Sign In
Sign In
Register for Free
PrimarySecondary

Even-Handedness, Quiet Subversion – These Are The ‘British Values’ I Recognise

We're being asked to school pupils in 'British Values', observes Kevin Harcombe, when really we ought to be focusing on the everyday actions of the fundamentally decent…

Kevin Harcombe
by Kevin Harcombe
Paddington Bear whole school resource pack
DOWNLOAD A FREE RESOURCE! Paddington Bear – Whole-school lesson plans & activity sheets
PrimaryEnglish

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel – or in this case, the politician. There seem something slightly desperate about the government’s current efforts to dissuade susceptible youngsters from joining extremist groups (principally ISIS, rather than UKIP).

I am always slightly suspicious of flag wavers. While I am quietly and undemonstratively proud to be British, I don’t think we have the monopoly on values. Equally, I don’t think lessons on parliamentary democracy will butter many parsnips with potential jihadists – or, indeed, the great mass of apathetic citizens.

Fundamentally decent

Even Churchill, that scion of Britishness, said that democracy wasn’t that great but it was the best we had. Would it diminish fundamentalist radicalisation, for example, to learn that this government – currently doing Lord knows what to grand British institutions such as the NHS and the BBC – were actually swept to power with only a piffling 25% of the eligible vote? UKIP – and I’m no apologist for that rag-tag grouping of the disaffected and occasionally demented – garnered 4 million votes but only one MP. No wonder fighting in Syria seems an appealing option to some misguided youths.

To be ‘fair ‘(another tick on the BV list), tolerance, acceptance of other ideas and faiths are also included on the DfE list. The list also suggests that pupils should be schooled in the ‘disadvantages’ as well as ‘advantages’ of democracy, so it is trying to be even-handed, I guess. Damn it, the thing is just so British!

For me, though, the best ‘British Values‘ – or the most striking, anyway – are not necessarily those enshrined in stuffy waffle about the separation of power between the executive and the judiciary, but the ones that are daily demonstrated and practised by ordinary people, British or otherwise, who are not fundamentalists, but just fundamentally decent.

Pianissimo tootling

Unlike the Americans and the French, we British can be quite diffident when it comes trumpeting our values – because ‘trumpeting’ simply isn’t the British way.

Maybe the DfE actually has a point in encouraging some pianissimo tootling about our strengths. Many of us are often more comfortable with those British Values that are distinguished by a low-key, quirky and essentially harmless debunking; quiet, anti-establishment subversion that can bring a smile to the wizened face of even the most hardened cynic.

A recent example of this is the school that put two fingers up to the government’s attempts to fine parents for taking children out of school during term-times for a holiday. The begrudgers might argue that if you can’t afford a holiday in the designated school break, then tough – get a better bloody job.

Yet the ‘British values’ response, until the fines came in at least, was to promote tolerance, even for the wicked term-time holiday absconders. Rather wonderfully, one ingenious Welsh school has opted to allocate all of its five INSET days to one week in June 2016, so that parents can book holidays – be it in Benidorm or Bognor – that will be less than half the price of what they would be during the summer break a few weeks later. As the crafty headteacher pointed out, this move also neutralised any excuse parents have had for taking their children out of school for holidays at other times of year.

Does that count as exemplifying ‘British Values’, or are the Welsh now thinking of dashing for the exit along with the Scots? I hope not. Thinking like that is priceless – and quintessentially British.

Kevin Harcombe is a Teaching Award winner and headteacher at Redlands Primary School, Fareham

You might also be interested in...