Lifelong Learning and the Riots

Everything that John writes in this eloquent blog is to the point and irrefutably true. Once the recriminations are over and the thinking starts, deep change must take place unless we want to experience lawlessness over and over again.  I have however a feeling that these riots were of a different order than those in the 1980s, much more anarchical, more ordered (by using social media) and more violent. Racism was only a side issue but an important one. It was more an opportunity to demonstrate the power of the underclass  - for want of a better name  - to shock and create mayhem. These people are not mindless, as the press would like to persuade us - they have their own culture and think very deeply and resentfully about the situation they find themselves in. And of course what was done was criminal even though it doesn't help to focus on that alone as press and politicians have tended to do..

Whatever was done last time and since was not enough, as John willingly admits.

I question whether adult education is a viable answer. For a start many of these rioters were of school age and, secondly, adult education unfortunately only gets through to a few adults., predominantly the ones who don't need the counselling. The rot starts much earlier - in a combination of the soullessness of city estates and the inflexibility of most aspects of schooling. While I, like many others, feel helpless and bewildered by the magnitude of the community reconstruction task,  I have suggested a few potential solutions to alleviate this in another PASCAL PIE blog on the riots. Trouble is - many are long term, expensive, radical and demand such a change of mindset in educators and politicians that it is doubtful that they will happen. John's blog helps to define the territory but who and what and how will  it be reclaimed?

Of course John is right. My questionning was not about the value of adult education, - that's self-evidently valuable, as John's reply demonstrates. The perception of a no-hope future affects adults as much as children. The point was more about the target of whatever funding may be made available (and it isn't certain that there will be any at all) to fill the moral vacuum that our greedy and superficial society has created.  There are a hundred reasons for the riots - the declining influence of parents and the more responsible role models, exacerbated by the huge rise in one-parent, usually fatherless, families, is just one.

There are also a hundred solutions and I was looking for longer term ones, making the point that we let children down in so many ways that radical change has to be made and that that will cost. Many of them, especially those with problems, lack support from parents, teachers and mentors from the community at large. The Finnish model of wrapping all local authority services around the school - psychologists, logopedists, health centres, parent groups, libraries, theatres, even police stations- might be one suggestion. In that milieu, special talents, maladies, difficulties, behavioural divergences and so on can be quickly detected and appropriate action taken, But Finland has a population of 6 million and England has one of 50.

I was also much taken by the Mawson Lakes school in South Australia. Here the school invites members of the public into its classrooms to learn with the children daytime and evening, and brings in expertise, support and equipment from wherever it can get it - business, university, adult education, members of the community etc.- all of it willingly given. All its children are in touch with other children around the world. A more apposite example is in the Hume Global Learning Village  where a large, highly deprived borough of Melbourne with more than one hundred ethnic groups manages to unite its communities through the power of learning. 

On the flip side I look at some communities in the world in which a dominant polltical, religious or social ideology appears to have taken over the minds, brains and actions of its people, and results in the lack of any desire to absorb new knowledge or to accept diversity. These appear even in the most advanced societies.

So thank you, John, for pointing out the error of my ways. Based on your comments, I, and I hope the debate, have moved on. This isn't a conflict - the real target is the whole community, and solutions will have to be found at a whole community level. That might mean more adult education working in close contact with childrens' and civic organisations to create a learning community - now where have I seen that phrase before? The problem is that, when it comes to the education of children, the English Minister of Education appears to be moving in exactly the opposite direction.

I think that maybe some of the suggestions I made in my riots blog might be appropraite in the context of Peter's request. They include:

• More schemes which take these youngsters out of the environment in which they feel hopeless helpless and angry. Instead of banging them up in prison where they become even more alienated and often become criminalised, create a number of environments away from home where they learn employability, self-reliance and social skills;
• More schemes to involve youth in the building of their community than the destroying of it. Engage the gangs in finding useful and creative ways of improving their environment, in helping the sick and old. Pay a small salary or give rewards to those who will help others – eg time dollars, community service volunteers;
• Make the schools into real community centres – put all the services around them – psychologists, libraries, police stations etc – make sure that deviation from normal patterns of behaviour is detected early and dealt with locally.

To the second and third one I would add an adult education dimension whereby adults become mentors for youths and schoolchildren. This is a project already in place in some places in the UK which has had some success but evidently not enough to make too much of a difference. Experience from Finland shows that the structures in number 4 are successful in identifying behavioural problems early and coping much more easily with them before they become endemic. Unfortunately the present UK Government is a) still in retribution mode and b) orienting its education system towards isolatiing schools from what happens in communities. This of course may not be true in other countries and it would be interesting to hear of experiences there. In my three visits to Hume I have been impressed by the determination to create a community which gels together though, as Peter says, there is more to be done. It may be a good idea to put together a list of what Hume is already intending to do for the borough (I have created such a list) and, if Peter wishes, I can add it to this blog stream. It is quite long.

Norman

Various commentaries on the UK riots have drawn attention to racial tensions as a factor in the riots. To what extent is controversial with other perspectives reflected in views such as the following statement by David Goodhart in Prospect.

These are truly post-political riots, style riots, boredom riots, feel good riots, look-at-me riots, riots at the end of history.

An interesting perspective on race, ethnicity, alienation and poverty is given by an Australian psychiatrist,Tanveer Ahmed. In an essay in a Sydney newspaper reflecting a book he is about to publish (The Exotic Rissole), Ahmed comments on the Australian experience with race and ethnicity citing statistics that Sydney has the greatest proportion of overseas born people in the world (Melbourne is surely close behind), while other statistics show that Australia is among the least racial countries in the multicultural developed world (high rates of social mobility, mixed marriages etc). Ahmed argues that racial prejudice of the past is now less important than a range of area, class, and socio-economic factors.

While this may be an Australian perspective, it points to factors that need to be addressed in building inclusive intercultural cities where opportunities are open for all. These factors are at the heart of the Hume Global Learning Village and continue to drive its current initiatives such as the Intercultural Project mentioned by Marea Ekladious in her blog (Culture Theme). As Marea mentions, Hume welcomes sharing ideas with other cities addressing similar issues. If other PIE cities are interested in doing this, please contact Marea or myself.