Plural Identities

A last resort for dimwits

The Economist article on the April 30th Joseph Rowntree Foundation report into the link between ethnicity and poverty chose to focus on the decision whether to be employed or work for oneself, although it did not make any assertions about the link, if it exists, between self employment and poverty, only noting that in contrast to America, in Britain graduates consider self-employment as the last resort for dimwits, which I suppose may account for my perception that after my Oxford/INSEAD education, my parents think my self employed status is somewhat shaming.

Parental influence may be the key here.  It is well known that Chinese parents and Indian parents are keen on their children becoming doctors, accountants or lawyers, which may be why the percentage of self employed Chinese and Indian origin British has fallen over the past 15 years.  Zia Haider Rahman points to parental influence for Bangladeshi origin people too.  Having lived and been politically active in Bethnal Green for five years or so myself, I agree with his comment that the persistence of poverty is no surprise to those who have been involved in the civic life in such communities.  His point about the influence of Sylheti history and cultural background is key too.  He says:

"But what distresses me the most is not the material deprivation but the lack of aspirations that parents in this community have for their children. This lack of aspiration is not just a consequence of poverty, though poverty certainly doesn't help, but is actually embedded in the culture of many East End Bangladeshis."

White parents can be prone to this too though, particularly with regards to educational aspirations.  I remember a boy at my state grammar school who was certainly bright enough to stay on for A levels, as the teachers wanted him to, announcing that he couldn't because his father would not support him, and wanted him to help out and then take over the family ironmongers.

Multi-faith schools

Sir Cyril Taylor, education adviser to the British government and chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust proposes in an interview in the Financial Times today that:

Schools dominated by Muslim children should be closed down and replaced with a new breed of "multi-faith" academies in order to forcibly integrate pupils in some of the UK's most troubled towns.

The BBC reports on this and adds, in the interests of balance of course, twice, just in case we did not get the message, that the Department of Education and Skills:

'has rejected such a controversial proposal.

"Any suggestions of closing schools are wide of the mark. However, all schools can and should play a leading role in creating greater community cohesion."'

Lord Adonis said that in such a school pupils would not be selected on the basis of their faith.  We need to hear more detail but I wonder how easy it is going to be to get parents to send their pupils to such a school - assuming that we are not talking about compulsory social engineering here.

 

   

Exclusive schools

A few weeks ago I thought I came up with a radical new policy, that any school which selected its pupils on whatever basis (religion, income, intelligence, gender) should have to prove that they had a substantial programme in place to integrate with whichever group they were excluding (ie not just a once a year boys' school/girls' school disco) or else their state funding or charitable status would be withdrawn. Many private schools already do something along these lines, such as twinning with a struggling state school, because of threats made to their charitable status if they do not do something 'charitable' for the community. Now St Paul's, one of the top London private boys' schools is saying they will admit pupils exclusively on merit, regardless of income. By the way, I find it very British of the head to say that he is looking for a sense of irony in pupils - I can't imagine schools in other countries placing much value on irony.

And last week Alan Johnson announced that the Education and Inspection Bill will be changed to specify that any new faith schools must offer up to a quarter of their places to non-faith children. I wish old faith schools could be targeted somehow too.  I don't understand why the Catholic education service is reacting angrily - surely this is a great opportunity to convert non-Catholics, unless they think going to a Catholic school is more likely to put them off Catholicism.  I went to a Catholic school in Japan at the ages of 7 and 8, and hardly any of the pupils were Catholic, nor was the school particularly academically attractive, but the nuns running the place made it very clear that the school had a Catholic ethos, and we were all taught to pray.  (Check out the archaic sailor uniforms we all had to wear!)

Although the experience did not make me a Catholic, the Japanese rather than Catholic values of the school had a profound influence on me.   The school did not not exclude non-believers or regard non-Catholics as inferior, but I worry that British schools who do exclude non-believers and which preach that one faith is more worthy than another, or that those with no faith are worthless, will affect the values of children in their formative years, brainwashing them into a religious mono-identity and not allow reasoned, rational choice of identities, a fear which Amartya Sen (see quote heading this blog) also has.

Update:  See also David Aaronovitch - also asking why only new faith schools are targetted by the proposals.