Tim Brighouse has passed away. A principled senior educator, and advocate for equality. A few words.
I was sad to hear of Sir Tim Brighouse’s passing. He was the former London Schools Commissioner and chief education officer for Oxfordshire and Birmingham. My brief acquaintance with him came from his advice and support for the maligned teachers and schools targeted in the Trojan Hoax* affair.
He often called out the erstwhile Secretary of State, Michael Gove, and Oftsed in their witchless witchhunt.
His comment piece in The Guardian, Trojan horse affair: five lessons we must learn, lambasted the Secretary of State, and argued that the lens used to view the actions of teachers and parents and teachers targeted by the investigations was a bogus one. He explained from his experience their actions were of apiece of their co-citizens, it was the racialised lens through which they were viewed that was different:
“So great have been the recent cuts in local authority expenditure that Birmingham and many other local authorities have neither the resources nor sufficient senior and experienced staff to carry out their role effectively. Worse, the arrival of academies and free schools has created an open season for lay people and professionals keen to pursue their own eccentric ideas about schooling: and when trust or governor vacancies occur, some perpetuate the very English tradition of inviting friends to join them. When the community is white it doesn’t cause much comment. In mono-ethnic east Birmingham, however, it is seen as a Muslim plot to expose pupils to an undefined “extremism”.”
He had strong views on the place of religion in educational settings – he would have preferred there not to be any – but he was also fair and equitable. If, as the situation is, faith can be an integral part of the education system, then, he argued, Muslims have the same rights as their co-citizens. He also was at pains to point out to all who listened that the Trojan Hoax schools had been turned around by the policies and practices of those teachers, parents and governors who were being demonised by media and political attacks.
In the obituary published in The Times on 19 December, a picture of an eccentric but dedicated and effective man was portrayed. Given Brighouse’s position on Trojan Hoax – a matter fomented by The Times – you would think there would at least be critical mention of this. Instead silence on this very importance stance. It is a lesson in how power and powerlessness and privilege work. Brighouse – despite this most radical of positions – can simply have this excised from an account of his life. He can be sanitised for the audience of The Times – he can be presented and viewed as legitimate and included as part of the whole: whole discourse, whole social group, whole structure. It is the same exclusionary lens he saw at work in the demonising of Muslim parents, governors and teachers in Birmingham, and protested.
The irony would not have been lost, I think, on him.
Inna lilla wa inna ilayhi rajioun.
* See also VIDEO: John Holwood on the so-called Trojan Horse Affair
Find out more about the Trojan Hoax affair here.
Photo used from UCL / IoE. CC3.0
