Virginia Crawford’s Duty To Offend
THE PRINCIPAL OF Hamilton’s Fraser High School, Virginia Crawford, has been roundly criticised for warning her students about the strong correlation between truancy and failure in the world beyond high school. The push-back against Crawford’s address culminated in a walkout by around 100 of Fraser’s senior students on Monday 24 September 2018. But, what if she was telling the truth?
Very few people have been willing to test Crawford’s claims empirically. To ascertain whether the behaviours she warned her students against: truancy, substance abuse, petty crime; are, indeed, common factors in the much more serious social indices of functional illiteracy, long-term unemployment, prolonged periods on social welfare, repeated incarceration, mental health problems, sexual assault, domestic violence and, most disturbingly in relation to young New Zealanders – suicide.
This is strange, since a great deal of work has already been undertaken in this area by those convinced of the efficacy of the National Party’s “social investment” initiative. The whole point of the social investment project was to identify the “warning signs” of individual and/or family dysfunction so that the authorities could intervene and, hopefully, forestall, that individual’s and/or family’s decline into irremediable social pathologies. Those warning signs were precisely the behaviours alluded to in Crawford’s address.
“Every student who walks out of the gate to truant is already a statistic of the worst kind, highly likely to go to prison, highly likely to commit domestic violence or be a victim of domestic violence, be illiterate, be a rape victim, be a suicide victim, be unemployed for the majority of their life, have a major health problem or problems, die at an early age, have an addiction – drugs, gambling, alcohol or smoking.
“The more you truant, the more likely you are to end up as one or most of those statistics. I don’t want you to be one of those statistics. Economic research confirms everything I am telling you. It’s been proven. Some young people at Fraser today are still proving that message to be true.”
One of the Principal’s sternest critics is Herald columnist, Deborah Hill Cone, whose argument is best summed-up in the old aphorism: ‘Give a dog a bad name and hang him.’ “Being told by an authority figure you are certain to become a grim statistic is more of a danger to young people than skipping class”, Hill Cone warned Crawford. “In some very pervasive, unconscious and dogged ways we become what we are expected to be.”
There is something quite touching about Hill Cone’s faith in the individual’s ability to rise above the awful impetus of social causation and statistical correlation. “And try to remember this,” she advises the students of Fraser High in her Monday column, “your principal, Virginia Crawford, has absolutely no idea what your life is going to be like. None of us do. And she has no right to tell your story.”
Many would argue, however, that Crawford not only has the right, she has the duty, to speak plainly and forthrightly about the awful statistics to which so many of the students attending Fraser High School are likely to contribute in the months and years ahead of them. Telling them, as Hill Cone would have her do, that: “It’s your soul, and your story to construct” is all very bracing and Kiplingesque, but it is highly debateable as to whether it will do as much good as telling them that buckling down and working hard at school is just about the only way out of the dead-end working-class suburbs which for so many of them constitute the boundaries of the known world.
A number of the parents of Fraser High School students have taken offence at Crawford’s comments and are threatening to withdraw their offspring from the school until such time as its errant principal is replaced. Like so many of us, they do not like to think too much about the uncanny ability of insurance underwriters to correlate specific behaviours with specific outcomes in the setting of their clients’ premiums. Rather than condemn Crawford for her predictions, might it not be more helpful for their children’s futures to ask themselves whether the behaviour they have been modelling in their own lives bears out or refutes the Principal’s fears?
Nothing did more to shatter the rigid boundaries separating New Zealand’s social classes than the First Labour Government’s ringing affirmation that every New Zealander “whatever his [or her] level of academic ability, whether he [or she] be rich or poor, whether he [or she] live in town or country, has a right, as a citizen, to a free education of the kind for which he [or she] is best fitted, and to the fullest extent of his [or her] powers.”
It is impossible to listen to Crawford’s speech without hearing in every word and phrase her passionate understanding of just how important education is to freeing people from the social conditions – and expectations – that imprison them. She knows that there is a vast, beautiful, exciting and intensely rewarding world beyond the borders of “Nawton or Dinsdale or Western Heights” – just as she knows that the students of Fraser High School who play truant on a regular and prolonged basis are, statistically-speaking, the ones most unlikely to ever get to see it.
I’ve never been motivated by a negative rant … don’t know many teens that are either. I wonder if there are some more sophisticated and effective motivational tools that Ms Crawford needs to model and develop e.g respect, empathy, listening? Educators need to rise above low-level yelling at kids, negative tirades that express their frustrations. I believe (based on research and implementation of established interventions e.g. Dr Ross Greene’s CPS model) that educators and school leaders need to develop some real skill in empathy, understanding of development, motivation. Of course we want to yell in frustration however that pushes students, teens away from us when it is trusting relationships that we know make the difference and brings teens towards us and our positive influence.
She seems like the head keeper in Trumps petting zoo.
The upbringing of a child will determine how they will react/act to things. A parent is responsible for their own children.
A child is often, almost always incapable of making informed judgements that will determine their future. They simple do not have the experience (normally) to make sound long term planning. Hell, a large % of adults don’t show much in the way of long term planning.
Any sane person would differ from Trumps petting zoo – if the kids don’t want to go to school at all, then being in school probably won’t be doing them much good anyway. From an early age, their path paths where chosen – they will join the ranks of the working class in factories and manual jobs. So be it.
The current problem is due to the increasing attitudes of denying responsibility.
Isn’t this a cause vs correlation issue. I would have thought truancy was just one more symptom of societal problems that some children are afflicted by.
Isn’t also a case of the Principal blaming the kids for her failure – or more accurately the system’s failure.
The kids who truant already feel hopeless so loading that speech on to them is guaranteed to send their motivation to subterranean levels
It’s well proven that the home environment is a huge factor in the success of a child’s education – simply making them stay in school won’t change the fact that they get no encouragement at home, or help with school work, or maybe even a kind word. Nor will it change the fact that every test and exam result they get tells them over and over again they are a failure.
Even if she was 100% right it shows remarkably poor judgement to make a speech like that. The fact that she is confusing correlation with causation makes it worse. The fact that the school system bears significant responsibility for consigning these kids to the scrap heap is so far beyond her horizon there is almost no point bringing it up.
Given the size of Fraser High School I imagine there are many teenagers there who are dealing with suicidal thoughts, I can only hope that none of them are tipped over the edge by this additional blow to their sense of hope – and good on the kids who protested, there are real leaders in there and hopefully their actions have bought any potential suicides back from the brink.
Having listened to her speech (recorded on a Fraser student’s cellphone) I would refute the suggestion that Crawford confused correlation with causation.
She was at pains to point out that the statistics revealed a strong relationship (correlation) between truancy and other negative social indices. Her whole address was about evading those negative experiences by availing themselves of the educational opportunities on offer.
Blaming society, even blaming the students’ parents, won’t help the young people seated in Fraser High School’s assembly hall. In the short term, it is their own responses which count.
Interestingly, a surprising number of Fraser students interviewed by RNZ strongly endorsed their Principal’s remarks.
Idk. I believe teachers/principle need to set expectations with parents and adults at the start of the year. He or she needs to lay out what they want from the class, go over a few things and expectations around parent involvement and support and be aware of emotions. Emotion is the enemy when attempting to talk to teens. What they say and do is not necessarily a reflection on the school. You may not like the way teens behave or how they’re thinking – but keeping emotions out of it, even if their conduct impacts on you. Their behaviour and language is probably a result of another adult in their lives.
Appreciated, Chris. A sound, erudite analysis of an extremely worrying trend among the young.
“Trend” being the operative word.
Education; Indeed it once was a way out of the trap of poverty. In the days when Chris and I were young and it was free. Some were even paid a wage to learn.
Now it is the trap. Teacher, nurse, midwife for just three examples… low pay, impossible work demands and huge debt that financially cripples the recipients, for life in some cases.
Then all the courses that are advertised and encouraged by marketing directors in public institutions that appear to lead nowhere except into debt because there is no decent job at end of it all.
Maybe these students are onto something that society would rather pretend wasn’t happening. Maybe they think they’re being lied to.
‘Education … once was a way out of the trap of poverty … Now it is the trap’
Good point well made!
Good on Virginia Crawford for putting the student straight and telling them the truth.
The government should stick by her, what she said might be offensive to some but maybe her words were not just to the truant kids but to the parents of truant kids… do they want that life for their kids???
Once kids get turned off school, it is very difficult to get them back… speaking hard words while they are 13-17 might be better than them leaving school with no qualifications and all that lost potential..
also there needs to be ways to help the truant kids stop being truant… the hard part with actions to support kids not going off the rails, before the railway tracks disappear.
Indeed scary that a high school academic leader can’t understand the difference between correlation and causation, suggest she uses her next professional development to take Statistics 101 at any university. Its a bit like describing her as the Principle.
Norman Smith: “Indeed scary that a high school academic leader can’t understand the difference between correlation and causation….”
Did you listen to her speech? I did. Sounds to me as if she understands the difference perfectly well.
What many of the children I heard were complaining about was the implication that if you truant you are more likely to get raped. Yet again blaming the victim for “getting raped” as if it is a choice! It was a very bad path for her to go down and I am not surprised at the push back – how dare she!!!!
I suspect being POOR is the factor most likely to result in a person ending up going.. “to prison, highly likely to commit domestic violence or be a victim of domestic violence, be illiterate, be a rape victim, be a suicide victim, be unemployed for the majority of their life, have a major health problem or problems, die at an early age, have an addiction – drugs, gambling, alcohol or smoking.”..and to be a ‘wagger’.
ITS NOT WAGGING THAT LEADS TO THESE OUTCOMES.
Chronic repeat Wagging is just another symptom of a life spiraling out of control.