for the

Family

for the

Youth

for the

Future

Bulletin 131: Spring 2008

In this issue:

AGM and Conference

Saturday 14 June 2008
Royal Air Force Club, 128 Piccadilly, London W1
10.30am to 5.00pm

This year we are looking forward to welcoming Irina Tyk, the headmistress of Holland House School in Edgware. In the early 1990s, Mrs Tyk set up ‘The Butterfly Project’ to teach children to read and to raise educational standards. She is the author of Culture in the Classroom, published in 1995 by the Centre for Policy Studies and The Butterfly Book, a phonic reading course for young children (see review on p.7). Mrs Tyk will be speaking on ‘Education and the culture’.

Our second speaker is Ray Lewis, a former prison governor, and founder and executive director of the Eastside Young Leaders Academy in the London Borough of Newham. Since 2002, the Academy has provided educational and emotional support for boys aged 8-18, particularly those identified as being at risk of social exclusion, and aims to nurture and develop the leadership potential of young African and Caribbean males. Mr Lewis will address us on ‘Rites of passage in a modern age’.

As usual, we shall conduct the formal business of the Trust during the morning, with reports from the Chairman, Treasurer and Director, followed by an opportunity to hear from several of our supporters who have been hard at work in support of the family within their own communities.

We are particularly looking forward to hearing from Owen and Eunice Johns about their experience of being turned down as foster carers because they were unable to condone homosexual practice.  Mr and Mrs Johns originally became foster carers in 1996 and over a period of four years had an unblemished record of caring for 18 children. After a break from fostering, they recently re-applied only to be advised by Derby City Council that applicants are now required to signify their approval of a homosexual lifestyle as a condition of being approved as foster carers. Following publicity in the national press and media, the Council’s social services department backed down and agreed that Mr and Mrs Johns may proceed with their application, though the final outcome remains uncertain.

Please let the office know if you are planning to attend at fyc@ukfamily.org.uk

There is no charge for attending the conference, and we are able to offer a substantial lunch for the subsidised price of £21.00. To reserve a lunch, please send a cheque for £21.00 made payable to ‘Family Education Trust’ to the office at: Family Education Trust, Jubilee House, 19-21 High Street, Whitton, Twickenham TW2 7LB.

Please join us if you are able for what promises to be a worthwhile and stimulating day.

 

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Government presses ahead with writing fathers out of the script

Notwithstanding strong opposition, the government is pressing ahead with its proposal to do away with the requirement to consider the need of a child for a father before granting women access to IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatment. As the highly controversial Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill now moves from the House of Lords to the House of Commons for further debate during the summer, it contains a clause aimed at substituting the current legal requirement with a vague and ill-defined obligation to consider the need of a child for ‘supportive parenting’.

Defending the government’s position, the health minister, Lord Darzi claimed that it was ‘unnecessary, inappropriate and out of step with practice in society’ to take into account the need of a child for a father.1 Above all, he said, it discriminated against single women and lesbian couples, and went against the government’s view of equality:

Parliament has passed legislation allowing the legal recognition of civil partnerships and preventing discrimination on the grounds of sex and sexual orientation. In line with this government policy, the Bill provides for civil partners and same-sex female couples to be named as the parents on birth certificates. We feel that retaining the need-for-a-father provision, or indeed any other provision that mentioned a mother and a father, would be inconsistent with the wider government policy of promoting equality.2

Anticipating questions about the meaning of ‘supportive parenting’, Lord Darzi argued that since ‘people embarking on assisted reproduction [were] fully committed to having a child and [had] given a great deal of thought to it’, the presumption could be made that they would be ‘supportive parents’.3

In response to the minister’s comments at Report Stage in the House of Lords, Baroness O’Cathain stated her conviction that removing the requirement to consider the child’s need for a father ‘prioritises the desires of people to be parents above the needs of the child’,4 and Baroness Deech argued that:

Keeping the requirement to have regard to the child’s need for mothers and fathers is an important case of non-discrimination. It is about upholding parenting and equal respect for both sexes in their roles.

Lady Deech went on to express concern that:

scientific advances in fertility may dehumanise in particular fathers, who are reduced to mere sperm donors and who, having done their job, can go away with no regard to their vital importance in children’s welfare. Women have fought a long battle to be recognised in their maternal role, for their bodily integrity and autonomy, and for their role to be valued. It is now the turn of men to fight that same battle, for they are falling behind in this need to keep humanity in our IVF law.5

The government’s misplaced notion of equality not only runs contrary to nature, but is also at odds with reputable research findings.6 It also flies in the face of public opinion. In response to a recent survey, 79 per cent agreed that it was important to consider the child’s need for a father when creating a child by IVF fertility treatment, and among 18-24 year-olds support for retaining the present legal requirement rose to 83 per cent.7

Other controversial clauses
Other controversial clauses in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill include the construction of animal-human hybrids, the creation of ‘saviour-siblings’, and increased use of embryos in stem cell research. It is also anticipated that amendments will be moved in an attempt both to tighten and to relax the present law on abortion.

As a concession to Labour MPs who find themselves unable in good conscience to support the Bill as it stands, the Prime Minister has agreed to allow a free vote on three of the most contentious measures at Committee and Report stages. In a letter to Labour MPs, Gordon Brown confirmed that a free vote would be permitted:

on whether admixed embryos are permitted within strict constraints; on the question of permitting ‘saviour siblings’ (who could, for example, donate blood) in the context of rare genetic conditions; and on changing the IVF requirements to require the need for supportive parenting to be taken into account.8

However, the Prime Minister has made it clear that he expects Labour MPs to support the Bill at both Second and Third Readings in the House of Commons.

The All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group is running a ‘Passion for Life’ campaign and has set up a website (http://www.passionforlife.org.uk/) to raise greater public awareness of the Bill and to help concerned individuals to take appropriate action.

The Bill will shortly be debated in the House of Commons. Now is the time to visit or write to your MP, to stand up in support of the value of human life and the need of the child for a father.

Notes:

1. HL Hansard 21 Jan 2008, col 58;
2. ibid., col 55;
3. ibid., col 56;
4. ibid., col 64;
5. ibid., col 59;
6. The Public Affairs Team at CARE has compiled a helpful bibliography highlighting the uniqueness and importance of fathers, and showing the distinctive contribution fathers make to the parenting process which cannot be compensated for by other means. Available at www.care.org.uk/fathers
7. ComRes, telephone poll of 1,004 adults in Great Britain, March 2008.
8. Gordon Brown letter to Labour MPs, 25 March 2008.

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Falling marriage rates – mark of a mature society or cause for concern?

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) at the end of March revealed a further decline in the number of UK marriages in 2006. The chart below illustrates that there has been a steady long-term decline over the past four decades. While marriage rates stood at 77.5 per 1,000 unmarried men and 59.5 per 1,000 unmarried women in 1970, by 2006 rates had fallen to 22.8 and 20.5 per 1,000 respectively.1

Despite the decline in marriage rates, the increased prevalence of cohabitation and the trend towards later marriages, over half the adult population remains married and the majority of people live in families headed by a married couple. In 2006 there were 17.1 million families in the UK and around seven in ten contained a married couple.2

Although divorce rates have remained relatively stable over the past 20 years and saw reductions in both 2005 and 2006, a review of divorce trends conducted by ONS suggested that if divorce rates and mortality rates remain unchanged, around 45 per cent of marriages entered into during 2005 will end in divorce.3 However, this headline figure conceals the fact that, at 33 per cent, the likelihood of first marriages ending in divorce is much lower; two-thirds of first marriages last for life.

Unstable cohabiting partnerships
There are no publicly available figures for the breakdown of cohabiting relationships, but it is evident that the ongoing increase in family breakdown, especially that involving young children, is not being driven by divorce, but by the increase in unstable cohabiting partnerships. The Millennium Cohort Study of 15,000 mothers with three year-old children found that while married couples represented 67 per cent of all couples, they accounted for only 27 per cent of family breakdown, whereas unmarried couples, representing 33 per cent of couples, accounted for 73 per cent of family breakdown.4 As the author of the study has observed elsewhere, ‘Fewer marriages translate directly to increased family breakdown and an ever rising bill for the taxpayer.’5

According to some commentators, low marriage rates and high divorce rates give no cause for alarm. Children’s author and Independent columnist Terence Blacker prefers to see the statistics as ‘a rare indication that we are growing up as a society and taking more care with our personal decisions’. He goes on to suggest that, ‘It is time to admit that some marriages – most marriages, probably – have a natural life span’ and proposes the introduction of marriage licences that are renewable every 10 years or so.6

The abiding benefits of marriage
However, amidst all the social changes over the past 30-40 years, one thing that hasn’t changed is the benefit that marriage brings to adults, children and society. For adults, marriage is associated with better health, lower rates of injury, illness and disability, less domestic violence, and longer life expectancy than more casual living arrangements.

Children thrive on the stability that comes from knowing that their parents are committed for life to each other as well as to them. Children living with their own married parents tend to have fewer emotional and behavioural problems, enjoy better health, do better academically, and have lower levels of stress, depression and anxiety. They are also less likely to smoke, drink and take drugs, and less likely to be sexually active or engage in crime.

Marriage also brings substantial benefits to society as a whole. Communities where it is the norm for children to be raised by married parents are better places to live. Marriage not only strengthens family ties, but it also strengthens communities.

Government policy and cultural change
Government policy must take a share of the blame for the retreat from marriage. The government has consistently refused to acknowledge the evidence that families founded on marriage provide a far more stable upbringing for children than any other living arrangement; it continues to discriminate against marriage in the tax and benefits system; and the ease with which couples can obtain a divorce means that many choose to walk away rather than work through their difficulties.

A reversal of current government policy would go some way towards improving the situation, but there are limits to what any government can achieve. Above all, if we are to have any hope of reversing the current downward spiral, there needs to be a major cultural change. We are increasingly becoming a hedonistic society, preoccupied with self and the pursuit of personal pleasure. And that doesn’t sit comfortably with the spirit of selfless sacrifice and commitment that lies at the heart of a lifelong marriage.

Notes

1. National Statistics, ‘Marriage rates fall to lowest on record’, 26 March 2008 (Table 2b, Marriages – numbers and rates (Historic)).
2. Office for National Statistics, Social Trends 37 (2007)
3. Wilson B, Smallwood S, ‘The proportion of marriages ending in divorce’, Population Trends 131, Spring 2008, Office for National Statistics.
4. Benson, H, ‘The conflation of marriage and cohabitation in government statistics – a denial of difference rendered untenable by an analysis of outcomes’, Bristol Community Family Trust, 2006.
5. Benson, H, ‘Marriage may be down but it’s far from out’, Bristol Community Family Trust newsletter, April 2008.
6. Blacker T, ‘Is it so terrible that marriage is in decline?’ Independent, 28 March 2008.

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Government launches review of sex education

The government has launched a review of sex and relationships education (SRE) that could pave the way to compulsory sex education in all schools. Asked whether the review would lead to sex education being put on a statutory basis, Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes said that while it was not a primary focus of the review, ‘I am sure that we will be asked to consider that and we will have to consider what people say’1 She also stressed that the review was being undertaken in conjunction with the UK Youth Parliament, whose report on SRE published in July 2007 called for sex education to be made compulsory and for the removal of the right of parents to withdraw their children from classes.2

The make-up of the group overseeing the review gives rise to further concerns that its conclusions may not pay due respect to the role and responsibilities of parents. The 25-strong steering group includes three members of the UK Youth Parliament, together with representatives from the Sex Education Forum, Brook, the Terrence Higgins Trust, and the fpa. The chair of the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group, Gill Frances, is also involved, as is Professor Roger Ingham who has long been an advocate of earlier sex education.

Concerted campaign
Over recent months a concerted campaign has been waged to make SRE a compulsory part of the National Curriculum. In January, Labour MP Chris Bryant published a report and secured a parliamentary debate to add his voice to those of many of the individuals and groups represented on the steering group.

In launching the SRE review, the Department for Children Schools and Families confidently asserted that:

The delivery of good SRE is crucial in keeping young people safe and healthy as well as helping to bring down teenage pregnancy rates.

However, written answers to parliamentary questions reveal that the Department has neither commissioned nor evaluated research on the impact of SRE on the attitudes and lifestyle choices of young people.3 Neither has it made any assessment of the effectiveness of sex education.4 It therefore remains unclear precisely what the government would regard as ‘good SRE’ and what it would consider constitutes ‘best practice’.

Listening to children
Ministers are placing a strong emphasis on listening to children and young people. The Schools Minister Jim Knight stated:

I am determined that young people be involved in developing this policy. I look forward to working with the UK Youth Parliament who have played an important part in bringing this issue to the fore.5

His ministerial colleague, Kevin Brennan, similarly remarked:

We have listened to young people and recognise that many feel that they do not currently have the knowledge they need to make safe and responsible choices about relationships and sexual health. We will involve young people fully in the review to make sure that future SRE better meets their needs.

In a letter to Schools Minister, Lord Adonis, Family Education Trust asked what opportunities there would be for parents to contribute to the review and what appointments had been made to the steering group to represent parental views and concerns. We pointed out that the government’s current guidance on SRE places a strong emphasis on consultation with parents, working in partnership with parents, and developing policies reflecting the wishes of parents. The guidance states that parents are the key people in:

  • teaching their children about sex and relationships;
  • maintaining the culture and ethos of the family;
  • helping their children cope with the emotional and physical aspects of growing up; and
  • preparing them for the challenges and responsibilities that sexual maturity brings.7

In reply, Lord Adonis stated that, in order to take account of the views of parents, the steering group would be undertaking a literature review of the evidence that exists on ‘whether parents want schools to provide SRE; what topics parents feel should be covered at each key stage; and effective ways of engaging parents’. He also mentioned that the steering group included a practitioner with ‘extensive experience of working with parents to help them talk to their children about sex and relationship issues’. However, further enquiries revealed that this was a reference to David Kesterton who heads up the fpa’s ‘Speakeasy’ programme. Given the association’s view that it is ‘paternalistic’ to hold that parents are best placed to judge what is in the best interests of their children, we derive little comfort from the Minister’s assurances that an officer of the fpa will be representing the views of parents on the steering group.

Having held an intial meeting in March, the steering group is due to meet again in May and hopes to agree its recommendations at its final meeting in July. The recommendations will then be considered by Ministers.

The DCSF has set up a dedicated mailbox to receive views and ideas relating to the review. All comments and concerns should be sent to SRE.REVIEW@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk

 

Notes

1. HC Hansard, 29 January 2008, col 43WH.
2. UK Youth Parliament, SRE: Are you getting it? July 2007.
3. HC Hansard, 19 February 2008, col 511W.
4. HC Hansard, 25 March 2008, col 109W.
5. DCSF Press Release, ‘Review of sex and relationship education delivery’, 25 February 2008.
6. HC Hansard, 27 February 2008, col 1688W.
7. DfES, Sex and Relationships Education, July 2000.

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The Sex Education Forum: Are they getting it right?

It is not without significance that the day after the government announced its review of SRE, the Sex Education Forum launched a government-funded ‘toolkit’ to help secondary schools canvas young people’s opinions on what they think they should learn at various ages. Schools Minister Jim Knight said:

Young people are at the heart of the national review of SRE delivery in schools which we announced yesterday. We are keen to help schools find out whether the SRE they are currently providing to their pupils is meeting their needs, so we have supported the Sex Education Forum to develop the SRE pupil audit toolkit. This toolkit will give schools practical ways of involving young people, to ensure they do get the information and support to make safe and healthy choices.

Under the title, Are you getting it right? the toolkit contains a series of activities designed to encourage  pupils to share  their  views about what they want to learn in SRE, how they want to learn, and what support and advice they want and need.

It is evident that the Sex Education Forum is committed to promoting the view that there are no rights and wrongs when it comes to sexual relationships. The activity on a ‘moral and values framework’ makes it clear that the purpose is ‘not to agree the rights and wrongs’ of various statements, ‘but rather to discover the range of opinions on the subject’. The intention appears to be to steer children away from a belief in moral absolutes and to encourage them to think that everything is relative.

The toolkit seems oblivious to the fact that there is a fundamental conflict between the relativistic approach favoured by the Forum and its stated aim of helping young people to make safe and healthy choices. The only truly safe and healthy choice is to follow a clear moral code that keeps sexual intimacy within the context of a faithful and lifelong marriage.

Separating sex from marriage has not only led to high rates of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and abortions, but it is also a major contributory factor in divorce and family breakdown and all the human misery and adverse social consequences that flow from it.

The toolkit is also fundamentally flawed in assuming that children have the maturity and discernment to know what they need in terms of sex and relationships education. What children say they want is not necessarily the same as what they need, and it is a serious abdication of adult responsibility to allow the curriculum to be shaped by the views of children.

Sex Education Forum, Are you getting it right? A toolkit for consulting young people on sex and relationships education, February 2008 http://www.ncb.org.uk/dotpdf/open_access_2/sre_audit_toolkit.pdf

 

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Towards an EU strategy on the rights of the child

The European Parliament has passed a resolution in support of the provision of sex education, contraception and abortion to children and young people under the age of consent. The wide-ranging resolution calls on member states ‘to facilitate access for young girls to information and education about reproductive health and reproductive health services’, and states that, ‘adolescents’ right to sexual and reproductive health and family planning education and services…must…be an integral part of the future EU strategy on the rights of the child’.

The document makes reference to ‘the importance of promoting policies on sexual and reproductive health in order to reduce and possibly prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) (including HIV/AIDS), unwanted pregnancies and illegal and unsafe abortions for young women, and to avoid lack of understanding on the part of young people of their reproductive health needs’. Member states are called on to:

provide sexual education, information and counselling in order to increase awareness and respect for a person’s sexuality, and to prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of HIV/AIDS and other STDs, and to facilitate access to and information on different contraceptives

and to:

ensure that all children and adolescents in and out of school are provided with tailored and comprehensive scientific information on sexual and reproductive health in order to make informed choices on issues related to their personal well-being, including the prevention of STDs and HIV/AIDS.

The resolution also calls on all member states to appoint ombudspeople for children’s rights at both a national and local level, and for the European Union to provide funding for the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children (ENOC), ‘so that ENOC is able to address more intensively and on an EU-wide basis issues that relate to the rights of the child’.

The danger
While the document, ‘Towards an EU strategy on the rights of the child’, is not legally binding, it is likely to be cited by children’s rights activists as they seek to advance their agenda throughout Europe. The explanatory statement attached to the document stresses that if the Constitutional Treaty were to be approved, children’s rights would be placed on a much stronger footing:

Article I-3 of the Treaty on ‘The Union’s objectives’, which contains direct references to children’s rights and, in particular, Article 24 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (entirely devoted to the ‘rights of the child’) would become binding provisions.

If that were to happen, there is little doubt that these non-specific provisions would be interpreted in the light of more prescriptive strategy documents approved by the European Parliament.

The primacy of parents
Kathy Sinnott, who represents Ireland in the European Parliament, was one of the few MEPs to express concern about the children’s rights stategy:

I would like to stress the primacy of parents – not the state – as the guardian of children and, for this reason, the importance of support for the family in their responsibilities. The state should assist the parents in protecting and promoting the child, and it should only take over from the parents when the parents are unwilling or unable to serve their children.

On the issue of children’s so-called ‘sexual and reproductive rights’, Mrs Sinnott maintained that young people:

do not benefit from the message that is so often given in the name of sexual and reproductive rights that they cannot be responsible and are, in fact, walking disasters who need adult help with damage control, and that they can get this help without any negative effects to themselves or without the knowledge of their parents.

Explaining her vote against the report, she stated that it was:

regrettably used to promote the sexual and reproductive rights agenda…which was particularly incongruous because we are dealing with children and the protection of children. Though I very strongly support all protections for children I found myself unable to support this report.

Towards an EU strategy on the rights of the child http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/file.jsp?id=5479632

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The damaging effects of social dysfunction and family breakdown

The effects of family breakdown continue to be felt at every level in society. In recent conference addresses, a High Court Judge and a school teacher have sent a clear wake-up call to the government about the importance of stable family life for law and order and for education.

The High Court Judge

Speaking from 37 years experience in the family courts, Mr Justice Coleridge told the national conference of the family law association, Resolution, that in many parts of the country, family life was in meltdown or completely unrecognisable.

The Judge suggested that the general collapse of ordinary family life, as a result of the breakdown of families, was on a scale, depth and breadth which few family lawyers could have imagined even a decade ago. Given the increase in the number of more casual cohabiting relationships, official statistics did not reveal the full extent of family breakdown. Growing numbers of parents, both married and unmarried, were providing ‘no consistent parental influence or authority over their children’s daily lives and separating as a matter of course and as part of the ordinary experience of children as they grow up’. The Judge described it as ‘a never ending carnival of human misery’ and ‘a ceaseless river of human distress’.

The importance of stable family life for a healthy society was incontrovertible:

For as long as history has recorded these things, stable family life has been co-extensive and co-terminous with a stable and balanced society. Families are the cells which make up the body of society. If the cells are reasonably healthy, the body can function reasonably well and properly. But if the cells are unhealthy and undernourished, or at worst cancerous, and growing haphazard and out of control, in the end the body succumbs. The disease may be hidden from view until very late in its progress. And this may make the situation when it is discovered that much more difficult to control and treat. But it is there even if invisible.

Family breakdown in the UK was already taking its toll on the psychological health of both the parents and children involved, but its long-term effects on the health and functioning of the nation were unknown. Judge Coleridge predicted that family breakdown would prove to be as big a threat to society as global warming, terrorism, street crime, drugs, or any economic decline.

He was in no doubt that ‘almost all of society’s ills can be traced directly to the collapse of family life’:

Examine the background of almost every child involved in the public law care system or the youth justice system and you will discover a broken family. Ditto the drug addict. Ditto the binge drinker. Ditto those children who are truanting or cannot behave at school. Or indeed any of the other ills which are so regularly trumpeted by the media as the examples of national collapse. It always comes back to a broken family or the complete lack of any stability within the family. Scratch the surface of these cases and you invariably find a miserable family, overseen by a dysfunctional and fractured parental relationship or none at all. I am not saying every broken family produces dysfunctional children but I am saying that almost every dysfunctional child is the product of a broken family.

Judge Coleridge said it was not enough to deal with the fallout and pick up the pieces; the causes of family breakdown needed to be addressed at their very root. There was a need to educate young people and their parents about the causes of relationship breakdown and ways of managing it and preventing it.

The benefits to be gained from reducing the incidence of family breakdown were huge. Stable family life would lead to lower rates of criminal and anti social behaviour, and significant improvements in mental health and schooling, resulting in massive savings for the public exchequer.

The full text of the speech given by Mr Justice Coleridge will be found at http://www.resolution.org.uk/media_centre/ (5 April 2008)

The teacher

Delegates at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference supported a motion calling on the government ‘to recognise fully the extent to which social dysfunction and family breakdown are damaging the educational attainment of children and the performance of schools and colleges’ with a resounding majority.

Speaking in support of the motion, Phil Whalley, a history teacher at Hardenhuish School in Chippenham, noted that family breakdown and chaotic home lives were having a devastating effect on children’s educational prospects and future life chances: ‘No matter how brilliant the lesson, or how much has been spent on rebuilding the school, if a child comes in angry and in emotional turmoil because of their family life they will not learn.’

With reference to international research evidence, Mr Whalley dismissed the suggestion that low educational prospects could be accounted for solely in economic terms and addressed by alleviating poverty. For one thing, family structures and poverty were often intertwined, but also, the evidence showed that, ‘regardless of economic circumstances the structure and stability of a family, will in itself impact on a child’s educational achievement’. Overall, children from broken homes had poorer educational outcomes than those raised in two parent families.

Mr Whalley expressed concern that the damaging consequences of family breakdown were far-reaching:

The great sadness is that the consequences of an unstable family background are felt long into adult life.  Those who underachieve in their education are much more likely to go on and live dysfunctional lives and be unable to support a stable family life for their own children.  In short, as a society we are in danger of creating an expanding, perpetuating and toxic circle.

The purpose of the motion was not to stigmatise single parents or to suggest that it was possible to turn back the clock and create a nation of stable social and family relationships. Nor was it the role of teachers to tell people how to conduct their family lives. However, Mr Whalley stressed that when it came to informing the public policy debate, it was vital to face up to the critical issue of family structure with openness and honesty:

We should send out a clear message to society and the government that social dysfunction and family structures and stability, or lack of them, are affecting the educational achievement of the nation’s children and if we are not careful we could reach that crossover point when no matter how much we invest in education and no matter how hard schools and teachers try, we will not be able to overcome the negative impact of broken and dysfunctional families.

 

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Have public attitudes really become so liberal?

According to a survey of 3,000 adults, while public attitudes towards family life have become more liberal, when it comes to bringing up children people demonstrate a stronger commitment to more traditional family arrangements. The British Social Attitudes 24th Report, compiled by the National Centre for Social Research, reveals that:

  • 70 per cent thought there was nothing wrong with sex before marriage, up from 48 per cent in 1984;
  • 66 per cent thought there was little difference socially between being married and living together;
  • Only 28 per cent of people thought married couples made better parents than unmarried ones;
  • Only 32 per cent thought that homosexuality was always or mostly wrong, down from 75 per cent in 1987.

However, where children were involved, there was stronger support for the two-parent family headed by a mother and father, and for full-time motherhood in the pre-school years:

  • Only 42 per cent thought one parent could bring up a child as well as two;
  • While 90 per cent supported donor insemination for couples who could not conceive naturally, fewer (61 per cent) thought such treatment should be available to single women;
  • 42 per cent disagreed with the view that a male homosexual couple was as capable of being good parents as a man and a woman;
  • 41 per cent of men considered that ‘a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works’.

A Daily Telegraph leader observed that very often opinion surveys tell us ‘not so much what people actually believe, as what they feel is acceptable to admit’. This is increasingly the case as political correctness creates a culture of fear in which free speech is stifled. However, even taking this into account, the report’s findings still give cause for concern. As the Telegraph leader continued:

[T]his decline in the general willingness to express regard for traditional marriage is alarming. It suggests that public opinion has been formed by media fashion and anti-marriage government policies: so much so that all the statistical evidence now in the public domain showing marriage to be by far the most stable and secure form of union in which to raise children is scarcely having an impact. Politicians who wish to change this perception are going to have to be braver and bolder in speaking the truth.1

Notes
1. ‘British Social Attitudes report and marriage’, Daily Telegraph, 23 January 2008.

National Centre for Social Research, British Social Attitudes: the 24th Report, January 2008 http://www.natcen.ac.uk/natcen/pages/news_and_media_docs/BSA_24_report.pdf

 

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Book Reviews

The Butterfly Book: A reading and writing course

by Irina Tyk, Civitas 2007, 194pp, £9.50, ISBN 978-1903386613

Irina Tyk, the headmistress at Holland House School, founded the Butterfly Project in 1991 after discovering just how many reading schemes attempted to teach children to read by a ‘whole-word’ method and ignored the fact that the letters of the alphabet denote sounds. Such an approach reflected the widespread opinion that the English language contained too many exceptions and spelling anomalies to be taught in a coherent and systematic fashion and that the exceptions overwhelmed the consistencies.

In the course of time, the Butterfly Project gave birth to The Butterfly Book, which provides a clear, self-contained and easy-to-use method of learning to read. It systematically introduces children the 44 sounds that make up the English language, teaches reading and writing simultaneously, and from the start there are no accompanying pictures so that children can learn to read without prompts.

The approach of The Butterfly Book has proven itself at Holland House School where children become independent readers after a year. Irina Tyk testifies to seeing many fearful and hesitant children liberated by the discovery that learning to read is not nearly as hard as it may at first appear. Civitas has recently reprinted the book in a new format to make it more widely available to parents and teachers who know that phonics works and want the means to put it into practice.

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The Great Reading Disaster: Reclaiming our educational birthright

by Mona McNee and Alice Coleman, Imprint Academic, 2007, 341pp, £17.95,
ISBN 978-1845400972

‘By the late 1980s, half the nation’s children were receiving eleven years of progressivist schooling that failed to give them even the elementary basis of education that was completed by the age of seven in earlier days. This great reading disaster was caused by the “look-say” method of teaching, which presented whole words not individual letters. This book explains the causes and provides the solution to the problem.’

So reads the back cover of this title by Mona McNee, founder of the UK Reading Reform Foundation, and Professor Alice Coleman, formerly of Kings College at the University of London.

The book begins by comparing and contrasting traditional phonics and the progressivist whole-word approach to the teaching of reading and critiques progressivism as a whole with its various tenets and gurus. The history of the decline of literacy is then charted, showing how the downgrade which set in during the disruption caused by the Second World War was never reversed because of a radical change in the approach to the teaching of reading.

The second part of the book reveals how progressivist thinking infiltrated every level of the education system, the media and publishing, and how criticism of its theories was suppressed and advocates of phonics were marginalised. This is followed in Part Three, ‘The Struggle for Reform’, with an account of the efforts made to improve literacy and of the continued efforts of progressivist thinkers to promote their own solutions.

Finally, the authors offer practical solutions, including a complete phonics workbook for parents to use to teach their own children to read, together with suggestions on how to simplify testing in schools and improve discipline. While it would benefit from better referencing, this book nevertheless provides a fascinating and comprehensive history of the teaching of literacy, and offers some wide-ranging and radical thoughts on improvements to teaching and learning in general.

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Courts urged to go easy on good parents

New guidelines issued by the Sentencing Guidelines Council instruct courts to consider the intentions of defendants convicted of assaults against children before passing sentence. Since section 58 of the Children Act 2004 came into force in January 2005, in order to deprive parents of the reasonable punishment defence, it has been possible for prosecutors to charge parents with assault occasioning actual bodily harm when all they intended was to correct their children’s behaviour in a moderate and reasonable manner. Since there is no clear distinction in law between common assault (for which the defence remains available) and assault occasioning actual bodily harm, there is a very real danger that good parents could be brought before the courts as a result of the new legislation.

The guidelines acknowledge that:

There will be circumstances where the defendant has been charged with an assault occasioning actual bodily harm and the court finds as fact that the defendant only intended to administer lawful chastisement to the child, and the injury that was inflicted was neither intended nor foreseen by the defendant.

In recognition of that fact, the guidelines go on to recommend that there should not normally be a custodial sentence in cases where parents or others in loco parentis intended to physically correct a child within the law:

Although the defendant would have intended nothing more than lawful chastisement (as currently allowed by the law), he or she would have no defence to such a charge because an assault occasioning actual bodily harm does not require the offender to intend or even foresee that his act will result in any physical harm; it is sufficient that it did. Such a finding of fact should result in a substantial reduction in sentence and should not normally result in a custodial sentence. Where not only was the injury neither intended nor foreseen, but was not even reasonably foreseeable, then a discharge might be appropriate.

Responses to the Sentencing Guidelines Council consultation obtained by Family Education Trust under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the Crown Prosecution Service, the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee, and the Criminal Bar Association were supportive of the guidelines. However, anti-smacking groups such as the NSPCC, the Children are Unbeatable alliance and the Children’s Rights Alliance for England were strongly opposed to the courts taking into account the intentions of parents when passing sentence.

In a letter to the Sentencing Guidelines Council that also represented the views of the Home Secretary, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Jack Straw, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, expressed the government’s reservations about the guidelines. The ministers were concerned that the guidance would undermine section 58 of the Children Act 2004 which limits the defence of reasonable punishment to charges of common assault. While they agreed that the defendant’s intention merely to discipline the child and not to cause any injury should be seen as a mitigating factor, they did not accept that this should result in a substantial reduction in sentence.

Sentencing Guidelines Council, Overarching Principles: Assaults on children and Cruelty to a child, February 2008, http://www.sentencing-guidelines.gov.uk

 

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Comment on new sentencing guidelines

Much as we welcome the recognition in the sentencing guidelines that there is a distinction to be drawn between the case of a parent intending to administer lawful chastisement and other cases of assault against children, it would be far better if that distinction were to be recognised at a much earlier stage.

When sentencing is under consideration, the child and the family concerned have already suffered the trauma of a court case, the child may already have been forced to testify against a parent against his or her will, and the parent has already aquired a criminal record leaving his or her reputation and career blighted. Even if the court grants a discharge, the offence is recorded on the parent’s criminal record with all the consequences that flow from that.

The law must undoubtedly act to protect vulnerable children, but it must also respect the responsibilities of parents and the role of the family in the care and nurture of children. While parents must not abuse their power and exploit the vulnerability of their children, equally they must retain the right to exercise their lawful powers to discipline their children. This can sometimes be a delicate balancing act and it is not in the public interest for the authorities to come down harshly on parents who are adjudged to have slightly exceeded the use of reasonable force in correcting their child’s misbehaviour.

If section 58 of the Children Act 2004 is to remain in place, there is a strong case for amending the charging standard to ensure that due attention is given to the difference between an intention to administer lawful chastisement and a violent assault against a child at an earlier stage – before the case comes to court. Given that ministers have not been minded to propose such an amendment to the charging standard, the guidelines issued by the Sentencing Guidelines Council are all the more necessary.

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Dismantling the altar of ‘safe sex’

‘After repeated failure, the altar of safe sex needs to be dismantled in favour of credible public health policy’, writes Dr Stephen Genuis in a British Medical Journal debate feature.

Dr Genuis, an associate clinical professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of Alberta in Canada, argues that condoms cannot provide the definitive answer to sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Quite apart from the risk of mechanical failure, and incorrect or inconsistent use, they provide insufficient protection against many common diseases which are transmitted through ‘skin to skin’ or ‘skin to sore’ contact. Promoting condoms as ‘the’ answer also ‘fails to tackle the underlying social and emotional needs of young people… For some, risky sex is one component of self-destructive behaviour that includes substance misuse and delinquency’.

Citing evidence that concerted efforts to promote the use of condoms has consistently failed to control STI rates, even in countries with ‘advanced sex education programmes’, Dr Genuis maintains that more is required than a condom-focused approach:

The relentless rise of sexually transmitted infection in the face of unprecedented education about and promotion of condoms is testament to the lack of success of this approach… In my home province of Alberta, rates of chlamydia and gonorrhoea have tripled since 1998 despite ubiquitous ‘safer sex’ education. The ongoing assertion that condoms are ‘the’ answer to this escalating pandemic reminds me of Einstein’s words, ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’.

Genuis S J, ‘Are condoms the answer to rising rates of non-HIV sexually transmitted infection? No’, BMJ, 2008, 336:185 http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/336/7637/185

 

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A letter from Valerie Riches

Denis Riches KSG, Rest in Peace

I am deeply grateful for the many kind personal letters of condolence I have received from the officers and members of Family & Youth Concern following Denis’ death on 15 December 2007.

From the inauguration of the Society in the early 70s, Denis assisted me bringing many valuable insights and experience to the work, despite his own demanding career.  His wisdom and indomitable spirit will be sorely missed, especially by Venetia and Jeremy, his children, and me, his devoted wife.

Valerie Riches DSG, Founder President

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