Category: Children and Young People

From the Archives, July 2009- Jean Spence explores what we mean by defence

On By Tony TaylorIn Youth and Community Work, Politics, neoliberalism, Children and Young People, Youth Work, Education, HistoryLeave a comment

My latest shoveling into the IDYW archives for pieces, I think, remain of interest and pertinence.

Back in June 2009, Jean Spence, a leading voice in youth and community circles through her endeavours as a lecturer at Durham University, through her valuable research – see ‘Youth Work: Voices of Practice, available as a pdf – and her pionering contribution to the emergence of ‘Youth & Policy’ in the 1980s, gave this contribution to a Leeds ‘In Defence of Youth Work’ seminar. Within it she engaged particularly with a certain anti-intellectualism within our work, which seems to persist , even unto the present, despite our status as a graduate profession. Her thoughts are not past their sell-by date.

Jean on her retirement from the Y&P Editorial Board in 2016

I’m glad to be able to make an active contribution to the series of meetings organised in Defence of Youth Work.

The last meeting that I attended was in Newcastle a couple of weeks ago, where I think more than 90 people turned up. Meetings being picked up in other parts of the country suggest that the Open Letter has touched a nerve amongst those of us who have some commitment to youth work.

Clearly if we feel the need to defend youth work, we must be also feeling that it is somehow under attack. The nervousness, not to say antagonism of some of the managers of local authority services to the North East event highlighted the fact that organising to defend youth work cannot be undertaken naively – it cannot be assumed simply that defending youth work is a straightforward matter of supporting good workers who are working for the good of young people and not being appreciated. Life is more complicated than that. At the very least, if we are discussing attack and defence, we are inevitably engaging in conflict – and there is some need to understand who will be on what side in the conflict, and for what reason.

I don’t want to complicate things too much, but I do want to draw upon some of the issues which were raised for me through my participation in the Newcastle event. Later, and partly in recognition that this event is also to celebrate 20 years of Community and Youth Work education in Leeds, and Marion Charlton’s 30-plus years contribution to the education and training of community and youth workers, if I have time, I want to draw a little from a celebration event that I attended in the same week as defending youth work. This was a 30-year celebration of a voluntary youth project where I worked between 1979 and 1985 as a detached/neighbourhood youth worker with a remit to focus on work with girls and young women. These two personal experiences raised all sorts of questions for me and I want to offer some of these questions to you for debate in the hope that there are some universal concerns in them about youth work.

Firstly, to go back to Newcastle. That event was attended by academics, managers and practitioners from a wide range of projects, practices and working approaches. During its course, we addressed the question of what it was we wanted to defend which involved considering the focus of youth work. Among the various propositions, I heard an academic suggest that the focus should be upon civil society and democracy. This was countered by detached youth workers who wanted to focus upon the process of listening to young people and the following discussion in a small group became oppositional. The language used by the two parties was operating in two different planes. In response to an effort to create a conversation wherein the two sides might find common ground for conversation, I suggested the possibility of listening ‘in context’. Implicitly, listening in context is connected with questions of civil society and democracy because it is a listening which understands the circumstances not only of being young, but of being situated in sets of social relations which are inherently unequal. Listening effectively and actively requires some knowledge on the part of the worker. They might need to know something of youth subcultures, but under this, they might need to know something about class and poverty, about racism and sexism, about the realities of global displacement, about structural relations of power in which some voices are silenced and in which listening must be an active process of encouraging speaking, not just the speaking of individuals, though that is important, but the speaking which enables groups to find collective voices and thus to combine and act on their situation. Just as the ‘In Defence of Youth Work’ meetings are attempting to do for youth work as a profession silenced in a set of power relations. There is a direct connection therefore between questions of power, voice, listening and speaking, and issues of politics, democracy and civil society.

Now I know I must own up to being some sort of an academic – even if the academy has a highly ambiguous and grudging relationship with my area of knowledge relating to community and youth work – and therefore I might be perceived as someone who does not understand the realities of practice. However, I was shocked at the response to my efforts at finding common grounds for discussion. Firstly, the meaning of ‘context’ was misunderstood: it was assumed that I was referring to ‘place’ and therefore the protagonists felt it necessary to inform the group that not all young people congregated where they lived. Secondly, perhaps in pursuit of the point, the detached workers insisted that youth workers needed to know NOTHING. Apparently, all youth workers need to do is learn the skills of listening to young people. I hope I am not misrepresenting the case or offering a caricature here, but I was left with the distinct impression that the position that was being taken, that what we were being asked to defend, was a process of youth work as listening, in which the youth workers act as sponges, absorbing what young people say to them. I have yet to discover what youth workers are then to do with such listening. Of course, not all youth workers were taking this position, but it did force me not only to repeat to myself the question, ‘What exactly are we trying to defend?’ but it also make me ask, ‘Do I want to defend this? Am I on the same side as those detached workers?’

Here the ongoing and perennial tension between academics and practitioners, between theory and practice starts to raise its ugly head. This tension is not a new one. In some of the historical work which I have done the question emerges time and again as part of the struggle for professionalization. I digress for a moment, but it is interesting to see how the earliest youth workers in the late nineteenth century, who were integrated within the broad set of activities known as social work, which included community work, welfare rights work, campaigning and various other types of social intervention, and which even sometimes laid claim to the concept of socialism as a term to describe their interventions, it is interesting to see how for the pioneers of this work, there was no split between theory and practice. Indeed, practising social, community and youth workers were also pioneers of the new discipline of social science and it was only when social science began to be accepted within the academy that the split began to happen.

Anyway, to put that to one side, for a moment and return to the reality of the present tensions, in the plenary session, one of the organisers felt it necessary to say something about the fact that this was a grass roots organisation of workers and to underline the point, to say that they wouldn’t be using long academic words and jargon in their approach. No doubt this was said to encourage those who might be intimidated by academic pretensions, and later it was suggested to me that this was in response to the academic use of the word ‘hegemony’. Nevertheless, it came across as pandering to an assumed anti-intellectualism amongst youth workers which to my mind is part of the reason why the profession has been so weak and is now in so need of defending. Can anyone tell me why youth workers should not understand the meaning of hegemony? And if they don’t understand it, why they shouldn’t seek to understand it?

This question is particularly important given that one of the points most frequently reiterated in the feedback from the group discussions was that youth work needs to promote what it does more effectively, that youth work voices need to be heard in appropriate places, and that youth workers should make more effective use of the media in order that they should receive credit and status for their achievements. This is fine, but I do wonder if this is all. Indeed I wonder why we think that youth work is so unknown. There are some grounds for believing that on a day to day basis those who are not involved in youth work don’t really appreciate the complexity of the work, and sometimes confuse it with other social services. There are also some grounds for thinking that related professionals in health, social work, and teaching are sometimes, though not always, vague about youth work, but I am not sure that this can be said to be true of politicians and policy makers. There is now a distinct body of research which demonstrates what youth work does and what it achieves, some of which itself has been commissioned by government and there is a whole programme of policy which relates to youth work practice. The inclusion or omission of youth work from policy directives seems to me to be self conscious. And here we might do well to remember that some politicians don’t actually like some aspects of youth work which many youth workers consider central to their practice identity. To paraphrase an extract from Bernard Davies and Bryan Merton in an article about to be published in Y&P:

One Children’s Minister (Margaret Hodge) generated the headline ‘Youth clubs can be bad for you’ (Hodge, 2005; Ward, 2005); and another (Beverley Hughes) asserted that youth work must be ‘primarily about activities rather than informal education’, with ‘self-development’, though welcome, not seen as an essential goal (Barrett, 2005).

There are not a few MPs who themselves have been youth and/or community workers and often I hear youth workers speaking on the radio in response to some issue that has arisen about young people. So how does this square up with the idea that the work isn’t known? I would like to suggest that the tension between theory and practice in youth work has to be considered in order to understand why youth work is either misunderstood or dismissed. It is no good promoting it. What we have to do is demonstrate in practice that it is a profession with distinct characteristics and that includes, with intellectual credibility, with a historical tradition, with a discourse of its own, and with a desire to engage critically with lively, open and informed debate and action relating to young people and to the type of work we think is central to the profession. This debate is not about promotion. It is about professional, intellectual and political engagement in the areas that are relevant to our work. Ultimately it returns to questions of democracy and civil society.

And this brings me back to the fact that the academic in my Newcastle group has a particular interest in community development raising an enormous question about the distance between the language of community work and that of youth work. As Jeffs and Smith argued years ago, the thrust of policy since the Thatcher period has been towards an increasing individualisation of youth work. Incrementally, youth work has been moved away from working with groups, away from working with political issues, away from working with local cultures and questions of community identity, away from working with the large social issues of poverty, class and social inequalities. As I tried to argue in ‘Youth Work: Voices of Practice’, what is central to the self understanding of the youth worker, has become marginal in the contemporary conditions of practice. And those things which should be secondary, have been made primary. So instead of working with potential, we are required to work with problems. Instead of working educationally, we are required to offer support. Instead of seeking partnership with colleagues on the basis of issues arising from our engagement with young people, we are required to be integrated from an organisational perspective. And most importantly, instead of being able to use the privilege of professional status to build confidence, and trust, and to make professional decisions about risk and about sharing with others, we are required to act as technicians delivering policy directives and feeding information into highly dubious systems. Insofar as we are increasingly driven towards children’s services and social work, so we are incrementally driven away from community and community work issues. The consequence is an absence of political engagement. Do we think that work with young people is not political? Do we think that we can work with young asylum seekers without dealing with the disgrace of policy in these matters, without dealing with global issues, without thinking about racism and sexism, without considering community identities for instance?

So if we are keen to defend youth work, what do we want to defend? It really is the simple question but it is meaningless without considering what we need to build and what we need to attack and destroy. We can have no chance of answering these questions without engaging in critical and informed debate. So the second question must be:

How can we hope to engage in critical and informed debate if some of us continue to denigrate theory, if we do not acknowledge the value of intellectual understanding and the importance of continuous learning in what we do. So how do we challenge this tension between theory and practice? What can we do about it?

And linked to the need to develop a disciplinary discourse for professional youth work, is the question of where we would like our field of knowledge to reside. How do we think about the core of our practice? Is it within the disciplinary domain of social work, or education or politics or community work? Or is it worth thinking of it as different from all of these and if so, can we build a unique body of theory around its core practices drawing from the related disciplines and professions without being sucked into them as second-class actors?

And having asked these questions, I want to turn to the questions which emerged from my 30 years of Southwick Neighbourhood Youth Project anniversary experience. Firstly in this regard, I would like to say that there are some advantages to growing older and one is the privilege of being able to attend more of such events and through them to gain a view of the longer-term impact of youth work practice, education and training. It is easy at gloomy moments to think that we have little impact but a reunion or an anniversary celebration can really inject some optimism about the importance of youth work. I first had a sense of this when I went to the launch of Celia Rose’s book on the Clapton Jewish Youth Club. There was a gathering of people who had been members of the club from as long as 50 years ago. Some had even travelled from the USA to meet old friends at the Jewish Museum in Finchley where the event was held, and it was seriously moving to hear people’s testimony to the positive impact which the club had had on their lives. I once interviewed a man who was a member of a Sunderland boys’ club during the 1930s which was a hard time in Sunderland as everywhere. This man had returned to Sunderland on his retirement, having been an engineer and an FE teacher in Lewisham. I asked him what membership of the club had done for him, and he told me that it had made him believe that he could be somebody in a world where that message was coming from nowhere else. He retrieved and showed me the reference which the Warden of the club had written for him to help him in his search for jobs, and he firmly believed that any success which he had in life, had been a consequence of attachment to the club.

Southwick Neighbourhood Youth Project, known as SNYP, emerged from the Inner City partnerships of the mid 1970s. It started as a small youth club in a Neighbourhood Action Project (SNAP) and was successful in gaining Urban Aid funding for 3 years in 1979. I was appointed with one other full-time worker as a neighbourhood and detached worker in early 1979 and was very pleased to be given the brief to work focus my attention on work with girls. The project was situated in an area of Sunderland which had had a long history as a village, only joining with the town in 1923. It had retained a strong village mentality and community identity. Many of the people who lived there had done so for generations and they tended not to travel far. There was no way any outsider could work with the young people of that area without addressing the question of community, without being accepted by the community and without understanding something of the local culture and family relations. The industrial development and growth of Southwick had been built upon shipbuilding and mining. As a consequence, the local culture was strongly masculine in a very old-fashioned sense. Men and boys ruled OK and there was a general acceptance of this truth. The area was also almost completely white and most of its inhabitants were unselfconsciously racist. So as youth workers we had to work very self-consciously to know and understand local social relations, and this meant local history and culture as well as active relationships between people, and at the same time, in order to mobilise the principles of equality and justice which we brought as core values to our work, we had to work critically and developmentally with the sexism, racism and homophobia which were part of the everyday relations of that community.

By the time I left Southwick in 1985, these issues were becoming more acute and pressing as the industrial base which underpinned social relations and local culture and community disintegrated and the youth job market collapsed. Problems associated with displaced working class masculinity, including violence and crime increased, and racism became more active as a poor area became even poorer and as the young people became increasingly hopeless about their future. Although the language we used was not the same as today, the workers in SNYP understood their youth work with reference to both the context of the local community and with reference to a broader set of values about the type of social relationships we wanted to encourage. We were in no doubt that our work was political, that it was allied to community work, that it was educational and that it was concerned with groups, social change and social conflict as much as, if not more than with individual support and social cohesion.

So what did I find at the 30 year celebration and reunion. Firstly, I found lots of aging young people. And some of their parents. Those who I had worked with when they were in their teens, were now in their mid to late forties. One whole family had turned out, the parents telling us that they had just celebrated their golden wedding. Secondly, I found how poverty had taken its toll with tales of accidental deaths, suicides, alcoholism and serious ill health amongst some. In those tales, it was strikingly obvious how services failed to meet the needs of people in poor communities. I also heard tales of rags to riches and great escapes. However, what was most touching were the repeated tales of how SNYP had broadened the lives of so many of the young people who associated with it.

One woman talked with some passion about how we had shown her different types of food and how we had taken her to Kent, and shown her things she could never have seen otherwise when she had never previously been out of Sunderland. Actually, we took her to Belgium, but what was important was Kent. It was like the other end of the world to her.

Most significant for me, a woman who was a lesbian who just wanted to tell us how important it was to her that we showed her how to ‘get out’ and how she had been trapped and would never have found the way out had it not been for the youth project. Never in all that time did we ask her to address her sexuality, or refer to her sexuality, or make an issue out of it, even though we knew about it. But of course we were addressing it by providing a physical space for her to participate in a project in which she knew that prejudices were challenged, where justice was central and where there were opportunities for moving beyond what was given.

And I was left wondering at the end of that night, in the end, is this all that I want to defend in youth work? The right to work with people in a way which accepts and understands who they are and why, which addresses inequality and injustice and which offers opportunities for them to broaden their lives? I think it probably is. And ultimately, this is the right of a professional worker, based upon responsibility, knowledge and skill, to interpret the context in which they need to work with young people and strive with them for a justice in a wider world than that into which they were born. This means defending a whole understanding of the meaning of professionalism which is clearly at odds with the technical definitions of professionalism to which we are currently being asked to subscribe. And this leads me to my last three questions for informing your discussion.

The first is about the extent of our claims for the value of our engagement with young people. What do we really offer? Is it certificates, information, advice on applying for jobs, information about sexual health and healthy eating ? Or is it the space in which to experience difference, to consider alternatives and to learn about things which might not otherwise enter the frame of lives limited by poverty, silence and injustice?

The second is about organisations. Is it an organisation like SNYP that I want to defend, or is it simply a way of working that is expressed in some organisations? Is there a dange that in defending youth work, we simply try to hang on to our own organisations?

The third concerns the meaning of professionalism. How can we be professional youth workers if the space to take risks, to criticise, challenge and develop alongside young people is closed? What do we want to defend, and what do we want to open up? Do we think that the promise of professional status which is supposed to accompany the degree level qualification in 2010 means that we will achieve the type of professionalism that we need?

My final word today is my own view. Do not think that youth work can defend its practices in isolation or that it is the only profession under threat. One of the central threats to all the people professions, is the incremental removal of opportunity for self defined collective organisation, conversation and informal space in everyday practice. To quote a favourite academic of mine – Stuart Hall: Speaking at a seminar in Durham in 2001, and referring to the policy initiatives of New Labour, he said ‘This is the most deeply penetrative government we have ever had’ and to add to this insights from Jeffs and Smith, it is also one of the most deeply authoritarian administrations we have ever experienced. Government has colonised professional practice from the centre down. And if we do not think that our practice is and our action is political in this context, then our practice is not worth defending and our action will be pointless.

If I have to pull out three key questions from this, they are as follows:

  • Is all our practice worth defending and what should we defend?
  • Is there a need to address the tension between theory and practice, between the academic and the practitioner as an aspect of our defence? And if so, how do we do it?
  • What can youth work legitimately claim about its achievements, and how do we know or evidence these achievements and use them to support our defence of youth work?

Jean Spence

In Defence of Youth Work: Leeds 10th July 2009.

Share this:

The price of speaking out – a courageous headteacher puts his head above the parapets

On By Tony TaylorIn Children and Young People, Education, History, Politics, Youth and Community WorkLeave a comment

On a number of occasions, both during and post the pandemic, faced with overwhelming professional compliance and collusion, I have expressed my despair and dismay. As best I can see and I have scoured the mainstream and alternative media for dissident voices, almost to a person, the education profession has collaborated with utterly unnecessary draconian restrictions on children’s and young people’s lives. I remain perplexed that teachers, play and youth workers, together with lecturers claiming as a result of their training to be politically informed and critically reflective could acquiesce with scarcely a murmur to a shoddily evidenced, glaringly opportunist and organised global intervention that mocked the very notion of sovereign democratic states. To add to my perplexion education professionals, amongst others, are prone to waxing lyrical about the importance of ethics, of codes come to that, yet they remained silent, nay colluded with the unethical campaign of fear concocted by SAGE’s unholy team of behavioural psychologists.

Perhaps most upsetting is that we now observe a profession in denial. Contradictorily, given the less than unusual coronavirus was marketed as an existential threat to humanity, it’s almost as if nothing much happened really. Apparently, there’s no need for any of that reflective malarkey, better the well-worn brush under the carpet. Thinking only of my old back garden in Youth Work, I suspect I will wait in vain for the appearance of any self-critical piece, ‘What Did We Do In The COVID War?’ from the likes of the National Youth Agency, the Centre for Youth Impact, the Training Agencies or the trade unions.

Without a hint of embarrassment, it’s business as usual after the unusual. There’s an unsaid caveat though. If anything unusual, as decided by our betters, does come up, we will again do as we are told and keep our mouths shut – for the common good, I’m sure. For what it’s worth I think, this would be tragic. These are not normal times. More emergencies await us. More than ever we need to talk openly to one another without the fear of being wrong, trashed or smeared.

I take comfort and inspiration from the following.

The price of speaking out

The author of this article is Mike Fairclough, a headteacher who blew the whistle on what he felt were serious safeguarding concerns about the impact of Covid interventions on children. Though whistleblowers are in principle protected by the law, he has been repeatedly smeared and victimised for voicing his concerns. Here he tells his story.

There is a great deal of discussion in the media about free speech and censorship. What are we allowed to talk about and who has the authority to silence us? Particularly in the wake of the pandemic — a period which saw increased anxiety about the consequences of expressing our opinions or even asking questions about the government’s response to Covid — but also around issues such as sex education in schools and identity politics, the closing down of debate has created a damaging culture of self-censorship. Worryingly, this has influenced many adults to put their own self-preservation ahead of the needs of children. 

As the headteacher of a UK junior school, and a parent of four children, I saw it as my moral duty to speak out about my concerns regarding the catastrophic harms that the pandemic policy was doing to my pupils — from school closures and remote learning, masks, cancellations of children’s sports and lives, and then of course the drive to vaccinate children against Covid.

My approach has always been to weigh the benefits of these interventions against the known risks and safeguarding flags.  As regards the Covid vaccines, my assessment was simply that we shouldn’t apply a  medical intervention to children unless there is a clear benefit and a proven safety record — a view which until 2020 would have been seen not only as a reasonable position, consistent with medical ethics, but a position against which to argue would have been considered extreme.  It was clear early on that for healthy children there was minimal risk from the virus and therefore no, or only very minimal, clinical benefit from the vaccine; and critically there was, and is still, no long-term safety data. 

So it was my honestly held view as a parent and headteacher that the roll-out to children constituted a potentially serious safeguarding issue, and that I was legally as well as morally obliged to voice my concerns about this.  People who work in education are obliged to attend annual safeguarding training which informs us that we must report all safeguarding concerns.  Indeed,  attempting to prevent unnecessary harm to children is a legal requirement within my profession.  The professional who turns a blind eye to abuse is held equally accountable, even if not directly enacting the harm themselves. Silence is never an option.

However, my experience of becoming a whistleblower on these safeguarding issues — lockdowns and masks as much as vaccines — is one of relentless attacks and smears both online and in the press, frequently being mis-labelled as an “anti-vaxxer”, and enduring multiple attempts to silence me.

My employer has supported three investigations into my conduct, following whistleblowing complaints relating to views I had expressed about child safeguarding.  Indeed, the most recent unfounded allegation involved the complainants reporting me to the Department for Education’s Counter Extremism team as well as to Ofsted.  Results of an FOI request reveal that I have also been monitored by the UK Counter Disinformation Unit. 

Although I have been cleared of any wrong-doing on all occasions, following independent investigations, these attacks have inevitably taken their toll on me. My nineteen-year career as a headteacher has been overwhelmingly successful up until this point. My employer, Ofsted and the DfE have always supported my educational innovations and celebrated the achievements of the school prior to this time. However, I am now perceived as an extremist and a troublemaker, despite being cleared of the radical allegations against me. I have also been told by former colleagues that I deserve to be punished and should never have spoken out. It appears that any criticism of the government in relation to its pandemic response and its effects on children is seen as a form of blasphemy by devout followers of the orthodox Covid consensus. 

Some of those colleagues believe I was wrong to even question the vaccine roll-out to children because, they tell me, children needed to be vaccinated in order to protect vulnerable adults. I go to sleep thinking about the situation, I dream about it and then wake up in the morning worrying about it again. As a result, my health has suffered in ways which I have never before experienced. I have lost weight, have a constant knot in the pit of my stomach and feel agitated and low much of the time. My personal relationships have also suffered and it feels like every aspect of my life has taken a hit. All because I did my job by blowing the whistle about my safeguarding concerns for the children in my care.  This is something which I should be protected for doing, not attacked for, provided I have acted in good faith. I don’t regret speaking out but I won’t pretend that it has been an easy ride.

Along the way, I have received support from many people, including fellow headteachers and others within my profession, albeit almost always in private messages and secretive whispers. These people have thanked me for voicing my opinions but said that they have been too fearful to speak out themselves. Sometimes they have pointed to the attacks which I have faced as the reason for their silence. I have been grateful for their encouragement but I feel it’s now important for everyone to find their voice. If we see a safeguarding concern regarding children’s health and wellbeing we have a moral obligation to report it. I will emphasise again, it is also a legal duty within the education profession to do this. 

In the shadow of this pandemic I believe we all now need to empower ourselves, and each other, to speak up and speak out, rather than simply leaving it to others to fight our corner.  Nowhere is this need more urgent than in the context of safeguarding for children.

As a career educator, I have a strongly held philosophical belief in the importance of critical thinking and in freedom of speech. I challenge orthodoxies when I encounter them and then publicly share my thoughts, always careful to maintain respect for other people’s differing views and trying always to remain open to changing my existing opinions.

I don’t suggest this is a new idea: educators and thinkers have adopted this approach to life for millennia, with philosophers such as Socrates using this method of thinking and communicating since the time of ancient Greece. And yet, though we like to think that we live in an advanced and progressive liberal democracy, we now find that challenging orthodoxies has become one of the greatest taboos. Critical thinking is frequently assigned to the realms of the conspiracy theorist and pointing out the obvious can become a punishable offence with sanctions delivered both by zealous authorities and by our fellow citizens.

There is an increasing number of people who now say that they opposed many of the government’s pandemic responses but didn’t make their views public at the time. Individuals who had recognised the potential harms caused by lockdowns, masks or the vaccine mandates but stayed silent. The minority who did speak openly about their concerns were often attacked, which no doubt will have played a part in others’ self-censorship. But, if more people had publicly voiced their concerns, I’m sure we could have collectively prevented at least some of the unnecessary harms unleashed on us, and on our children. 

This is why it is so important that we create a cultural landscape within which different opinions can be freely expressed. And I believe that we each have a significant role to play in bringing this about. Speaking our truth about controversial or sensitive subjects and ending this culture of self-censorship and fear. If we don’t do this, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past few years. Watching in silence at harms taking place around us instead of standing up and speaking our truth. Critical thinking and free speech are not dangerous. They are what free and democratic societies are built upon. Fight for them and they — and we — will flourish. Leave it to others and we risk losing our hard-won civic freedoms forever: a future for our children which none of us want to see.

Many thanks to UsForThem for the original

usforthem2020.substack.com

Postscript

As I read this afresh I’m moved to wonder how I might have responded if I had been transported to be, if not a Chief Youth Officer, some brand of Senior Manager within the remains of Services for Young People. Would I have had the bottle to stand my ground and report to politicians and bureaucrats my principled and informed opposition to the closure of playgrounds and youth centres, to express my concern that the imposition of masks and social distancing had no solid empirical basis and would undermine the very foundations of relational education? I like to think so but it’s easy to be brave from a distance. Certainly, it seems likely that when word got out about such a stance, whatever my track record, I would have become persona non grata overnight. Quite how this immediate, damning and long-lasting judgement of my worth squares with the person-centred, process-led and forgiving youth and community work tradition of yesteryear [?] is for another time.

From the In Defence of Youth Work archive: Were we being precious in 2009?

On By Tony TaylorIn Children and Young People, Education, History, Politics, Youth WorkLeave a comment

This is another historical piece lifted from the In Defence of Youth Work [IDYW] archives that may be of some passing interest.

This post contains an exchange between myself and Ravi Chandirimani, then the editor of CYPN. It dates from May 2009. He advised those involved in IDYW to embrace pragmatism. Being pragmatic has certainly done him no harm. He sits today on the Mark Allen Board of Directors. Fair enough. Does the success of his individual pragmatism expose the naive preciousness of the collective, that was the IDYW? Or, ironically, given the failure of IDYW to organise a successful resistance to the behavioural capture of youth work, what has been the price of the victory of Ravi’s pragmatic advice?

The links in the following paragraph do not work. Evidently, CYPN and its owners, the market-leading brand, Mark Allen Holdings don’t do history.

The debate about youth work values and core principles continues on the pages of Children and Young People Now In the article ‘Are government policies chipping away at youth work values?’ Janaki Mahadevan collects together the views of ‘a panel of experts’. Now being dubbed an expert does my head in, but we’ll leave this contemporary obsession with experts to another day. Whilst in a related Opinion piece ‘Youth Work must avoid isolationism’ Ravi Chandiramani advises us ‘to be pragmatic, not precious’.

Ravi Chandirimani

His argument unfolds as follows:

Youth work must avoid isolationism

De Montfort University’s inquiry on the impact of government policies on youth work has added to the sense of unease expressed in Tony Taylor’s open letter, In Defence of Youth Work, that its core principles are under threat.

This week we ask a number of experts to evaluate these concerns.

The anxieties themselves derive partly from the fact that the more eye-catching, headline-grabbing – and crucially, properly funded – initiatives that involve youth workers target certain groups of young people deemed to be “troubled”, “vulnerable”, “at risk” or whatever administrative label is the flavour of the month. Our feature this week on non-negotiable support offers one such example of these initiatives. Such targeted youth support defies youth work’s cherished value that the relationship between a young person and youth worker is voluntary. It may not be youth work in its purest form, granted, but targeted support calls on a number of youth work skills to build relationships with young people.

The anxieties are fuelled also by requirements for youth work nowadays to demonstrate accredited outcomes and the feeling that these are dictating practice. However, as London Youth’s Nick Wilkie states, it is entirely reasonable to assess youth work’s impact on young lives, particularly since cuts in public spending are forcing all children’s and youth services to prove their benefit.

What we have at the moment is a bit of a stand-off between policymakers and some sections of the youth work community. From the government, amid initiative after initiative targeting the country’s problematic youth, what is missing is a clear articulation of support for youth work in its purest sense: as voluntary, informal, providing young people with someone to talk to, somewhere to socialise, and activities that boost young people’s confidence.

That said, youth workers have to accept reality. Other professions in the children’s sector – teachers and social workers among them – have had to adapt beyond their core skills base to ensure the young get the services and support they need. At a time when youth workers are being given the opportunity to play a more central role through the youth professional status, some risk becoming isolationist, and marginalising themselves from the Every Child Matters agenda, which has plenty to commend it. They should defend their turf, by all means, but now is a good time to be pragmatic, not precious.

I have responded in the following vein:

Ravi

This is a curious piece. In order to make your case you are forced to create a Strawperson: a precious youth worker refusing to face reality, devoid of pragmatic intuition, marching off into splendid isolation. Now the DMU Inquiry is not the work of such a fictional character. Bernard Davies and Brian Merton have laboured seriously for decades in both a pragmatic and principled way in support of process-led, young person-centred voluntary youth work practice. If there is a stand-off between policymakers and the likes of Bernard and Brian, it is a situation of the policymakers’ making. It is down to the bureaucracy’s failure to enter into an authentic dialogue with the folk who understand and do the job. Of course, I accept that I might be identified as an out-of-touch maverick. However, the contradiction is that the Open Letter is not at all a personal statement. It is an effort to distil the mood and thinking of a diversity of practitioners with whom I have been closely involved in recent years. Within the missive, we use the idea of ‘democratic and emancipatory’ youth work to describe the form of youth work we favour and wish to defend. Myself, unlike some of my closest friends, I have no desire to claim that what is going on under New Labour is not Youth Work. My problem is that it is a form of Youth Work that is imposed, prescriptive and normative, which doesn’t mean that the people doing it are evil and nasty. It does mean that those, going along with its agenda, have accepted that the purpose of Youth Work is control and conformity.

And it is the question of purpose which is at the heart of the resurgent debate about Youth Work. It has little to do with your confusing reference to skills. If teachers and social workers have ‘adapted beyond their core skills base’, it is not so that they can become better at working with their students and clients, but rather that they become better at form-filling and the like. What has been altered is the focus of education and social work: away from educating a child for life towards a narrow vocationalism, away from social welfare to social punishment. Increasingly within these professions, people are protesting that enough is enough. And so it is within Youth Work. Our desire is to contest the meaning imposed on our engagement with young people.

I will outstay my welcome if I respond properly to the mythical idea that the quantitative amassing of accredited outcomes gives some ground-breaking insight into the impact of youth work on young people or that it provides some ‘robust’ defence against public spending cuts. So let me close on the question of pragmatism, which has never been in short supply within Youth Work. In my own case, you don’t hold down jobs in senior management in Youth Work for 20 years without sadly having to be pragmatic. But it’s one thing being pragmatic as a necessity in specific circumstances, it is quite another to make of pragmatism a virtue, or even a philosophy. For pragmatism suffers at heart from a lack of vision and imagination.

Ravi, I think your advice is wide of the historical mark. With politicians and policymakers on the run, spewing in their breathlessness chunks of rhetoric about democracy, the devolution of power and the crisis of the body politic, our arguments about the need for an open, democratic and pluralist youth work will not isolate or marginalise us. More and more folk are saying similar things about their particular turf in all parts of the State and civil society. Now is a precious time, not to be wasted, to be principled and imaginative, not passively pragmatic.

Tony

As ever your criticisms and comments are welcomed. Are we in danger of being isolated?

Thinking about the Past, Present and Future of IDYW

On By Tony TaylorIn Children and Young People, Education, History, neoliberalism, Politics, Youth Work3 Comments

For the sake of some sort of continuity I’m publishing here my final post from the In Defence of Youth Work website. It contains themes emanating from the authoritarian imposition of the COVID measures, which I will continue to take up in one way or another on this blog.

Below you will find the lead contribution I made to the final IDYW Steering Group meeting held on Friday, October 8th in Manchester. As it was the train of my thought was often, necessarily and fruitfully interrupted by the musings and memories of those present. These interventions made for a challenging yet always supportive critical, collective conversation. Unfortunately I can’t do justice to that process. Hence you are getting no more than my opening and closing remarks. The substance of my offering was an effort to trace major events and significant themes in the life of IDYW since 2009. These are to be found, now archived on this site.

A group discussion at our fifth national conference in Birmingham

Thinking About the Past, Present and Future of IDYW.

Opening Remarks

I’m anxious about this bit of an opening presentation, which might well seem ridiculous. I long ago gave up paid work, selling my soul to the State with all its attendant tensions. Why the disquiet!? The principal reason for my apprehension is that I’ve scoured back through all the IDYW website posts since March 2009. I stopped counting at 1500 plus. What riches, what a turmoil of contradictions, hope and despair and what a plurality of offerings. I was bemused. How could I possibly do justice to this fascinating potpourri? My confusion was not eased in finding myself listening to the videos of the first National Conference in February 2010 – Janet Batsleer welcoming us to an ‘unauthorised space’, Kev Jones introducing my rant, Tania de St Croix warning about surveillance and Bernard Davies making the youth work case. Thoughts and sentiments that would not be out of place today. In thinking about the inaugural Conference I remembered also meeting Sue Atkins on the Didsbury campus in the dark the night before. We had something to sort out. I remember not what. It might well have been 20 years since we’d last crossed paths. A tear in our eyes it was as if we’d never been apart.

So forgive me if my recollection of IDYW’s history is riddled with absences. If there isn’t a book there is certainly an MA, even, a PhD to be found in the IDYW archives. Although on second thoughts a PhD collecting dust on a shelf would hardly move us forward.

So why did IDYW emerge in late 2008 on the back of the Open Letter I penned. It ventured:

Thirty years ago Youth Work aspired to a special relationship with young people. It wanted to meet young women and men on their terms. It claimed to be ‘on their side’. Three decades later Youth Work is close to abandoning this distinctive commitment. Today it accepts the State’s terms. It sides with the State’s agenda. Perhaps we exaggerate, but a profound change has taken place.

The shift has not happened overnight. Back in the 1980’s the Thatcherite effort via the Manpower Services Commission to shift the focus of Youth Work from social education to social and life skills was resisted. In the early 90’s the attempt to impose a national curriculum on the diverse elements of the Youth Service ground to a halt. However, with the accession of New Labour, the drive to impose an instrumental framework on Youth Work gathered increased momentum. With Blair and Brown at the helm youth workers and managers have been coerced and cajoled into embracing the very antithesis of the Youth Work process: predictable and prescribed outcomes. Possessing no vision of a world beyond the present New Labour has been obsessed with the micro-management of problematic, often demonised youth. Yearning for a generation stamped with the State’s seal of approval the government has transformed Youth Work into an agency of behavioural modification. It wishes to confine to the scrapbook of history the idea that Youth Work is volatile and voluntary, creative and collective – an association and conversation without guarantees.

Of course, the idea of the Letter did not spring out of the blue. It was not at all my individual creation. The inspiration for challenging the neo-liberal consensus goes back for me to the late 1960s. I want to argue that IDYW was but a particular expression of a post-war liberal/social democratic belief that education ought to be child/young person-centred, process-led, holistic and questioning in its desire. IDYW was born too out of a frustration that this humanistic perspective had struggled to dent a behavioural tradition focused on social control and conformity. In my own experience back in the late 1970s, Roy Ratcliffe and I were disciplined for supporting the autonomous voice of an embryo Youth Council. We wrote about this setback and the lack of support from fellow professionals in a piece to be found within the Inner London Education Authority’s ‘Schooling & Culture’, entitled ‘Stuttering Steps in Political Education’. As the Youth Service Training Officer in Wigan, I fought a bitter battle with Youth Service officers and workers to rewrite a part-time youth worker training course that sought to introduce Carl Rogers to Karl Marx, to question liberal taken-for-granteds by way of socialist and feminist understandings. Over in the newly created Community and Youth Workers Union, the Women’s Caucus emerging from the social movements turned the organisation upside down, Stimulated by the sisters Roy and I (in perhaps the best thing I’ve ever done) drafted a member-led and democratic constitution which directly challenged in practice both hierarchy and bureaucracy. Yet despite the radicalisation of full-time training courses, behaviourism was reasserting itself by the late 1980s as the servant of neo-liberal ideology. Indeed some former advocates of a radical grass-roots agenda were to the fore in advocating the managerial imposition of its tenets.

To say the least, this analysis is sweeping. I’ve always tended to be that way inclined. Yet, as an example of the shift, when I went in 1990 as the Wigan Chief Youth Officer to a Confederation of Heads of Youth Services national conference with perhaps 100 managers in attendance I sat in a corner over a drink with at most half a dozen fellow travellers. The majority embraced prescribed outcomes and the accumulation of data as the only way to save the Youth Service and Youth Work.

As it is I fled the scene at the end of the 1990s because of Marilyn, my wife’s serious illness. However, I was not quite finished. With Malcolm Ball, Steve Waterhouse (tragically both no longer with us) Deb Ball, Tim Price and Steve Monaghan we formed the minuscule Critically Chatting Collective, continuing to question what was going on through a website and tiny gatherings. For example, I remember back in 2005 Bernard Davies addressing a central London meeting of no more than six people – hardly an indication of mass support for our meanderings. Be that as it may, this continuation of a critical perspective was essential to my subsequent scribbling of the Open Letter which was rejected by the National Youth Agency’s organ, ‘Young People Now’ as being too heavy for its readership. I declined the offer to rewrite.

Thus we circulated the Letter at the 2009 Youth & Policy History Conference in Durham, knowing that Y & P itself stood for an open and serious appraisal of the State’s relationship with young people. I have failed to track down the place where the signatories are housed, well over 700 as I remember. In short, the Open Letter opposed the behavioural and instrumental, the imposition of rules, norms and outcomes upon practice. As I argued, “we described a clash between the process of ‘becoming a person, individually, socially and politically aware’, which held good for ourselves and young people and neoliberalism’s desire to manufacture self-centred conformism and unquestioning obedience to the status quo amongst both ourselves and young people”.

All of which preamble leads to a specific engagement with the history of IDYW itself. As I have more than hinted there is a book to be written. I will have to content myself with a limited number of memories.

At this point in my contribution to the meeting, I began to explore all that we had done across the life of IDYW. In this context to do so here would come across as a list with little in the way of explanation and exploration. Hence, for now, I can only ask the reader to interrogate for themselves the IDYW archive. For my part I am committed monthly, if not more frequently, to post afresh gems from the archive and hope you might keep your eye on their appearance. Amongst the themes I touched upon were:

The Annual Conferences
The Regional Seminars
The range of questioning articles and books produced by IDYW activists
Our unstinting support for wider initiatives, exemplified by our involvement in Choose Youth and ‘Is the Tide Turning’
Our input into the European Youth Work debate

Concluding Remarks

Given I’m somewhat retired from the fray I don’t want to overstay my return to a discussion about IDYW’s future or indeed claim that my finger is on the pulse. My piece on ‘Resistance in a Climate of Anxiety’ conveys still much of my perspective.

Firstly, IDYW was born out of a spirit of resistance to and dissension from the mainstream behavioural narrative besetting our relations with young people.

Secondly, therefore, my question is whether IDYW remains a critical voice, given that the formalisation of the informal within Youth Work has continued apace? Or has it been slowly sanitised, swallowed up safely into the mainstream as symbolised by a Facebook page dominated by exchanges and requests far removed from the philosophy and politics of the Open Letter?

Finally, in my opinion, neither Youth Work nor IDYW itself can sidestep facing the implications for both young people and society as a whole of the consciously created COVID pandemic. As best I can see the profession meekly and unquestioningly complied with a flagrantly undemocratic, disgracefully unethical, utterly one-sided governmental response to a virus which, if placed in context, has been far from the 21st-century Great Plague predicted by that methodological absurdity, the Science, its cynical experts and obedient stenographers. We witnessed the overnight abandonment of a holistic, measured, informed Public Health Policy and the character assassination of those brave souls, who pointed this out.

In particular, youth workers and education professionals as a whole ought to examine on what unevidenced grounds they cooperated with the closing down and stifling of children and young people’s provision and ask themselves to what extent they were complicit in the transmission of the fearmongering propaganda disseminated by the behavioural psychologists and their ‘nudge, nudge’ advertising arm? For what it’s worth, even if this emergency dies down and the covid zealots retreat, I don’t think it’s possible to proceed as if not much has gone on, to accept their New Normal.

The logo of our friends at the now defunct National Coalition for Independent Action

Above all, a supposed democratic and emancipatory youth work is now put to the test in terms of its own integrity. Is it possible to abandon the pursuit of truth and critical reflection with hardly a whimper, then as the dust settles, claim to be its principled advocates? I ask this with some pessimism as more than ever in the light of the pandemic I believe that the struggle to defend and extend the power of the people against the technocratic authoritarianism of the ruling class and its supporters on both the Left and Right is now the overwhelming political struggle of our time. Indeed it is a struggle, which transcends simplistic political categories. It is a struggle, within and without youth work, which demands a renewed critical dialogue across a veritable diversity of voices. IDYW in its time sought to do so but fell short. Crucially we never developed a vibrant, living network of local and regional IDYW support groups. It falls upon a younger generation in particular to revive the spirit of its intent.

IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK CLOSES ITS BOOKS IN SADNESS BUT WITH MUCH PRIDE

On By Tony TaylorIn Children and Young People, Education, History, Politics, Youth WorkLeave a comment

Some readers of this blog will know that I penned the Open Letter, which initiated the Defence of Youth Work campaign in early 2009. For a decade I coordinated the campaign and maintained its website. It took up a big chunk of my life but I was privileged that it did so. By a twist of fate, I had the time and space to do so. I stepped down from my leading role in 2019 but no one was able to fill the gap. No one had the time and space. I cannot escape from the fact that my withdrawal in part sapped the energy and slowed the momentum of the campaign. As it was the restrictions on social existence imposed in the name of COVID brought things almost to a standstill. Thus on Friday, October 7 the Steering Group agreed to bring IDYW’s life to a close. Below is the Steering Group’s statement, first published on the IDYW website. More thoughts to follow.

The original IDYW logo

IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK CLOSES ITS BOOKS IN SADNESS BUT WITH MUCH PRIDE

At our very first national conference in 2009, Janet Batsleer welcomed us to an ‘unauthorised space’. Her eloquent words ring down through the years.

In Defence of Youth Work as a campaign and critical forum is no more. At an Open Steering Group meeting held in Manchester on Friday, October 7th, amidst smiles, frowns and tears, it was agreed that IDYW had run its course, having lost its impetus and energy. In exploring why this was so and where we were up to, it became plain we had much of which to be proud. The evidence for this assertion is to be found on this website with its 1500+ posts recording our collective activity since our appearance in early 2009. We are committed to preserving the website as a historical archive and as a testament to the impact of our small ‘unauthorised’ and independent group, ‘punching above its weight’, upon the national and indeed international youth work scene.

One of Jethro Bryce’s striking illustrations from our book, ”This is Youth Work’

Whilst IDYW will cease to be an organised presence in the youth work arena, it is vital to recognise that its existence was always of its time. It was no more and no less than a particular expression over the last thirteen years of a centuries-old struggle for a truly democratic and ‘popular’ education. Without questioning, democratically inclined citizens, young and old, there can be no democracy. In this context, the humanist philosophy and practice of a secular and religious disposition that inspired IDYW’s resistance to the behavioural and instrumental neoliberal agenda remain a universal treasury of hope. The ideas live on. In the face of an increasingly technocratic and authoritarian capitalism, we hope that our endeavour will be taken up afresh and reimagined by a new wave of workers and activists. We hope too that the archive of our efforts will provide a moment or two of inspiration.

Gathering our collective thoughts

For now, we will take a deep breath, tinged with sadness, bursting with pride. In the coming months, from time to time, we will highlight anew memories worth remembering. Tony Taylor at tonymtaylor@gmail.com has agreed to be a Keeper of the Records, to use an old-fashioned title, and will welcome approaches from students, academics, researchers and practitioners seeking to explore our ‘books’.

Hopefully concentrating on a speaker’s provocative insights!

A Pragmatic Postscript

Over the years our Facebook page has taken on a life of its own. At this moment it boasts 6,800 members. It has become the go-to place for sharing information and ideas about youth work in general. In many ways, the page has lost touch with its original purpose of encouraging debate focused on IDYW’s cornerstones. Nevertheless, it is clearly an important resource and a marketplace for youth workers and projects. Respecting this our moderators will continue to keep watch on its contents and are considering ways of perhaps filtering the daily waterfall of varied material.

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES LA LUTTA CONTINUA Ο Αγώνας Συνεχίζεται

A post of uncritical, chattering indulgence – Bravo, Logan Astley

On By Tony TaylorIn Children and Young People, History, Rugby League1 Comment

I was born into the working class world of Rugby League – the Lancashire side of the Pennines. During my teenage years, I lived in a classic two-up, two-down terraced house, only a drop kick away from Hilton Park, the rickety home of Leigh RLFC. My dad, like many a miner, tried his hand, playing a couple of games as hooker for the ‘A’ team. And, in 1957, I played for Newton West Park against the Twelve Apostles in the Leigh Primary Schools final on the hallowed ground of the town’s professional team. The muddy pitch was so big it was a wonder either team got near the opposition’s try line. It ended 3 points all in a dour draw. I ended up with a bloody nose, which was sorted by my father, running on with the ‘magic sponge’ and the instruction, ‘ger on wi’it’.

Hilton Park. Leigh

Like many a young lad, I dreamed of playing for Leigh. My hero was the rampaging Mick Martyn. However I was neither tough nor quick enough to emulate his exploits. Never mind that I went to grammar school, where class pretension meant rugby union was the name of a game, where writhing about on the ground was a necessity. kicking obligatory and passing almost unheard of. I became a race walker, where the only necessary contact was with the ground rather than with hurtling bodies – in retrospect far safer.

In 1989 I found myself living in a ‘posher’ house close to the middle of Wigan, this time only a spiralling pass from Central Park, the atmospheric home of Wigan RLFC, Leigh’s fiercest rivals. My love for the game was reignited. To the dismay, I’m sure of loyal ‘Leythers’, with my wife being a ‘Wigginer’, I rationalised following both the Leigh and Wigan teams, the latter in its pomp. Ellery Hanley, Shaun Edwards and Andy Farrell were amongst our heroes. It was an exhilarating period of dramatic matches, of incredible skills and courage, interspersed on our part with many a pint of Pendle Witch or Timothy Taylor’s Landlord consumed in characterful pubs across the North-West of England. During a couple of summers, I even found myself playing touch rugby for my local, the Tudor House, the oldest, slowest, but perhaps fittest in the team. On a couple of occasions my daughter’s soon-to-be husband, Bob Astley contributed to our efforts, startling us with his blistering pace.

Central Park, Wigan

Bob’s fast-twitch fibres were to be of more than passing importance. Having emigrated to Crete. Marilyn and I were not present at Logan’s birth so we can’t confirm the rumour that he was born with a rugby ball between his thighs. We can though vouch for the fact that from an early age he went to bed with ball in hand. Indeed when we visited we found the living room had been transformed into a rugby pitch with two couches set at a right angle, comprising the grandstands. From thence on the ruffled carpet was host to passes, short and long, delicate grubber kicks and crunching tackles with Sonny, Logan’s younger brother in the heat of affairs. It’s a wonder the room remains roughly in one piece. Recently Tubby, the family dog has found himself buffetted in the thick of things and, apprenticeship served, is able now to bark with authority, ‘Grr ’em onside’.

A magical try from Logan in his younger days!

Outside of the Astley’s private training ground, Logan has made his way successfully through the competitive age groups of the local amateur rugby scene, often in the colours of the Wigan St Patrick’s club, earning consistent praise for his talents. Possessed of an exhilarating turn of speed, inherited from his dad and perchance a willingness to do the hard miles reminiscent of my athletic dedication he has stood out from the pack. He’s been on the books of Wigan Warriors [ don’t get me started on the daft, unnecessary brand name!] for the past few years and has made his first team debut. Where it goes from here is not anyone’s guess. He is gifted and committed, telling his mum, ‘how lucky he is to be paid for doing something he loves’ but the sport is cruel. Many an exciting prospect falls by the wayside, sometimes through career-threatening injury, sometimes by losing the plot. In his favour is a laid-back and unpretentious disposition. He’s certainly not too big for his own boots. For now, a proud grandad I’ll wallow in the moment described below and leave tomorrow for another day.

Astley leads the way as Warriors take title
WIGAN WARRIORS 40 WAKEFIELD TRINITY 12

DAVID KUZIO

Robin Park, Sunday, September 18, 2022

BEN O’KEEFE grabbed a hat-trick of tries and kicked four goals as Wigan claimed the second-string crown with a comfortable victory.

The winger completed his treble in the first half as the hosts led 18-6 at the break after bossing the bulk of the action.

The Warriors raced into a 14-0 lead with O’Keefe scoring twice on either side of a Kieran Tyrer try (O’Keefe improved that effort).

But Robbie Butterworth got Wakefield on the board with a try out of nothing, to which he added the two, as the visitors started to grow into the contest.

However, O’Keefe’s score on the hooter settled the home side, who were slowly allowing Trinity to get into the game.

A 51st-minute score from Josh Phillips, also converted by O’Keefe, gave Wakefield fresh hope as the deficit was cut to six points.

But a brace of tries from Sam Halsall and scores by Alex Sutton and Logan Astley, plus three O’Keefe goals, saw Wigan home.

It was not a great start from them as Umlya Hanley put the ball out on the full from the kick-off, and they then conceded a drop-out as Wakefield looked to gain an early advantage.

But Tyrer turned the tide as he found touch from the drop-out and it was Wigan now on the front foot.

They made that count as Astley took the ball left and found Halsall in space to send O’Keefe in at the corner.

Wigan extended their lead in the 15th minute when Tyrer collected a short ball, threw a dummy and went in under the posts unopposed.

Jack Bibby and Tyrer went close before Astley and Halsall combined once again to send O’Keefe in for his second try – and a 14-0 lead.

Great defence from Robbie Mann and Rob Butler prevented Wigan from scoring their fourth try.

The Yorkshire side took heart from that, went up the other end, and scored their first.

A towering kick was collected by Hanley, but he was met with a monster hit and spilled possession, leaving Butterworth to pick up and touch down. Wigan were reduced to twelve men with James McDonnell sent to the sin bin for a professional foul, and Wakefield started to cause problems.

Jay Haywood-Scriven came close to grabbing a second, but he was held just short.

Wigan managed to soak up a lot of pressure and O’Keefe crossed for his hat-trick just before the interval following another neat pass from Astley.

Wakefield enjoyed a lot of possession at the start of the second half as they camped on Wigan’s line, and they got their reward with Phillips forcing his way over from close range.

Wigan were now struggling to create chances as Wakefield were taking the game to them, but a poor pass was intercepted by Halsall, who raced 80 metres to help put Wigan twelve points in front with 23 minutes to go.

Halsall then put the game out of Wakefield’s reach with another long range effort. Junior Nsemba – who was brilliant all afternoon – combined with Astley and O’Keefe, with the latter turning it inside for the scorer to race away.

Wigan’s seventh try came from Sutton as he was on the end on another passing move started by Astley, who then capped a marvellous performance with a try of his own.

GAMESTAR: Ben O’Keefe, Sam Halsall and Junior Nsemba were brilliant, but scrum-half Logan Astley was the one pulling the strings.

GAMEBREAKER: Sam Halsall’s 57th-minute interception try pushed Wigan ahead by twelve points and they were never in danger of losing the game after that.

School Children Resist in 1911: A Historical Precedent?

On By Tony TaylorIn Children and Young People, History, PoliticsLeave a comment

On the 5th of September 1911, a UK-wide strike wave of schoolchildren was sparked when pupils in Llanelli, Wales walked out in sympathy with a boy who was disciplined by a deputy headmaster. From this one school, walkouts spread across the country to at least 62 towns and cities, with pupils demanding an end to corporal punishment and shorter hours. The schoolchildren’s strikes followed a summer of workers’ industrial disputes.

Schoolchildren on strike, Shoreditch 1911

In the present climate of growing unrest with the consequences of the authoritarian assault on children’s, young people’s, parents’ and workers’ rights, indeed upon society as a whole is inspiration to be found in this history.

School children in Hull on strike in 1911 “for shorter hours and no stick”


There is a wonderful pamphlet about the walkouts, written by Dave Marston, a docker and Ruskin student in 1973.

https://libcom.org/history/childrens-strikes-1911

Editorial Note

The children’s strikes of 1911, as Dave Marson shows in this pamphlet, were part of the huge upheaval of labour in the long, hot summer of 1911. The industrial unrest has often been written about: the school strikes are Dave Marson’s own discovery. He came upon them by accident when researching the history of his own people, the Hull dockers. He has followed the strike movement all over the country and has set them in both a school and a community context. The school situation which he describes has by no means disappeared: nor have the difficulties of organising resistance. The writer is a working docker, who was a student at Ruskin in 1970-2.

He begins his marvellous piece.

I came upon the children’s strikes of 1911 by accident. I was researching into the Hull Dock Strike of 1911, and reading through the Hull newspapers of that year when I noticed a small paragraph relating to a strike of Hull school children which took place in September 1911. It seemed no more than a curiosity, an illustration of the extent of the industrial unrest taking place at that time. What struck me first was the story about a policeman having to mount his bicycle and charging at the youthful strikers who had formed a picket line outside their school. The mere sight of a blue uniform was enough to frighten me and my school friends.

What set me looking further into things was one line in the report which said that the Hull boys were following the example of children in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Then looking through another Hull newspaper I discovered a front page splash – with photographs and a story about the strike. The newspaper listed all the different classes of workers who had been out on strike in Hull during that hot summer – cement workers – factory girls – seamen and dockers, and connected the children’s strike to them. It was a photograph that really affected me – it was a picture of the children picketting the gates of Courtney Street Primary School, the same school I had been to myself. I identified myself with those strikers – some of them might have been the parents of the children I went to school with.

When I looked at the Times I found that children’s strikes were taking place not only in Yorkshire but all over the country. At first I couldn’t believe it – how could it have taken place so quickly and all over the country – I’d always believed that strikes were something which had to be organised. I felt that these children were trying to say something. I did not realise how many places were affected until I started reading through the local newspapers at Colindale. These showed that there were many more than the Times had reported.

Dave ends after cataloguing an amazing variety of children’s responses across the country.

Away from their classrooms the jubilant children began to express themselves in various ways. To some it would be a ‘street theatre’ and to others the sheer feeling of freedom would exhilarate them enough to address the crowds of boys in the manner of the factory-gate or street-corner agitator. To the newspaper columnists they were ‘Dunces’; ‘The Truant Class’; ‘Children from the Poorer Areas’. This attitude shows how the respectable classes regarded them. Throughout the country children began to show originality and independence.

The strikes were not all violent. In Hartlepool the boys walked along the sands and picnicked, taking advantage of the splendid late Summer weather. In other places they went swimming or simply sat around discussing general topics; they played at being soldiers and paraded; some sang patriotic songs.

In Northampton strikers went blackberrying. But more important they entertained themselves with their own music making up the words to songs. These children, despite their stifling schooling showed their minds had not been overwhelmed by the gray monotonies of the class-room. They still retained imagination with ideas like the colours in a paint-box.

Are youth workers chatting critically about their compliance with or resistance to the closing down of young people’s lives?

On By Tony TaylorIn Children and Young People, Politics1 Comment

Back in January, I published a post, What about Children and Young People? Are they no more than collateral damage? The opening sentence declared, ‘from the very beginning, March 2020, of the utterly undemocratic imposition of COVID-inspired sweeping restrictions on social existence I feared for children and young people.’

I was perplexed from the outset at what seemed to be the absence of debate and the utter lack of opposition to the demanded closures of children’s and young people’s provision – from playgrounds through schools and youth facilities to universities. I am being diplomatic. I was pissed off and angry. It was plain that such draconian, disproportionate action would be deeply damaging. The belated acknowledgement in the summer of 2021 that the lockdown was creating serious mental health issues for the younger generation, crocodile tears, merely confirmed my angst. Then, a humble breath taken, I recognised it was easy for me to be so moved. If I was still a practising youth worker. teacher or lecturer what would I have done during the last two years?

Towards the end of the piece I commented:

Certainly in the coming weeks, as the pandemic narrative unravels, it would be revealing to hear the thoughts of UK youth workers, teachers and lecturers about their sense of the impact upon children and young people, upon themselves of the two years lost.

I’m still waiting but prodded by an Opinion article in the Guardian, ‘Evidence grows of lockdown harm to the young. But we act as if nothing happened‘ by Martha Gill, I’ll return to the issue by way of a recent criticism of lockdown.

Written by Dr Zenobia Storah, Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychologist, it is entitled, ‘Reflections of a Child Psychologist on the Pandemic Response, 2 years on.’ It deserves to be read in full, particularly perhaps by professionals in the fields of welfare and education. At one point she muses.

Something unexpected happened in Spring and Summer of 2020. I found myself standing apart from my colleagues. I could understand that in the initial stages of the pandemic, due to the particular threat that Covid posed to the elderly, the government’s decision had been to focus on the protection of older members of the population. But as the weeks wore on and I imagined the harm being done to children across the country, informed both by my training and my professional experience, it was clear to me that too much weight was being focussed on the protection of adults at the enormous expense of the less obvious (but more long-term) damage to the future and well-being of children and young people. And yet those who I would expect to be my natural allies due to shared knowledge and experience remained silent. There was no national, grown-up discussion anywhere about how we might balance the need to protect the most vulnerable from Covid with the interests of the young, and how we could remain faithful to our national commitment to children’s best interests being paramount. Any attempt to introduce such discussion was met with derision and accusations of moral decrepitude. To my astonishment, this was also the case on professional online forums, where it became increasingly difficult to raise concerns. It seemed to me that psychologists, who describe themselves as ‘scientist-practitioners’, should be asking serious questions about society-wide decisions to impose restrictions and mandates that would inevitably harm children and young people (and other vulnerable groups). At the very least, they should all be calling for a broader discussion, which they would be uniquely placed to inform, and at best, an extremely high bar (in terms of cost-benefit analysis) for the introduction of such measures. Yet the general view amongst those working with children and young people – and the official view of most professional bodies including my own – was that the moral responsibility of child professionals was to support government policy (at whatever cost to society and whilst asking no questions – or so it seemed to me) and then to work to mitigate the impact on mental or physical health. The alternative view – that policies that kept children out of schools, cut them off from families and friends, kept them from participating in outdoor sports, normal play, activity and socialising and prevented them from accessing healthcare and other support services should not be in place at all – was anathema. This was disturbing and confusing. I could not understand how, given the values and knowledge we had all shared before March 2020, this had come about.

She concludes.

We always knew what circumstances and experiences children needed in order to thrive, to be physically well and to be mentally healthy, and we knew that the unprecedented social experiment that took place from March 2020 deprived them of many of these things and would put many at risk of serious harm. The collateral damage outlined in all these studies and reports could have been foreseen and warned against by many more child professionals than ever spoke out. In moving into the post-pandemic era, it is essential that we continue to speak of these harms, to measure and describe them and to share these findings with our colleagues and the general public. We need to welcome into the discussion the concerns of many people who, at the time, were persuaded that reduced transmission of Covid trumped everything else, including the safety and mental and physical health of children and young people. It would be good to reach a point where there is full acknowledgement of the harms caused and the catastrophic errors made that led to them. Perhaps the Covid Inquiry will lead society to ask itself how we ever got to a point where children and young people were routinely subjected to harmful and unevidenced interventions and restrictions. As we support recovery, all those working with children and those in government must re-commit to the principles of the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child. And we must ensure that we never subject a generation of children to such experiences ever again.

Speaking purely of youth workers, managers and lecturers, fond of proclaiming themselves to be critical practitioners par excellence, to what extent at a local, regional and national level are they coming together to consider what has been going on over the pandemic years? To what extent are they encouraging young people to discuss the rights and wrongs of the authoritarian clampdown on their lives? Or is the profession pretending the last two years never happened? Such collective myopia bodes ill for a future, within which an emboldened ruling class is confident that its diktat will be fearfully obeyed and that amongst its messengers of anxiety will be indeed youth workers, managers and lecturers.

Remembering Steve Waterhouse – A youth worker’s youth worker

On By Tony TaylorIn Children and Young People, History, Politics, Youth WorkLeave a comment

I can’t believe it’s six years since my dear friend and comrade, Steve Waterhouse died so tragically. By chance, a week or so ago, sifting through old boxes, I came across this photo of Steve and I demonstrating in Chesterfield against the privatisation of the NHS. Taken in the late 1980s we were marching particularly in support of the striking Scarsdale Hospital cleaners. Ironically, the government of the time was not calling on us to save the NHS, its policies being to the contrary.

Then I realised that although this blog is dedicated to Steve, along with Malcolm Ball, the obituary I penned at the time for IDYW has never appeared here. Hence I’m taking this opportunity to put the record straight. I think the piece still resonates.

RIP Steve Waterhouse : A youth worker’s youth worker

Steve W

I first met Steve Waterhouse in late 1984, drawn together by both youth work and the Miners’ Strike.  He was a part-time youth worker in Shirebrook, a pit village at the heart of community resistance to Thatcherite violence. I was the newly appointed District Community Education Officer, ostensibly his boss. Steve was a young, fresh-faced, passionate anarchist with a marvellous gift for relating to people, already a significant figure in the local music scene and co-founder in 1983 of a jobless youngsters’ Open Shop. I was a more wrinkled, yet passionate socialist, not keen on management’s right to manage. We hit it off right away. Indeed we got closer on our train journey to the Department of Education and Science, where I had to convince a panel that Steve was a diamond, despite having a trivial conviction for cannabis possession. They were suitably impressed, which thankfully meant that later Steve could pursue a full-time qualification.

We became fellow Bolsover Bucket Bangers, the name our diverse Community Education team adopted in the face of criticism that we took the progressive policies of the Derbyshire County Council too seriously. Steve was not interested in pretence. He was committed to what in those days we called a radical youth work praxis, opposed to exploitation and oppression in all its forms.

Crucially, though, and this is reflected across his whole career, he never sought to convert a young person to his way of seeing the world. He wanted simply, but not so simply, to be in a questioning, always respectful conversation with young people, which was lightened at every turn by his quick-witted sense of humour. That this was so is reflected in the outpouring of grief and love from hundreds of those he touched across thirty years of work with young people. Time and time again we read messages on Facebook that say, “Steve and I hardly ever agreed with one another, but he meant so much to me”.

SteveDawn
Steve and Dawn 1987 supporting Silentnight workers

He was deeply involved in the Community and Youth Workers Union and in our Socialist Caucus through the late ’80s, into the ’90s. I remember us arguing the toss about the nature of the capitalist state in the back garden of the Exeter Community Centre. Reluctantly I confessed to him that I thought he was much closer to the truth than my dogmatic assertions allowed. He didn’t hold it against me. As I left Derbyshire under a cloud, pursued by leading figures of the Council, he was my supportive case-worker as Audit sought to find transgressions within my travel claims. His faith in my integrity saw me through.

His move to Liverpool saw him become the key youth worker at what was to become the highly regarded Interchill Project. A comment from one of the original members says a great deal.

A guy walks into the interview room at Interchill and sits down confidently although slightly nervous. His name was Steve Waterhouse. Being Interviewed by a group of teenagers wasn’t what he was expecting. But we wanted to pick the right person ourselves to manage our youth facility. Needless to say, regardless of his dodgy socks 😂 Steve was our man. And the service and inspiration he went on to provide for the young people of Speke & Garston over the years will never be forgotten. It is with great sadness and disbelief to hear of his recent passing. A true peoples person and a father figure and advisor to so many. Steve you will be sadly missed.

Steve canoe
Steve canoeing. Ta to Tracey Ramsey

With Interchill falling foul of cuts, he moved over into the Liverpool Youth Service, where his outstanding endeavours were rewarded with an award for his dedication. As you might expect Steve was embarrassed by the attention.

In the early days of the In Defence of Youth Work campaign, Steve and I were reunited in the struggle to defend a young person-centred, process-led youth work. In retrospect, though it’s clear that the assault on open youth work, on his beliefs and values, was taking its toll on this remarkable bloke. It’s easy to say, but I don’t think he realised how much he had influenced young people’s lives.

Listen to just a few of the moving comments made:

I can’t believe this news. He was an important person to me. He changed how I felt about so much. Inspirational is just a word, but he changed my life and so many people around him. He loved people and wanted the best for them. The world has lost a fantastic human and I will miss him so much. Xx

I remember first meeting him at Interchill when I was 16 and being amazed at the set up. How he inspired young people to take control of their own services and supported them while maintaining excellent relationships. He was always warm, engaging and funny and such an integral part of my early youth work experience.

A few years ago Steve stayed with me on holiday and we had a surreal discussion on the terrace at the back of our house. In the teeth of all his own practice, Steve was arguing that youth work was just a job.  Hardly able to believe my ears I responded that he didn’t really believe this, that the youth work, we believed in, was closer to something we might dub a calling.  Given our atheism, this was not a calling from a deity, but a calling from all those past and present, who have sought in concert control over their own lives. It seemed to me that Steve’s denial that night of his own commitment was an expression of the mental and physical exhaustion that can accompany always giving of yourself, expecting little back in return.

To return to Facebook with all its contradictions this is where young and old have returned their love and gratitude, however belatedly, to a very special bloke. And, I don’t think Steve would think me opportunistic in saying to politicians and management alike, ‘if you want to grasp the significance of youth work, bin your manufactured outcomes and read the reactions of people to Steve’s passing. Take a breath and have the vision to see beyond tomorrow’s soulless data’.

Let me finish by saying that Steve’s way of being with young people was rooted in his anarchism, in his rejection of imposed authority and his belief in the creativity of those written off by the system. If Steve had faith, dented though it might have been, it was in our ability to create a more just and equal world. Together we could never accept that the present state of play is the best that humanity can come up with. I can but shed a tear at realising that we will never chat critically again; that we will never link arms again in the struggle against injustice; that we will never again laugh together at our pretensions. He was a dear friend and comrade or as one message defined him, ‘a youth worker’s youth worker’. Like so many others I loved him and I regret not conveying this enough in recent years.

Our best tribute to Steve’s memory is to continue defending the tradition of improvisatory and empathetic youth work he symbolised – a way of being with young people that is ‘volatile and voluntary, creative and collective – an association and conversation without guarantees’. But a way of being, as many have testified, that brings enormous rewards; that truly has an authentic impact on young people’s lives.

I’ll sign off, Steve, in our time-honoured way.

In love and struggle,

Tony

What about Children and Young People? Are they no more than collateral damage?

On By Tony TaylorIn Children and Young People, Education, Politics, Youth Work2 Comments

“We are engaged in a war against the virus”- Boris Johnson

” In this fake war children are set to be vaccine fodder” – A concerned parent

From the very beginning, March 2020, of the utterly undemocratic imposition of COVID-inspired sweeping restrictions on social existence I feared for children and young people. Perhaps this was a knee-jerk response. After all, I have spent the last 50 years conversing with and about them – as a teacher, youth worker, lecturer and, latterly, a commentator-cum-spectator on the sidelines. Indeed in late 2008, I penned an Open Letter, arguing that youth work should side with young people and not the State; that it should not assume it knows what’s best for young people; that it should be in a critical conversation with them about how together we see the world; and that it should aspire to be ‘volatile and voluntary, creative and collective – an association and conversation without guarantees’.In short it ought, first and foremost, to be a democratic practice. On the back of this missive, a campaign, In Defence of Youth Work [IDYW], emerged.

Against this history, given these commitments, I was perplexed from the outset at what has seemed to be the absence of debate and the utter lack of opposition to the demanded closures of children’s and young people’s provision – from playgrounds through schools and youth facilities to universities. I am being diplomatic. I was pissed off and angry. It was plain that such draconian, disproportionate action would be deeply damaging. The belated acknowledgement in the summer of 2021 that the lockdown was creating serious mental health issues for the younger generation, crocodile tears, merely confirmed my angst. Then, a humble breath taken, I recognised it was easy for me to be so moved. If I was still a practising youth worker. teacher or lecturer what would I have done during the last two years?

Thanks to medicalnewstoday.com

I find it difficult to imagine that, as a youth worker I would have caved in without protest as the youth centre was boarded up or that on the streets I would insist the young people be masked or else. I find it difficult, as a former primary school teacher, to believe I could cope with imposing upon children, I knew well with all their idiosyncrasies, the general requirement to don face coverings and keep their distance from each other and me. I find it difficult to accept that as a lecturer teaching upon a course committed to vibrant argument I would have meekly capitulated to the assault on critical thought, the depiction of the campus as a theatre of contagion and the arrival of on-line learning. As far back as Spring 2019, a modicum of independent research would have shown that masking was about obedience rather than transmission and that children/young people were in little danger from COVID and little danger to anyone else.

Of course, I’m probably deluding myself, thinking I would have swum against the conformist tide. The calculated campaign of fear disseminated without demur by the mainstream media has known no moral or ethical bounds. Management and trade unions in the public sector, along with the caring professions, armed with the ideology of ‘safetyism’, which in a trice provides both explanation and justification, have all embraced the dominant narrative with at times a nauseating pomposity. If you want to follow the unfolding of this smug self-righteousness delve into the archives of the Guardian.

Hence, where would I have found support in desiring to resist – certainly not in the trade union. little chance in the staff team and, to my chagrin, not through In Defence of Youth Work? In this context, speaking up might well have meant losing my job. However, deep in my decaying bones, I want to believe that there has been guerilla activity, which by its nature is underground. In my pretentiousness, I want to believe that with others I would have sought somehow to bring these guerillas together in some supportive form of solidarity – see the history of the Socialist Caucus and Critically Chatting Collective. You might well say, ‘dream on,Tony, dream on’.

Insofar as there has been debate in the world of youth work IDYW did organise a Zoom seminar on the theme of Resistance in November 2020, which spawned the following pieces.

Resistance, rebellion, revolution! – Sue Atkins

Our fears and resistance to working collaboratively – Ruth Richardson

Youth workers’ every day marvels… when does persistence become resistance? – Janet Batsleer

In particular, Janet’s eloquent, positive portrayal of youth workers amidst the turmoil via the Citizen Enquiry in times of COVID is the counter to my perhaps ignorant negativity.

Certainly in the coming weeks, as the pandemic narrative unravels, it would be revealing to hear the thoughts of UK youth workers, teachers and lecturers about their sense of the impact upon children and young people, upon themselves of the two years lost.

As a stimulus to reflection, I’m reposting this moving and stimulating article by a Canadian teacher, which appeared on Common Sense, one of many alternative news sites that have sprung up during the pandemic. This outlet seeks to situate its politics as rejecting both the hard Left and the hard Right. Classically it seeks to find the middle ground with all the contradictions therein. To my mind, the very categories of Left, Centre and Right are in such a state of meltdown that the vital thing is to be aware of one’s own prejudices and history, to explore expansively, be open to critical dialogue and committed at every turn to the democratic process in the struggle against authoritarianism.

I’m a Public School Teacher. The Kids Aren’t Alright.

By Stacey Lance 

I am proud to be a teacher. I’ve worked in the Canadian public school system for the past 15 years, mostly at the high school level, teaching morals and ethics.

I don’t claim to be a doctor or an expert in virology. There is a lot I don’t know. But I spend my days with our youth and they tell me a lot about their lives. And I want to tell you what I’m hearing and what I’m seeing.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, when our school went fully remote, it was evident to me that the loss of human connection would be detrimental to our students’ development. It also became increasingly clear that the response to the pandemic would have immense consequences for students who were already on the path to long-term disengagement, potentially altering their lives permanently.

The data about learning loss and the mental health crisis is devastating. Overlooked has been the deep shame young people feel: Our students were taught to think of their schools as hubs for infection and themselves as vectors of disease. This has fundamentally altered their understanding of themselves.

When we finally got back into the classroom in September 2020, I was optimistic, even as we would go remote for weeks, sometimes months, whenever case numbers would rise. But things never returned to normal.

When we were physically in school, it felt like there was no longer life in the building. Maybe it was the masks that made it so no one wanted to engage in lessons, or even talk about how they spent their weekend. But it felt cold and soulless. My students weren’t allowed to gather in the halls or chat between classes. They still aren’t. Sporting events, clubs and graduation were all cancelled. These may sound like small things, but these losses were a huge deal to the students. These are rites of passages that can’t be made up.

In my classroom, the learning loss is noticeable. My students can’t concentrate and they aren’t doing the work that I assign to them. They have way less motivation compared to before the pandemic began. Some of my students chose not to come back at all, either because of fear of the virus, or because they are debilitated by social anxiety. And now they have the option to do virtual schooling from home.

One of my favorite projects that I assign each year is to my 10th grade students, who do in-depth research on any culture of their choosing. It culminates in a day of presentations. I encourage them to bring in music, props, food—whatever they need to immerse their classmates in their specific culture. A lot of my students give presentations on their own heritage. A few years back, a student of mine, a Syrian refugee, told her story about how she ended up in Canada. She brought in traditional Syrian foods, delicacies that her dad had stayed up all night cooking. It was one of the best days that I can remember. She was proud to share her story—she had struggled with homesickness—and her classmates got a lesson in empathy. Now, my students simply prepare a slideshow and email it to me individually.

My older students (grades 11 and 12) aren’t even allowed a lunch break, and are expected to come to school, go to class for five and a half hours and then go home. Children in 9th and 10th grades have to face the front of the classroom while they eat lunch during their second period class. My students used to be able to eat in the halls or the cafeteria; now that’s forbidden. Younger children are expected to follow the “mask off, voices off” rule, and are made to wear their masks outside, where they can only play with other kids in their class. Of course, outside of school, kids are going to restaurants with their families and to each other’s houses, making the rules at school feel punitive and nonsensical.

They are anxious and depressed. Previously outgoing students are now terrified at the prospect of being singled out to stand in front of the class and speak. And many of my students seem to have found comfort behind their masks. They feel exposed when their peers can see their whole face.

Around this time of year, we start planning for the prom, which is held in June. Usually, my students would already be chatting constantly about who’s asking who, what they’re planning on wearing, and how excited they are. This year, they’ve barely discussed it at all. When they do, they tell me that they don’t want to get their hopes up, since they’re assuming it will get cancelled like it has for the past couple of years.

It’s the same deal with universities. My students say, “If university is going to be just like this then what’s the point?” I have my own children, a nine-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son, who have spent almost a third of their lives in lockdown. They’ve become so used to cancellations that they don’t even feel disappointed anymore.

I think all of my students are angry to some degree, but I hear it most from the kids who are athletes. They were told that if they got the vaccine, everything would go back to normal, and they could go back to the rink or the court. Some sports were back for a while but, as of Christmas, because of the recent wave of Covid-19 cases, club and varsity sports are all cancelled once again. A lot of the athletes are missing chances to get seen by coaches and get scholarships.

I try to take time at the beginning of class to ask my kids how they’re doing. Recently, one of my 11th grade students raised his hand and said that he wasn’t doing well, that he doesn’t want to keep living like this, but that he knows that no one is coming to save them. The other kids all nodded in agreement. They feel lied to—and I can’t blame them.

What’s most worrisome to me is that they feel deep worry and shame over the prospect of breaking the rules.

Teenage girls are notoriously empathetic. I see that many of my students, but especially the female ones, feel a heavy burden of responsibility. Right before Christmas, one of my brightest 12th graders confided in me that she was terrified of taking her mask off. She told me that she didn’t want to get anyone sick or kill anybody. She was worried she would be held responsible for someone dying.

What am I supposed to say? That 23 children have died from Covid in Canada during the whole of the pandemic and she is much more likely to kill someone driving a car? That kids in Scandinavia, Sweden, and the Netherlands largely haven’t had to wear masks at school and haven’t seen outbreaks because of it? That masks are not a magic shield against the virus, and that even if she were to pass it along to a classmate, the risk of them getting seriously sick is minuscule?

I want to tell her that she can remove her mask, and socialize with her friends without being worried.

But I am expected to enforce the rules.

At the beginning of the pandemic, adults shamed kids for wanting to play at the park or hang out with their friends. We kept hearing, “They’ll be fine. They’re resilient.” It’s true that humans, by nature, are very resilient. But they also break. And my students are breaking. Some have already broken.

When we look at the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of history, I believe it will be clear that we betrayed our children. The risks of this pandemic were never to them, but they were forced to carry the burden of it. It’s enough. It’s time for a return to normal life and put an end to the bureaucratic policies that aren’t making society safer, but are sacrificing our children’s mental, emotional, and physical health.

Our children need life on the highest volume. And they need it now.

———————————————————————————————–