EDUCATION FOR THE GOOD SOCIETY - Support

7. Schools fordemocracyMichael FieldingCompass’s articulation of what it means by‘Education for the Good Society’ includes aninsistence that we pay attention to personaldevelopment and the ability to exercise democraticcontrol. ‘Education is, therefore, a fundamentaldemocratic issue.’ In part this entails‘greater local accountability, a stronger voicefor professionals organised in communities ofpractice and the development of inter-dependentrelations between educators and their students’(see Chapter 1). It is this last injunction – thedevelopment of inter-dependent relationsbetween educators and their students – I wishto explore and extend here. Unless we take thismore seriously and interpret it more radically thefuture of local accountability and professionalcommunities of practice will be compromised.Indeed, unless schools themselves become morefully democratic institutions, unless democracyshapes the way we live and learn together, wewill fail to achieve our wider democratic aspirationsand continue to perpetuate the presumptionof privilege and the smiling face of unguentcondescension that so disgracefully disfigure ourcurrent political arrangements.Beyond student voice to democraticcommunityFirst off, it is important to remind ourselves ofthe nature of the interdependence we are advocatinghere and the practical difference it makesto what goes on in schools and other sites offormal education. One way in to this is to reflecton the latest phase of student voice work that hasflourished in the last 20 years or so. In its mostrecent manifestations it has included a remarkableflowering of activity, for example:• peer support – activities that suggest youngpeople benefit socially and academicallyfrom listening to each other’s voices whetherindividually (e.g. buddying, coaching,mentoring and peer teaching) or morecollectively (e.g. through prefects, studentleaders and class and schools councils)• student–teacher learning partnerships – inwhich students are given responsibility forworking alongside teachers and other adultsin a developmental capacity (e.g. throughstudent-led learning walks, students asco-researchers and lead researchers, Studentsas Learning Partners, student ambassadorsand student lead learners)• student evaluation of staff or school –activities in which students express theirviews on a range of matters, sometimes aftercollecting and interpreting data, either onindividual members of staff, school teamsor departments, the school as a learningcommunity, or the wider community towhich the students belong (e.g. students asobservers, governors, informants in teacherconsultation about effective teaching andlearning, and key informants in the processesof external inspection and accountability;students on staff appointment panels; studentfocus groups and surveys; junior leadershipteams; and student action teams identifyingkey community issues to be addressed).Listening to the voices of young people, includingvery young children, is now something that isnot merely espoused, but actively advocatedby government departments and their satelliteorganisations. There has also been very substantialgrass-roots interest in student voice from staffin schools and from young people themselves.In many respects this might seem surprising,since these kinds of developments appear tooutstrip their equivalent explorations in the moreadventurous decades of the 1960s and 1970s.However, if we reflect on the slide from publicservice to private profit, from engaged citizento querulous consumer, another reading of therise and rise of student voice begins to emerge.In what I call the ‘high performance’ neo-liberalmarket perspective young people are seen asconsumers or customers who are required toconstantly re-invent themselves in an unendingpursuit of material and instrumental gain. At acollective level, high performance schools seetheir main task as maximising their position incompetitive league tables by producing better34 | www.compassonline.org.uk