Pupils should be awkward, says Patten

SCHOOLS SHOULD teach their pupils to be awkward and cussed, Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong and a former Conservative education minister, said yesterday.

He told the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' annual conference in Jersey that many great figures, ranging from saints to statesmen, were awkward customers - including Thomas a Becket and Sir Thomas More.

"Few institutions value cussedness in their members. We all incline when we are in positions of authority to favour a bland and cheerful conformity," he told the headteachers of independent schools.

"But should we not encourage those who we teach to distinguish between right and wrong, to be prepared to be downright awkward, in speaking up and digging in their heels for what they believe to be right?"

In these days of leadership through focus groups it was important to encourage young people to have convictions and stand by them, Mr Patten said. He had been brought up in a world in which leaders had convictions and were not steered as now, by the findings of surveys of opinion, he told the conference. Political leaders today often suggested that there was no such thing as an ideologist.

He described the Third Way as "an intellectually vacuous cliche" which obscured the fact that there were real choices to be made. "Encourage your student to be opinionated, hard edged not soft focused, opinionated about man, money and God," he said.

Mr Patten said that the country had consistently undervalued and underfunded education. He called for the reshaping of the welfare state to provide more money for schools. He also attacked politicians, both Conservative and Labour, who took decisions about state education while sending their children to private schools.

"It is counter-intuitive to argue with the fact that so many decisions about state education have been taken over the years by those who have no contact in their personal lives with it. It cannot have been other than detrimental," he said.

Of the last seven Conservative secretaries of state for education only one, John Patten, had a child at a state school.

All Chris Patten's children went to state primary schools. One daughter went to an independent school, another to a girl's comprehensive and one to school in Hong Kong.