Recently a 14-year-old girl of my acquaintance was discovered by a teacher in her school attempting with two other students to "open a window the wrong way", in the words of her form teacher. The conduct was characterised by the teacher who came across them as vandalism. She instituted disciplinary action immediately, writes Vincent Browne.
The students were required to write out the school rule book five times - an exercise that would have taken five to six hours - and they were also subjected to detention (i.e. required to stay over in school for several hours after the other students had gone home).
The 14-year-old girl was terribly distressed and humiliated. She cried uncontrollably in school and again when she returned home. She felt humiliated. Apparently one of the other two students thought he might be expelled from the school and he too was terribly upset.
I suspect this is a fairly commonplace occurrence in most schools and essentially is of little consequence. Initially the teacher may have been alarmed at the idea that the students could have injured themselves in the way they were attempting to open the window, as well as, incidentally, damaging school property. But I think the incident allows an insight into the culture of our educational system, a culture that is not healthy.
First there appears to have been no due process applied: no fair procedure to determine what was going on; no attempt to invite the students' point of view. The teacher who came across the incident, and who imposed the punishment, did not know the students concerned, at least she did not know the 14-year-old girl, and was therefore not in a position to evaluate fairly the conduct of the students.
Then there was the humiliation, distress and, in the case of the students who thought they might be expelled for this trivial incident, fear. Very probably the teacher did not intend to cause this reaction but she did nothing to mitigate it once it occurred. Nor has she since apologised.
But at the heart of the incident is the power relation between student and teacher. The students were at the mercy of the teacher who had the power to cause them distress and humiliation, and impose punishments on them. I think this is wrong and inimical to the balanced development of these young people. Indeed the whole school culture is wrong and this is a mere incidental example of how it is wrong.
By far the most important value we can transmit to a child is the idea of equality and respect for others. By equality I mean that we are all equal. No one has more rights or entitlements than others, no one is endowed with arbitrary power over others, and that applies to students in relation to other students and students in relation to teachers. In treating others as equals, we show them equal respect.
Schools are often the antithesis of the idea of equality and to that extent inculcate insidious values and ideas in the minds of young people.
They convey that some people have natural "authority" over others, an authority that is unaccountable at least as far as students are concerned.
Students are not involved, for instance, in formulating the rules of the schools. Indeed I suspect most teachers and school authorities would find the suggestion ludicrous.
But why should young adults not be engaged in deciding how best their workplace should be regulated? What values are conveyed to young people by being excluded from that process? What values are inculcated by the "natural" and indeed "commonsense" hierarchy of schools where teachers have or are supposed to have "control", where they are referred to by titles, and deferred to.
If students are referred to by their first names, why then not apply that to teachers as well? The very fact that many teachers, indeed perhaps parents as well, will consider these suggestions as off the wall is indicative of how inimical the culture of our education is to values that we might think are "core".
Of course paternalism is unavoidable in the upbringing and education of children. One cannot engage a two-year-old in a discussion on whether he/she should be allowed to run across a busy road. But the process of maturation should surely be accompanied by a process of democratisation.
If 18-year-olds are entitled to engage in the process of deciding who governs society, why is it ludicrous that they should be engaged in deciding how their schools should be run? Why should there be no phased engagement of 14- to 18-year-old students in how the institution of most relevance to their lives is run? Why should those who exercise "authority" in those institutions have no accountability at all to the students whose lives they affect so significantly?
But, most crucially, if young people come out of schools believing there is a natural order of hierarchy and power, then how are they likely to treat others with equality and respect?