of the most disciplinarian headmaster (illustrated here).
This hysterical reaction is fairly typical.
Pete: 'We want a union at Highbury Grove to stop the cane, the petty rules and school uniforms.
Tim (3rd year): 'At our school you can get caned for almost anything. can make up the rules as they go along.
'For example, people beaten for fighting, swearing, (even when vou re over 16). and even things like eating in class or answering a teacher back or forgetting their homework.
Frank (4th year): twice they've caned a whole class. Like one first year class got caned 'cos ther mucking about with a fifth year. The teacher came in and just caned the lot of them.
*The NUSS told us there are rules about the cane. They said schools in Highbury Grove School, received a letter from the to attempts by students to organise, and even more so to the new National Union of School Students' magazine Blot, RAY BROWN and SUE HUTCHINS talked to some of the students at Highbury Grove to find out why they wanted a union at their school.
teachers have to do it in private with a teacher as a witness and with a proper cane. 'In fact kids often get it in front of the whole class and not always with a cane.
The teachers *I'd estimate they cane about eight times a week at Highbury Grove. That makes it I've known by far the worst school round lateness, here. smoking Other problems at the school include incredibly petty uniform rules - to the extent that students have to get passes if, for example, they don't have *Once or the proper regulation shoes If they don't get a pass from their housemaster they're likely to get suspended. students racism was a problem too.
Steve (4th teachers seem to pick on the coloured kids more than the London, and white fighting, I've one and not the other.?
school former cation system.
change things in the school.
use the are getting organised.
school gales They *subverted They came thought the clothes they choose. year):
like kid get caught seen icacners punisa me colourcu In fact Highbury Grove is already a test-tube for many of the Stone Age ideas that its Rhodes Boyson, now Tory education spokesperson, would like to see applied throughout the eduThe keynote is discipline, and a senior staff smart enough to use their privileged access to parents to whip them up against any attempt by their students to In spite of this the students Forty came to a meeting after NUSS had leafleted the school and responded to the head's letter by distributing Blot free at the didn't come to be corrupted" and because they thought a union could help them to win basic rights that those of us not at school take for granted: to join a union; against physical violence from teachers; for the right to wear legal code Their next step will be to try to win mass support for tactics wearing uniform, altogether.
L.J. Norcross, B.A Telephone: a heroe tot parents are bet he in the drand tat at 7 p. on thursday: Loch danuary In view of the demanding that at least the on cane is enforced, and trying to get ride of corporal punishment 9th January, 1979.
Yours sincerely
L.J. NORCROSS.
They deserve the support of socialists and more especially socialist teachers, whose union leaders universally attack and condemn the NUSS include giving strikers more
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