against if the wind and rain were from the east, but as we had prevailing westerlies we generally got wet and cold. We always seemed to be wet when we got on the bus. This only added to the steamy, smelly atmosphere that we then sat in while the bus wound its way through other villages on its way to town. I remember sitting at the front because I felt sick. The bus prefect was a senior student; she was bossy but she let me sit near her. The back seat was full of the older kids. We sat and did homework some days, we sang a lot and there were plenty of arguments. We did not like the children who got on at Downland; that was when the arguments started. There was often trouble with the old buses used for the school run. There was one big hill on the journey and sometimes, on icy mornings, we had to get out and walk up the hill because the bus could not make it loaded with kids. On one occasion, the bus crashed into the hedge when its brakes failed. None of us was hurt but the bus was badly damaged. I still have a piece of the bus that fell off that day. (Gristy, 2019, p. 289)

Two other themes that emerged were the nature of the road, tyres and friction and the problem of incessant rain: The friction (or lack of friction on some occasions) between the tyres of the bus and the road as well as the mechanical sounds from the engine effects the noises that the bus makes. As the tyres on the road and engines makes more noise, the noise levels inside the bus rise which impacts on the passengers, some of whom respond with raising the volume of their voices. Some find the noise unpleasant and perhaps plug in their music headphones to listen to something more pleasing. Others find the noisy bus an impossible space to be in so cannot get on board and go to school. (Gristy, 2019, p. 290)

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Water has the ability to percolate through small spaces. The bus bodywork has cracks and splits which allow water into the bus. Water seeps into the framework and fabric. The passengers, arriving with wet clothes and footwear, sit on the seats and more water soaks in. The presence of so much water and warmth makes an ideal growing environment for microbes, making a damp, smelly environment. In cold weather, the glass windows become covered with condensed water vapour, restricting the view for passengers inside. So the water in the bus has agency in the assemblage, playing its part in the development of the smelly, damp atmosphere inside. (Gristy, 2019, p. 290)

Gristy notes that such bus journeys can act as a disincentive to attend school as well as being a facilitator of attendance and concludes, ‘The longer bus journeys to school act at a micro level on children’s health and wellbeing, increasing roadside pollution and local public transport patterns’ (2019, p. 291).

Unsafe Journeys—The Problem of Traffic Sometimes the journey to and from school is also just plain dangerous. This can be so for a number of reasons. For example, a sample of students in high crime areas in America were asked to discuss the safety of their school routes; emergent themes included student’s fear/awareness of death, fear of violence/victimisation and fear of gangs (Meyer & Astor, 2002). Indeed, Students felt that they were on their own once they left the walls of the school building until they reached the security of their own home and that no one appeared to be responsible for keeping their school routes safe. One of the most common reasons students stated that their school routes were unsafe was their fear that no one would intervene to help them if they were being attacked or victimized. (Meyer & Astor, 2002, p. 125)

But a more common and widespread danger is that of traffic itself. As Ipingbemi and Aiworo say,

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Concerns for school children’s travel and safety have been apparent over the years… School children travel a long distance and spend substantial amount of time in getting to schools. A large number of them walk to school with most of the walking and crossing facilities in poor and dilapidated condition… This is compounded with poor traffic behaviour of drivers of motorized transport leading to increasing pedestrian accidents which is still widely regarded as one of the most serious of all health risks facing children in both developed and developing countries… Children as pedestrians have problem coping with traffic and are particularly vulnerable to injury or death by vehicles… They are at risk especially in the road environment because their attention is easily lost, have limited traffic experience, small in stature (height) and they find it hard to judge speed accurately… In other words, they have poor traffic knowledge. Research in developing countries has shown in general that children’s road user knowledge is poor compared with children in developed countries such as the UK. (2013, p. 77)

In Britain, children are increasingly dependent on parents (largely female parents) and cars to get to school, with a decrease in individual mobility that is seen as increasingly problematic: In addition to concerns regarding children’s physical health…are the high accident rates of 11/12 year olds, who, when beginning to travel to secondary school unaccompanied, are often not used to walking without escort… Driving children to school also contributes to congestion. At the height of the morning peak hour, up to 18% of cars on urban roads are escorting children to school. (Barker, 2011, p. 414)

Moreover, the author of this research noticed a trend towards larger cars in more affluent areas, but there were interesting sociological as well as practical reasons for this: As well as a practical response to escorting larger numbers of children as part of car sharing, buying ‘a bigger car’ can also be seen as a visible response to powerful local ideological expectations regarding motherhood in this particularly middle class part of Enfield, where large 4×4s and people carriers were commonplace. Material objects such as cars can be used as highly visible status symbols to create and maintain social difference… Unlike

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other private and invisibilised forms of care which go on in the home, these forms of care are highly visible and public, and generate powerful messages which shape normative everyday geographies of care in particular places. These messages include requirements for consumption (in this case, the purchase and running of large cars) as part of an ideology of “how to care”. (Barker, 2011, p. 418)

In Scotland, in 2004 there were 1,176 child (aged 0–15) pedestrian casualties, accounting for 38% of all pedestrian casualties, with 246 children killed or seriously injured. The term ‘accident’ suggests that these are unforeseen or uncontrollable events. This belies the predictability of their occurrence. Most happen on local roads in built-up areas with child pedestrian casualties peaking on weekdays at times coinciding with school journeys. Rates are higher for boys than girls, highest for the 12–15 age group, and highest also for those in the lowest socio-­economic group… Although falling, child pedestrian casualty rates within the UK are poor in comparison to other European countries. (Ross, 2007, p. 388)

In a study of young people from 10 to 18 years in Philadelphia, US, Wiebe et al. (2013) note that The proportion of American children who walk to school is decreasing, contributing to sedentary lifestyles with long-term health consequences… Parents cite physical barriers to walkability—cracked sidewalks, parked cars that block pedestrians’ views, traffic signals that don’t give pedestrians time to cross—as reasons for not letting their children walk to school (but)… Neighbourhood violence is also a barrier In 2007, 5.5% of U.S. high school students reported not going to school one or more days in the past month because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school. (2013, p. 54)

Their empirical study found that ‘It was remarkably common for children (58.5%) to report feeling less than very safe at some point during their morning travel to school’ (2013, p. 59).

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Indeed, perceptions of risk such as traffic accidents and stranger danger by parents is a key reason why more and more children have been travelling to and from school in their parents’ cars: due to parental concern for children’s safety, children are less likely to be allowed to go to school and other places without supervision. Fed by the culture of fear and insecurity, many parents have decided to increase surveillance of their children by escorting and driving them everywhere, even equipping them with mobile phones. (Drianda & Kinoshita, 2011, p. 227)

Ironically then, The traffic risk in Iran is even worse near the schools, where there is a substantial congestion due to increasing use of motorized modes like private cars taking children to the schools. In addition, motorized modes such as household private car and carpooling services used to take pupils to schools increase the risk of accident involvement in urban roads network. (Mehdizadeh et al., 2017, p. 61)

But then parents and pupils in Iran have plenty to worry about anyway in terms of getting to and from school as Iran is regarded to be one of the most unsafe countries in the world when it comes to road transport safety. The country has a 43.54 death rate per 100000 (age adjusted death rates) which is the highest in the world. (Mehdizadeh et al., 2017, p. 61)

Moreover, there are few safe and dedicated walking facilities in school neighbourhoods in Iran. For instance, some schools are located close to main roads with high speed limits (50 km/h) in the study area. (Mehdizadeh et al., 2017, p. 67)

A study of 550 parents and guardians about the safety of travel to and from school by bus in Dubai (Dghaim et al., 2020) found that the parents identified several factors that pose a threat to bus safety including

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speeding cars, poor driving, lack of seat belt use enforcement, lack of supervision, motorists’ lack of understanding of school bus stop law, and children’s behaviour. Poku-Boansi et al. (2019) point out that safety in urban transport and mobility has been seen as important in achieving the globally discussed and accepted goals for human development, the Sustainable Development Goals, and that, as a result, targets for road safety have been included in two goals: Goal 3, which is on health, and Goal 11, which is on cities. This, they argue, therefore presents a new opportunity for tackling road safety and protecting children on their journeys to and from school. They also note in relation to Africa that it has been estimated that the continent has the highest number of fatalities per 100,000 of children below 19 years… Citing the FIA foundation, the UNICEF estimates that 500 children lose their lives on the world’s roads every day and of this number, many are killed on their journey to or from school. In addition to this high numbers of travel related deaths, UNICEF…has also indicated that for every child that dies, another four are permanently disabled; while ten more are seriously injured. These findings have become more worrying because the journey by children to school is a regular activity and takes place during peak periods. (Poku-Boansi et al., 2019, p. 2)

They also note that other studies on travel safety among school children in Africa have highlighted the long distances travelled by pupils to and from school, lack of child-friendly transport infrastructure and services, and uncomfortable travel times. Writing specifically on their own context of Ghana, where walking remains the dominant mode of pupils travelling to and from school, they state: In terms of travel safety among children, available statistics on urban Ghana raise concerns. For example, between 2014 and 2016, about 9% of casualties recorded in Ghanaian towns and cities involved children below age 16; and were mostly in schools with ages ranging between 6 and 15  years. Of the total number (5,722) of fatalities, 13.5% are children within school-going age. Again, a substantial proportion of the road traffic collisions occurred during school trip hours—23.5% and 5.9% of road traffic collisions occurred between 2pm and 4pm and 6am–8am

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r­espectively… Similarly, 27.8% and 6.6% of injuries occurred between 2pm and 4pm and 6am–8am respectively… These periods coincide with the times during which children travel to and from school respectively. Again, it is further indicated that five out of the top 20 sites with the highest frequency of road collisions in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana had basic schools nearby. This emphasises the travel risks children are exposed to during their trips to and from school. As a result, safety issues among school children have become one of the major challenges confronting stakeholders in the public transport arena. (2019, p. 2)

They further note that the danger of travel by school children is exacerbated by traffic congestion, poor infrastructure, inefficient transport services delivery, disregard for traffic laws and regulations, the use of unroadworthy vehicles and poor and inadequate pedestrian facilities. Cars and traffic are a particular danger to pupils travelling to and from schools in Ghana and Africa in general, but they remain a serious problem everywhere. In Canada Wilson et al. (2019, p. 112) note that while travel to and from school presents an opportunity for children and young people to be less sedentary and more active, ‘The majority of research on children’s active school travel omits children from the research process even though children interpret their environments in fundamentally different ways than adults’ (2019, p. 112). When they involved primary school children in their research, they found that safety was very important to them. The children said they felt more comfortable walking with friends while walking to school: Seeing familiar faces en route and stopping at a friend’s house to travel together were the two most common safety supporting features students identified. Many students consciously selected certain routes to encounter other students, including one child who liked their walking route to their suburban school because “I feel safe going this way cuz like a lot of it’s in a row with like five kids that I know”… Crossing guards were another significant safety-supporting feature, as one student at the urban school put it, “I usually feel safer walking that way because there’s a crossing guard there”… Children perceived crossing guards’ presence and capacity to calm traffic along their route as beneficial. (Wilson et al., 2019, p. 119)

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On the other hand, Safety-related barriers included challenges crossing the road, traffic, and busy streets. Crossing the street, regardless of the neighbourhood infrastructure, often raised safety concerns for students. These centred on negative experiences with specific traffic lights, distractedness and impatience of drivers, and simply not enjoying the act of crossing the street. One student explained crossing the street near the urban school as “super busy in the mornings. A lot of people—I actually almost got hit there. I had the right of way and someone came drifting. I think they could put a stop light there instead of having it as an intersection”… Another student shared similar feelings of aversion towards crossing the street while actively travelling to their suburban school, explaining that, It’s the crosswalk right by my, um, house I don’t like it because, um, cars, they, usually when I’m rollerblading to school, the cars don’t, um, stop, and they don’t look, so, um, I don’t, I just don’t feel safe when I’m going across, and, and when there’s cars stopping, because they don’t, some cars don’t stop. (2019, p. 120)

The volume of cars, traffic speed, and noise generated by traffic made students in this study feel unsafe and apprehensive on their journey, with many students expressing a sense of insecurity and feeling scared. A third of a billion children travel to and from school in India every weekday (Tetali et  al., 2016, p.  171). In their study of 45 secondary schools in Hyderabad Tetali et  al. found that 17% of the children, so nearly a fifth, reported being involved in a road accident going to and from school over the last year: Cyclists reported the highest prevalence of road injury (33%), followed by children who travel by motorised two-wheelers (20%) and children who walk to school (17%). The lowest prevalence was reported by children who travel by school bus (8%). The prevalence of road injury was highest (25%) among children who travel 2–3 km to school and lowest (9%) among children who travel over 5 km. The prevalence of road injury to children who walked or cycled increased with distance. (Tetali et al., 2016, p. 172)

Even on a Greek island travel to and from school can be problematic. A study of the Greek island of Chios (Kamargianni & Polydoropoulou,

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2011) showed that teenagers there increasingly preferred to use motorised transport to travel to and from school, primarily using motorcycles but with a minority using cars. The study found that • 78% of the teenagers drove unlicensed. • 10% of students drove for first time at the age of 7 to 9 years old. • The majority of the drivers bought their motorcycle between the ages of 13 to 15 years with consent from their parents, although the law decrees that they can drive a 50cc motorcycle only at the age of 16. • 60% of legal drivers and 46% of illegal drivers were involved in accidents. • 70% of these accidents occurred on motorcycles. (2011, pp. 1902–1903)

The increasing tendency in some countries for parents to drive their children to and from school every day has raised concerns about the health of young people in terms of a less active lifestyle and an increasing tendency towards obesity as well as reducing children’s opportunities to build the resilience and skills critical to be competent and independent environmental users. There are also concerns that the restriction on children’s independent mobility contributes to children losing the opportunity to learn about autonomy, the capacity to govern oneself without external guidance. However, getting young people to use bicycles to get to and from school, for example, can be problematic. A study in Dunedin, New Zealand (Hopkins & Mandic, 2017), reported research on cycling that suggested that for under-represented populations, including women and children, a high degree of separation from motorised traffic is important for increasing rates of cycling for transportation. They note that ‘Research in New Zealand has shown that cycling is perceived by high school students to be less safe than walking’ (2017, p. 351) and in their own research found that large-scale physical infrastructure developments alone are unlikely to address safety concerns. Antisocial driver behavior, proximity to large and/ or high-speed vehicles, and traffic volumes also need to be considered. In Dunedin, the existing on road cycling lanes which have been built along Dunedin’s SH1 were viewed as particularly unsafe, especially during busy times which includes travel to school times. Thus, it was argued that the

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configuration of cycling lanes in Dunedin makes them ineffective and dangerous, especially for high school students. When investing in cycling infrastructure, the wider context needs to be considered. For instance, for some, less confident cyclists, quieter routes that are not used by large or high-speed motor vehicles, or routes with lower volumes of traffic might be a preferred option for less confident and younger cyclists, even if those routes are less direct. (2017, p. 350)

Indeed, a key problem in terms of getting more children and young people to cycle to and from school was that Responsibility for safety was often articulated to be the responsibility of the individual cyclist, rather than the system of transportation or other road users. This framing of safety and responsibility is aligned with the dominant system of transport, and the hegemony of car-based travel. This includes narratives of roads being “for” cars, rather than bicycles, and therefore cyclists need to behave as a “guest” on the transport network. High school students appeared to be replicating these values, highlighting situations where cyclists were “taking up the whole lane,” and frustrating motor vehicle drivers. (2017, p. 352)

Moreover, the school itself was not seen as encouraging cycling: We also found important implicit school norms associated with cycling-­ related infrastructure on school grounds and school uniforms that perpetuate a culture of not cycling. The perceptions of incompatibility between the school uniform and cycling to school appears to be coupled with perceptions of cycling as a rigorous activity or “sport” that therefore requires “sport” clothing, which may differ from the norms, values, and practices of high-cycling countries. The types of bicycles used by students and within the wider society may also contribute to this perception, with mountain bikes and road bikes more common than “city bikes” in Dunedin. Moreover, students appeared to be largely unaware over whether they could cycle to school in sports clothes and change at school. Many students also appeared unsure about the availability of cycling racks. This could perpetuate a culture that prioritizes other modes, and not cycling. (Hopkins & Mandic, 2017, p. 351)

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However, perceived safety in this study varied by how and with whom children were travelling. Children generally felt safer with an adult family member but less safe with another child. In their study of schools in Benin City, Nigeria, Ipingbemi and Aiworo found that two thirds of the children walked to school. While this might constitute a form of exercise, the lack of pavements and poor-quality pavements made walking to school more dangerous: The poor quality of walkways is compounded with the fact that most of the walkways have been taken over by street trading and on-street parking; a phenomenon that forces school children to share road space with moving vehicles. This portends a grave danger for the safety of school children on the road. Most drivers and riders do not go through formal training as some of them only learn how to drive or ride through friends and relatives… Therefore, they do not possess prerequisite traffic knowledge to deal with the road environment. Though reliable crash data are difficult to come by field observations revealed that school children are regularly hit as pedestrians but are not formally reported. Furthermore, the ranking of poor drivers’ behavior as the most important impediment to walking to school is consistent with other findings in developing countries. Most drivers in Nigeria have poor traffic knowledge, especially riders of commercial motorcycles popularly known as ‘Okada’ which has become a menace in Nigeria cities. Many of these riders do not know that they have to stop for pedestrians where there is ‘Zebra Crossing’ road marking or ‘Children Crossing’ sign. For the drivers who know, field observations showed that it was not respected. The problem is compounded because some of the road markings and traffic signs are in poor and dilapidated condition. Street trading is a feature of urban activities in Nigeria. Wares, books, food items, etc. are spread on the walkways and in some cases kiosks and canopies are also erected on them creating barrier to children who walk to school. In the same manner, vehicles are parked on road shoulders and sometimes on the walkways forcing school children to share the carriageway with moving traffic with its attendant consequences. (Ipingbemi & Aiworo, 2013, p. 81)

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Unsafe Journeys—Other Dangers and Issues In a study of the Hill region of Nepal, Lind and Agergaard (2010, p. 311) observed that the social implications of getting to school are hardly studied. Yet children in many parts of the world face long journeys to and from school, often involving dangers such as sexual assault (PLAN, 2008, p. 1/2) or, in South Africa, crossing rivers with hippos and crocodiles in them (Harber & Muthukrishna, 2000, p. 423). In their study of children and parents in Japan, Drianda and Kinoshita (2011) found that, apart from a fear of traffic and strangers, some children in a small town mentioned their fear of meeting wild monkeys and wild boars in the neighbourhood. As one 13-year-old boy put it, ‘I don’t know what to do if I meet a wild boar or monkey!…it appears that children in this small town were not keen to confront wild nature even though they live very near to it. Based on our interviews at the school, we found out that some wild boars often appear at the back of the school gates. According to the local people, the wild boars, especially the big one, are very aggressive and will attack anyone they see. As this town is located near to the monkey preservation area, some wild monkeys were reported to have been seen and disturbed local residents’ farms and houses. (2011, p. 237)

Lind and Agergaard’s (2010) study of children who lived a long distance from school (‘taadhaa’ pupils) in Nepal found that they were considerably disadvantaged. This was partly because by the time they walked home there was less time to do homework and partly because, living in more rural areas, they were expected to do other jobs such as fetching water, helping to graze cattle, clean the house and prepare food. This was particularly the case for girls. Indeed, pupils who lived a long way from school often had to go home after half a day to have time for their daily work. The pupils from villages a long way from the school (walking 1.5 hours or more) were absent from school from between 4–5 days a month to 16 days a month whereas those nearer the school were much more likely to be present. Moreover, during the four months prior to examinations pupils can pay to attend private tutorials in maths and English, the most difficult subjects to pass. However, such tutorials begin

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early so that teachers can have breakfast before normal classes, which makes it very difficult for pupils from far way villages to attend as the journey would have to take place in the dark and would mean following trails that are narrow, steep, icy and wet. Thus, these pupils miss out on the tutorials. To get to school on time many of the children miss breakfast and therefore come to school hungry and tired. Some of the pupils have been awake for 8–10 hours before they get their first real meal. Concentration and intellectual performance are therefore harmed. Also, because they often arrive late, taadhaa students’ sit at the back rows of the class which has obvious negative implications as a taadhaa boy in class 9 explained: ‘we can hardly see the blackboard and if there is noise or the wind blows we cannot hear what the teacher says’. During the numerous class observations, students in the front asked and were asked more questions than those at the back, and students’ concentration seemed to fade towards the back of the classroom. Related to this both nearby and taadhaa students agreed that familiarity with teachers enhanced students’ abilities and willingness to participate and learn. (Lind & Agergaard, 2010, p. 319)

As a result of these factors the pupils who have long journeys to school tend to perform less well in examinations. Their journeys are also just downright dangerous. Lind and Agergaard walked some the of the journeys to and from school with the pupils and noted: One day, as we crawled up the immensely steep trail from a taadhaa village to cross a ridge, students showed where they had seen a bear eating berries some months back. Fortunately nothing had happened, but every year someone is injured or killed by a bear… Another morning we encountered the fresh marks of a wild boar. ‘It has just been digging here’, a boy from class 9 said, ‘It cannot be far away’. We tried to find a stick. He told us that wild pigs can be very aggressive and dangerous and explained how we had to jump to avoid being hit on the legs: ‘If you fall it can kill you’… The local topography and environment also posed dangers and unexpected challenges. Several trails were very narrow and carved into almost vertical hillsides. After a 13-year-old girl from the school had just been carried through the village with a deep open fracture in her head, the nurse at the

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local health post said: Every month people are injured or killed as they get hit by rocks and stones falling from above or because they slide off the trail and fall far down the dangerous steep hillsides. Several students explained how they, or their siblings, have suffered various injuries while walking on the steep trails to school. (2010, p. 324)

Things are just as bad, or worse, in the former ISIS stronghold of Falluja in Iraq. To get to school, pupils have to walk along a dirt road lined with signs pointing out the danger of landmines. One school’s deputy head repeats the message of the danger of landmines every week in school assembly. When it rains the children are told to stay at home because the ground is softer and it is more dangerous (Beaumont, 2018). In Lesotho, Morojele and Muthukrishna (2013) issued disposable cameras to pupils to capture the challenges, risks and pleasures of their normal, day to day journeys to and from school. They found that children travelled long distances, crossing flooded rivers and dense forests in pursuit of access to education. The school which was located roughly some 10 kilometres away from the villages where the children stayed meant that each morning and afternoon these children had to travel for up to 4 hours on foot, sometimes in rainy weather and cold winter mornings. (2013, p. 5366)

Interestingly, Morojele and Muthukrishna note that the implementation of compulsory free primary education in 2010 in Lesotho legally binds all children between the ages of 6 and 13 to attend primary schooling. This means that the option of delaying entry to school until children are old enough to handle the adversities of the school journey does not exist, leaving children as young as 6 years with no choice but to begin enduring a long and precarious school journey. In a way, young children are caught between the now legally binding requirement to attend school, as education in these communities is the only viable means to a relatively better future, and the scourge of facing the health risks, including crossing flooded rivers, walking in ice cold winters while poorly clad and so forth. (2013, p. 5368)

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However, they also ask: Should policy makers and rural development agencies (including the government) rely on the innovative rural children’s abilities to navigate the treacherous and harsh spaces and places of the school journey, and allow the status quo to remain? Or alternately, could rural children’s abilities to negotiate treacherous school journey be used to understand what strategies are relevant to implement in these contexts to mitigate these risks and improve children’s experiences of the school journey? Obviously it is not fair to expose rural children to the risks and hardships that could be avoided, and we contend that policy makers should use the insights on children’s creative ability to navigate the school journey as a basis for devising strategies to alleviate the problems—which should include building schools close the villages in order to prevent children from walking long distances to school. (2013, p. 5372)

In December 2020 Ella Kissi-Debrah became the first person in the UK to have air pollution officially recognised by a coroner as a cause of death when she was nine years old and attending primary school. Indeed, in Britain clean air campaigners have regularly written to the government calling for a ban on parents driving their children to school in an attempt to cut air pollution. Environmental groups and medical professionals warn that pollution from the school run is having a serious effect on young people’s health. The British government’s Department of Transport has produced figures showing that one in four cars on the road at peak times are on the school run (Taylor, 2018). However, it can be even more dangerous than this. A sharp rise in the amount of knife crime affecting young people has been widely reported and discussed in the UK. There appears to have been a particularly sharp increase in the number of casualties aged between 14 and 16. The time when under-16s are most at risk of being stabbed is between 4 pm and 6 pm on weekdays and almost half of under-16s were stabbed on their way home from school. Hospital trauma specialists argued that, as a result of these figures, secondary schools should stagger their closing times. Data across London, Nottingham and Birmingham showed that 30% of weapon-enabled assaults occurred between 4 pm and 8 pm (Campbell, 2018). One letter

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to a British national newspaper from a parent about the topic read as follows: Staggering school closing times to reduce numbers of pupils allowed out together categorically limits aggressive behavior, as does police presence. Walking with my son to his secondary school was, without exception, an awful experience. We witnessed dangerous, aggressive, out-of-control pupil behavior towards each other and the public. Once, while walking home amid a running battle between girls, when one couldn’t punch her opponent, she thumped me instead. Previously I had been verbally abused, shoved, hit by coins and watched, horrified, as pupils vandalised property. Reports of such incidents were largely ignored but, during a parents survey, I suggested staggering leaving times, especially prior to holidays when excitement was heightened. It was implemented and made a positive difference. Similarly, when a mini-digger was located near the school, a police officer guarded it and our journeys there and back were the most peaceable experience. Later, it was disconcerting to hear police constables, patrolling locally, say that they would avoid the school because it got “really nasty round there”. (The Guardian 8/11/2018)

Travelling to and from school can also be a gendered experience and issue. In a study of 24 urban and rural sites in Ghana, Malawi and South Africa, the authors note that Security is an issue which forms a key theme in some of the locations where we collected data, especially where girls are concerned: they may face a very real threat of rape. In other cases girls’ journeys to school and school attendance are hampered by Africa’s transport gap and cultural conventions which require females to take on this burden (by pedestrian head loading) and other work before leaving for (or instead of attending) school. (Porter et al., 2011, p. 63)

Being late to school caused girls to be punished when they got there. In all three countries rough terrain and fast-flowing rivers were a hazard in rural areas for both genders, while in urban areas traffic hazards were the main issue. The negative impacts of longer journeys on mental health, physical well-being and schooling were raised by boys and girls in all

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three countries and given as a reason for school dropout (Porter et al., 2011).

Conclusion The main argument of this chapter is that for many children travelling to and from school on a daily basis is not necessarily a safe experience. Where something can be done about this—and the references cited in this chapter make many suggestions for improvement in levels of safety— and it isn’t, then it is a form of violence by omission. It would also be good if children and young people were safe once they actually reached school, but they aren’t as we shall see in Chap. 8, which examines issues surrounding the nature of the school buildings in which pupils learn.

References Barker, J. (2011). Manic Mums and Distant Dads? Gendered Geographies of Care and the Journey to School. Health and Place, 17, 413–421. Beaumont, P. (2018, November 15). Landmine Legacy: Shadow of Isis Lingering in Falluja. The Guardian. Campbell, D. (2018, November 7). Change School Closing Times to Curb Stabbings, Say doctors. The Guardian. Dghaim, R., El Kouatly Kambris, M., & Barakat, C. (2020). How Safe Are School and Bus Environments? Parents’ Perception of Risks and Hazards in the Emirate of Dubai. Policy and Practice in Health and Safety, 18(2), 100–110. Drianda, R. P., & Kinoshita, I. (2011). Danger from Traffic to Fear of Monkeys: Children’s Independent Mobility in Four Diverse Sites in Japan. Global Studies of Childhood, 1(3), 226–242. Gristy, C. (2019). Journeys to School in Rural Places: Engaging with the Troubles Through Assemblages. Journal of Rural Studies, 72, 286–292. Harber, C. (2014). Education and International Development: Theory, Practice and Issues. Symposium. Harber, C., & Muthukrishna, N. (2000). School Effectiveness and School Improvement in Context: The Case of South Africa. School Effectiveness and Improvement, 11(4), 421–434.

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Hopkins, D., & Mandic, S. (2017). Perceptions of Cycling Among High School Students and Their Parents. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 11(5), 342–356. Ipingbemi, O., & Aiworo, A. B. (2013). Journey to School, Safety and Security of School Children in Benin City, Nigeria. Transportation Research Part F, 19, 77–84. Kamargianni, M., & Polydoropoulou, A. (2011). Exploring Teenagers Travel Behavior for School and After: Implications on Safety. International Conference on Transportation Information and Safety (ICTIS) 1896–1904. Lind, B., & Agergaard, J. (2010). How Students Fare: Everyday Mobility and Schooling in Nepal’s Hill Region. International Development Planning Review, 32(3–4), 311–331. Mehdizadeha, M., Nordfjaernb, T., Mamdoohia, A. R., & Mohaymany, A. S. (2017). The role of parental risk judgements, transport safety attitudes, transport priorities and accident experiences on pupils’ walking to school’. Accident Analysis and Prevention 102, 60–71. Meyer, H. A., & Astor, R. A. (2002). Child and Parent Perspectives on Routes to and from School in High Crime Neighborhoods. Journal of School Violence, 1(4), 101–128. Morojele, P., & Muthukrishna, N. (2013). “My Journey to School”: Photovoice Accounts of Rural Children’s Everyday Experiences in Lesotho. Gender and Behaviour, 11(2), 5362–5377. PLAN. (2008). The Global Campaign to End Violence in Schools. PLAN. Poku-Boansi, M., Amoako, C., & Obeng Atuah, D. (2019). Urban Travel Patterns and Safety Among School Children Around Accra, Ghana. Journal of Transport and Health, 15, 1–11. Porter, G., Hampshire, K., Abane, A., Augustine, A., Munthali, A., Robson, E., Mahiri, M., & Maponya, G. (2011). Young People’s Transport and Mobility in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Gendered Journey to School. Documents d’Analisi Geografica, 57(1), 61–67. Ross, N.  J. (2007). My Journey to School….Foregrounding the Meaning of School Journeys and Children’s Engagements and Interactions in Their Everyday Localities. Children’s Geographies, 5(4), 373–391. Taylor, M. (2018, May 21). Clean Air Campaigners Want the School Run Banned to Cut Pollution. The Guardian. Tetali, S., Edwards, P., Murthy, G.  V. S., & Roberts, I. (2016). Road Traffic Injuries to Children During the School Commute in Hyderabad, India: Cross-Sectional Survey. Injury Prevention, 22, 171–175.

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Wiebe, D. J., Guo, W., Allison, P. D., Anderson, E., Richmond, T. S., & Branas, C. C. (2013). Fears of Violence During Morning Travel to School. Journal of Adolescent Health, 53(1), 54–61. Wilson, K., Coen, S.  E., Piaskoski, A., & Gilliland, J.  A. (2019). Children’s Perspectives on Neighbourhood Barriers and Enablers to Active School Travel: A Participatory Mapping Study. The Canadian Geographer, 63(1), 112–128.

8 School Buildings (and Grounds)

 uildings for Learning in Discomfort: B For Some? One of the first things that strikes you about school buildings for the mass of children is how similar a lot of them look, wherever you are in the world and whatever the official ideology of the state. Meighan and Harber (2007, pp. 93–94) summarised some key propositions that emerged from observing school buildings: 1. A group of 30–40 under the surveillance of one adult is often believed to the most suitable for the learning process. 2. The process of education is seen as both orderly and apparently uncomfortable for the learners. The buildings tend to have the same clinical austerity of places in which one is confined for purposes other than pleasure. 3. The asymmetrical relationship in the allocation of space and facilities: teachers have larger desks, padded chairs, lockable cupboards and access to more of the school territory, whereas pupils have inferior

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claims on the building’s resources. It is a teachers’ building rather than a pupils’ building: it is ‘their’ building rather than ‘our building. 4. The design on which classrooms are based is not unlike a factory, in that the children pass though ‘stages of production or process’ according to certain criteria like age and sex, in regular sized compartments, in regular sized groups and at regular sized desks or tables. 5. A ‘production manager’ (headteacher) is allocated extra space and facilities to supervise the production activities of the teachers. 6. The buildings are not conducive to individual learning and small group learning. 7. The buildings tend to obstruct the development of cooperative and democratic relationships between teachers and pupils. 8. The buildings provide some facilities not available in homes such as libraries and gyms. 9. The buildings tend to introduce some ideas not present in houses and flats such as separate toilets for the sexes, learning regularly in large groups and large areas of space with access forbidden to children. Indeed, as suggested above, the nature and structure of school buildings wield a strong influence on the nature of learning and teaching and teacher-pupil relationships that exist inside the school. This is so taken for granted that they still influence learning away from the school. In a survey of pupils’ views of schooling in the UK, it was found that they had a strong desire to learn outside of the confines of the school classroom, in places such as gardens, museums, nature reserves and ecological centres. However, the study also cites research to the effect that even on such visits everyday school routines and practices persist: When school groups visit such sites, they can be observed to adapt classroom-­style, task-oriented approaches which contrast with the ‘natural learning behaviours’ manifested by family groups visiting at weekends…Such behaviours tend to be less formally organised, more random and led by curiosity rather than design. It has been argued that school-­ imposed task structures inhibit the natural tendency to learn at such sites. ‘Worksheets encouraged “tunnel vision”, box-ticking and emphasis on literacy rather than environmental objectives’ and surveys have indicated that ‘most teachers and pupils felt that learning would have been more effective

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if there had been unstructured time for exploration, open ended questioning and consolidation through structured discussion’. (Burke & Grosvenor, 2003, pp. 68–69)

In the 1960s Jackson also noted the crowded conditions of many schools, a worrying factor with the possible presence of Covid: Even factory workers are not clustered as close together as students in a standard classroom. Indeed, imagine what would happen if a factory the size of a typical elementary school contained three or four hundred workers. In all likelihood the unions would not allow it. (1968, p. 8)

Yet, despite this close proximity, students are expected to behave as though they were in solitude: They must keep their eyes on their paper when human faces beckon. Indeed, in the early grades it is not uncommon to find students facing each other around a table while at the same time being required not to communicate with each other. These young people, if they are to become successful students, must learn how to be alone in a crowd. (Jackson, 1968, p. 16)

Indeed, a study of pupils’ views of schooling in the UK (Osler, 2010, p. 57) found that one of the biggest challenges facing pupils was a lack of space—they complained of crowded corridors and hallways, dining rooms and classrooms. A study of two schools, one in Portugal and one in Brazil, on user comfort in schools found dissatisfaction with aspects of school buildings (Saraiva et al., 2018). In the school in Portugal, two fifths of the students in the sample stated that they were not comfortable with the temperature inside the classroom and only a quarter of the students were comfortable with the desks in the classroom. In Brazil, three fifths of students were not comfortable with the levels of noise in classrooms and under a third were comfortable with the nature of the desks provided. The researchers concluded that low scores on such indicators are not good because students spend long periods of time in schools and lack of comfort ‘interferes with the students’ health, concentration and learning’ (Saraiva et al., 2018, p. 9).

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However, there are often stark differences between the buildings of schools for the poor and those for the wealthy that physically signify the socially reproductive role of schooling. This is evident at a glance in the UK when comparing the standardised buildings provided by state education, which are sometimes in poor shape because of lack of sufficient finance, with those of expensive and elite private institutions such at Eton, Harrow or Charterhouse. The historical buildings of the latter, set in spacious grounds and playing fields and elaborate facilities, signal a very different education and set of life chances to state schools. Such elite private schools are present in many countries (Harber, 2014, pp. 63–64). Brown (2003, p. 127) writes in relation to America that public (state) schools resemble prisons or military camps rather than sites for learning. In these schools, replete with metal detectors, armed guards, and periodic searches, poor youth, especially African American and other youth of colour, are being subjected to increasing levels of physical and psychological surveillance and regimentation. The physical restrictions imposed within the school walls are complemented by national policies and practices such as school uniforms, more stringent forms of rote education…which signify the need for discipline, obedience and conformity…Conversely, public schools for wealthy youth resemble palatial edifices adorned with all the resources that constitute sites for learning, critical inquiry and fluid social interchange. These schools are located on spacious grounds and are equipped with state-of-the-art facilities in comfortable, resource-rich environs that encourage the freedom of mobility and thought to discover, problem-solve and create.

Brown goes on to compare in detail two schools in Chicago that possess these contrasting physical characteristics with their implications for the nature of learning and educational and social success.

School Buildings and Pupil Safety Children and young people are encouraged and compelled to go to school globally, so when they are there they should at least be provided with a safe and conducive everyday physical environment in which to learn.

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Except that this isn’t always the case. Sometimes the physical facilities for a safe, hygienic and comfortable experience may simply not be there in poorer countries or poorer regions. For example, a study of 40 schools in Karkala Taluk, Karnataka, in India set out to evaluate whether they met the ten criteria of Child Friendly School Initiative as recommended by Indian Academy of Pediatrics. The study found that none of the schools met all the criteria; 90% of the schools did not have adequate toilet facilities, 90% did not have safe transportation for the students, 72% did not have access to safe drinking water, 57% did not have properly ventilated and illuminated classrooms, and physical punishment was being administered in 45% of schools. 28% of schools did have a periodic health checkup, 40% of schools did not have a clean kitchen/ dining room, 40% had inadequate facilities for games, and 43% did not have facilities for first aid at the school. (Hedge & Shetty, 2008, p. 407)

However, school buildings can also be downright dangerous. Indeed, pupils could be in danger simply by entering the school building. The following examples are from the early 2000s: When an earthquake shook the town of San Giuliano di Puglia in southern Italy in November 2002 the sole building it completely destroyed was the local primary school, killing 26 children and a teacher. It became clear that the school had been cheaply and poorly built despite a history of earthquakes in the region. The final date for making all school building secure had been put back five times because of a lack of funds. Since the earthquake a number of surveys and reports have come to light suggesting that around half the schools in Italy are unsafe or lacking safety certification…A government report in Japan, where tremors are common, revealed that less than half of all schools and universities are sufficiently earthquake resistant. Some experts have predicted that a force 6 or 7 earthquake would hit the Kanto region soon in which case half of Tokyo’ schools would simply ­disintegrate. Moreover, two thirds of the schools in Tokyo have no nearby evacuation spaces. Boards of education have repeatedly asked for money to re-build schools to make them safe but it has not been provided…In England the Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors Association are to investigate the state of school toilets as they are concerned that many are unhygienic and are breeding grounds for germs which could affect the

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health and well-being of pupils…In Russia the Prime Minister ordered an immediate fire survey of all schools following the death of 28 children in southern Russia following another fire three days before in Siberia where 22 children died. Prosecutors blamed the high death toll in Siberia on building code violations including a blocked fire escape. Russia’s Izvestia newspaper reported that last year 700 fires damaged school buildings across Russia. (Original sources in Harber, 2004, p. 46)

While this chapter was being written, the BBC reported that at least eight children died and many were feared trapped after a building containing a school collapsed in the Nigerian city of Lagos. The school, which was on the top floor of the three-storey building, in Ita Faji on Lagos Island, reportedly had more than 100 pupils. The collapsed building was a residential block containing a number of apartments as well as the school. It is not unusual for buildings to collapse in Nigeria. Materials are often substandard and the enforcement of regulations lax (www.bbc. co.uk/news/world-­africa-­47555373, March 13th 2019). Seven children were also killed and 64 injured when a classroom collapsed as pupils were starting their morning lessons in Nairobi. The children were aged between 10 and 14 years. The cause of the collapse was not immediately known but authorities had previously warned that 30,000 to 40,000 buildings erected without approval in Nairobi were at risk of collapse (The Telegraph, 23/9/2019). In 2019 it was reported that three students were killed and many more trapped at Hoerskool Driehook near Johannesburg when a walkway collapsed (The Guardian, 1/2/2019). School buildings continue to be a safety issue. In China officials have been reported as refusing to let parents use their own money to buy air purifiers for school classrooms despite serious levels of smog and pollution around and in the school. Many middle-class families have air purifiers at home but most state schools have no such equipment. Parents complain that their attempts to help have been met with bureaucratic excuses, confusion and delay. Without purifiers, even indoor air in Beijing often contains ten to twenty times the World Health Organisation’s recommended maximum exposure to key pollutants (MacLeod, 2017). In Thailand pupils have been wearing masks to combat heavy pollution in Bangkok. Schools were also closed for a day as the situation was very bad.

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The governor of Bangkok also noted that this would further help matters because it would empty the roads of cars on the school run (Durkin, 2019). A study commissioned by the Mayor of London reported in 2017 that tens of thousands of children at more than 800 schools, nurseries and colleges in London are being exposed to illegal levels of air pollution that risk causing lifelong health problems. A report the previous year had stated that 433 primary schools were exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution. A third of state-maintained nursery schools in London (27), nearly 20% of primaries (360) and 18% of secondaries are in areas where toxic levels of nitrogen dioxide threaten children’s health (Taylor & Laville, 2017). Ironically, as we saw earlier in the book, a significant factor in this is parents driving their children to and from school. In fact, primary school pupils at a school in Greater Manchester started patrolling the streets outside their schools as uniformed “junior” police officers, issuing fake parking tickets to parents parked on the pavement or sitting with their engines running. Pollution at the school breached legal limits in 2018 (Pidd, 2019). In Scotland architects warned that inspections urgently needed to be carried out on all public buildings built using private finance initiatives (PFIs) after the publication of a highly critical report on the safety of PFI schools. Concern was prompted by the collapse of an external wall at Oxgangs Primary School in Edinburgh in January 2016. A report on the collapse blamed inadequate quality supervision and cost-cutting measures. Edinburgh city council initiated inspections of 17 schools built through PFIs after the collapse at Oxgangs but the other 31 authorities had not done the same (Perraudin, 2017). In England, findings branded “absolutely terrifying” by union officials indicated that fewer than one in six newly built schools have been installed with sprinkler systems: Despite official government guidance that all new schools should have sprinklers “except in a few low-risk schools,” figures showed that, of the 673 schools built under the government’s flagship school building scheme and free school programmes, sprinklers were fitted in just 105. (Savage, 2019)

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There were more than 7000 fires at educational premises in England during the decade 2009–2019 (Savage, 2019). Again in the UK, nearly 700 schools were referred to the Health and Safety Executive over concerns that they are failing to safely manage asbestos in their buildings. potentially outing thousands of staff and pupils at risk. (Perraudin, 2019a)

Campaigners and teacher unions say that asbestos in schools is often poorly managed and that staff are frequently unaware of its location. Exposure to asbestos is particularly dangerous to children, and even low levels can cause cancer decades later (Perraudin, 2019a). A further report (Perraudin, 2019b) found that nearly one in five school buildings in England required urgent repairs. Many more were found not to have the paperwork required by law, including electrical test certificates, fire risk assessments or asbestos management plans. In May 2021 it was reported that more than 70 schools were likely to have used plastic foam insulation, which burns, since it was banned on residential buildings over 18 metres tall in 2018. In the five years between 2016 and 2021, 47 primary and secondary schools have been destroyed in England. Members of Parliament, firefighters, the construction industry and the Mayor of London are among those wanting a ban on the use of such potentially dangerous combustible materials in school buildings (Booth, 2021). Moreover, as UNESCO (2019, p.  200) notes, school buildings are often damaged or targeted during violent conflict. It further states that there were over 12,700 attacks on education in 2013–2017, harming over 21,000 students and education personnel. Reported incidents included physical attacks or threats of attacks on schools, students, teachers and other education personnel; military use of schools and universities; child recruitment or sexual violence by armed parties at or in transit to or from school or university; and attacks on higher education. In total, 28 countries were classified into three levels by number of incidents and/or number of students or education personnel harmed. (UNESCO, 2019, p. 200)

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I’ll Be Watching You: School Buildings as Surveillance School buildings are also places of surveillance. Important here is the work of Foucault (1977), who argued that from the eighteenth century onwards the physical design of social institutions such as working class housing estates, hospitals, asylums, prisons and schools were based on the model of the military camp where behaviour could be constantly observed and thus regulated and controlled. Foucault uses Jeremy Bentham’s design of the ideal prison—the Panoptican—to describe how modern institutions survey behaviour. Like prisons, schools are divided into cells (classrooms) where the inmates are constantly watched. When people know they are being watched and will be punished for contravention of any rules then it makes it easier to control and supervise them. (Harber, 2004, p. 65)

Indeed, a study of pupils’ views of schooling in the UK found that children have ‘the capacity to examine critically the normal and everyday spaces in which they learn and can articulate their future in previously unimagined ways’ (Burke & Grosvenor, 2003, pp.  20–21). However, when they did, a recurring theme was that schools were like prisons. Indeed, Burke and Grosvenor (2003, p. 34) found that even the eating of school meals had a strong element of surveillance and control: children have readily associated the serving of school food with institutions such as hospitals and prisons which emphasise authority, control and the regulation of bodies…At the present time in the UK, school meals in primary schools are often served within an atmosphere of distrust and compulsion, sometimes within enforced silence. This goes a long way to explain the prevailing dislike of the school meals assistant or supervisor whose job it is to ensure that the meal is taken with the minimum of fuss and waste. Children’s inventions of robotic dinner assistants and technological devices for avoiding contact with human beings, such as midday supervisors, betray the need for less interference and more trust.

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In Delhi in India, the government announced in 2018 that it will install CCTV cameras in every classroom in the city after several high-profile crimes took place in schools, including the rape of a five-year-old girl by a member of staff and the murder of a seven-year-old boy. The cameras were installed in 1000 schools and parents will be given access to the feed through a mobile phone app. Parents quoted in the article approved both because of their ability to spot potential danger and because it will allow them to see how much attention pupils are getting, whether schools are being cleaned and if pupils were receiving their midday meal on time. However, a lawyer who had recently been involved in a supreme court case that established a right to privacy in India was more critical. He said that there was little evidence that such systems work and that the government needed to establish that use of surveillance in schools was necessary and proportionate which was difficult given that the people who will be under perpetual surveillance will be children. (Safi, 2018)

The general secretary of the School Teachers Association also opposed, particularly as 70% of the teachers were women. He said that this was not about the safety of pupils but to keep a vigil on teachers (Safi, 2018). Fisher et al. (2019) have noted that in recent years in America school buildings have increasingly begun to incorporate formal control and surveillance mechanisms into the everyday experience of schooling in the form of school security measures such as security personnel and police, surveillance cameras, and metal detectors. Devine (1996) described a situation in schools in New York: where traditional forms of school authoritarianism have broken down but rather than being replaced with more constructive forms of democratic discipline and order have given way to a culture of violence. Educational staff have abdicated their responsibility for safety and security to an ineffective array of armed security guards who patrol the school and a technology of metal detectors, walkie-talkies and emergency security telephone systems in classrooms. Teachers focus purely on academic skills as defined by state-dictated curricular requirements and are not concerned with the whole student—behaviour, social skills and values. There is little insistence on personal responsibility and students conclude that teachers just do not

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care. As a result the schools he describes are a mixture of the trappings of repressive security technology masking a fundamentally laissez-faire culture in which half the pupils carry guns or knives and frequently use them. In this situation schooling, despite the obvious security presence, is failing to protect its pupils from violence. (Harber, 2004, p. 57)

In their research Fisher et al. found that the daily presence of such an array of security personnel and devices in schools worsened the relationships between staff and students. In South Africa, an initiative known as Operation Phakisa for Education (OPE) is a detailed study of pupil behaviour by tracking their use of government-subsidised computers. The avowed aim is to improve pupils’ performance with digital evaluation and targeted intervention. Each pupil has a personal learning plan, which can only be derived by watching and recording every aspect of a pupil’s digital activity. The author of the article describes OPE as a ‘surveillance engine of South Africa’s youth’. OPE data collection involves the creation of a cloud in which data on each schoolchild is stored and processed in central government repositories. The department of education intends to use cookies to track pupils’ internet activity in a centralised government database. The author argues that such ‘granular surveillance’ of all youth in a society has never been attempted before but that a large body of research suggests that surveillance produces a ‘chilling effect’ on free speech and inquiry: Study after study shows that individuals conform to the expectations of the status quo when they know they are being watched…very likely they will restrict their expression, experimentation and inquiry to the bounds of accepted thought. (Kwet, 2017)

One high-level member of the telecommunications department’s e-education initiative responded that ‘children need to be controlled’ and added that ‘they can dissent at home’, posing an obvious counter to the overt discourse of democracy and human rights in post-apartheid South African education (Kwet, 2017). Hope (2009) noted the increased use of surveillance cameras in British schools to reduce crime and foster greater safety:

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Yet, within UK schools such devices have become part of material culture, play an increasingly important role in social control and serve to illuminate the underlying values inherent in changing disciplinary practices’…and that that whilst school CCTV use might have been initially concerned with protecting against ‘dangerous outsiders’, it subsequently developed to facilitate the social control of students. (Hope, 2009, pp. 891–2)

However, Hope argues that the increased use of surveillance by cameras in schools also marks a shift in emphasis in discipline and control away from helping individual pupils to improve and develop self-­ discipline to a greater emphasis on punishment: CCTV is a situational modifier, essentially concerned with target hardening and intervention facilitation. Its use approaches the problem of social disorder as one of system integration rather than social integration. That is, attempts to directly reform individuals are somewhat disprivileged and the focus shifts from changing individuals’ social attitudes to relying on technological systems to deter deviancy or facilitate punishment. (2009, p. 902)

The implication of ‘such a shift in values is that crime and deviancy become perceived as mundane, inevitable, everyday occurrences’ (2009, p. 903). In his own empirical study of schools, Hope found that staff tended to be resigned to the inevitability of student misconduct, even talking about specific students in a manner that suggested they had already been labelled as criminal in nature…so that, rather than enculturing citizens to be rule obeying and law abiding, this approach seeks to ensure that technological systems exist to thwart individuals’ disorderly instincts. In this context school CCTV use can be seen as a movement away from focusing upon and reforming students to surveying ‘deviant spaces’. Such interpretations share similarities with panoptical ideas, wherein disciplinary technology could easily become privileged over engagement with those being observed. (2009, p. 903)

In Britain, parents and anti-surveillance campaigners urged a secondary school to re-think its decision to install CCTV cameras in pupil toilet

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areas after reports that some children were too scared to use them. One parent said that it was to prevent bullying and vandalism but that they should put a prefect or teacher on duty in the toilets at break time. One parent claimed that ‘her daughter came home in tears because she was too scared to use the toilet and nearly wet herself in class, describing the use of cameras as intrusive and creepy’. The article also pointed out that five years previously the campaign group Big Brother Watch found that more than 200 schools across Britain were using CCTV cameras in pupils’ toilets or changing rooms, raising concerns about the privacy of schoolchildren. The chief executive of Big Brother Watch was quoted as saying that ‘Teaching children high standards of behavior can be done in many ways that do not involve breaching their privacy when going to the loo. This is a heavy-handed, unacceptable and frankly lazy approach to addressing problems of behavior’ (Weale, 2017). Indeed, surveillance cameras made by a Chinese tech company, Hikvision, implicated in human rights violations and which could be used to spy and collect information have been installed in some schools in the UK. The company has acknowledged that its cameras may have been used in ‘re-education’ camps, the internment camps that are used to detain at least one million people from China’s Muslim minorities (Kirchgaessner, 2020). In Brazil, the national education minister was forced to backtrack after he asked schools to film students singing the national anthem in front of a Brazilian flag and reading out the campaign slogan of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. The filmed results were meant to be sent to the education ministry (The Guardian, 27/02/2019). The rest of this chapter will examine issues related to particular aspects of school buildings and their surrounding property.

School Playing Fields School playing fields, for those lucky enough to have them, provide a potential everyday opportunity for pupils to learn, practice and develop their sporting interests and capacities. By enabling the exercise of the mind and body they help to provide a healthy balance to the indoor,

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exam-focused academic emphasis of many schools. So why are so many schools in the UK getting rid of them? Basically because they are being sold off to housing developers so that in times of austerity those who control the schools—sometimes local councils but also privately run academy chains—can realise their assets in the form of cash. A report in 2019 noted that ‘The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) calculates total school spending per pupil in England fell by 8 per cent in real terms between 2010 and 2018’ and that ‘The government has approved the sale of 215 school playing fields in England since 2010 at a time when childhood obesity is reaching epidemic proportions’ (Busby, 2019). The British Times Educational Supplement reported in 2020 (Speck, 2020) that according to Department of Education documents more school playing fields have been ‘approved for sale’ between January and July of 2020 than in the whole of last year and in the whole of 2018. The decisions on the disposal of school land document shows that 13 school playing field sites in England have been approved for sale in 2020, compared with 11 sites in the whole of 2019 and 12 sites in the whole of 2018. Two of the sites being sold are at schools which have closed; however, Fields in Trust, a charity which supports parks and green spaces, said in such cases there would need to be confirmation that neighbouring schools had sufficient playing fields. The charity’s chief executive Helen Griffiths said: ‘As schools begin to reopen (post-Covid), it is vital that outdoor space remains available for play, sport and the delivery of a wide curriculum.’ She added, We know that parks and green spaces are not equally distributed across the country so even where entire schools are being closed it is important to consider whether a more creative approach is needed to enable neighbouring schools to use these spaces and whether green space that is surplus to educational use can be repurposed for local community use. (cited in Speck, 2020)

The article also notes that in 2017 a Times Educational Supplement investigation revealed that the amount of school playing field land earmarked for sell-off had increased dramatically to a seven-year high and that almost half of the land was in three local authority areas, Knowsley,

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Kent and Barnsley, all of which have higher than average levels of overweight and obese children of reception age (Speck, 2020). As Grylls (2020) points out, this is a matter of considerable political controversy: The sale of school playing fields is an emotive topic. In 2008, then Conservative shadow education secretary Michael Gove criticised the legacy of New Labour, saying, “It is ironic that the government is selling off school playing fields on the eve of a campaign to get children to lead more active lives. The planning rules need to be changed to make it easier to set up schools and use them for education and recreation.” And yet four years later, as education secretary, it was Gove who overruled the independent Schools Playing Fields Advisory Panel five times in 15 months, giving the go-ahead to a series of controversial projects. A Daily Telegraph study showed that the proportion of children doing two hours of sport a week fell from 90 to 43 per cent after his department’s decision to drop this compulsory requirement.

School Toilets and Changing Rooms While pupils at schools in industrialised countries may not be happy with their school buildings, many pupils in less industrialised countries don’t have a school building at all or schools are forced to operate a double shift system where the same staff have to teach two shifts in one day, with predictable effects on teacher morale and wear and tear on buildings. Even the most basic human needs such as the existence of a toilet, and preferably a single-sex toilet, may not be met (Harber, 2017, pp.  75–76 on sub-Saharan Africa). Indeed, a study of factors affecting menstruating school girls’ health and well-being in Tanzania found that only 11% of the schools surveyed met the Ministry of Education’s standard of 20 girls and 25 boys per drop hole toilet, that 52% of girls’ latrines did not have doors and that 92% of schools surveyed did not have functional hand-­ washing facilities with water (Sommer, 2013, p. 30). Many of the schools observed during the study had pit latrines or some variation of toilets (e.g. flush); however, the number, quality or appropriateness of the

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facilities was often a problem. The ratio of toilets to girls in some schools was as high as 114:1, way above the national requirement of 20:1 for girls. The girls expressed a strong desire for doors with locks on the inside (many latrines lacked any doors), the availability of separate toilets from boys and from younger girls/students (because they found it embarrassing to manage menses with younger children who teased them in primary school) and basic bathroom cleaning supplies (including gloves) so that students, who are primarily responsible for cleaning the latrines in most schools, could maintain a decent standard of hygiene within the facilities (Sommer, 2013). The girls in the study also wanted water taps (or buckets) located inside each latrine stall, for privacy of washing menstrual stains, and wanted incinerators built near the latrines to avoid the embarrassment of carrying used supplies across school as described above. Observation and informal discussions with female teachers also revealed their discomfort with managing monthly menses in school environments, particularly those schools which had bathroom or latrine facilities located too close to the teacher staff room, shared with male teachers, cleaned by someone other than the teachers, and facilities that were specifically for teachers but were considered too dark and unhygienic for managing menses. Some schools lacked water altogether, while other schools had an inconsistent supply (Sommer, 2013, pp. 331–2). In a further study of the issues of menstruating school girls in Tanzania, Ghana, Cambodia and Ethiopia (Sommer et al., 2015), discussions with the heads of some Ethiopian schools revealed that when faced with a choice for funding more classrooms versus additional latrines or changing rooms, classrooms are prioritised. In Ghana and Ethiopia, schools were observed to have insufficient numbers of latrines at the primary and secondary school levels, with existing latrines often found to be unclean and inadequate, lacking doors and locks. Related challenges included a lack of privacy and insufficient segregation of girls’ and boys’ latrines. The researchers also note that In Ethiopia, the use of the girls’ latrine by boys was frequently mentioned as a concern for menstrual management. Although separate latrines did exist, the use of both latrines by the boys deterred girls from using the

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female latrine. The gender dominance of boys around latrines, and their ability to control or influence girls’ use of latrines, is likely a gendered pattern of behaviours learned from outside the school environment. In Cambodia, girls were frequently discomfited by the closeness of the girls’ latrines to the boys’ latrines, creating inadequate privacy. Some Cambodian schoolgirls requested there be a tree or other barrier placed between the girls’ and boys’ latrines. (Sommer et al., 2015, p. 602)

In the UK many teenage girls at school feel anxious about the routine monthly experience of their periods. Indeed, a 2019 survey found that more than half of girls aged 14–21 had missed school because they were embarrassed or worried about being on their period. 57% said that they had experienced negative comments at school, being told they were “dirty” or “disgusting”, being mocked for their perceived mood behaviour while menstruating or being teased about leaking sanitary products. (Ferguson, 2020)

One piece of research found that many female pupils talked about fear and embarrassment but they also reported poor access to toilets and products at school and feeling unable to ask a teacher if they could go to the toilet (Ferguson, 2020). Another issue was insufficient water supply, and girls at school in Cambodia and Tanzania said that even when water was available it was frequently located outside the latrine or toilet stalls rather than inside, compromising their privacy. A study of the views of primary school children in Vietnam found that they generally liked school but When asked what they did not like about school… The most frequently cited issues for children in schools which had not had capital work sponsored by Child Fund related to aspects of the school environment, in particular toilets, sanitation and cleanliness. These matters seriously affected children’s ability to play in breaks and their willingness to go to the toilet…Other suggestions related to the condition of buildings more generally, and children mentioned walls that were going to collapse, ceilings that were cracked, fans that were out of order, and bannisters that were not strong enough to lean on. (Phelps et al., 2014, p. 38)

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Indeed, UNESCO (2019, p. 198) reports that globally, only two thirds of schools have basic water services, two thirds had basic sanitation services and half had basic hygiene services. In Jordan, 93% of schools have basic drinking water, but only 33% have basic sanitation. In Lebanon, almost 93% have basic sanitation, but only 59% have basic drinking water. In Palestine, both facilities are offered at the basic level in around 80% of schools. Even in the UK, one of the richest countries in the world, a survey of pupils’ views about schooling revealed the following: Take toilets, for example. Nearly every entry mentioned them. They were smelly and dirty and the locks never worked. They wished that paper and soap were provided so they could wash their hands. But who says this is a trivial issue? Several thoroughly ‘grown-up’ studies have shown that unpleasant toilets encourage bullying and contribute to truancy. Worse, they show a disregard for the dignity of pupils. (Burke & Grosvenor, 2003, p. ix)

It may also be that school facilities lack the privacy required for pupils to function as they might wish. Wolfe (2017, p.  66), for example, describes one Australian female pupil’s intimidating experience of the sports changing rooms at school: the change rooms as well I found really intimidating. There’s always the popular girls, the pretty girls who just strip off in front of everyone and sometimes that felt like they were showing off as well, and of course I was overweight and I didn’t want to do that. And there was no privacy at all, there wasn’t anywhere to go, they were just communal change rooms, I remember them very well and that was an area I just never wanted to enter. So that was another reason why I wouldn’t participate in sport, because I didn’t want to come in the change room…I can vividly remember change room episodes in my head, like things, like girls talking about their bras and their underwear and things like that, which I didn’t have, and walking around in skimpy things and looking fantastic and ‘Aren’t we great?’ And I just couldn’t participate in any of that so I really didn’t feel like part of the team…the change room was a place that was intimidating for me and that I just couldn’t go into if there was anyone else there. Maybe if they’d all gone already I would go in later, but I just felt like it wasn’t somewhere that I could be because I wasn’t the same.

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Wolfe (2017, p. 67) adds that another student, Eve, refers to the sport spaces as both ‘unsafe’ and ‘elitist’, where her difference (unsporting physique) became prominent and complicated with ‘the awful expectation’ that she may have to participate (understood as guaranteed failure that would reinforce, publicly, her non-belonging).

Wolfe further observes that Both Carla and Eve are excluded from an affective community and understand the cause of this as their physical bodies that are unacceptable within the desired collective. It is not that they are unable to play sport but that the place of sport did not allow for them to exist as viable. To participate, Eve would have to go through ‘the process’ of getting changed in the public changing rooms that she ‘hated’…Eve felt ‘unflattering and awful’: the physicality of the sports uniform and the change room shamed the body reducing the capacity to response-ability. (2017, p. 67; original emphasis)

In England, a survey of school pupils found that they raised concerns about toilets in terms of being able to access them when they want to as times of access were, as in many schools, often controlled by staff rather than the bodily needs of pupils (Osler, 2010, pp. 58–59).

School Canteens, Kitchens and Dining Areas One everyday occurrence in schools is that children eat food, often in the dining room or area and often cooked in the school kitchen. A public and widely addressed controversy surrounding school canteens and dining areas in many countries that has existed for quite a while is the extent to which pupils are offered healthy food—or not—and their role in tackling obesity—or not. However, there are other difficult issues that need to be addressed. One is food waste, where schools should be setting an example and acting as a role model to pupils. Boschini et al. (2020, p. 1) note that Reducing food losses and waste is broadly considered as a main way to improve sustainability of food supply and consumption chains, as well as

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to tackle their negative consequences on the environment and on the socio-­ economic system. In September 2015, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved the new “Sustainable Development Goals”, which included the objective to “halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer level by 2030”.

And that The food waste generated in the school food service sector is attracting increasing attention both from the academic literature and the public opinion. (2020, p. 1)

Boschini et al. list a number of causes for this food waste in schools, which includes operational issues related to catering provider policies and organisation of the foodservice at school, such as the absence of an ordering system for school meals, lack of flexibility to adapt centrally planned menus to meet student’s preferences and excessive size of portions with respect to children’s nutritional needs. There were also other reasons not directly connected to food, such as an unpleasant environment in the dining room, the short time available to pupils to eat their lunch and practical difficulties with eating food that need to be peeled, such as fruit. Behavioural reasons included individual choices, for example, lack of hunger or limited appreciation of meal options (Boschini et al., 2020, p.  2). In their study of over 100,000 meals served in Italian primary schools Boschini et al. found a number of significant causes of food waste. The most significant was the foodservice provider in influencing the amount of diners’ leftovers, confirming that more effort should be put by municipalities to recall the companies in charge of the service on a greater attention on the quality of the meals offered. (2020, p. 11)

Other factors that significantly affected the amount of diners’ leftovers were the serving size, especially when the amount of food served exceeded 370 grams per day per capita, and the composition of the menus, highlighting the importance of reducing the gap between nutritional

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requirements and children’s preferences. The results also showed that diners’ leftovers increased when children were free to consume snacks without a limited amount of caloric content during mid-morning break, as is the case when food is provided by their families. A study of food waste in Spain (Derqui et al., 2018) found that overall food waste was estimated to be between 60 and 100 grams per pupil per day, when computing both pre-consumer (cooked but not served) and post-consumer waste (served but not eaten). Derqui et al. note that, consistent with the literature, the highest amount of waste found in our audit came from plate waste, which ranged from 21 to 47 grams per pupil per day in primary schools and from 23.7 up to 88 grams per pupil per day in secondary schools, related to pupil’s food preferences (i.e. higher plate waste volumes when vegetables were offered than when pasta or rice). They conclude: Regardless of the business model, plate waste is a high source of food waste at schools. It is mostly avoidable and very strongly influenced by the school’s educational perspectives. School headteachers, canteen supervisors and teachers play a relevant role in facilitating, designing and implementing waste minimisation interventions. The human factor has arisen as the most relevant one when aiming to minimise food waste. (Derqui et  al., 2018, p. 9)

This seems to be a global problem, not just a European one. For example, Kasavan et al. (2021) found in a study of schools in Malaysia that the average food waste in schools is 6.4  grams per portion per day and 12.2 grams per capita per day. Staple foods and vegetables are the most commonly wasted food items, and other types of food represent minor waste. Moreover, 82.6% of the total food input is used to prepare the meals, while the remaining 17.4% end up as food waste. Again, in the context of Covid, food hygiene becomes even more important than normal. In a study of hygiene in relation to ready-to-eat vegetable salads in Spanish school canteens, Rodríguez-Caturla et  al. (2012) found that there were major problems with glove changing and correct hand-washing (35%). The use of gloves was not regularly observed during food preparation and distribution. They add that

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It is important to note that food workers’ hands can act as vectors in the spread of foodborne diseases, particularly in the case of handlers with inadequate personal hygiene. Moreover, hand-washing is a simple and effective way to avoid cross-contamination, and the use and change of gloves during food handling are crucial, because soiled gloves can be a cross-contamination source similar to unwashed hands. In this study, glove changing was considered essential because the workers took part in several activities. (2012, p. 2337)

As Ababio et al. (2016) note, food poisoning occurs in schools in both developed and developing countries, and the Ministry of Health in Ghana reported of 1348 children suffering from food poisoning in 2007 in the capital city of Accra alone. Their study of food hygiene in school kitchens which took place partly in Ghana found that Although 60% of schools in Ashanti Region of Ghana fed between 1000 and 3000 students thrice a day, there was no evidence of food safety management system in all the schools. Staff food and personal hygiene practices including, temperature control, hand-washing, avoidance of self-­ adornments, infectious disease control were substandard. A mandatory requirement by Food Laws for persons in supervisory position was not stringently complied with as 31% of kitchen matrons reported not to have hygiene qualification in the Ashanti Region of Ghana and 82% of 180 staff sampled had never received hygiene training. (Ababio et al., 2016, p. 167)

Similarly, a study in school kitchens in Brazil (Rossi et  al., 2017) showed that there were risks of microbial contamination. The study found that all samples (surfaces, cutting boards, kitchen sponges, milk, and water) were contaminated with heterotrophic bacteria. Staphylococcus aureus was found on the surface of sinks, dish cloths, cutting boards, and on the hands of food handlers. Fecal coliforms were found on sinks, water, and milk. The results from the survey revealed that food handlers in Brazilian schools know about good practice but they do not carry them out in in school kitchens. (Rossi et al., 2017, p. 1)

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Another study of 204 food handlers in 50 schools in Kenya (Illés et al., 2021) found that Kenya’s high school food handlers possess fairly adequate knowledge on food contamination but fairly low knowledge levels on personal health hygiene and the transmission of food-borne diseases. More than half of the study participants have never received any form of training or refresher courses on food safety and sanitation, while almost none of the participants knew what Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) is. A majority of the respondents admit that none of the kitchen facilities they work for carry out HACCP procedures, hence compromising the health and safety of high school students by increasing susceptibility to food-borne diseases. A further study in Spain evaluated the extent to which food allergens were present in 50 school kitchens (Ortiz et al., 2018). The presence of egg and gluten was detected in 15% and 45% of the food-contact surfaces, respectively, and for some specific food-contact surfaces the occurrence reached 40%. The authors state that these results indicate that the current cleaning procedures as well as the subsequent manipulation of surfaces are not sufficient for the control of allergen residues in school canteens…the presence of allergens in food-­ contact surfaces of exclusive-use to prepare allergen-free meals implies that cross-contaminations might happen, thus increasing the risk of hidden allergens in the final product. (Ortiz et al., 2018, p. 449)

A study of aerosol pollution levels in schools in Vilnius, Lithuania, was not able to study schools in the most polluted parts of the city next to intense traffic and polluted factories, but it was found that the main source of aerosol pollution in schools was the school canteen due to poor ventilation, and this had also been found to be a problem in Italy as well (Prokopciuk et al., 2020). There were also external causes of aerosol pollution such as construction works using sandblasting near schools, but the main problem was that state authorities which should take care of pupil health do not assess the levels of indoor aerosol pollution or monitor its levels. But what about where the food is eaten? Pike (2008) studied dining rooms in primary schools in the UK. She uses a Foucauldian perspective to

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argue that spatial practices in the primary school dining room can be regarded as techniques of government or social control, which are underpinned and legitimised by specific rationalities and that specific policy discourses around school meals become manifest and achieve dominance within the physical space of dining rooms. She examines two discourses affecting school dining rooms—the nutritional and the social. The first is the emphasis on healthy eating and avoiding obesity noted above. The second regards school meals as an opportunity to improve children’s social development through the experience of communal dining and is connected to the perceived decline of the ‘family meal’. However, in her study of four schools the nutritional superseded the social: ‘In all four of the dining rooms studied, tables and seating were organised to maximize throughput and minimise the potential for children’s social interaction’ (Pike, 2008, p. 417). However, there were plenty of posters advertising the benefits of healthy eating, and children had to queue next to the salad bar for some time in order to get their main meal. Pike notes that in Discipline and Punish (1977) Foucault suggests discipline proceeds from the distribution of individuals in space and that this is particularly applicable to institutional spaces such as school dining rooms: When transgressions occur within the dining room, separation is employed as a disciplinary tactic and is further pursued outside in the playground where the offending individual’s motionless body can be made peculiarly visible among the general hubbub of the playground. (Pike, 2008, p. 418)

Interestingly, in all four of the school dining rooms studied, there also existed a material or symbolic division between those children who stayed for school dinners under the ‘Eat Well Do Well’ scheme and those who stayed for packed lunches brought from home: This spatial segregation serves to reinforce differences between school dinner eaters and pack up eaters and facilitates different types of interactions between the adults supervising the space and the children dining within it. For example, as all the meals served under the ‘Eat Well Do Well’ scheme were deemed to be healthy, adults frequently rewarded the school dinner

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eaters with positive praise, encouragement and stickers when they ate their lunch. These ‘rewards’ were not available to pack up eaters whose food was felt to be less healthy. (Pike, 2008, p. 418)

Moreover, in one of the schools, those children eating school dinners that also demonstrated appropriate table manners and other preferred modes of behaviour were selected to dine on a special table at the front of the dining room and with additional privileges, such as juice, tablecloths and flowers. This option was not available to packed lunch eaters who found it more difficult to demonstrate appropriate table manners as they ate the majority of their meal with their hands. Therefore, while it was possible for children seated on one side of the room to access rewards for ‘healthy’ behaviour, these were denied to children on the other side of the room. (Pike, 2008, p. 419)

Pike also observed that the segregation of packed lunch eaters from school dinner eaters also enabled different regimes of surveillance to be carried out. While all children were subject to surveillance, those eating packed lunches were subject to normalising judgements around appropriate ways of eating and appropriate types of food. However, those eating school lunches were monitored to ensure that they ate sufficient quantities of food and not just the items that they liked or were familiar with. She concludes these are just some of the ways in which spatial practices in school dining rooms can be understood as techniques of government that seek to shape the conduct of actors within the setting by limiting their field of action and that ‘In adopting this approach, practices which appear “normal”, or as the only reasonable way of doing things, are regarded as discursively generated’ (Pike, 2008, p. 419).

The School Tuck Shop Many schools around the world have a shop where pupils can purchase food. In some countries this may be a main or only source of food. Yet, there is serious concern, especially in many middle- and high-income countries, about diet and health implications of increasing obesity among

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children and young people. Hawkes et al. (2016) demonstrated that the school food environment has a major impact on children’s food choices and that the availability of tuck shops and vending machines at school were strongly associated with snack consumption. Nortje et al. (2017) reviewed ten studies of the consumption of food in schools in South Africa. They note that five of the ten studies reported that school children in South Africa often rely more on bringing money to school than on bringing a lunch box. At national level, approximately 50% of learners buy food at school frequently. Foods are sold through tuck shops, which are controlled by the schools, outsourced or privately owned, and food vendors either on or outside the school premises. In some instances, children buy food from a shop nearby the school. The authors argue that it can be postulated that schools have an ethical responsibility to protect children from an unhealthy food environment. However, Available data show that mostly unhealthy food options are sold to South African school children; with low-nutrient energy-dense foods (e.g. chips, sweets) and sugar sweetened beverages being the most popular. (Nortje et al., 2017, p. 74)

Nortje et al. note a number of reasons for this—children’s preference for unhealthy foods, the cost of healthier food options and a lack of proper facilities may however be barriers for implementing healthy tuck shops. They nevertheless argue that tuck shops have a duty to protect learners from an unhealthy food environment, as Malnutrition impacts negatively on the health, development and educational achievement of children; nutrition interventions targeting school-­ aged children in developing countries or countries in transition is therefore important. (2017, p. 76)

Interestingly, however, they note that Tuck shops particularly in low socio-economic schools may lack appropriate storage space and facilities to sell significant amounts of perishable foods, such as milk and fruit. Locally produced fruits, either at school or

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community gardens, can be sold through school tuck shops which will reduce the need for storage space. Although sponsorships from food companies may help to improve storage facilities for perishable foods, these sponsorships often come with conditions favouring the food company’s own products. Food/beverage companies often use school sponsorships to promote their (unhealthy) products…more than 60% of surveyed schools in the Western Cape, the school name was displayed on a branded food or beverage advertisement board…in Soweto, South Africa, vendors selling sugar sweetened beverages and advertisements for sugar sweetened beverages are located in close proximity to primary and high schools. (2017, p. 77)

In South Korea, tuck shops are located in many middle and high schools, but they are not under the schools’ supervision and are usually operated by a private retailer. School tuck shops frequently have low standards of food safety and quality, facilities, and sanitation. In addition, most of the food sold to students by tuck shops, such as high calorie snacks, breads, and sweets, is unhealthy. (Kim et al., 2012, pp. 138–9)

A study in British Columbia, Canada, also found that “Junk” foods were widely available in elementary, middle, and secondary schools through a variety of outlets. Although snack machines are virtually absent in elementary schools, tuck shops and school fundraisers sell foods usually found in snack machines, largely cancelling the positive effect of the absence of snack machines in these schools. Schools with a group responsible for nutrition appear to have a positive impact on nutrition policy implementation. (Rideout et al., 2007, p. 246)

Research in schools in Poland where there are no school canteens or kitchens (Jarossova, 2013, p. 588) found the following: 1. The school shops were varied in terms of hygiene and sanitary conditions, which had an impact on the type of food offered. 2. The majority of food and beverages sold in school shops and most frequently purchased by the students was characterized by a high energy value (high content of fat or sugar) and low nutritional value.

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Only those categories of foods were included in the shops’ sales promotion. 3. The school shops were missing posters promoting the types of food recommended for students, but displayed numerous advertisements of sweetened fizzy soft drinks (Coca-Cola) and crisps. 4. The activity of those school shops which sell food and beverages not recommended for the students can be assessed as harmful for their health and developing improper eating habits.

The School Playground In a study of girls eight to ten years old in Australia, most identified time in the playground as the most enjoyable part of the school day (Snow et al., 2019, p. 154). A study by Darmody et al. (2010) in Ireland also showed that, in accounts of their school life, most children identified the school playground as their ‘favourite place’. For many children, school break time provides opportunities for the kinds of physical activity and social interactions that are not as available to them outside the school context. However, as Mulryan-Kyne (2014) notes, they are also places which are overcrowded, where bullying takes place, where boys can dominate the space, where young children can feel frightened. She states further that In a study at the Institute of Education, London…, children were interviewed at ages 7 and 11 in relation to their break time experiences. Some 7-year-old and 11-year-old children found the playground experience distressing due to such behaviours as teasing and name-calling…Over half of children, more boys than girls, reported being involved in fights…Some children worried about being cold, not knowing what to do or with whom they might play…girls expressed more worry about break time with many wanting the option of staying inside…[A study] interviewed 11-year old children in their final year of primary school and among the findings of this study was that almost a half of the 175 children in a study, mostly girls, would like to be allowed to stay inside during at least some of break time if they chose to do so. The more negative attitudes of girls towards break time

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may be explained by the finding of…which showed that many girls were concerned about the domination of playground space and equipment by boys. Children also have commented about problems caused by the size of the outside space, the surfacing used on it and the lack of play apparatus…Children felt that the small size of the yard made play activities more difficult. Having older and younger children in the same small yard was also seen as a problem. It has been suggested that the bleak nature of some outside spaces in schools may be a contributory factor in the aggressive and anti-social behaviour that frequently occurs there. (Mulryan-Kyne, 2014, p. 383; research references in original)

Moreover, while school playgrounds may initially appear to provide a space where pupils can behave freely, they too are subject to social control. As Thomson (2005, p.  76) in her study of primary school playgrounds in England puts it, When gazing at the chaotic melee of a primary school playground the assumption is that the children have few constraints within this area. In school, as far as the children are concerned, one of the spaces that affords them a certain amount of autonomy is the playground. The general perception of the school playground is that it is not an adult space. However, it is a space conceived by adults to contain children at school. Each playground had prescriptive patterns of usage. These were designated according to the adults’ view of the children’s spatial desires and needs. However well-­ meaning the initiatives and management of playtime, staff still sought to limit the spatiality of the children.

In her own research she found that the children had to remain alert and conscious of all their actions in case they over stepped the line both literally and metaphorically. Therefore, it appeared that the children could not move as unconsciously and spontaneously as they wished. They had to remain alert to the rules and recognise spaces where entry was restricted/forbidden or embedded with rules. Conditioning children to bounded spaces in this way does nothing to encourage resourcefulness, risk competency or freedom of movement…Adults and agencies delimit the activities of, and the access in, the playground. Through their control of children’s games and play in this space, they

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explicitly and implicitly use the space to mould children’s behaviour, to teach them what is acceptable and what is deviant. Adult rules designate which part of the playground children can freely enter, which area of the playground belong to older or younger children, what games must be played in specific areas, where children should line up before entering the premise…Their slightest aberrant movements are supervised and disciplined. (Thomson, 2005, p. 76)

Thomson found that this control of the pupils supposedly free play space had some worrying consequences: Their anxiety at this experience sometimes expresses itself like that of animals caged in a zoo. One year 4 teacher remarked on the fact that she had a child who ‘perimeter walked’. At one school, several children would spend all of their playtime continually walking around the perimeter of the playground that bordered the outside space of the school premises. In addition, I found it interesting that a very popular game in all school playgrounds was one of ‘jails’ or ‘gaolers’. The children acted out being captured and imprisoned and put into jail. These games might well symbolise how the children feel about being confined in, and to, the school playground. (2005, p. 77)

In a further study of the playgrounds of three primary schools in the UK, Thomson (2007) also noted that there were a number of rules and regulations dominating the playground. Children were forbidden to play certain games, carry out particular ­activities or enter particular areas. On further scrutiny it was clear that there was a framework of rules, regulations and surveillance that constrained the children’s impromptu acquisition of knowledge and constrained their ingenuity. This worked to limit the children’s ownership, occupation, use and knowledge of their surroundings. (2007, p. 493)

When she asked the children themselves about the playground rules, the children said that they felt that there were an inordinate number of rules telling them what not to do. One seven-year-old summed it up by saying, ‘There’s an awful lot of don’ts aren’t there, there should be more

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dos’ (2007, p. 494). Most of the children she interviewed had absorbed the notion of rule keeping. The various rules and what was forbidden/ sanctioned in the playground were uppermost in their mind. At two of the schools the rules were pinned onto the doors into the playground. Thomson comments: The children’s list of school rules was considerably longer and more complex than those supplied by the teachers. Their list exemplifies how the discipline of the school filters down and is embedded in the consciousness of the children. Their version suggests that they feel/sense the impact of regulation quite strongly. Do teachers realize how rule-bound playtime can become for children? What adults say unthinkingly can, on occasions, become embedded in a litany and tradition of playtime. (2007, p. 494)

Thus, Children note the adult negativity about their activities and become cognisant of the regulations, they internalize them and learn to regulate their own actions, activities and explorations accordingly to fit in with the general adult remit of the playground…Overall, I suggest that the rules and regulations of playtime works to negate children’s understanding of the environment. By limiting children’s natural and spontaneous interaction with their environment we stunt their environmental knowledge, expertise and aesthetic pleasure. (2007, p. 498)

The findings of a study of primary school playgrounds in South Africa challenge dominant teacher constructions of the playground as a ‘free space’ and demonstrate how the playground operates as a site of learning gender through forms of ‘policing’ that involve boys bullying girls and boys who do not conform to gender norms (Mayeza, 2017). One of the key observations that emerged from the study pointed to the importance many boys attach to soccer which signifies ‘approved-of masculine traits’ such as toughness and strength, in ways which excludes and marginalises girls. One ten-year-old boy who insists on playing soccer with a girl, and this is seen by his male peers as ‘transgressing’ the norms of masculinity and is disapproved of. Mayeza notes that

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soccer emerged not only as an important signifier of what it means to be ‘properly’ male but competence in soccer was also cited as a key requirement for girls to gain membership to the boys’ playgroups and friendship circles. The boys differentiated between girls who are athletic and good in soccer but who also inhabit and display the usual, expected feminine traits. They compared these girls with other girls whom they constructed in derogatory ways as ‘tomboys’ because, besides these girls’ interest and competence in soccer, they were perceived to have ‘masculine’ qualities which includes showing too little concern about their physical appearance, spending most of their leisure time with boys, and constantly getting into trouble for engaging in fights at school. (2017, pp. 484–5)

Girls who participated in soccer were seen as problematic because they blurred the binary construction of gender according to the ways in which girls and boys are positioned in opposition to one another. In this context, the only way to make sense of a girl who plays soccer was to construct her as ‘masculine’ by reclassifying her as a ‘tomboy’. Moreover, the term ‘gay’ was widely used by the children, largely boys, as a policing strategy for not only gendered games but also cross-gender friendships in school. In the same way that girls who chose to play soccer risked being labelled ‘tomboys’, boys did not want to participate in activities largely associated with girls for fear of being denigrated and being called ‘gay’. Sexual and gender-based violence is a serious problem in South African schools (Harber & Mncube, 2017), and Mayeza and Bhana (2019) further explore how 12- to 14-year-old boys in a low economic township primary school in South Africa construct their hegemonic identity as ‘real boys’ in the school playground during break. They note that feminist literature on play suggests that gender and sexuality are socially produced and enacted in everyday social interactions at school and that research in the US on children’s playground social interactions reported on young boys’ sexually degrading comments about girls during gender-mixed play and argued that these kinds of comments are often used by some groups of boys as a benchmark to convince peers and friends that they are knowledgeable about specific ways of expressing heterosexuality:

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Indeed, the sexual objectification of girls is considered, in the literature, as one of the common ways in which groups of boys assert themselves as heterosexual beings. (Mayeza & Bhana, 2019, p. 269)

Their own data reveals that heterosexual masculine power is a major element in the construction of being a ‘real boy’. ‘Real boys’ express their power-based heterosexual identity in ways that objectify girls, while, at the same time, promoting a culture of gender violence through heterosexual competition and the policing of girls’ sexual agency. The major finding in their study is that the school playground is an important site for hegemonic and heterosexual identities, where a ‘real boy’ is displayed and given dominance during break time. Indeed, they conclude that The data have shown how “real boys” use the school playground during break time as a space to construct and negotiate their heterosexual identities. The manifestations of cultures of heterosexuality in the ways in which the “real boys” talked about what they do in the playground disrupts the common-sense discourse of sexuality in which primary schools are imbued with ideas of “innocence” and the protection of the presumed childhood sexual innocence. What we find substantially evident in the study is that heterosexuality plays an important role in everyday constructions by “real boys” of what being a “real boy” entails. (2019, pp. 274–5)

School playgrounds are not necessarily physically safe places either. One recent study in America published in the Journal of School Nursing (Olsen & Kennedy, 2020) notes that more than 200,000 accidents a year requiring medical attention happen in school playgrounds. Indeed, school nurses are well aware that unintentional injuries and incidents on the playground are common occurrences in the school setting. Playground injuries remain as one of the most frequently observed injury sources treated in hospital emergency departments…Each year, 218,000 children are treated in emergency departments, with falls accounting for more than 75% of these injuries…Fractures, commonly of the upper extremity, comprise the largest single injury category of injury seen by emergency departments (>33%), with more than 75% of fractures attributed to falls…Recent studies indicate that emergency department visits for playground-related

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traumatic brain injury have remained steady, or even increased in frequency across the past decade, with an average of 21,000 children treated each year…Furthermore, emergency room surveillance data have reported school playgrounds are among the top three common modalities for injury to school-aged children, along with motor vehicle- and bicycle-related injuries. (Olsen & Kennedy, 2020, p. 399; research references in original)

In their own research Olsen and Kennedy found that traffic congestion near playground environments is a concern. The study found only 46% had either a fence or sufficient distance to protect students from traffic (2020, p. 372). They also found that The inadequate shade observed on playgrounds influences both relative temperatures of surfacing and equipment and leads to increased ultraviolet (UV) exposure on playgrounds. This UV exposure is a concern as many cases of melanoma can be traced back to childhood sun exposures. (2020, p. 373)

Olsen and Kennedy also found that playground surfaces were noncompliant with existing standards and that there was an increased risk for potential severe injuries, whether the fall height was over nine feet for loose fill surfacing materials or over six feet for unitary surfaces (2020, p. 373).

Conclusion The material manifestation of the school is its buildings. But buildings aren’t just brick, concrete, wood and glass; they transmit social messages and have implications for the learning and well-being of pupils. Not only do the nature of school buildings reflect the inequalities of society but for many children schools and their grounds can be physically uncomfortable, unhygienic and unsafe places. They can also be places of social control and surveillance, on the one hand, and places where negative gender roles can be learnt, on the other. Like the other features of ‘normal’, daily schooling discussed in this book, they are problematic and need more consideration than they have had if we are in a hurry to send children and youngsters back to school in a post-Covid world.

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Harber, C. (2017). Schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policy, Practice and Patterns. Palgrave Macmillan. Harber, C., & Mncube, V. (2017). Violence in Schools: South Africa in an International Context. UNISA Press. Hawkes, A.  P., Weinberg, S.  L., Janusz, R., Demont-Heinrich, C., & Vogt, R.  L. (2016). An Innovative Method of Measuring Changes in Access to Healthful Foods in School Lunch Programs: Findings from a Pilot Evaluation. PLoS One, 11, e0146875. Hedge, A., & Shetty, A. (2008). Child Friendly School Initiative at Karkala Taluk, Karnataka. Indian Pediatrics, 45(5), 407–409. Hope, A. (2009). CCTV, School Surveillance and Social Control. British Educational Research Journal, 35(6), 891–907. Illés, C. B., Dunay, A., Serrem, C., Atubukha, B., & Serrem, K. (2021). Food Safety and Sanitation Implementation Impasse on Adolescents in Kenyan High Schools. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18031304 Jackson, P. (1968). Life in Classrooms. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Jarossova, M. A. (2013). The Impact of School Shops on Students’ Eating Habits on the Example of Secondary Schools in Wrocław in Poland. Studia commercialia Bratislavensia, 24(4), 581–590. Kasavan, S., Binti Mohd Ali, N. I., Bin Sharif Ali, S. S., Binti Masarudin, N. A., & Binti Yusoff, S. (2021). Quantification of Food Waste in School Canteens: A Mass Flow Analysis. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 164, 105176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105176 Kim, K., Hong, S. A., Yun, S. A., Ryou, H. J., Lee, S. S., & Kim, M. K. (2012). The Effect of a Healthy School Tuck Shop Program on the Access of Students to Healthy Foods. Nutrition Research and Practice, 6(2), 138–145. Kirchgaessner, S. (2020, September 22). US-Blacklisted Chinese Cameras Used in UK Gyms and Schools. The Guardian. Kwet, M. (2017, December 8–14). Big Bro Set to Watch Each Pupil. Mail and Guardian. MacLeod, C. (2017, January 6). Beijing to Spend 300bn Pounds on Clean Energy as Children Choke in Class. The Times. Mayeza, E. (2017). ‘Girls Don’t Play Soccer’: Children Policing Gender on the Playground in a Township Primary School in South Africa. Gender and Education, 29(4), 476–494. Mayeza, E., & Bhana, D. (2019). How “Real Boys” Construct Heterosexuality on the Primary School Playground. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 34(2), 267–276.

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Meighan, R., & Harber, C. (2007). A Sociology of Educating. London: Continuum. Mulryan-Kyne, C. (2014). The School Playground Experience: Opportunities and Challenges for Children and School Staff. Educational Studies, 40(4), 377–395. Nortje, N., Faber, M., & De Villiers, A. (2017). School Tuck Shops in South Africa—An Ethical Appraisal. South African Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 30(3), 74–79. Olsen, H., & Kennedy, E. (2020). Safety of School Playgrounds: Field Analysis from a Randomized Sample. The Journal of School Nursing, 36(5), 369–375. Ortiz, J. C., Galan-Malo, P., Garcia-Galvez, M., Mateos, A., Ortiz-Ramos, M., Razquin, P., & Mata, L. (2018). Survey on the Occurrence of Allergens on Food-Contact Surfaces from School Canteen Kitchens. Food Control, 84, 449–454. Osler, A. (2010). Students’ Perspectives on Schooling. Open University Press. Perraudin, F. (2017, February 15). Experts Call for Urgent Checks on All Scottish PFI Buildings. The Guardian. Perraudin, F. (2019a, July 5). Revealed: The Asbestos Risk at Hundreds of Schools. The Guardian. Perraudin, F. (2019b, December 9). One in Five Schools Need Urgent Repair Work. The Guardian. Phelps, R., Graham, A., Nhung, H.  T. T., & Geeves, R. (2014). Exploring Vietnamese Children’s Experiences of, and Views on, Learning at Primary School in Rural and Remote Communities. International Journal of Educational Development, 36, 33–43. Pidd, H. (2019, February 2). Pupils on Patrol Near School to Tackle Polluters. The Guardian. Pike, J. (2008). Foucault, Space and Primary School Dining Rooms. Children’s Geographies, 6(4), 413–422. Prokopciuk, N., Franck, U., Dudoitis, V., Tarasiuk, N., Juskiene, I., Valiulis, A., Cepuraite, D., Staras, K., & Ulevicius, V. (2020). On the Seasonal Aerosol Pollution Levels and Its Sources in Some Primary Schools in Vilnius, Lithuania. Environmental Science and Pollution Research International, 27(13), 15592–15606. Rideout, K., Levy-Milne, R., Martin, C., & Ostry, A.  S. (2007). Food Sales Outlets, Food Availability, and the Extent of Nutrition Policy Implementation in Schools in British Columbia. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 98(4), 246–250.

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Rodríguez-Caturla, M. Y., Valero, A., Carrasco, E., Posada, G., García-Gimeno, R., & Zurera, G. (2012). Evaluation of Hygiene Practices and Microbiological Status of Ready-to-Eat Vegetable Salads in Spanish School Canteens. Journal of Science Food and Agriculture, 92, 2332–2340. Rossi, E. M., Beilke, L., & Barreto, J. F. (2017). Microbial Contamination and Good Manufacturing Practices in School Kitchen. Journal of Food Safety, 38(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfs.12417 Safi, M. (2018, January 19). Delhi to Combat School Crimes by Putting CCTV in Classrooms. The Guardian. Saraiva, T.  S., De Almeida, M., Braganca, L., & Barbosa, M.  T. (2018). Environmental Comfort Indicators for School Buildings in Sustainability Assessment Tools. Sustainability, 10(6), 1–11. Savage, M. (2019, April 14). Children at Risk as “Most New Schools Built Without Sprinklers. The Observer. Snow, D., Bundya, A., Tranterb, P., Wyver, S., Naughton, G., Ragena, J., & Engelen, L. (2019). Girls’ Perspectives on the Ideal School Playground Experience: An Exploratory Study of Four Australian Primary Schools. Children’s Geographies, 17(2), 148–161. Sommer, M. (2013). Structural Factors Influencing Menstruating School Girls’ Health and Well-Being in Tanzania. Compare, 43(3), 323–345. Sommer, M., Ackatia-Armah, N., Connolly, S., & Smiles, D. (2015). A Comparison of the Menstruation and Education Experiences of Girls in Tanzania, Ghana, Cambodia and Ethiopia. Compare, 45(4), 589–609. Speck, D. (2020, July 14). More School Fields on Sale This Year Than in All 2019. Times Educational Supplement. Taylor, M., & Laville, S. (2017, February 25). Toxic Air Risk in One in Four London Schools. The Guardian. Thomson, S. (2005). ‘Territorialising’ the Primary School Playground: Deconstructing the Geography of Playtime. Children’s Geographies, 3(1), 63–78. Thomson, S. (2007). Do’s and Don’ts: Children’s Experiences of the Primary School Playground. Environmental Education Research, 13(4), 487–500. UNESCO. (2019). Migration, Displacement and Education: Building Bridges, Not Walls. UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report. Weale, S. (2017, November 3). Parents Protest at CCTV in School Toilets. The Guardian. Wolfe, M. J. (2017). Affective Schoolgirl Assemblages Making School Spaces of Non/Belonging. Education, Space and Society, 25, 61–70.

9 Post-Covid Schooling?

This book has set out evidence about the nature of everyday, normal schooling, which is often uncomfortable to read. Indeed, it has used analytical frameworks of control, reproduction and violence which in themselves do not shed a positive light on schooling. However, as made clear at the beginning of the book, this is not because schools don’t do many good things—they do—but because the much-reported positives are not the only truth about schooling. The harm done by schooling is not necessarily the fault of individuals either but rather the result of historical influences on the contemporary structures and ideologies of schooling systems that shape and impel the behaviour of participants. Nevertheless, we have to ask the question: are these the sort of schools we want children and young people to return to in a post-Covid world? I would suggest not. The first, and really important, point to make is, first, do no harm. When you’re in a hole, stop digging. The bottom line is that before any sort of post-Covid educational change in a positive direction is made, it is, at the very least, important to stop the direct forms of harm and violence inflicted on young people via schooling that have been described in previous chapters. If we are going to make the effort to get children back to school in a post-Covid world then the attitudes and practices that are © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Harber, Post-Covid Schooling, Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87824-5_9

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often deeply embedded in normal, everyday, taken-for-granted schooling need to be challenged and changed. Children and young people need not be physically assaulted at school either through corporal punishment or sexual assault and harassment. They need to be protected from bullying in school and not be subjected to other forms of harsh and unacceptable forms of punishment. They need safe school buildings with usable toilets, safer journeys to and from school, cleaner air, a major re-think on the nature and purpose of school examinations to better benefit learners themselves and help to broaden their development. This is the least we can do. Many of the articles and books I have cited in the text contain suggestions of practical ways of improving the situation in terms of, for example, better food hygiene, sanitary conditions, air quality, building safety and traffic management. But it will first require more of an open and honest admission that the current nature of everyday, normal schooling, although deeply ingrained, is also deeply problematic and not automatically beneficial to pupils and a public discussion of what can be done about it. We need to move away from the high level of global concern with access to schooling (exacerbated by Covid) and debate more about what actually goes on in schools around the world on a daily basis, whether it is fit for purpose and whose interests it really serves. We need to challenge and critique the normal and accepted more than we do. Time and time again during the Covid pandemic I have heard not just politicians but a whole range of trusted and respected scientists (I have never seen so many professors on television) all saying that of course it is important to get young people back into schools. There are rarely, if ever, any caveats, because the current unchanged model of schooling is still seen as unquestionably automatically the only way to carry out education despite widespread, but ignored, evidence that it is also harmful. When the immediate harm has been stopped or reduced significantly, then maybe more schools and the education systems of which they are a part can also at least begin to reduce or relax the current degree of authoritarian social control and surveillance that is a historical legacy of both the industrial revolution in the north and imposition through colonialism elsewhere. This means a genuine move towards greater transparency, participation, democracy and human rights in schooling, including

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combatting the scourge of corruption in education which flourishes where there isn’t strong and open accountability. This is the stated aim of educational policy in many countries and in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, though there often remains a yawning gap between policy and practice. Again, there is a large literature on education for and in democracy and human rights (some of which has been cited in this book) with many researched examples, honesty about the obstacles and practical ways forward. It is not that less rigid, competitive and hierarchical—and more open, flexible, participant and personalised—schools can’t and haven’t existed because they have. And it isn’t that many alternatives don’t exist to the current, globally predominant form of schooling because they do. Carnie (2003), for example, discusses small schools, Steiner Waldorf schools, Montessori education, democratic schools and home-based education in the UK. More globally, the international handbook edited by Lees and Noddings (2016) has chapters on a wide range of educational alternatives—home-based education, teaching ethics in schools, holistic education, teaching philosophy in schools, forest schools, student voice, humanist schools and education about human-animal relations are just a few examples. Harber and Mncube (2012) provide many examples of more democratic forms of schooling in ‘developing’ countries. It is just that these democratic schools and other alternatives have always been in the minority because at the macro, meso and micro political levels the will hasn’t been there to make them more widespread. The majority of children and young people globally go to conventional schools facing many of the issues described in this book. One increasingly important aspect of facilitating a more democratic education in schools, and democratic citizens in the wider society, is what Postman and Weingartner (1971, chap. 1) colourfully called ‘crap detecting’, a term they borrow from Ernest Hemingway to stress the importance of developing in young people the skills of social, political and cultural criticism, that is, not to automatically accept beliefs and assumptions as true just because they are the dominant ones. However, in the age of the internet and social media, the learning and development of critical awareness and critical thinking also means being able to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources, genuine evidence and opinions,

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rumour and hearsay. In Finland, rated Europe’s most resistant country to fake news, detecting values, bias and misinformation in written, visual and aural material has become a core, cross-subject component of the curriculum since 2016. Thus, fact checking, interpreting and evaluating social, economic and political information are key aspects of maths, art, history and languages (Henley, 2020). Making schools more democratic, however, is not the same as enabling them to contribute to greater economic and social equality, another often-stated aim of educational policy globally. Over the best part of 50 years I have read academic research after academic research on how schools reproduce inequality and government statement after government statement about how they will reduce inequalities. Yet in reality very little changes—those from better off or in other ways advantaged households continue to go to better resourced schools and have better life chances and vice versa. We may need to look at the relationship the other way round—if schools can’t improve equality, then perhaps we more need a more equal society to make schools more equal. Empirical evidence for this is set out in Wilkinson and Pickett (2010, chap. 8). Over my (increasingly long) lifetime I have had periods when I have been optimistic about such change and periods when I have been more pessimistic. Having recently done a review of schooling in over 40 post-­ conflict societies (which has some possible parallels with post-Covid reconstruction) and found little evidence of democratic change in schools, I am currently more pessimistic. It is difficult to see the political and economic elites who benefit most from the unequal and authoritarian nature of contemporary schooling globally giving up their advantages and encouraging a more critical, participant, and informed citizenry by reforming schooling in any substantial way. I would love to be proved wrong. In the meantime, however, if systemic change is unlikely then we need to encourage, foster and publicise ‘doable’, small-scale practical change at the level of the individual pupil, teacher, classroom and school, where an attempt has been made to make schooling more human and responsive to the needs of those involved. One example of this is a recent joint project between the educational NGO Teachers in Development Education and the School of Education at the University of Worcester. Together they have produced an edition of

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their online magazine—The Elephant Times (No. 6)—written by staff and students at the university. These articles used the South African concept of ‘ubuntu’ or human dignity to examine ways in which schooling could be made more collaborative, cooperative, supportive, kinder and more participant through small-scale but useful initiatives covering a whole range of aspects of schooling. Such initiatives can be done globally despite the currently dominant model of schooling discussed in this book. Small victories may be better than big hopes that get nowhere.

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Index

A

C

Afghanistan, 2 Alternatives to school punishment, 114–117 America, vii, x, 1, 4, 5, 23, 24, 44–52, 76, 82–84, 92, 108–114, 140, 142, 144, 150, 153, 154, 156, 158, 166, 168, 188, 194, 217–218 Australia, 52–53, 107–110, 202, 212 Authoritarianism, 29–30, 41–61, 109

Cambodia, 201 Canada, 1, 56–57, 73–75, 171, 211 Catalonia, 15 China, xiii, 129–131, 190, 197 Colonialism, 7–9, 139 Corruption, 61–66 Criminalistion (of pupils), 109

B

E

Bangladesh, 64 Bhutan, 133 Brazil, 65, 187, 197, 206 Bureaucracy, 41

Ecuador, 146 Egypt, 65, 129 Eritrea, 157 Ethiopia, 200

D

Democracy, 41, 42, 78, 79 Denmark, 11, 42–44 Dubai, 169

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Harber, Post-Covid Schooling, Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87824-5

249

250 Index F

L

Finland, 226

Lebanon, 64, 202 Lesotho, 178 Lithuania, 207

G

Gender, 17–20, 24–28, 133–135, 180, 215–217 Germany, 158 Ghana, 20, 170, 171, 180, 200, 206 Greece, 172 H

Hong Kong, 3

M

Malawi, 180 Malaysia, 141, 205 Medicalisation, 111, 112 Mexico, 24, 79, 91 Militarisation, 154–159 Mongolia, 145 N

I

Iceland, 1, 57–59 India, viii, 7, 23, 90, 92–93, 101–103, 131–132, 154, 172, 189, 194 Indonesia, 149 Inequality, xii, 1, 11–21, 101–103, 226 Iran, 64, 147, 169 Iraq, 178 Ireland, 1, 59 Italy, 189, 207 J

Japan, 176, 189 Jordan, 86–88, 202

Nairobi, Kenya, 190 Nepal, 176 New Zealand, 173 Nicaragua, 65 Nigeria, 61, 175, 190 P

Pakistan, viii Palestine, 202 Peru, 157 Poland, 158, 211 Portugal, 187 Post-colonialism, 8–10 Pupils’ Perspective, xiii R

K

Kenya, 23, 133–135, 145, 207

Racism, 13–16, 153 Restorative justice, 113, 114 Russia, 24, 141, 190

 Index  S

School academic priority, 89–93 attendance, 37–40, 43 cheating, 100, 101, 130 collective punishment, 106–109 examinations, 47–49, 90, 103, 114, 121–135 exclusion, 102–104 isolation units, 104–106 kitchens, 203–209, 211 playground, 212–218 playing fields, 197–199 as prison, 60, 61 religion, 84–88 self-harm and suicide, 123–135 shootings, 91 stress, 124–135 toilets, 81–82, 199–203 tuck shop, 209–212 as work, 39–40 Social control, 1–12, 72–74, 110–112, 123, 147, 152, 164, 208, 213 South Africa, 1, 2, 28–29, 60, 79, 84–85, 176, 180, 195, 211, 215, 216 South Korea, 89–90, 127–128, 148, 211 Spain, 205, 207 Special needs, ix, 20, 103–106, 114–117

251

Sri Lanka, 22 Surveillance, 193–197 Sweden, 74, 78–79, 81–82 T

Tanzania, 80, 199–201 Thailand, 190 Turkey, 81, 155 U

Uganda, 27 UNESCO, xii, 10, 65, 192, 202 Uniformity, 139–140 United Kingdom (UK), viii, ix, 1, 5–9, 14–16, 18, 24–27, 54–56, 65, 76, 87–88, 93, 104–108, 142, 150, 154, 158, 166–168, 179, 187, 188, 190, 192, 193, 196–199, 201–204, 207–208, 214 V

Vietnam, 201 Violence, 1, 2, 21–31, 133–135 Z

Zambia, 23, 28 Zimbabwe, 20