Parents need to fight this 'dumb-ass' culture

Ruhy's class were a sparky bunch. Just a few weeks after arriving at secondary school in their new blazers and ties, they threw themselves into one of their first drama lessons. The theme was friendship, and virtually every one of their animated playlets featured a clever child being bullied by "cool" boys or girls.

By Fran Abrams

Published: 21 September 2006

The drama teacher eyed them quizzically. "What is this thing...?" he asked. "Why is it cool to be dumb?

There was silence as 20 pairs of eyes gazed at him.

"Who here wants to be dumb?"

Six hands rose in the air.

"Who wants to be average?"

Another eight hands, two of them from Ruhy's little group.

"Who wants to be clever?"

Ruhy, a smart girl from a well-educated Iranian family, raised her hand along with five others. Her two friends, following her lead, raised theirs again. Eight children in this class - fewer than half - were prepared to say in front of their peers that they wanted to succeed at school. As an indictment of a world in which learning has somehow become debased, that was hard to beat.

These were not a bunch of dispossessed ASBO children. Far from it. This was Seven Kings High School in Ilford, where I spent a year following a group of pupils and teachers, Ruhy among them.

Seven Kings is one of Britain's most successful comprehensives, consistently in the top 10 for "value added". It has a strong culture that values learning and challenges the mores of the street. Yet this powerful message - cool equals dumb - had seeped into the bones of Ruhy's classmates before they even arrived.

Pressed by their teacher, they were quite explicit about their reasons. If you were clever, you did not hang out with the best people. In the tight social hierarchy within each classroom, those in the top stratum were not brainy.

There is nothing new about this. The class swot, spotty and badly dressed, has long been a figure of fun in secondary schools. But the phenomenon has taken on new proportions, tightening its grip on much younger children.

It has begun to excite widespread comment, with a range of eminent figures expressing concern about the "toxic" culture of the young. At Seven Kings, teachers worked constantly and with some success to counter this culture. But imagine how it must feel to be a clever child in some of those other schools, where the academic ethos is not so strong.

Where does it come from, this notion that clever children are not at the top of the social heap? It comes, ultimately, from the same source as all youth culture - from the need of young people to define themselves in relation to the world. They do this, as they always have, by contrast with the culture of adults: the culture of education.

This is part of the normal, chafing process of growing up. Yet while the youth of today is doing what other generations have done before, the adult world seems to have gone into retreat.

Parents, remembering their own youthful indulgences, sanction those of their children. They pay for their CDs, buy them Nike trainers and close their ears to their lingo: "Orite. Cool. Cool. Safe. Later."

Paradoxically this leaves young people in something of a bind. In search of a place to be themselves, to be different from their parents, they retreat ever further into this tight corner that squeezes the life out of their academic potential.

Freed from the constraints of parental disapproval, the peer group becomes ever more powerful. When it comes to a choice between pleasing your teacher or your mates, there's often no contest. Even the bright, motivated ones like Ruhy have to work to strike a balance - she studied hard but at weekends was down the shopping centre, checking out this season's colours.

There were some parents in Seven Kings who did challenge the anti-intellectual sentiments - often those who were not born here and had not experienced youth culture themselves. But I would guess that they are the exception. It was hardly surprising that their children were the ones who went on to do well at school - the ones, like Ruhy, who didn't put their hands up when the teacher asked who wanted to be dumb.

Across the country, too many parents seem to lack the confidence, the skills or the will to challenge their children's misconceptions. Then they complain if their schools can't keep order or can't push their children to do well. But the key to the problem is in their hands - if they don't start to challenge this dumb-ass culture, it will continue to grow. This is not a battle that schools can win alone.

The writer is author of 'Seven Kings: how it feels to be a teenager', published today by Atlantic Books, £9.99

education@ independent.co.uk