Threats, fear and control

The street 'culture of respect' chimes with that of politicians, even though it's in total conflict with school values

Madeleine Bunting
Monday May 23, 2005

Tony Blair is trying one last time. He's having a final crack at the target that has so far stubbornly eluded him: the moral renaissance of Britain. It's phrased this time as a bid for a "culture of respect" in every classroom, city centre and street. Its enforcement will require punishment - zero tolerance of unruly behaviour in schools, suggested the education secretary, Ruth Kelly, on Friday. It will require the use of such old-fashioned concepts as stigma and shame - hence the proposal of orange uniforms for community service. This moral mission may use nice words such as decency, but the underlying aggression is self-evident: it's more to do with rearmament than renaissance.

A world away from the muscular political rhetoric of Westminster, designed for Daily Mail editorials, are the kids of St Thomas More, a secondary school in Haringey, north London. More than 90% of its pupils are black, and exclusions can run as high as 200 a month in a school of 1,200. If there is to be a national offensive on school discipline, St Thomas More will be on the frontline. Its otherwise good Ofsted report earlier this year singled out bad behaviour as the school's biggest weakness. So what did the 11 pupils aged 13 to 17 who sat down with me have to say on the subject of respect? Plenty.

Some of it uncannily echoed the political debate - though with important differences. Like Blair and his ministers, they also thought respect was extremely important, and they wanted much more of it. They were also well aware of how someone could enforce respect by the use of threats. Virtually every day they had to negotiate demands for respect from their peers, and were acutely aware of the potential penalties. Zero tolerance and shaming are not just rhetoric to some of these kids: they have already experienced them at the hands of other youngsters.

Seventeen-year-old Laurent described how he'd been sitting on a bus day-dreaming. A gang of seven got on the bus and accused him of looking one of them in the eye. "They said I was disrespecting them and asked me if I had a knife. I tried to keep calm. One of them had a knife and and they searched my pockets and took the money out of my pocket. I thought I was lucky to get away with that. When you look at someone in the face, that's a big insult."

His classmate, Matthew, pointed out how complex the politics of respect can get. "If you don't look at someone, people can feel they aren't being recognised. They want to be seen, but then eye contact can be seen as a challenge."

This is a street "culture of respect" that is in total conflict with school. According to its rules, I was told, you must be "tough and feared" and those who study are "nerds". Avoiding its penalties and/or earning its credibility is often more real than any kind of respect that parents or teachers talk of. But the street culture of respect dangerously chimes with that of Westminster politicians: both are couched in terms of threat, control and fear.

Laetitia, also 17, pointed out: "When kids are nice they don't get respect so they dress and behave in a certain way to get respect. They think, 'If I can't be respected I'll be feared instead.' "

All the kids understood the logic of that. They all had plenty of experience of either themselves or their relatives not being respected. "If you talk slang, the lack of respect you're shown is disgusting," said Ishen, 14. "People on the street, in shops and so on, treat my uncle like rubbish because he talks street slang. They don't even respect someone if they have an accent. They won't serve you. They'll pretend you're not there."

Alongside these destructive cultures of respect and disrespect, the kids had a very clear idea of another kind of respect and talked with enthusiasm of their parents, individual teachers and family friends. The key characteristic was always that these adults gave them time and attention, and listened to them.

Many of them had been through a lot of trouble at school, and they reflected on what had turned them round. Always it was the quality of these personal interactions with adults who had treated them "like human beings". It was a cycle, commented Laurent: if someone treated them with respect, they learned to respect them in turn. That's not an insight one can easily build government policy on. It doesn't lend itself well to a Whitehall target.

But it was the response to my final question that exposed most clearly the difficulty these children have in charting a path to respect and being respected. I asked what figures beyond their families they respected. "The one who makes the most money," was the instant reply, and a list of rappers and footballers followed. They particularly picked out those who had made it from nowhere, against all the odds.

But another set of answers emerged more slowly: the local football coach who was working with difficult kids, or a teacher who had rejected the option to earn more money to help children. "Single parents, because they have to work so hard," said Ishen, adding ruefully, "but a lot of people don't respect them."

These kids were getting mixed messages about how society awards respect. What they could clearly see was that respect was for sale in a consumer-service culture - enough money and you got respect and its close affiliate, deference.

The much cited loss of deference is wilful blindness. The point is that it has been commercialised. It is no longer available, ex officio, to teachers, policemen and doctors, but in the right restaurant, hotel or shop, to those with the right accent and clothing, it flourishes in all its old-fashioned obsequiousness.

At the same time, these kids' parents, a few teachers and the odd football coach or pastor have struggled against all the odds to instil an understanding of respect based on a less materialistic account of the value of an ordinary life. The kind of life that is never touched by fame or wealth, but has dignity in the benefit it brings to other human beings - be it a single mother or a cleaner. How confusing and offensive can it be to a child that the people whom they most respect are those whom they see receiving the least respect from society?

New Labour has done little to ease their confusion. Its meritocratic educational policy is built on an implicit contempt of ordinariness. In a bid to raise aspirations, it elevates the exceptional as the goal, but what happens to the unexceptional majority? How then do they win respect in a materialistic, unequal society? The answer is a deafening silence and, given that, the current political preoccupation with respect will only deliver a culture of fear. These kids could give Downing Street a few insights into cultures of respect.

m.bunting@guardian.co.uk