April 13, 2004
Thatcher, queen of the unruly
What a load of old tosh:
The legacy of Thatcherism has led to a rise in aggression and bullying in schools, a teachers' leader said yesterday.Thatcher’s children know that the foundations of a successful future are education, hard work, freedom of choice and responsibility. These ideas are totally incompatible with a culture of physical or verbal aggression and bullying in schools.Pat Lerew, president of the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers, said that, nearly 20 years after Margaret Thatcher declared that there was no such thing as society, parents who grew up in the 1980s had produced a generation of youngsters brought up to be selfish and to think the only thing that mattered was money.
Work hard. Take good subjects. Pass those exams. That was the message we got from Thatcher. Those that didn’t were simply not listening.
Schools have always had to deal with issues like bullying. Historically these were dealt with using a culture of strong discipline where kids knew that disruptive behaviour would be dealt with effectively at school and then at home.
Pat Lerew has misunderstood the causes of the problems we face today.
It’s not Thatcher’s principles that are to blame; instead it is the principles of those that have led us to a position of, as Kim du Toit might put it, the pussyfication of grown ups.
That old saying that if you give them an inch and they will take a mile is a good one. We have given ourselves over, inch by inch, to the rules of political correctness and the gradual disempowerment of teachers and the miles have been taken.
Lerew’s analysis has missed the mark. Failed the grade. 4/10, must try harder.
Here is something else that Thatcher had to say about society:
We want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the state is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the state.Oh the horror of it all.
