Reimagining work with young people – challenging the

contemporary order of things

Reimagining work with young people – challenging the contemporary order of

things

• Background

• The contemporary order of things

• Challenging the contemporary order of things (a great debate)

• Book and campaigning

• Conclusion

Background• Boris Johnson – argued centrality of education for

addressing the ‘“nihilism” and exclusion revealed by the [2011] riots’ (Wintour and Mulholland 2012: 1).

• Letter in Observer (1 April 2012) supporting this - but questioning the kind of education needed – i.e. one that provides not just ‘knowledge and skills necessary for the world of work but also those that enable engagement in the public sphere as critical, responsible and active citizens – conditions necessary for … wellbeing and democracy, values that have been eroded by three decades of neoliberal … restructuring. It is an approach to education that has been practised in the field of youth work, a practice that has served the interests and wellbeing of many young people for many decades’.

Background• Personal communication from Bill Williamson, co-

author with Frank Coffield of From Exam Factories to Communities of Discovery: The democratic route (2011), concurring with letter.

• ‘Looking back over the 67 years since the 1944 Education Act, the staggering statistic is that the so-called education “system” has been failing between 30 per cent and 60 per cent of each generation. Why has this disgraceful outcome been allowed to continue?’ (Coffield and Williamson 2011: 40).

• Attempts to reform the education system are futile – ‘it needs to be replaced’ (Coffield and Williamson 2011: 1).

The contemporary order of things

• Widening inequalities, weakened solidarities and declining wellbeing (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009).

• Neoliberal politics of austerity - most disadvantaged (largely young people) paying to bail out profligate corporate sector (through job losses, deteriorating working conditions, and cuts in welfare/public services, including state-funded HE).

• Cultural change - public attitudes to suffering hardening (e.g. 2011 British Social Attitudes survey revealed 25% respondents believed poverty result of ‘laziness’ or ‘lack of willpower’ – up from 15% in mid-90s) (Ramesh 2012).

The contemporary order of things

• Demonisation of the working class by politicians/ media - can’t budget; behavioural problems; poor parenting skills; welfare dependent; racist; lack aspirations; criminal and violent.

• Social disadvantage interpreted as a cultural problem (rather than political or economic) - legitimising policy interventions aimed at redressing these cultural deficiencies (work incentivisation measures; punitive criminal justice sanctions; youth work interventions aimed at changing lifestyle choices; etc) (Jones 2011).

The contemporary order of things

• Democratic deficit – e.g. revelations of Leveson inquiry on ‘how Britain’s political class in particular and ruling class in general collude, connive and corrupt both systemically and systematically. … The evidence has laid bare the intimate, extensive and insidious web of social, familial and personal ties between the political, corporate and legal forces that govern a country: a patchwork of individual and institutional associations so tightly interwoven that to pick at one part is to watch the whole thing unravel’ (Younge 2012: 23).

The contemporary order of things

• As the US, young people in England, particularly those marginalised by virtue of ‘race’ and class, increasingly denied ‘opportunities for self-definition and political interaction, … [and] representational status as active citizens’ (Giroux 2012: xiv) – a factor behind the riots?

• Stuart Hall: ‘The riots bothered me a great deal … [N]othing really has changed. Some kids at the bottom of the ladder are deeply alienated, they’ve taken the message of Thatcherism and Blairism and the coalition: what you have to do is hustle. Because nobody’s going to help you. And they’ve got no organised political voice, no organised black voice and no sympathetic voice on the left’ (cited in Williams 2012: 4).

The contemporary order of things

• Martin Luther King: ‘rioting is the language of the unheard’.

• Sabrina, youth worker in Tottenham speaking after the ‘riots’: ‘[Young] people don’t have a voice and it has been like that for such a long time. I have spoken to some and they didn’t regret it. To them they made a point in the only way they could’ (cited in Muir 2011: 9).

The contemporary order of things

• Slavoj Žižek: ‘The fact that the rioters have no programme is … itself a fact to be interpreted: it tells us a great deal about our ideological-political predicament and about the kind of society we inhabit, a society which celebrates choice but in which the only available alternative to enforced democratic consensus is a blind acting out. Opposition to the system can no longer articulate itself in the form of a realistic alternative, or even as a utopian project, but can only take the shape of a meaningless outburst’ (Žižek 2011: 2).

The contemporary order of things

• Ability of young people in England to express political dissent increasingly curtailed – e.g. policing of student protests late 2010 (‘kettling’ and violence) (Lewis 2012); University of Cambridge suspension of PhD student for his role in non-violent protest (reading out a poem) against David Willetts, higher education minister (Vasagar 2012).

The contemporary order of things

• Recent survey of teachers by ATL union suggests maintaining a school’s position in the league tables takes ‘precedence over developing the abilities of pupils’ (cited in Shepherd 2012: 11).

• Widespread demoralisation within teaching profession (Boffey 2012).

• Tripling of fees in HE – returning universities to being elitist establishments serving interests of the most privileged.

The contemporary order of things

• Closure of courses in the humanities and social sciences in favour of STEM subjects (e.g. History degree course closure at London Met).

• Schools cutting the amount of lesson time devoted to History (Paton 2011).

• Role of historicism in society (to recall other possibilities of being - other than the TINA mantra) severely threatened.

Challenging the contemporary order of things

• Exploring possibilities for generating a different model of working with young people based on approaches found in critical youth work practice and democratic education.

• Ultimately, a call beyond the defence of youth work and for the advancement of democratic ways of working with young people throughout the mainstream in the interest of a socially-just society.

Henry Giroux on education

• Need to reclaim education as a public good ‘committed to teaching young people about how to govern rather than merely be governed’ (Giroux 2012: 7).

• ‘Educational and other public spheres are spaces of politics, power, and authority that require constant questioning in order to enable people to imagine changing the world around them so as to expand and deepen its democratic possibilities’ (Giroux 2012: 55)

The education debate• ‘Education is a big political issue – it goes to

the heart of what kind of society we create’ (Millar 2012: 34) – need for ‘great debate’ on the purpose of education (cf Callaghan’s 1976 John Ruskin speech).

• A useful starting principle for this debate is, to what extent does education address the main threats to our collective wellbeing? (Coffrey and Williamson 2011).

Coffrey and Williamson (2011)• global warming; • inequalities; • the scarcity of resources; • the management of complexity and uncertainty; • crises of capitalist financial markets; • the corrosion of civil liberties and growth of surveillance;• the impact of consumerism on wellbeing; • political and religious extremism; • nuclear proliferation; • the rise of xenophobia; • the disproportionate power held by the mass media; • changes to labour market conditions.

A great debate on working with young people might address …

• Our amnesia – the forgotten history of radicalised ways of working (e.g. early pioneers of working class education - Chartist schools to the WEA).

• Democratic/humanistic ways of working in schools (e.g. the philosophy of A.S. Neil; Steiner).

• Feminist perspectives on ways of working that challenge normative understandings (e.g. Judith Butler).

• Critical pedagogy with young black people challenging mainstream representations of ‘race’.

A great debate on working with young people might address …

• Practical lessons from the work of the (dis)ability rights movement in England for ways of working with young people that challenge oppressive and discriminatory practices.

• Practical lessons from sustainability and Green perspectives for ways of working with young people.

• Cross-national comparative perspectives: exploring the benefits of approaches based on social pedagogy – familiar to Denmark and Germany - that empower young people and offer lessons for ways of working with young people in England.

A great debate on working with young people might address …

• Practical lessons from youth work - one of the few areas of social policy that carries a specifically democratic mission involving ‘a social responsibility to include young people, a concern to empower them and enable them to participate’ (Unite, undated: 25).

• Youth work’s effectiveness is its focus on working with young people ‘to enable them to develop their voice, influence and place in society and to reach their full potential’ (DfE 2011: 1).

Idea for an edited book: Reimagining work with young people- challenging the contemporary order of things

• Chapter 1 Introduction • Chapter 2 Radicalised ways of working with young people - a

forgotten history (John Grayson) • Chapter 3 Democratic ways of educating young people (Max Hope)• Chapter 4 Empowering community and youth work practice (Charlie

Cooper)• Chapter 5 Emancipatory ways of working with young people

through group-work - a feminist approach (Annette Fitzsimons) • Chapter 6 Critical pedagogical practice working with young black

people (Carlton Howson and Momodou Sallah)• Chapter 7 Practical ideas from working with (dis)abled young

people• Chapter 8 Educating for sustainability• Chapter 9 A cross national comparative perspective - social

pedagogy • Chapter 10 Informal learning, social learning and formal learning –

lessons for work with young people.• Chapter 11 Reimagining working with young people and how this

might be achieved

Campaigning• Giroux argues that any campaign to restore

the democratic public spheres of civil society ‘demands new modes of solidarity, new political organizations, and a powerful, expansive social movement capable of uniting diverse political interest groups’ (Giroux 2012: 8).

• Requires uniting the struggles of teaching unions, student bodies, defence of youth work, other youth protests and the wider trades union movement, locally, regionally and nationally.

Beginnings of such a campaign?

• Business of the education committee, UCU Congress 2012, 9 June 2012, composite motion on Defending public education (carried as amended).

• ‘Congress opposes the privatisation and marketisation of the education system at all levels. Congress asserts the belief that the purpose of education should be to educate people as human beings and as critical, thinking citizens for a democratic society. This means educational services must be run as a public service, not as private businesses. …

Beginnings of such a campaign?

• Congress calls on UCU to work with other trade unions, students' organisations and appropriate campaign groups to defend and restore public education, including a broad campaigning strategy behind a manifesto in defence of education as a universal public good, free at the point of delivery at all levels, where the benefits of the relationship between education and society in terms of the economy, critical citizenship, democracy and social wellbeing are clearly named. Building on the success of the Defend Public Education conference on 10 March, Congress instructs the Education Committee to organise a broad-based conference in spring 2013 to launch the manifesto.’

Conclusion• Need for research into the transferable

benefits of radical youth work practice and democratic models of schooling for designing a manifesto for mainstream working practices with young people.

• Need to campaign in support of this manifesto through a united broad social movement – beyond ‘Choose Youth’ and ‘In Defence of Youth Work’.

Sources• Boffey, D. (2012) ‘Schools “face talent drain” as morale of teachers dives’, Guardian online, 12 May. • Coffield, F. and Williamson, B. (2011) From Exam Factories to Communities of Discovery: The

democratic route, London: Institute of Education. • DfE) Department for Education (2011) An education for the 21st century: A narrative for youth work

today – final draft for consultation, London: DfE.• Giroux, H.A. (2012) Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories and the Culture of Cruelty, New York:

Routledge. • Jones, O. (2011) Chavs: the demonization of the working class, London: Verso.• Lewis, P. (2012) ‘Kettling: vital tool or illegal tactic?’, The Guardian, 15 March, p.20.• Millar, F. (2012) ‘Selective memory’, The Guardian, 22 June, p.34.• Muir, H. (2011) ‘In search of the spark that turned tension in Tottenham into flames’, The Guardian, 6

September, pp.8-9.• Paton, G. (2011) ‘History lessons “squeezed out of crowded timetables”’, The Telegraph on line,19 Sept.• Ramesh, R. (2012) ‘Cuts to public services are creating “forgotten Britain”, says charity boss’, The

Guardian, 10 May, p.2.• Shepherd, J. (2012) ‘Teachers are tempted to rewrite exams’, The Guardian, 2 April, p.11.• Unite (undated) Unite comments on ‘Positive for Youth discussion papers’, Birmingham: Unite.• Vasagar, J. (2012) ‘Cambridge student gets banned for reading poem’, The Guardian, 15 March, p.10.• Wilkinson, R.G. and Pickett, K. (2009) The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do

Better, London: Allen Lane. • Williams, Z. (2012) ‘The Saturday interview: Stuart Hall’, The Guardian, 11 February, pp. 1-5, at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/feb/11/saturday-interview-stuart-hall [accessed 15/02/2012].

• Wintour, P. and Mulholland, H. (2012) ‘Boris Johnson blames bad schools for riots’, The Guardian, 24 March, pp.1 and 4.

• Younge, G. (2012) ‘A web of privilege supports this so-called meritocracy’, The Guardian, 7 May, p.23.• Žižek, S. (2011) ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’, London Review of Books, 19 August, pp.1-5, at

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unite [accessed 15/02/2012].