Weighing in on the UK Riots

In amidst the moving, baby birthing and slow reintegration into the working world, I have been watching the situation in England closely and without much surprise. To my British friends and my readers from all over the world, what I’m about the write is my opinion only, an opinion that is based only on second hand knowledge that I have learned from my many British coworkers who have spent years working beside what is most likely some of the young men who were out on the streets in England over the last few days. I acknowledge the fact that I am 1) not British 2) have never lived in Britain 3) am forming these opinions based solely on my experiences in Canada and having closely observed the opinions and experiences of my British coworkers. My observations may be completely off base and uninformed but it is also a glimpse into the way people around the world who aren’t there might view the situation. Coming from Vancouver, I fully understand how people (with the help of the media) can misconstrue events and base their opinion of an entire city, an entire country even, on the actions of a few young people who are interested in causing havoc – the Vancouver hockey riots proved that quite well. However, I feel that the riots in England are a bit different than those in Vancouver; most obviously by the fact that they continued and escalated over days. Vancouver was a one off deal, fed by alcohol and hundreds of thousands of people crammed into one place at the same time. Additionally the issues in England were first sparked by a social injustice – the murder of a young man. However they quickly moved so far away from that event that one can no longer associate one with the other. The only injustice that sparked the Vancouver riots was the inability for the Canucks’ offense to get the puck in the net…hardly a deep seeded social issue…


Back to the issue at hand…


I recently watched a BBC interview with a gang expert in the UK who has been working with many of the young men who come from the areas and the social situations that have been at the forefront of the riots and she said first and foremost that an overwhelming majority of the young men she has been working with over the past 5 years cannot read or write and because of this have dropped out of school and feel completely hopeless for the future. They have nothing to look forward to, no job prospects, no hope of success and consequently, very little self-worth. For me, this boils down to one thing more than so many others, the UK education system. Now being a teacher, of course I’m going to look to the education system but I have learned so much about how “broken” the UK system is from working in a British school for the last 2 years. Unlike Canada or the US or Australia or countless other countries the UK has, in my opinion, made two grave errors in the structuring of their education system. Firstly, in the UK, students, no matter how incapable and underachieving cannot fail. Secondly, students are “setted” from early secondary (perhaps primary I’m not sure) in to “like ability groups” and once there, for a variety of social and educational reasons, it is very difficult to move up into a higher ability group. Plain and simple, a student can go through an entire year doing no work, with spotty attendance and failing every test they write only to in June have the powers that be say “congratulations! You pass, now we’re going to promote you to the next year but we’re going to put you in a class with all the other kids who are too fucked up to do any work and see if you can survive in there…good luck chap, hope you make it though.” To make problems even worse, they have a thriving grammar and private school system where if you have any money, or your kid has any level of drive or academic spark at all you send your kids to. Why? Because the comprehensive schools (where the remainders who can’t afford good schools end up) are so shocking and full of apathetic students and exhausted teachers that you’d be crazy to send your kid there. If you can’t see the myriad of problems with this way of thinking then maybe you’re British??? What you end up with in Secondary school (which begins in the Canadian and US equivalent of grade 6) are private schools full of good kids and public schools full of poor, socially disenfranchised, often impoverished youth, many of whom have parents who don’t care about them , who can’t read or write and don’t care either way.


I know many teachers who have worked in these types of schools (since it’s usually where you end up when you first start teaching since no one else wants to work there) and they are good teachers, passionate teachers but they are only human and can only take so much. I’ve heard stories of behavior that you wouldn’t believe in these schools. So many of these teachers have said the same thing to me over and over – in these classes it’s 90% class management (teacher speak for making sure the kids don’t kill you or each other) and 10% teaching. It just doesn’t work. Additionally, filling these schools with new teachers isn’t the proper thing to do either. New teachers have a hard enough time wrapping their heads around a class of able students let alone something close to Riker’s for kids.


This brings me to the most broken aspect of the entire system. Now, once again, to my British friends and readers, this is solely my opinion but it is an opinion that has been shaped by the comments, complaints, frustrations and experiences of myself and my many, many British coworkers. Like many things British, (my apologies for what I’m about to say), the British educational system is saturated with a sense of superiority and tradition. The British system and those who run it are for the most part rigidly opposed to change. There is this weird sense of “we’re British, we are the best and we do things the best, why would we ever change our perfect and culturally and morally superior way of doing things? We’ve been doing it this way for hundreds of years – it’s tradition! It can’t be wrong!!”


Well perhaps it was perfect, in 1820, but it isn’t anymore. I could list the things about the British system that make no sense here but I only have so much space, and you, my readers only have so much patience. The same woman who I was watching on the BBC made the analogy that if you were a surgeon and you performed the same operation in the same way over and over again with an 80% mortality rate, you would be crazy to continue and most likely you’d be arrested for murder or criminal neglect. But this is exactly what is going on in the British education system. The pride engrained in the British system has however made it impossible for the system to even consider change.


It is the youth who are living in this system, coupled with the numerous other dysfunctional and archaic social systems that the Brits fail to change that has created the mentality which these young people embrace. I have recently heard a lot of comparisons between the UK riots and those in LA in 1992. I don’t think it’s too far off the mark. Just like LA, the world did not truly understand the level of problems swirling around these communities until they exploded in our faces. In LA, they wiped the ash out of their eyes and moved to make a change. I hope that as the British people sweep their streets and wipe the ash from their eyes they too realize that it is time to make a change.


I in no way condone what has taken place on the streets of England. It’s disgusting and devastating but as with all tragic incidences in history, we must look at them as a springboard for change and self-reflection. The door has been blown open, literally, I hope the British government does not slam it in the faces of these young people yet again…

Cheers from the outside
J