Teachers’ leader attacks legacy of Thatcherism in schools
A teachers’ union leader has blamed the selfish values of Thatcherism for an increase in aggression and bullying in Britain’s schools.
Pat Lerew, president of the NASUWT, told a conference of teachers this weekend that today’s parents were ‘Thatcher’s children’ and their “devil take the hindmost” attitudes had led to a lack of respect for teachers, who were seen as “failures in the success race” during the 1980s.
Opening the NASUWT’s annual conference in Llandudno, Ms Lerew warned that problems with disruptive behaviour in schools had worsened as a result of a failure by the media to promote a more caring society after Margaret Thatcher was ousted as prime minister in 1990.
Ms Lerew said: “Today’s parents were growing up in the 1980s, Thatcher’s children, when there was no such thing as society and it was everyone for themselves, when anything that had a monetary value was sold and anything that had no monetary value was therefore of no value.
“Teachers, who were useless anyway and therefore poorly paid, typified the failures in the success race and were undermined by politicians and the media. Small wonder then that the children of the day grew up with attitudes that have manifested themselves in their own children.”
Ms Lerew, a teacher at Amery Hill school in Alton, Hampshire, claimed that violence was portrayed in some quarters as the norm, and even as ‘cool’, and the result was a burgeoning yob culture and increasing use of weapons. She stated that pupil behaviour was proving “the hardest nut to crack” and insisted that childhood was being “eroded” by the media, particularly by advertising.
NASUWT, the last of the three teaching unions to meet over the Easter conference season, has been highly vocal in its condemnation of poor pupil behaviour. Ms Lerew called on more teachers to support colleagues who refused to teach disruptive pupils and called on governing bodies to stop overturning head teachers’ decisions to expel pupils.
