Bashing ordinary people who are making their civic contribution

It’s been a triumphant few days for those who like bashing ordinary people who happen to be making a civic contribution. Last week we had a rash of unfortunate remarks about a group of citizens who, as jurors, asked for clarification on their role. True, it sounds as if there may have been some difficult characters among them, but the questions were presumably part of the (legitimate) way other jurors dealt with that difficulty. There’s not much justification for some of the snobbish sneering (e.g. about 'intelligence' - wait, make that 'cognitive abilities') from some commentators.

Thankfully, the Independent kept perspective and published an article by Trevor Grove, clarifying things for His Lordship the Judge Bod:

‘as someone who has been on several juries and also written a book about the jury system, I must tell Andrew Edis, QC, that jurors often do struggle to understand their basic tasks. After all, they are ordinary members of the public drawn from widely different backgrounds, most of whom have not been inside a courtroom in their lives. Some may not have been born in this country. Others may never have passed an exam. Yet amazingly enough these unpaid, untrained, randomly picked, involuntary volunteers, who are suddenly required to pass judgment on a fellow citizen in sometimes very disturbing cases, nearly always rise to the occasion. A large majority of judges, lawyers and police agree that most jury verdicts are just, or at any rate reasonable, in light of the evidence. And only in about 1 per cent of trials do juries fail to reach a verdict.’ (Emphasis added)

To continue the theme, today (on WATO and elsewhere) we have had a moralising, ideology-loaded hectoring of school governors from Michael Wilshaw, Ofsted’s chief inspector. With all the sensitivity of a drunk rhinoceros, the man plunged straight into likening ‘the worst governors’ to jurors who were ‘incapable of understanding their responsibilities in a court case'.

Well done there Mike. So if there's a problem, it’s not the system, far less a conflict about the purposes of the education system, it’s just that ordinary people are dull-witted peasants. Sadly, that’s still really the problem for the elite – how to get the plebs to do what is expected of them. And you thought it was only a question of ordinary people doing their duty, or in many cases, far beyond their duty, in the interests of fellow citizens. It might be worth pointing out to people like Wilshaw that many school governors invest their time, energy and expertise in their roles in order to give young people chances despite the heavy forces, ahem, working to deny them such chances.

For example, judging by his preoccupation with them, it still hasn’t occurred to Wilshaw that performance targets are damaging. What explains this determined denial by the governing class? Even the police are getting the message, with the Independent Police Complaints Commission making it clear yesterday in the depressing example of Southwark Sapphire Unit, that

‘The pressure to meet targets as a measure of success, rather than focussing on the outcome for the victim, resulted in the police losing sight of what policing is about – protecting the public and deterring and detecting crime.’

Well there's a surprise.

Wilshaw wants ordinary people either to adhere to the culture of target obsession disorder, or get out of the way. But people get involved in civic participation often because they can see a service needs re-directing or rescuing from misguided policy meddling. It's not going to help if there is also a growing culture of clobbering the volunteers.

Comments

[tony breslin]

Kevin Harris at his brilliant, insightful best - if we want a society of active, engaged citizens we need to build the capacity of governors, parents, students, jurors to play the role we expect and require of them and to praise them for what they do - with regard to young people, asking Ofsted's Sir Michael Wilshaw about where he stands on Citizenship Education, something on which Michael Gove has recently changed his mind in the right direction, might be an interesting starting point.

For governors, trustees and jurors (and for that matter, local councillors), we need to have a serious debate about how we 'do' lay democracy: induction, training, education during the school years, and in some cases a shift towards professionalisation - full-time local councillors? paid school governors?