47. A LIFE WITHOUT SANCTIONS - Thinking About Consequences And Their Lack In An Age Without Punishment

It has been quite the week for thinking about sanctions, punishments and consequences. The week began, in Britain, with Dominic Cummings’ clear breach of the Covid-19 lockdown guidelines with his cross-country drive with infected family members and his own suspected illness (anyone living with a suspected Covid sufferer here in the UK is meant to self-isolate for 14 days), not to mention his further breach of lockdown to “test his eyes” with a drive to Barnard Castle before the long drive back to London. As thousands isolating around the country had loved ones die, alone, from the disease and found themselves unable to find comfort in their usual support networks to grieve; as millions have been separated from family and friends for months, struggled with their own childcare arrangements, missed out on weddings, the birth of children, and all the other many sacrifices people have made to follow strictly the lockdown rules which Cummings himself authored, it came as a slap in the face to so many to discover that he had not only breached the rules they had doggedly followed, but that, in attempting to justify his actions, he was essentially telling them that they probably should have broken the rules too and that they had been fools to suffer alone for the sake of a public health policy the writers of the policy weren’t even taking seriously. A further face-slap came as Cummings, despite cross-party condemnation, refused to resign, was protected by the Prime Minister, and failed to apologise for what he did. No punishment, no sanction, and seemingly no consequences. For Cummings at least. The consequence for the rest of us will likely be a significant second wave of the coronavirus as his actions have weakened public support for the lockdown (something Cummings and Johnson actually want in order to restart the economy, so potentially their actual strategy here) and eroded public will to stay home and keep the virus from spreading. Today, as this post is published, some primary schools will be re-opening their doors against union and scientific advice, many businesses are re-opening, people are returning to work, and, without any medical consensus that we should do so, or any clear reason why it is safe to do so, the lockdown is easing. The predicted second wave which will likely come is one consequence of Cummings’ actions, but who knows how this breach of public trust will further erode the seriousness with which we make take a second lockdown later in the year once the number of infections rise again? The consequences of Cummings actions for us, if not for him, may well be fatal.

Across the ocean the week ended with a fatality that is not in dispute as it was recorded for us all to see. It seems hard to believe at a time with over 100,000 deaths in the country from Covid-19 a single death of a single American would be so significant to the entire world, but the brutal murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin, caught on camera in all its horror, was a stark reminder that while the coronavirus may have changed much about day-to-day life in our world, we are still living in the same broken system which existed before the quarantine. Another black man murdered by a white police officer. The world, or those who could stomach it (I couldn’t, I have merely read the multiple reports), watched as Derek Chauvin crushed the life from George Floyd, callously ignoring his pleas to live; another strangled black voice joining the shameful chorus of all-too familiar last words: I can’t breathe.

At first there was no sanction. Another failure of the police to bring justice against themselves, another reminder that, in America, black lives do not seem to matter as much as non-black lives. And people decided they were fed up with business as usual. Riots spread across the country. Eventually Chauvin was arrested and charged with murder, albeit third degree manslaughter (as if his brutal actions could be considered somehow accidental), but as I write this the riots continue. Why? Because that sanction, that punishment, isn’t enough. Not just because Derek Chauvin has not been taken directly into life imprisonment and branded an unequivocal murderer instead of this quibbling about degrees of culpability, but because Derek Chauvin is just a symptom of a wider problem of systemic institutional racism in America (and, let’s be honest, elsewhere too - it’s just the US cops have guns and a more prominent legacy of violence. In Birmingham, England, where I live, this week also marks the start of an IOPC investigation into the West Midlands police use of excessive force on black men across the city. We had our own riots in the UK in 2011 after the killing of Mark Duggan by the London Metropolitan Police.) The rioters know that whether Chauvin is exonerated or locked away, his arrest or lack of arrest isn’t going to solve a problem which runs so much deeper than this single incident. The consequence here is the death of George Floyd. It is the consequence of centuries of racism in America and the continued sweeping under the rug of a systemic problem which has killed too many innocent black people. Remember, when the #blacklivesmatter movement came to prominence in 2013 after the death of Trayvon Martin in Florida that was already a consequence of too many black lives lost to this institutional racism. It is now seven years later and nothing has changed.

Perhaps this is why people furious about Dominic Cummings are as angry as they are? It is not about one self-serving politician living by one set of rules while we are forced to live by another, but about the continued, systemic, self-serving hypocrisy and unjustness of successive UK governments? Cummings, and his escape from justice, becomes, like George Floyd becoming representative of all that is unjust for black people in America, representative of every lie and deception we have been told in a lifetime of being lied to and deceived. It is a symbol of every hypocrisy. A symbol of our lack of trust in leaders. A symbol of these people continuing to live without consequences to their actions. Whether it is Tony Blair lying the country into illegal and unjustified wars; Gordon Brown deregulating the economy as Blair’s Chancellor only to act surprised as the markets crashed because of such deregulation in 2008; Nick Clegg’s broken promise on student tuition fees; David Cameron, George Osborne and Theresa May’s deadly policies of continued austerity politics masquerading as economic necessity instead of the ideological choice that they were; or Boris Johnson’s many demonstrable falsehoods on Brexit and the EU both during the referendum campaign and in his bid to become Prime Minister…our leaders continue to lie with impunity. Cummings was just the latest straw to break even further the already broken camel’s back. Even if he had been punished, arrested by Durham police or fired from government, it might’ve felt good for a moment (as it did to hear Derek Chauvin had been taken into custody), but after the initial visceral sense of justice wears off we are left with the realisation that removing one piece off the chessboard is not enough to end the game of chess. Until the bigger underlying problem is resolved, there will be other Derek Chauvins and other Dominic Cummings. (Apparently all human synecdoches of wider systemic abuses have the initials D.C?)

Sanctions, punishments, threats…these may bring some short term sense of comfort that justice is being done, but true justice comes when we no longer need such threats to ensure good behaviour. When the logic of the genuine consequences of an action is enough to make people make better choices. When police aren’t racists and politicians aren’t liars because the obvious wrongness of being a racist or a liar, and its logical consequence in the death and suffering of innocent people, is sufficient to not want to be racist or lie.

One of the things I have loved about online teaching since schools closed in March has been the fact that I, like every other online teacher, have been robbed of our punitive ability to punish our students for bad behaviour. Bizarrely, as someone probably considered one of the strictest teachers at my school, punishing students for bad behaviour has always been my least favourite aspect of my job. In fact it was the area I most worried about in my training year - how could I, an anarchist anti-authoritarian, be an “authority figure” in the classroom? My initial idea that I would just not bother and see what happens was undermined not only by facing classes of children trained with a lifetime of sanction and reward to respond only to threat, but also by the fact that behaviour management - so-defined by whatever school policy it is you are working under - is one of the Teacher Standards a trainee teacher is bound to meet or else they will not be qualified to work in a British school. Thankfully, however, I had two things going for me to square the circle of my cognitive dissonance surrounding telling my students off. Number one, I had read some Richard Rorty while at university, and remembered his strange advocacy of being a “liberal ironist” as a postmodernist who did not believe in objective truths yet still wanted to endorse a particular political position as the “right” one. Rorty says, fully aware there is no “right” view, we can still act as if there is anyway and fully commit to our liberalism despite knowing it to be essentially baseless. Secondly, as a lifelong fan of professional wrestling, I knew what it was to play a “heel” character and be the bad guy. The best heels in wrestling were those who infuriated crowds by their clear hypocrisy and self-righteousness, claiming to have acted honourably when clearly they are a dastardly villain. I was reminded of a childhood form tutor of mine who was once deeply feared by me until I realised his teaching persona was entirely an act, largely done for self-amusement (he eventually quit the profession and became a vicar).

So combining these influences I began to play an “authoritarian ironist” heel character in the classroom, rigidly sticking to all the ridiculous rules of whatever school I worked in to the letter in the hope that not only would classes used to such strict disciplinarianism work for me, but that the ludicrous hypocrisy of the rules that I enforced would be exposed and their absurdity made clear and undermined through their enforcement. As students sat in my detentions asking “why” I would explain the rule-based rationale for their being there only to agree with the student’s protestations that the rules were ridiculous. When they asked me why, if I agreed, I would still enforce those rules, I would tell them it was “because I’m a teacher and it’s my job to enforce these rules so that you grow up knowing how important it is to follow rules, no matter how stupid”. They would tell me that was unfair and I would, with a smile, agree, and add that it was not only unfair, it was wrong. Teaching became a form of performance art wherein doing my job well became its deepest subversion. Especially combined with occasional glimpses behind the persona when the curriculum allowed me to discuss my real feelings about authority and rules imposed from on high. Teaching religion, as I do, the discussion is fairly frequent, most major religions being built on some notion of a set of rules which must be followed or else a deity, deities, or force of karma, will sanction you with some form of torment for your transgression.

But despite squaring my classroom authoritarianism with my anarchist conscience in this way, it does bother me that to do my job in the contemporary British classroom I am required to enforce not only so many arbitrary rules, but an entire way of thinking about rule-following and obedience. In most cases, underwriting school rules, are the sanctions that come as a consequence of not following the rules: detentions, exclusions, suspensions. Emails and phone-calls home. Threats of deeper failings - a test, an exam, a university application, a job… But what the online classroom has done is completely remove those threats. If I ask a student to do something and they don’t do it, I can’t make them stay behind at break time or keep them back after school. I can’t meaningfully add a black mark against their name which will be held against them at some future date (after all, in these strange times who knows how many valid reasons there may be for a piece of work not being done). I can’t point to a future exam they will fail (currently all exams are suspended). I can’t even point to the future career they won’t have if they fail my class (currently many careers have been suspended too!) Calls can be made home, and emails sent, but communication with home has always exposed the cracks in a teacher’s authority. If the parent sides with the teacher, they may be able to change their child’s behaviour (many can’t, and kind of think schools are magic buildings where their defiant teenager suddenly becomes compliant), but often the parent is fully aware of whatever their child has done and simply doesn’t care. “Your son missed a deadline”, “your daughter hasn’t logged on to her Teams account in three weeks”. “Yes, I know. They’ve been in their rooms watching Netflix. What about it?” End of conversation.

The point is, working from home has given our students permission - whether we want them to or not - to say no without any obvious sanction or punishment.

I say obvious sanction or punishment because there are still consequences. While teachers may bluster with threats which ultimately prove empty (I can think of certain Y11 students this year warned year after year that their poor behaviour and lack of revision would come back to bite them in their exams only for there to end up being no exams and no fabled comeuppance) it does still remain true that in many cases not doing certain aspects of schoolwork, just because of the set up of society that we live in, will put students at a disadvantage. Maybe it will be the piece of work which ended up being the highest tariff question in an exam two years down the line (or, in this year’s case, the piece of work which, though unbeknownst to the student, or teacher, at the time, ended up contributing the most to the centre-assessed grades derived in lieu of exams.) Perhaps it will simply be some crucial piece of knowledge that will impede them in life by not knowing it (I think myself of the French lessons I messed around in as a child, and my deep regret every time I travel that I can’t speak a second language.) It may even be about something beyond academia: the teacher whose work you didn’t bother doing ending up one day being someone who could have really helped you through some personal or professional crisis but, because of developing a combative relationship with them in your younger years, rather than one of mutual respect, you miss out on that opportunity or goodwill. I’m sure there are several students who have passed my classroom door over the years and left it hating me for whatever reason and, as a result, I never got to know them that well. In the meantime there are others who I have literally been a lifeline to in dealing with home issues, personal issues, academic issues, and even issues in later life as adults. Consequences can be strange and unpredictable beasts, but up until now teachers haven’t really had to meaningfully discuss real consequences with their students because our jobs have revolved around enforcing artificial ones. We discuss the detention tomorrow or the bad report we’ll send out at the end of term and tough parents’ evening looming ahead. Online, without these synthetic tools, we are forced into being honest and open: I have set you some work which I want you to do. I know you could get away without doing it and if you don’t do it it is highly likely nothing will happen to you. But here’s why I want you to do it and why I think it will be beneficial… and we have to hope our rationale is sufficient to motivate our students.

We have also had to be far more flexible. Gone are fixed and frequent deadlines, replaced instead with flexibility - I’ll set it for you on Monday and give you until Friday to do it. If that will be a problem let me know in advance and we can work out an extension. We have had to listen more. No longer able to dismiss explanations for missing work as “excuses”, students have come to us on a level playing field: my uncle has been in hospital with Covid-19…my mother is a nurse and hasn’t been around to make me work and, honestly, I’ve fallen behind…I’ve been finding it hard to get motivated to do any school stuff. Their stories suddenly matching our own experiences in this strange new world we have found ourselves quarantined in and hitting home: maybe there are good reasons to prioritise things other than schoolwork?

And what has warmed my heart the most is seeing how, despite the self-evident lack of meaningful threat or sanction for transgression, so many students around the country are still doing the work. Doing it not because they are scared not to, but because they have rationalised with themselves and come to the conclusion that the work is worth doing (and likewise, many not doing the work are likely doing it because they have rightly concluded the work set to be inessential. Sometimes a school curriculum can be like one of those old pre-streaming US TV shows where they had 22 episodes to fill each season whether they had a story to tell or not. Teachers stretching a topic across six weeks because they have six weeks in which to teach it, not because it actually needs six weeks to be taught. Students who could see that in the old world, are now able to act on their instincts in this new one.)

As teachers we have had to actually justify the requests we make on our students’ time and resources. If there is only one laptop in the house and you are sharing it with your dad and your sister, who needs it the most? Is my assignment actually worth your time? If so I have to show you why without merely telling you off for not doing it. And what’s more I have to reassess my own beliefs about the work’s importance and be part of a dialogue instead of a monologue. The old canard of doing it because I said so no longer flies.

Personally I am excited about taking this approach back into the real world classroom whenever I return. I have grown weary of playing the heel and would like to turn what in wrestling parlance is called “babyface” - the good guy. Playing the ironist has worn out its welcome. I want to experiment with a classroom of meaningful consequences. No detentions. No sanctions and threats. Just a genuine dialogue of my rationale for what is needed to be done, and why, and the eventual likely consequence of a student’s legitimate success or failure within the subject. It is highly unlikely any school will allow such an approach without a fight (why wasn’t this student reprimanded? Why haven’t their parents been called in? You’re not following our school policy!) but it will be an interesting experiment to attempt.

That said, and the problem with such unilateral experiments, is that so much can be undermined by the way the wider world treats people. If all we know is threat and reward then we are far more likely to respond to such approaches. It then becomes a legitimate moral question to ask (and how I have justified my previous approach to behaviour to myself for so long): if the majority of students will not know how to act responsibly without the threat of sanction and, as a result, may end up failing or in trouble elsewhere down the line, am I not obliged to do what is ‘best’ for the majority and do what works, even if that means threat and sanction?

The good thing about so many months of online learning is that it has changed the game for everyone and given every student a taste of this different approach to behaviour management. Hopefully enough that students, used to their recent independence and this different way of doing things, will be receptive to the new approach? May even flourish with it?

Ultimately, what it comes down to is this: you can fire Dominic Cummings, jail Derek Chauvin, and stick the misbehaving students in a detention. And, short-term, it may even make us feel better. But what we really need to aim for is a world where Cummings, Chauvin and misbehaving students have no reason to, and no benefit in, existing at all. The sooner we realise that it is consequences, understanding how and why things are done, and the reasons why someone thinks something ought or ought not be done that must motivate us to make real changes - whether this be in the classroom or in the country - and not just sanctions, punishments and their threats, the sooner we live in a world where people are good because they want to do good, not just because they are scared to do bad. Until then we must continue to experiment. Or, if the experiments fail, riot.

Author: D. McKee