'Ideally, all schools should provide space for the children to grow.' Photo: Mark Stevens / flickr CC.
Open spaces
Patricia Gosling considers the value of Quaker schools
The editor of the Friend, when reflecting on the importance of listening to people who hold different positions and views, once wrote in a ‘Thought for the Week’: ‘The challenge, surely, is to create spaces for people to grow. Not box them in… We need to protect these “open spaces” and, throughout its history, the Friend has offered one for Quakers.’
I wonder if that argument might apply to Friends’ schools? Ideally, all schools should provide space for the children to grow. However, much of the news one hears about local authority schools makes it doubtful that they are performing that function. Children are subjected to tests from an early age, and parents complain about the competitive pressures their children are under. It does not make for creative space for growth.
Last year Owen Hathway, policy officer for the National Union of Teachers (NUT) in Wales, said the pressures and stresses of the job were putting people off entering the profession.
He explained that many teachers today find the job they are doing is very different to the one they had expected to be doing, and they end up leaving the profession: ‘The vast majority of people going into teaching do so because they want to empower a generation… But they get into the role and find they’re so restricted in the job it doesn’t actually benefit pupils. They become disillusioned and the pressures of the job beat the enthusiasm out of them. Quite a few leave within the first five years because they’ve been worn down.’
If Friends’ schools provide an enclave where proper teaching can still take place, perhaps we should treasure them. If we destroy all such enclaves there is a real danger that the skills and traditions of good teaching will be lost. Yes, I wish our society was a more equitable one. The general level of wealth is greater than when I was a young woman sixty years ago. In those days, there was much hope that inequality would decrease over time. That has not happened. Instead, the disparity is increasing. I never expected to see food banks in our society!
I do not believe that reducing everything to the lowest common denominator is the answer, and because not everyone can benefit is no reason to destroy those good things that we do have. Instead, we should build upon them. There are always others we can envy if we have a mind to. Life is not fair, and we all have to come to terms with that. We must beware of envy influencing our decisions. Envy is rightly one of the seven deadly sins. It is deeply destructive.
People’s reasons for sending their children to Quaker schools are mixed – some more doubtful than others. However, relative wealth does not protect any of us from the misfortunes of life. A boarding school can provide a safe haven for a young person whose family life is under stress.
The granddaughter of a friend had reacted to the chronic marital tensions and ultimate divorce of her parents, and the loss of her home, by developing a provocative, impenetrable, prematurely sexualised carapace, or shell, that gave cause for alarm. She spent some time at a Quaker school. A few years on, she is now a relaxed and charming young woman with an impressive creative talent that has been nurtured by her school, and which is now taking her to university.
