The Rioters, the over-simplifiers and the presumptuous.

I approach the sharing of any comments regarding the causes of the recent riots with my own stab-proof jacket of trepidation tightly fastened, because although I believe I have something worthwhile to add to the debate, so does EVERYONE. And to be frank, there has been a backwash of bullshit from too many commentators this past week.

The only report of any insight was the brief street-side interview with a young looter in Manchester, because he was able to tell us why HE was doing what he was doing. And essentially, it was to piss the police off, who “arrest you for nothing” these days. (When asked for an example he was found wanting.) Most other people who have aired their theories have merely exposed their own ignorance, prejudices and propensity for over-simplification.

I won’t pretend to be much less ignorant than these people. With Socratic humility though, I am prepared to acknowledge my ignorance. But I know enough to know what I don’t know.

My other qualification for even commenting at all comes from this: I’ve taught history in secondary schools for 19 years and for the first 9 of them, I taught teenagers from Tottenham and neighbouring areas. The whole melting pot of socio-economic baggage was brought into school. And since then, I’ve worked with a predominantly white, working-class, provincial town demographic.

This experience has taught me some things worth saying.

For starters, as I constantly remind my students in history, everything that happens does so for a number of different reasons. Causation is complex and multi-dimensional and open to judgment and interpretation. Commentators on the riots have tried to over-simplify the causes, citing one or at most two real reasons, whilst refuting counter-claims regarding other possible causes. Sadly, it is part of human nature to over-simplify, because it’s easier. Spouting off opinions is like betting on horses. It’s competitive. You want to be the person who sounds RIGHT, who picks the winning cause, the one most people will agree with. So you have to sound strong-minded and choose just ONE cause and start your sentence with “I’ll tell you why they rioted, it’s because...” with that arrogance that precludes any humble admission of your actual ignorance.

I also regularly demand that my history students back up their arguments with sound evidence. But in the debate on the causes of the rioting, as with most things, what many people tend to do is hear lots of different theories and choose the ones that either sound right (suiting our own prejudices maybe) or the ones echoed the most often or the ones that sound most convincing. And then they regurgitate these opinions as if THEIR OWN. They don’t have time or inclination to access the FACTS to substantiate their pontificating. They just want to repeat the cause that they’ve painted onto their banner and are now parading with a certainty that they hold aloft the TRUTH.

Finally, I ensure my students never apply a generalisation to everyone from whichever society (or group in society) that we are studying. We talk about TYPICALITY yes; typical attitudes within a group, as agreed by historians who have thoroughly researched the subject. But my students are told NEVER to ASSUME that what we might call TYPICAL would apply to any more than MOST people.

And that’s how we organise a school, which in itself is a microcosm of society. At times for convenience and practicality we HAVE to treat the students as a whole or as groups, but it would be morally wrong and destructive not to actively treat them as individuals on a daily basis as well.

The looters and rioters were individuals acting for the most part with a group mentality.

What assumptions were made?

There are too many PRESUMPTUOUS muck-spreaders on TV and in real-life who assume that the trouble-makers are:
• On benefits
• From single-parent families
• Of a particular ethnic background
• Stupid

The fact that there’s bound to be SOME truth in SOME cases does not justify beliefs that this criteria is suitable to apply to the whole group. But people want solutions and solutions are easier if the causes are simpler and if the people who need dealing with are a homogenous group. If they were a homogenous group, then the same measures or laws are likely to work. For example, the call to remove their benefits sounds to some like a good idea, but they have to assume that everyone who looted or rioted is on benefits. Are they? How do you know? I doubt it.

The other problem with over-simplification is that it fails to acknowledge the varying degrees to which people were involved or to what extent they might usually behave in a similar manner anyway. Everyone accepted the concept of opportunism and this is how things work in schools.

I’ve learned from the thousands of 11-19 year olds that I’ve worked with over time that every person has the capacity to do good and to cause harm. What sets us apart from each other are the decisions we make every moment of the day in terms of these two choices. External factors are ALWAYS at play. We are all products of our environment. When people say that, other ignorant, over-simplifying, self-righteous and presumptuous people make an accusation that any reference to environment automatically creates an excuse. Not so. People react differently to their own environment, because of the multi-dimensional character of other external forces, most of them individualised, that have a bearing on the decisions they make. For example, one child of ethnic origin in a single parent household on benefits in Tottenham will not necessarily make the same decisions in life to another in the same situation, because there’s far more to us all than our ethnicity, familial circumstances, socio-economic position and postcode. Acknowledging that common external factors CAN create pressures which lead to a SIMILAR outcome is acceptable and indeed IMPORTANT when it comes to providing services to help people, but is ABSOLUTELY MORALLY BEREFT when it comes to judging people and their motives.

Like I say, a school is a mirror on society, because (almost) everyone in society has been to school. Schools always have a small core of students who will too often refuse to conform to the systems in place for the benefit of their own well-being and that of others. Similarly, society will always contains a core who will engage in criminal activity. Every effort should be made to continually offer these people a chance to change, a way out, because some will. And similarly, measures will always be needed to protect everyone else from the actions of this core of people.

The scale of the riots suggests that there were more involved than just the core of the usual criminally-intent members of society. In a school, a much larger group could be referred to as BORDERLINE in terms of their capacity to misbehave. Depending on external forces, they will sometimes choose to disrupt lessons, not do their homework, argue rudely with teachers, break rules, etc... and sometimes they will conform to rules and be co-operative, positive, hard-working etc, etc. So what schools have to do is to manage the external factors that they do have control over. If you have fair, agreed, beneficial procedures applied consistently in a school, then you will find the BORDERLINE students make the decisions that benefit them and others. But similarly, the very same students will muck around for the less effective teachers, will take advantage of inconsistencies or loopholes in the systems and most importantly REACT NEGATIVELY TO A SITUATION IN WHICH THEY ARE TREATED UNFAIRLY OR NOT BEING GIVEN WHAT IS EXPECTED which is good quality teaching and learning and opportunities that they see others being given. In other words, lots of people will fuck about given the opportunity, a reason to or an expectation of probable impunity.

We all have the capacity to think FUCK IT for some amount of time and to refuse to consider the consequences of our actions. The difference is again to what degree.

Apply this BORDERLINE theory to life. It is no coincidence that the riots are happening at a time when the perception amongst people is that there is more inequality than before, less entitlement to services, fewer prospects. And no, that doesn’t excuse it, and no it wasn’t a deliberate protest about these things. But it does create a situation where people are MORE LIKELY to act in this way. Whatever has happened to society over the last few decades has given these people who rioted and looted less reason NOT to think FUCK IT, less reason to distance themselves from opportunities for criminality, less external forces to make them think and act positively. It is quite logical to maintain that these issues DO EXIST and therefore quite likely that they are a factor.

My final analogy to schools: I have worked in a school in which leadership and quality of teaching and learning and the opportunities offered to students has improved over a small number of years. The actual students in that school improved their behaviour and attitude to work as a result. The same students would regress back if we started to get things wrong in what we were doing with them.

Sadly, the biggest difference is that it is far easier for a school to make changes to help a situation. Society is more complex and even more subject to external forces, particularly economic and social ones, huge monsters that no one can control. At best they can be influenced and manipulated to help create more benefit than harm. There are no easy solutions to this, because there are no easy causes.