Abstract
There has recently been some greater interest in various alternatives to the widespread standardisation of schooling and the neoliberal values set. Studies include, for example, Philip Woods and Glenys Woods’ (2009) Alternative Education for the 21st Century and, more recently, Peter Kraftl’s (2015) Geographies of Alternative Education, which uses spatial categories to examine various genres such as forest schools, farms and Steiner and Montessori schools.
However, Martin Mills and Glenda McGregor’s book makes a unique contribution to the literature through its rich description and thoughtful evaluation of learning spaces for young people who have either emotionally resisted the normal regimentation, or who have complex lives which regular schools have failed to accommodate. These are, in effect, two rather different situations, and the settings are also divided between England and Australia, so it is fascinating to see the authors develop a coherent explanation out of these diverse case studies. The result is not only a real insight into the educational relationship and participation within these various schools, but, equally illuminating, a stronger understanding of the mainstream.
The mainstream pattern, of course, is a peculiar modulation of traditional authoritarian modes of education to fit neoliberal priorities. The authors draw on Lingard’s (2011) argument that ‘Numbers, categories, data, statistics are central to this technology’; and that the technocratic business model is likely to conflict with the ‘emotional labour’ of teaching, leading to ‘a struggle over the teacher’s soul’ (Ball, 2003) as well as diminishing students’ joy of learning: What ‘counts’ as important knowledge is currently defined in quantitative ways thereby potentially limiting the possibilities for engaging students in personally meaningful modes of learning. (McGregor, 2009)
The constant drive for greater efficiency is not only narrowing curriculum and the aims of education but also marginalising questions of social justice. Young people to whom it is less easy to ‘add value’ are positioned in deficit ways, and the complexity of their troubled lives becomes simply a nuisance. Chapter 2 provides a summary of this situation and its effect.
Chapter 3 introduces readers to the diverse case studies of alternative schools and flexible learning centres, and considers how and why their students choose to learn there. A systemic tension is revealed between the drive for efficiency and the requirement to educate all young people of statutory school age, which has necessitated the emergence of alternative provision. Many alternative sites are punitive and designed to contain those whom the mainstream has ejected, or else to provide a rapid (though often unsuccessful) re-adjustment to the mainstream school’s demands so that the students can be sent back. However, the authors’ selection requires a positive reaching out to young people in their diversity and individuality. The quotations from students, teachers and parents show a strength of determination and desire – some travel over an hour from home to school. They also illustrate the lengths teachers go to provide for basic welfare needs, and how much this is appreciated. Flexibility is an important issue, as schools adjust to complex lives. Quotations also show the importance of a fresh start, a clean slate.
Chapter 4 switches attention to fee-paying schools with a democratic ethos. It provides fine examples of participatory democracy in school governance, including some of the tensions which occur and ways in which they are dealt with. It is good to be able to move beyond the over-cited example of Neill’s Summerhill and accompany students in their consideration of difficult questions of acceptance, or rejection, of more troublesome peers. There is also the beacon of one student’s experience of Danish schools, highlighting active political engagement of a kind which is rarely seen in the United Kingdom or Australia.
Chapter 5 follows the lives and experiences of teachers who often receive lower pay than mainstream colleagues but experience greater satisfaction. Some of these are as rebellious as their students with regard to the rigidity and sterility of mainstream schools.
Chapter 6 concentrates on just three schools as the basis for a closer discussion of key concepts, in particular the degree to which these alternatives are actually oppositional. It discusses concepts such as representation and democratic governance; the distribution of educational opportunity to young people with economic needs resulting from pregnancy and homelessness, for example; and the ways in which recognition plays out as an acceptance and valuing of difference. It is worth quoting two of the students’ testimony: The stuff that they help them with here – where are they gonna sleep tonight? Have they got childcare for the kids? They help them with medical needs, they’ll take them to the doctor, that type of stuff. See I’ve never been in schools where they help them with that. She just helped me leave a domestic violence relationship . . . They offer transport for people who can’t get here.
Schools such as these provide an example of what is possible.
The final chapter integrates local examples with global issues, relating teachers’ refusal to label in deficit ways with the demands of the hegemonic neoliberal policy regime. It shows how power runs through the mainstream of school provision, designed for the efficient production of human resources. It highlights how ‘policy tends to blame young people for their own circumstances’ while denying even basic economic and relational support. The authors quote a school principal: I really hate the word ‘disengaged’. The real word is ‘disenfranchised’, because ‘disengaged’ suggests that it’s the student’s fault when the reality of it usually is that . . . the education system doesn’t provide anything that meets the needs of the disenfranchised.
The authors openly acknowledge that they are dealing with a question which is fundamentally unresolved. They are certainly not suggesting that the problems of mainstream schooling can be solved through a proliferation of alternatives: Creating more of these schools may also be counter-productive . . . The existence of such schools, for example, enables mainstream schools to abrogate their responsibilities to some of the most marginalized young people.
Yet the schools in this book provide a beacon of hope, by demonstrating that alternatives are possible.
This new book by Martin Mills and Glenda McGregor makes a substantial contribution to the literature on educational change.