Miss Snuffleupagus talks about her fellow inner-city London school teachers being brainwashed, which comes out during a visit to India:
We are standing in the middle of an Indian slum. There is no running water. Houses are shacks made out of tin foil and paper. There is no electricity. A rotting smell permeates the air and the flies are a constant bother. Little 3-year-olds sing us their ABCs proudly and when we leave they wave madly, screaming ‘Bye bye! Bye bye!’ I want to stuff them in my bag and take them home with me.
One of the Indians with us asks me about poverty in England. I reply that we have poverty but that it is nothing on this scale. The young white teacher standing next to me screws up his face, pointing his finger.
‘That’s not true! We have the same kind of divide between the rich and the poor!’
I frown. ‘Well I’m not saying we don’t have a poor-rich divide. But we don’t have people living in these conditions.’
Mr Brainwashed shakes his head. ‘Do you know how much it costs to get a house in my area? At least 500 thousand pounds! But in the district next door, you can buy one for about 150!’
‘Yeah, I know. But we don’t have people who are living without running water and electricity.’
Mr Brainwashed growls. ‘But that’s not the point! He [the Indian] wants to know whether we have a poor-rich divide and the point is that we do. Things in India are just the same as they are in England!’
Can someone please tell me why some of us are obsessed with everyone and everything being the same? Even when it is blatantly obvious that poverty is not the same in these two countries, somehow this young man has persuaded himself that it is.
Swap to another conversation with my white English colleagues and some Indians. The Indians are describing their schools and the expectations of the students. These are slum schools: where children come from families who exist on less than a dollar a day. One of the issues is getting these children to remain in school. With their families so poor, often they are used to go out to work and bring home an extra 20 rupees for the day’s work. Given that the father might earn some 50 rupees per day if lucky, a child’s income can be very useful.
So various NGOs work with these families, trying to support them with government schemes, to allow the child to attend school. Unfortunately some 100 million children are forced into work, sometimes from the age of 3 or 4.
One of my colleagues pipes up.
‘Well maybe they don’t attend because the quality of the teaching isn’t very high!’
Our Indian host looks confused. ‘No, no, our teachers are trained and very experienced. And they have good salaries.’
‘No, but maybe they aren’t very good at inspiring. Maybe they aren’t very talented in the classroom!’
Our Indian host is frowning. Blame the teacher? He’s never heard of such a thing. Blame the teacher for the student’s failings? The very concept is baffling. But my colleague is like a dog with a bone.
The question is why. Why, when she has been presented with a perfectly reasonable explanation for why these children do not attend school, does she latch on to the quality of teaching? And why does our young man mentioned earlier insist that Britain has a larger-than-is-true divide between rich and poor?
Because this is precisely the nonsense that is shoved down our throats in British schools everyday.