White Working-Class Failure

The spider’s web was tattooed in greyscale across the gentleman’s face and shaven head. The spider itself was inked, crouching behind the right ear. It had fangs. The gentleman approached me in the playground of a down-at-heel primary school where my husband was Chair of Governors. He said: “What’s your man doing about this shithole? If things don’t improve by the end of term, I’m pulling my son out.” 

I think of this incident whenever stories appear about white working-class children failing educationally. So dire have things become (66% of white British boys eligible for free school meals failed both English and maths GCSEs and only 13% progress to university) that the Education Secretary has commissioned a White Paper to be published in the autumn. When writing about the issue ahead of A Level results, Bridget Phillipson suggested that more parents need to be like her “Mam” and understand “the value of education”. She wants schools to be “warm and welcoming” and government to provide “support and accountability”.

I work with, and like, the demographic that has failed educationally so catastrophically but, as Spiderman demonstrated, I do not blame their lack of aspiration. I do blame the rotten ideologies that have permeated the education system and society at large. As former schools minister Nick Gibb wrote recently: “An ideology of progressive education was the fundamental problem in English schools.” Phillipson suggests the White Paper will include: expanded “mental health provision” and “behaviour hubs” in schools, “AI-powered reports” to detect where early help is needed and the “provision of whole-family support”. These are only sticking plasters; the blood will continue to seep out, draining individuals and society of its ability to flourish.

What then is going on?

When children struggle at school or at home – as all children will at some stage – all parents and teachers will try their best to help. All of them. However, some parents and teachers will reach for useful solutions (see below), tried and tested over generations, others will reach for progressive solutions that will hinder the child’s ability to function well. It is my contention that certain segments of society are more susceptible to these harmful social and political ideologies that have been relentlessly propagandised to an undeserving population. People who come from families that have endured generational fracturing and worklessness do not love their children any less than the middle classes or Bridget Phillipson’s Mam and, in fact, love them so much that they – without solid family support – reach for the current prevailing ideology in the mistaken belief they are doing the very best for their children. Sadly for them, the current prevailing ideologies around parenting and education are absolutely catastrophic to the welfare of children. It is these “solutions” that drive a falling out of the education system.

The ideology of our time concerning families and education is dark, insistent and wildly damaging. Some of the lies told by experts and then broadcast by politicians and media stars are broad: self-actualisation over family commitment, self-care over hard work, the default setting that the state rather than families should help first, that family breakdown doesn’t matter. Others are narrow and pernicious: the relaxing harmlessness of weed, the benefits of nurseries over mothering, that classroom discipline is Right-wing, that the western canon is racist. The worst are draped in the cold lies of science: the educational benefits of digital devices, that ordinary childhood challenges are explained by faulty brains that require lifelong medication. It should be obvious by now, with one in five children and young people reporting mental illness and 20% of children persistently absent from school, that these useless ideologies are not conducive to human happiness or educational prospects.

Meet Tyler (not his real name), a white working-class 15 year-old educational failure whom I am trying to teach. He was in bed (2pm) and I waited downstairs with his mother, a woman in her thirties and her baby son. She sat on the sofa with her baby cradled in the folds of her skirt. The baby curled his balled fists into his mother’s hair and she nuzzled her kisses to his neck. It was a Madonna and Child scene worthy of Raphael: Bridget Phillipson’s Mam would approve. We began to chat, she explaining everything that had gone wrong with her older son’s schooling and all of the things that she had done to try to help him. The list was long but worth recording in full: from a young age they had made sure he had all the latest tech from his first iPad at five, smartphone at seven to his Xbox at eight. When he wasn’t enjoying school, she had him assessed for ADHD, autism and ODD (oppositional defiance disorder) and was relieved with the ADHD diagnosis. They’d invested in wobbly sensory cushions for home and school, fidget toys and played white noise to help him sleep. He was also dyslexic. She’d put him on the waiting list for CAMHS and he’d had one appointment with a specialist who thought he was suffering PTSD after a fight at school. He was prescribed ADHD medication, an antipsychotic and melatonin to help him sleep. He’s on a waiting list to see a therapist but in the meantime she’s signed him up to an online therapy website but he’s not keen on taking part. He’s got his next CAMHS appointment in six weeks and she’s hoping that afterwards his behaviour will stabilise. I learned that the boy’s father had separated when he was young and her new boyfriend, the father of the baby, and Tyler don’t get on. Tyler has started smoking weed to help him relax. Within this rotten paradigm, educational attainment is impossible. Bridget Phillipson’s “behavioural hubs” may contain the problem but not solve anything.

In the end Tyler did not get up and we did not have our tutoring session (I’m sent by the second school that expelled him). What is particularly poignant in this situation and hundreds of thousands of others like it is the dedication of the mother and her innocent trust in the experts to help. Everything, from the digital zombification, the medication, the family breakdown, the county council accommodating his absence from school, the various special-needs diagnoses to the hope of therapy to solve the situation, are completely inimical to her or her son’s ability to live a good life. Yet all of it forms the current prevailing wisdom about how best to educate children and help those struggling. In trying to deploy the very latest medical and therapeutic expertise to support her son, she unwittingly harmed him. 

How different would the outcome have been if the prevailing elite ideology had recommended exercise over medication, socialising over digital isolation, volunteering or part-time work over online therapy?

In another world, Bridget Phillipson, teachers and doctors, television personalities and politicians, Hollywood stars and mayors of London, TikTok personalities and CAMHS specialists would instead eulogise over digital detoxes, the joy of reading books, the necessity to spend time in nature, to volunteer in the community, to help others, to prioritise hard work, to socialise. The London Underground would be plastered with signs forbidding children and babies to use phones and take off headphones. The Keep Calm and Carry On signs would be reissued. New signs would appear: Work Hard, Play Hard. The Education Secretary would announce the rapid recruitment of thousands of male teachers, with intensive academic lessons in the morning and afternoons spent outside exploring and making things. Village halls and community centres would host dances every week so young people could socialise in person. A massive campaign akin to the drink-driving ads will appear on TV, on billboards, in schools, encouraging everyone to come off their mind-altering drugs – whether legal or illegal. Allowing children to play Roblox would become as socially unacceptable as giving children crack.

Bridget Phillipson’s Mam doesn’t strike me as the sort of woman who would have fallen for this progressive nonsense; let’s hope her daughter can shake herself out of it and give an honest assessment about how to improve the education of the white working class. 

Mary Gilleece is an education support worker and her name is a pseudonym.