Cargo cult thinking about virtue

Tristram Hunt, inspired perhaps by ResPublica's call for a bankers' oath, wants teachers to take a public oath committing them to professional standards. This contains a speck of sense, but ignores some big questions.

The speck of sense is people have an urge to behave consistently. Once we have made a commitment we thus feel obliged to stick to it. As Robert Cialdini says:

Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. (Influence, p57)

So far, so good. There is, though, a lot that this misses. Not least is that the problem with teachers isn't so much that they behave unprofessionally in the classroom but that they don't stay in the classroom at all; two-fifths of newly-qualified teachers leave the profession within five years.

What's more, this ignores the fact that, insofar as a lack of teacherly virtue is a problem, the cause lies not (just) with inadequate individual teachers but in societal and institutional pressures which undermine professional ideals. I'm thinking here of three things:

 - Managerialism. Setting targets and encouraging teaching to the test are not always compatible with the virtue of teaching, which is to bring the best out of every student. This is also a big reason why so many teachers leave. The problem here is - of course - not confined to teaching. In all professions, there's a tension between hierarchy and professionalism; one seeks to reduce professional autonomy, the other to expand it; one is concerned with the goods of effectiveness, the other with the virtues of excellence.

 - Anti-intellectualism. A society in which young people want easy fame, in which schools are regarded as ideological state apparatuses, in which the mass media is trashy, in which intelligent people have no place in politics, and in which even supposedly valued science graduates are modestly paid is not one in which education has a high priority. Teachers are therefore running into strong headwinds.

 - Money. Spending per pupil in secondary schools is just £5671 per year - one-third that of the better independent schools. Even if we leave aside the fact that you get roughly what you pay for, what does this difference tell us about how society values the education of the 93% of pupils who are educated in the state sector?

My point here is not merely a narrow one about teaching. It's a wider one about an important and neglected question: how do we promote virtue when there are pressures which undermine it? I fear that in not addressing this question properly, and in assuming that the fault lies solely in individuals and in neglecting those countervailing pressures, Mr Hunt is merely engaging in cargo cult thinking; he's fetishizing the rituals of virtue without investigatng the causes of it. It's enough to make me suspect that the Labour party might not be serious about social change. 

Comments

[Dave Timoney]

The original Hippocratic oath was mainly concerned with caste loyalty and demarcation, rather than ethics. The "virtuous" reading is a later, nineteenth-century interpretation, meant to distinguish a growing middle-class profession from the "selfish" oath-taking of trades unionists and Chartists. I'm sure Hunt is well aware of this background.

[An Alien Visitor]

Maybe asking pupils to take an oath would be a better way forward.

[R F McCarthy (@RF_McCarthy)]

A pupil oath is indeed a far more intelligent proposal - can we could also get them all to wear red scarves and teach them how to field-strip an AK47?

[rogerh]

Surely Hunt and his ilk are the cause of the problem, they speak different messages out of the two corners of their collective mouth. On the one side 'better standards and commitment to excellence' and out of the other side 'keep down costs, never provide support'. The managerialists hear loud and clear the second message, the first message is reduced to a publicity puff. The usual kiss-up, kick-down management structure.

If I were a young person looking to take up teaching or medicine I think the idea of having some smarmy type with a clipboard and a dishonest agenda breathing down my neck would put me off.

An improvement might be more professionalism at the top, starting with a compulsory WikiCV (up-to-date, complete and truthful) for all senior public offices would make a good start.

[simonfa]

It also misses the issue that the professional values teachers support are not homogenous. So whose values will the oath support. Old fashioned didactics or faddy "progressive" types. As a large proportion of teachers have managerial responsibilities will the oath encompass both the aims of managerialism/efficiency and the 'virtues of excellence'

[Chris Purnell]

*Easy fame* The popularity of the 'Educating...' series has teachers learning how to play to the camera and become *stars*. Worse: these are then used as showpiece acts as a type of *How to do it* where *it* is 'teaching'.

[Stevenclarkesblog.wordpress.com]

I fear you are being as uncharitable to Mr Hunt as he is being to teachers.

He is as constrained by systematic forces that prevent good policy making as teachers are constrained by forces out of their control.

Politician's failings are more often systematic than individual. (Let's except the Rt. Hon. Mr. Newmark from that last sentence.)