On Authority

Beginning my first teaching job in Birmingham this summer working with Italian teens seeking to learn English gave me new insight into the role of authority in the classroom and provoked thought in me on the subject at large in society as a whole. I wondered how to inspire it, how to maintain it and how to use it.

Forging a working relationship with teenagers in such circumstances is essentially walking a proverbial tight rope. One has to be feared enough to be listened to whilst being liked enough to be thought relevant and interesting. The experience often called to mind George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant” in which the writer finds himself working in the British colonial police force in Burma. Orwell finds it necessary to put on heirs of authority in order to maintain the respect of the locals. He must even eventually shoot a wild elephant; something which he finds personally repugnant. This he concludes, is evidence of the servitude colonialism puts on the conqueror, as they will have some of their values and aims compromised in an exchange that is usually thought to be entirely one sided.

For the most part, during teaching I was able to define my own potent blend of carrot and stick. I hardly ever raised my voice but I managed to speak clearly and forcefully. I built a good rapport whilst keeping a good distance and thought little more about authority.

Then the riots happened. I was lucky in that I lived in a fifth floor apartment on a secure university campus at the time. I still witnessed gangs of young teenagers marauding at street level dressed from nose to toe in black, their eyes visibly devoid of respect for anything. I have already spoken briefly about what I think the cause of the civil unrest in urban England was. I will reiterate however, that I believe that a breakdown in authority has led to this. A culture where teachers in secondary schools are technically not even allowed to raise their voices at the disruptive has clearly helped bring this about. Authority over the youth in Britain, has to a certain extent, fallen off the tight rope.

Now, I know what you must be thinking, a liberal, especially a near bleeding heart liberal like myself cannot be arguing for more rigorous authority. Well I am. In the context of young people I believe that their learning should and can be as autonomous as possible but that when you undermine the leadership of their role models you threaten their loyalty to society as a whole.

It was also around riot time that I finally piked up Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. Yes, I know I know. I left it a tad late, didn’t I? Orwell was the dystopian of my adolescence and I had Huxley constantly suggested to me by friends and colleagues as further food for thought. “Brave New World” had been sold to me as more prediction than warning. After publication, Huxley made it clear that ideally he would have offered his savage protagonist a third alternative apart from the reservations and the world state that would embody the best values of both. With that in mind, and being keen to examine new prospective social structures in the wake of the riots, I became engrossed. Huxley’s World state establishes it’s authority in a much more subtle fashion than in Orwell’s Oceania. The state is benign, folk are conditioned to enjoy their work and remain docile and these values are reinforced by the universal availability of sex and drugs.

The teaching method I was schooled in earlier this year would seem, in hindsight, to be giving a nod to Huxley. This CELT or Cambridge method seeks to minimise teacher input whilst maximising learner autonomy. Subject matter for classes should concern topics of interest to the learner. It also sounded very wishy washy to me on paper. I had been hoping for more traditional “chalk and talk” based methods. In practice, in Birmingham I can say that it worked well, but only when buttressed by my supervision especially when teaching lower level classes. This cannot be forgotten.

There is much we have yet to learn about the science of what motivates people and what methods maximise social efficiency. There are basics we can get right in the meantime that can hopefully prevent urban unrest.

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