Stuart Waiton comments on the riots in England in The Australian. You can find the article here.
Further comments from Stuart can be found in The Scotsman , The Courier and The Daily Record.
Stuart Baird takes the platform in The Scotsman with a contribution regarding the current direction of education in Scotland under the Curriculum for Excellence.
You can read the piece here.
Nearly a decade ago Alison Wolf explored the relationship between the economy and education. In Does Education Matter? Wolf made it clear that that there was no direct relationship between the amount of education in a society and its economic growth and that government efforts in intervening in education did not impact on that growth. Indeed in her conclusions Wolf noted that viewing education as a tool for social policy reflected a narrowing of our view of education and its purpose. It was clear that politicians were playing with children to satisfy their own needs to appear to have an optimistic view of the future. In the process the education on offer to children was degraded in parallel to the decline in political ideas.
From such a position you would have hoped that lessons would have been learned, that the link between education and the economy had been broken and that politicians would have stepped back from abusing education. Reading over the manifestos for the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election we actually see a different trend one which sees the link between the economy and education strengthened alongside a wave of additional public policy goals that have been assigned to schools.
It would be expected that the Conservatives have the economy on their mind as they seek to, ‘encourage schools to introduce a more flexible curriculum structure which allows pupils to select either an academically focussed path from S2 onwards or a more vocationally-focused path’, but such a plan is followed by the other parties with Labour suggesting such vocational training starting in S1 while the Liberal Democrats hold off till the pupils are fourteen. During these times of recession depicting schools as the engine of the economy may seem like an easy option for all parties. Of course we all know that education played no part in the current economic slump and will play no part in the recovery. Such dabbling in education will though have an detrimental impact on a number of our children. In particular to those working-class children who find themselves selecting relevant vocational courses before they have had the chance to understand the full range of possibilities before them.
Following close behind the economy, schools are tasked with improving the nation’s health and halting global warming.
Each party is in agreement that our children need to exercise more and that school is a key site for such activity. A popular cry is for two hours of PE for every child but in addition breakfast and lunchtime clubs will monitor food intake against a background of healthy eating slogans. There are high hopes for the possibilities that a game of football and a baked potato can offer with the SNP believing, ‘that only by looking at physical activity and sport together will we harness that passion and tradition to make them an engine of positive change in our country– improving health, reducing anti-social behaviour and making our society fairer.’ All parties see sport as a tool for improving public health and follow it closely with a morality play based on our food intake.
The collective trappings of the green consumer are captured in the eco-schools project. A mix of end of the world preaching alongside Malthusian restraint is combined with the latest reports from non-governmental organisations such as Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature. The SNP show support for One Planet schools and the Climate Challenge Fund, while Labour, ‘know that fair trade is a model way to empower people, both in countries in the global South and in our own nation.’ The threat created by climate change is seen as pervasive and each party can find an aspect of the approved routes for combating it to create a policy around. It has been said that we are involved in a war on climate change and the mentality around it certainly has the blitz spirit about it. Politicians have always found war a useful way to reach out to their citizens and find a connection. It is the case though that the war on climate change is somewhat phoney and while the electorate give it only a passing thought our children are seen as more appreciative targets.
I certainly believe that the link between sport in schools and public health along with eco-schools and global warming are as fantastical as those examined by Wolf in regards to education and the economy. They do though share a clear similarity in that they too debase education. We have the quantifiable figure of a loss of teaching time in the pursuit of these phantom policies but we also have a further qualitative shift in how our society views education. Both though combine to limit the opportunities of our children.
The season of goodwill brings the chance to spread a little joy and trust. A petition has been set up by Stuart Waiton get councils to think a little more sensibly about taking photographs at school activities.
You can find out more and sign the petition here.
Stuart Waiton has a paper published in Youth and Policy regarding the changing nature of the relationships between adults and young people. The abstract appears below:
Adopting aspects of the work of Frank Furedi, the question of the socialisation of children is addressed. It is argued that the problematisation of behaviour, coupled with the development of new state and institutional processes, has led to a growing spread of ‘professional’ and contractual involvement in everyday life. This is something that relates to and is accelerated by the emergence of micro-politics and micro-social policy over the last few decades. This colonisation of the lifeworld, it is argued, is increasingly formalising informal relationships and undermining spontaneous relationships between adults and young people. It also distorts the nature of professions and the relationships developed between them and young people. The real relationships between adults and young people are consequently being undermined and replaced by an ersatz form of socialisation.
The full paper can be read here.
In attendance at the annual conference of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council was Stuart Waiton. The TESS described the conference as highlighting once again the risk-averse society that we are creating for our children and young people.
The article can be read in full here.
The Scottish Government has published a review of literature regarding youth violence in Scotland.
The review draws on available sources of data from administrative sources (recorded crime, criminal proceedings, school exclusions, referrals to the Children’s Hearings System) and from the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey to construct a picture of what is known about youth violence using official data sources.
The review can be found here.
Included in the review is the study of the Child Safety Initiative by Generation Director Stuart Waiton. Published as Scared of the Kids: Curfews Crimes and the Regulation of Young People the book is available from sources here.
Stuart Waiton comments on the desire of Local Authorities to distrust the decisions of parents in the wake of two cases regarding children making their way to school.
The article can be read in full here.
A paper by Stuart Waiton appears in Surveillance and Society examining the development of CCTV over the past two decades. The abstract appears below:
This paper explores the rise of CCTV in society during the last two decades. It concentrates on state sponsored surveillance schemes in an attempt to answer the question of why it is that CCTV surveillance emerged at this particular point in history. At one level, advancing technology can allow a ‘surveillance society’ to emerge, yet the extent to which CCTV cameras have spread into city centres and residential areas suggests something more profound has changed in ‘public’ life. The exponential rise in the
surveillance of society is often understood to reflect the rise of authoritarianism, perhaps particularly in the UK. Whether from a Weberian, a Foucauldian, or even – and perhaps in particular – a neo-Marxist perspective, this development is often understood as an enforcement of power, resulting from an ideological consensus built around ‘rampant’ neo-liberalism; public life is, in part, understood to be undermined by private interests, the power of capital, or techniques of governance associated to one degree or another with neo-liberalism. In this paper, the neo-liberal framework for understanding the rise of surveillance is questioned. Building upon arguments by Baudrillard, Lasch, Bauman and Furedi it is argued that, rather than an aggressive and purposeful moral or neo-liberal authoritarianism lying behind the rise of surveillance cameras the opposite is in fact the case. The diminution of ‘public’ space both reflects and represents the decline of political purpose and meaning within society and especially within the political elite.
The full paper can be read here.
