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Will Diane Abbott M.P. betray the
Sisterhood, or betray her relatives? Schools
are short of male staff, admits minister - Rebecca
Smithers, Guardian, 8jan02,
p8p8 The govt yesterday
admitted there was a worrying shortage of male role models in the classroom,
after a Labour MP claimed that black boys were under-achieving because
primary schools were dominated by women teachers. The school
standards minister .... admitted that .... more male role models were needed
in schools. The proportion
of men entering primary teacher training courses is below the 15% target set
for the teacher training agency. [A much smaller % than women MPs now in the
Commons. Why not 50%? The unstated implication that we need more women
students because they will go part-time or withdraw, is surely matched by the
fact that the attrition rate for male teachers as a result of false
allegations will continue to rise. Is any effort being made to attract men to
teaching by setting up procedures to give them better protection against
false allegations? - Ed] Diane Abbott, MP
for Hackney North and Stoke Newington [bordering Islington], said black boys
needed boundaries and strong direction from "male mentors" at an
early age. [This directly contradicts the radfem anti-patriarchy propaganda
that if boys are left in the hands of women, they will avoid learning macho
behaviour, and be passive and sweet. - Ed] She said primary
schools had become a feminine domain and called on the education secretary,
Estelle |Morris, to recruit more teachers from the Caribbean. ....
"There's nothing wrong [with white women] but the fact is when these
black children come into school aged five, the are doing as well as white and
Asian children. By age 16 their achievement has collapsed, particularly black
boys. [she said the issue was] a silent catastrophe. .... Letter. Dear Diane Abbott, In stark
contrast to the Guardian report
[above] of only eleven days earlier, there were two glaring omissions by you
in your fifteen minute interview which I have just seen on BBC 24hour TV at
6.45am this morning. At no point did you say that there was a need for more
male teachers. You also played down the issue of lone mothers. This was in
spite of the fact that you frequently said, "The figures don't
lie", and implied that you were well informed over the figures. This
surely means that you know the figures in the book The Unequal Struggle by Afro-Caribbean Ashton Gibson and
Jocelyn Barrow. By mentioning a
macho tendency among boys, you fed the idea that boys learn macho
misbehaviour from men, even though you must know that it is absence of men
that feeds the macho culture, as implied on 8jan02 above. Although, as a
black woman, you are generally invulnerable in the PC stakes, you are close
to being called a gender-racist,
putting the interests of the sisterhood above those of black boys. Three
times you said, "the numbers don't lie". You said that black girls
were doing better than black boys in school (and we mean Afro-Caribbean).
When the issue of single mothers was raised, you played it down as a factor
in the problem. Even worse, the message that I took from your interview is
that you would regard any concern about lone motherhood (which at 65% is largest in the
Afro-Caribbean community {see Gibson & B}, linking with 68% teenage pregnancy) as
largely irrelevant. I fear that as
you come to realise that the logic of your recent very public initiative must
separate you from the [Stanko, Phillips, see Note 1] radfem man-hating
sisterhood, you are retreating from it into a cloud of obfuscation. A black
woman is open to the charge of gender-racism in betraying our Afro-Caribbean
boys. You are not part of the select band of black one-legged Jewish lesbians
who can throw out accusations of racism as frequently as you do with
impunity. First you need to get rid of a leg, at the very least. Probably, as a divorced
single mother with one child, you will betray the sisterhood if it is a boy,
but not otherwise. The Achilles heel in the radfem attack on the family is
that some of them will make the mistake of giving birth to boys, and then
fear their ever increasing penchant for suicide. Please tell me whether you
stand by the 8jan02 quote; ".... a Labour MP claimed that black boys
were under-achieving because primary schools were dominated by women
teachers." Yours sincerely,
Ivor Catt, Editor, Ill Eagle, www.ivorcatt.com/98.htm 19jan02 No reply received as of 5feb02. Third copy sent 5feb02
Note 1
"'There
was also a need to ensure that the curriculum included areas which would
allow children to find ways of shining which were not to do with being macho
- music, drama, dance.' - Angela Phillips, the keynote speaker at the 16nov98
Home Office conference entitled Boys,
young men and fathers, from which men's organisations were
excluded. Here we see the attempt to destroy every rite of passage for the
boy, including sport, in a Home Office conference supposedly about the
problem of the growing alienation of boys." - Ill Eagle 9, june00, p4 www.ivorcatt.com/00.htm . The idea
that we need to hire more male teachers to teach "music, drama,
dance" is risible. From Ill Eagle
8, may00 www.ivorcatt.com/00.htm ; The back cover of the 1995 issue of Farewell
to the Family?, by Patricia Morgan, 0171 799 3745, states; Large numbers of unattached and predatory males who
have never taken on the responsibilities of family life, or who have been
ejected from families, now meet the classic conditions for the creation of a
'warrior class'. Our
ManKind 28oct00 Conference entitled “The Age of Violent Young Males” had
Patricia Morgan as a speaker. http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/conf/generalinfo.htm
The most important part of the excellent videorecording of the 2000 conference is the discussion between our speakers Erin Pizzey, Patricia Morgan and Lynette Burrows about the censorship they and Melanie Phillips have experienced when trying to raise this issue. Melanie has complained bitterly in a Spectator article about being censored by The Guardian and The Observer. She then left to join The Sunday Times. (Now she writes in the Daily Mail.) The crunch question is
whether men teach boys to be violent, or men teach boys how to refrain from
violence. Dianne Abbott is caught in the middle, trying to exploit an issue
she does not understand, and cannot afford to understand. Today we see the
violent results of the misrepresentation followed by imposition of their
policies of those who control the media and the Cabinet (through Cheri - see
below) – Stanko, Angela Phillips etc.
It bears directly on the question of exclusive custody after
divorce. Ivor
Catt 19jan02 The crunch question is whether
men teach boys to be violent, or teach them to refrain from violence. If
Dianne is a radfem like Livingstone, and believes men are violent, then she
should be pleased that Afro-Caribbean boys lack a father. Thus, she has to
ignore the statistics, that fatherless boys are more criminal than poor boys.
However, she kept saying, "The numbers don't lie." Also, in another
TV programme in the ten days between 8jan and 19jan, she said that the
disastrous stats for Afro-Caribbean boys had been suppressed by lumping them
with Asian boys. Asians have father presence and high achievement. Thus, she
complains about manipulation of statistics. Will she face up to the message,
loud and clear, from the statistics, that the crisis is caused by removing
the father, as we are now busily doing with white boys, egged on by Cheri
Booth, using Stinko's falsified DV statistics? The Gold Standard is the Asian
boy, who very rarely loses his father. However, like the white boy, he too is
being dragged into the disastrous Afro-Caribbean fatherless culture. Thus, if
my statistics are disputed, then more unbiased research (i.e. not by Stinko)
must be done before the Asian family is destroyed, along with the white
family, at which point we will lose the key message. Ivor Catt 19jan02 In stark contrast to the
lies put out by Stinko and heavily funded by a radfem Home Office on DV (via
ESRC), see M. Fiebert’s Domestic
Violence Bibliography for a cohort of 60,000 (as opposed to Stinko’s and Cheri’s
cohort of 60 Hackney ladies). Also see Father Facts Society
Guardian. Drive against violence in the home
Alongside an array of government lawyers and prosecutors,
she helped launch guidelines from the crown prosecution service designed to
increase the number of successful prosecutions. Horrific behind closed doors
abuse was a daily reality in many British homes, she said. The guidance suggests cases could still be pursued even
when women dropped the allegations faced by domestic pressure or a not guilty
plea by their partner. The change of policy enables police to concentrate on
collecting additional evidence to support what the victim says, such as
witness statements from neighbours or medical evidence of injuries. Nearly
half domestic violence cases are dropped before they reach the court, and
almost four-fifths of these are dropped because the woman withdraws her
complaint. The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, said that domestic
violence accounted for a quarter of all violent crime and half of all
murders. The CPS handled 13,000 domestic violence cases every year, but a
review of court and police procedures was needed to see why so many cases
were dropped. David Calvert Smith, the director of public prosecutions,
said domestic violence was a more serious crime than a violent assault on a
stranger outside a pub. He said even a slap "amounts to a gross breach
of trust and confidentiality, as well as the safety of the home." The government did not propose a specific change in
sentencing law. But Mr Calvert-Smith said: "The justice system has
to see domestic violence as an aggravated form of crime and from now on that
is how the CPS will be treating that form of crime nationwide." With the solicitor general, Harriet Harman, and the new
minister for women, Barbara Roche, Lord Goldsmith also announced a new
network of domestic violence prosecutors. The government has also set up an
inter-departmental ministerial committee. Ms Booth QC has long campaigned on the issue of domestic
violence. At the launch of the guidelines she recalled she "had cut her
teeth as a young barrister in her 20s representing abused women when they
appeared in court". She said: "It had been a great shock to me to see
women in court with their self esteem in tatters, bruised and scarred. It is
sobering to realise that behind closed doors in homes everywhere in this
country, a horrific abuse is a daily reality. She said that "in the UK an incident of domestic
violence occurs every 26 seconds. In England and Wales a woman is killed by
their partner or former partner once every three days." Ken
Livingstone, mayor of London, released research showing domestic violence
accounted for over a quarter of all violent crime in the capital and resulted
in 30 murders a year. An allegation of domestic violence was made to the
Metropolitan police every 12 minutes and the cost to the public services was
at least £278m a year.
I
take issue with Diane Abbott’s assertion that it is the predominance of white
female teachers who are at the heart of the ‘failure’ in black boys in school
(Comment, last week). I am a department head in a London boys’ school which
is 80 per cent black, staffed almost entirely, apart from myself, by black
teachers, male and female. I
can assure Ms Abbott that my colleagues face just the same challenges in
terms of the boys’ size, aggression, violent behaviour and dissatisfaction
that I do. In fact, I have more success in dealing with it and I am white,
female, middle class as well as being over 50. My colleagues tell me that
they despair of the negative behaviour of the boys and the way they throw
away their educational chances for the dubious pleasure of a second-hand,
copied, watered-down, hip-hop, black Americana. There
is definitely a problem with the behaviour of black boys and their attitude
to schooling and education. I have had to put up with a level of personal and
racist abuse that shocks me – but I prefer to stay and deal with it. I try
not to take it seriously. It isn’t easy! Many
of my colleagues have just as hard a time as white teachers: worse sometimes,
especially if they are African and have an accent. Black British boys are
particularly disrespectful to black African teachers and pupils. Is Diane
Abbott aware of this phenomenon? Name and
address supplied ……………….. Diane
Abbott’s article makes some valid points but ignores the obvious but
uncomfortable fact that it is black men who are failing black boys. The
statistics that are available make grim reading. Eight per cent of Asian families are
single parent, 14 per cent of white families are single parent yet more than
two thirds of Afro-Caribbean families are single parent. For single parent
read single mother.
Before these children attend school they already inhabit an environment which
does not include a male, never mind one that aspires to be a role model. Ms
Abbott would be better off addressing this issue rather than demonising young
white female teachers. - Eamon McMahon
London N10 ………………… Diane
Abbott is right about the under achievement of pupils from African Caribbean
backgrounds in the British education system. She states that the issue has fallen
off the Government’s agenda and needs to be re-instated. The
Caribbean Volunteer Readers and Performers Project, a voluntary group
initiated by an advisory group to the Barbados High Commission, has recruited
many male volunteers from within the African Caribbean communities and placed
them in schools to support young black boys with their reading and self
image. We need more black male teachers in all schools, particularly primary
schools. – Winston Best, Director,
Caribbean Volunteer Readers and performers Project, London SE15
The Intervening Variable
Kaye Wellings et. al, Sexual
Behaviour in Britain, pub. Penguin 1994, is the Gold Standard of
statistics on the subject. Of particular interest is their figure for
homosexual practice. pp183/5, find homosexuals number only around 1% of the
population. The winter 01/02 issue no. 106 of the FYC Bulletin, p1, discusses the
follow-up articles to the Wellings book, published in the Lancet of 1dec01 (vol. 358). Here we see
interesting manipulation of facts for political ends. "The whole thrust
of the article is immensely encouraging to the govt, .... the most important
predictor of early motherhood is given as the educational level of the
teenage girl. .... [also,] 'the factors most strongly associated with risk
behaviour and adverse outcomes have considerable potential for preventive
intervention'. "Lurking in all these
columns of figures is the uncomfortable fact of family structure. .... [the
article] ignores the extent to which educational level and family structure
are linked. [i.e. bad family structure causes both teenage pregnancy and bad
educational outcome.] Anyone who thinks that standards in education can be
raised irrespective of the home backgrounds of pupils obviously hasn't been
in a school lately. Unless the govt's teenage pregnancy strategy is prepared
to take family structure on board, the 'potential for preventive
intervention' may be less than the authors of this study seem to think."
FYC (Family & Youth Concern) is at www.famyouth.org.uk Ivor Catt (a member of FYC) 27jan02 |
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Led by Toynbee, The Guardian is anti-fatherhood,
and takes care to avoid mention of the core problem, that 65% of Jamaican
sons in England have lost all contact with their fathers. They are determined
not to repeat the single mistake
they made in 1996, while Toynbee was
not looking. They will not publish Eugen again, of course. – I.C. 2sep04 Black boys betrayed by racist school system, says report Hugh Muir and Rebecca Smithers The Guardian Black schoolboys have been betrayed by the education
authorities for almost half a century and are struggling to overcome racism
from many of their own teachers, according to a damning new report out today.
Members
of an influential education commission say the failure of the schools system
and individuals within it to successfully engage with students of
African-Caribbean origin has severely hindered them and contributed to
massive underachievement. Last
year 70% of African-Caribbean boys in London left school with fewer than five
or more GCSEs at the top grades of A*-C or equivalent, while
African-Caribbean men are the least likely of any group to have a degree. During
the research, which was commissioned by the London mayor, Ken Livingstone,
and conducted over the past year, black boys complained of racism and
stereotyping from teachers. They said chances of success were also limited by
an archaic curriculum. Their
parents told researchers they felt schools did not welcome their input. Black
teachers spoke of discrimination. Only 7.4% of London's teachers are from
ethnic minorities and 2.9% are black. The
285-page report, which represents the most exhaustive study to date of the
educational underachievement of black boys, concludes that "the English
schooling system has produced dismal academic results for a high percentage
of black pupils for the best part of 50 years". Mr
Livingstone, who has called for action to ensure that the number of ethnic
minority teachers in the capital rises to least 33%, said: "The
composition of the teaching staff, governors and other professionals dealing
with the education of our children must change dramatically to fully reflect
the diversity of London's children." His
officials have organised the London Schools and the Black Child conference to
be addressed by schools minister Stephen Twigg on Saturday. In
the study, conducted under the direction of the mayor's London Development
Agency and an advisory board led by MP Diane Abbott, focus groups reached a
wide degree of agreement: "The consensus was that low teacher
expectations played a major part in the underachievement of African-Caribbean
pupils. In addition, inadequate levels of positive teacher attention, unfair
behaviour management practices, disproportionately high levels of exclusions
and an inappropriate curriculum took their toll." Pupils
were acknowledged to suffer from negative peer pressure and many are said to
be disadvantaged by inadequately funded schools with a high turnover of
teachers. The insufficient level of involvement by some black parents is also
singled out. The
commission also heard evidence of direct discrimination. "Racism
manifested itself most harshly in being over looked for answering questions,
verbal aggression from teachers and harsher reprimands than for students from
other ethnic groups for the same misdemeanour." The report says that
relationships between black pupils and white teachers was generally
characterised by "conflict and fear". One participant complained:
"When it is white boys, it is a 'group' but when it is black boys it is
a 'gang'. I think that's wrong." The
commission found that in 2002, black boys started to lag behind from primary
school year two. The gap widened every year after that. It plays down the
role of social backgrounds because working class boys from other communities
outperformed middle class African-Caribbean boys. In a
series of recommendations, the commission calls for intervention on several
levels. It urges ministers to give every parent three days a year paid leave
so they can play a part in the schooling process. It also says black teachers
should benefit from fast-tracking and "golden handshakes". The
commission calls for urgent action to reduce the number of black pupils
excluded. Controversially, it suggests that heads should not exclude pupils
for a first serious offence unless the catalyst is an incident involving a
knife or gun. It calls for clear procedures which would allow pupils to
report racism by teachers. But they also call on black parents to play a more
proactive role with their children and schools, "regardless of
resistance". Last
year the government launched a new package - Aiming High - backed with £10m
of extra funding to tackle the problem of African-Caribbean pupils'
underachievement in both primary and secondary schools. A
spokeswoman for the Department for Education and Skills said: "We
recognise that many pupils, particularly from African-Caribbean backgrounds
are not achieving their full potential. That is why we are working with
parents and community representatives to raise the achievement of minority
ethnic pupils." Steve
Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "It
is grossly unfair to blame teachers alone for a phenomenon which is more
complex than the report appears to make out." Rampton
Revisited, The Educational Experiences and Achievements of Black Boys in
London Schools , published by the LDA Education Commission. |