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Selfish Villagers Jeopardise Kids’ Lives

Evelyn Walcott

The proposed closure of Luss Primary School has caused a shrill outcry of opposition,
since wind of it blew in the direction of the people of Luss. A staunch campaign has been set
up to counter the motion. Logging onto the internet, you will find: a ‘Save Luss Primary
School’ Facebook page, a Twitter feed, a campaign website, and an online petition. As of 16
December 2010, there were 506 members of the Facebook page (including myself), and 5
followers on Twitter. I have read the vast number of comments of support which have been
posted on the Facebook page. However, after reading a few, realisation quickly set in that
this campaign is much more sinister than it initially appears – and I wasn’t surprised. There
is a well-known attribute of the Luss community which is actually driving this campaign:
selfishness, born of the persistence of tradition, nostalgia, and sentimentality. Far from
concerned parents worried about education provision, this campaign is overrun by villagers
scared at the prospect of Luss becoming – as Facebook campaigner Edward Eadie puts it – ‘a
holiday village’.
As I trawled on the Facebook campaign page, I found, as expected, no compelling
arguments for the maintenance of Luss Primary School. The majority of them focus
vehemently and obsessively on the preservation of the village itself. In support of the cause,
Lisa Ramsay’s comment begins promisingly with ‘Luss is a fantastic school’, but this notion
is soon abandoned by the hasty move into the real issue: ‘it is vital for the community of Luss
village’. Norah Campbell begins similarly, saying: ‘Small schools are vital to communities’.
Because of the excellent holistic experience they provide for their children? No, because, ‘if
[the school is] not there then families will not move into the area’. Even the ‘official’
campaign material harps on about preserving the village, with the Facebook page suggesting
that the ‘closure of the school will be catastrophic to the village of Luss’, which will be
‘ruined without our school’, and the online petition saying that it will have ‘a devastating
effect on the village of Luss and its community and forever change its future’. This is
nothing more than a persistent discourse about the preservation of an old, no longer fit for
purpose village, and any motions to move away from the traditional canon are slammed.
The year 2011 is almost upon as; we have our feet comfortably under the table of the
st
21 century. It is time to bring into serious question and consideration the implications of
preserving Dickensian village ideals as a way of life, especially for kids. But, of course, this
is not really about the kids. In the Helensburgh Advertiser last week, Mrs Winton states that
the motion is ‘destroying our family’s way of life’, and that ‘we live down a lane which exits
directly on to the A82’. Perhaps now is the time to question seriously the suitability of rural
life. What really has Luss got to offer the modern family? Apply this question to any distant
village. Times have changed. They will continue to change, and we all must consider the
suitability of our lifestyles in view of this. On the Facebook page, Alyson Walker lets us
know her family’s education history, telling us that she is a former pupil, and now her son has
been enrolled as a P1 pupil. She tells us how closing the school would be ‘terribly sad’. I
recently spoke with a former pupil who was in my own class at Luss, who now stays in
Oxford. When I told her about the proposed closure, she replied: ‘Nooo! They can’t close
it!! Too many memories’. This is nothing but nauseating nostalgia, manifesting itself in the
form of a contrived ‘concern’. Are memories and tradition a good reason for keeping a
school? Of course not, the very suggestion that they might be so is preposterous. This raises
the question: do the supporters of this campaign really have a good cause to fight for?
Comments such as the one posted by Shazjack Mse: ‘Luss has always been one of my
favourite places to stop and visit’, surely must be met with the response, ‘so what?’ The
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village of Luss is likely to mutate into something other than what it is currently, but it will not
disappear, nor the loch and rivers, the hills and mountains, the glen and woodlands. And the
primary school itself can hardly appeal to the aesthetic enchantment of an architectural
wonder.
Luss is an incredibly small school, with a current roll of 21 pupils. Facebook
campaigner, Chris Townsend, raises the point: ‘It’s about life, not numbers’. I would agree
whole-heartedly that it is about life, and the experience of that life, but argue that it is also
very much about numbers. The lives of children are largely shaped by their early interactions
with their peers, and exposure to diversity. As section 4.7 of the Proposal Document
(November 2010) asserts: ‘Children encounter a very limited peer group [at Luss Primary].
This is very restricting socially’. As a former pupil of Luss, I well remember the slim-
pickings when it came to socialising and interacting with members of my peer group, when
my primary level group never exceeded five.
The size of the group from which one is supposed to gain interaction from brings with
it a whole host of various problems. I interviewed another former pupil, who stated that ‘it
was almost like a clique’. The village mentality was present. I can fully identify with this.
As Clay Barham says in his online article on Helium (‘Village Mentality: A life of
conformity’): ‘Community, or the village, is a crowd, a group, like any other. It is unlikely
any group will naturally accept big differences between members in community’. This is
directly related to the issue of diversity, and the lack of exposure to diversity associated with
small, rural schools. I can recall a time when I was a pupil at Luss when a class from a
primary school in Glasgow was to visit us. I cannot recall what the nature of this visit was,
but I can clearly remember the reaction from both parents and pupils, which were, of course,
the same. They were immediately ‘outsiders’. They had nothing in common with ‘us’. They
were ‘rough and ready’ kids from the big, bad city, and were coming to corrupt us. The
pupils of Luss were genuinely frightened by the prospect of these foreigners visiting, and
during playtime the social segregation remained. I was shocked and incredulous when I
found campaigner, Alison Walker, echo these sentiments on Facebook, that, by moving to a
larger school, ‘the children will lose their innocence a lot quicker and be introduced to a more
hostile environment from an early age’. When I presented this statement to another former
pupil, the reaction was of laughter, followed by: ‘That’s a warped idea. I’d like to know how
she conjured up that impression’.
Speaking of warped ideas, some campaigners have decided that, if their gripping
arguments for keeping the school are not enough, then what about ‘sending very young
children down the most dangerous road in [Scotland]’, as Alex Field puts it. This would be
the A82. Section 3.6 of the proposal document states: ‘There are no specific known safety
concerns with regard to the road between the two locations [Luss and Helensburgh] and the
travel time is not considered excessive’. Quite so, and this is the same road which is, and has
been, used for as long as I can remember to shuttle the village’s children to and from
Hermitage Academy in Helensburgh (the associated secondary school). Not only this, I
understand that the road is also used to bus pre-school children to and from nursery provision
at Arrochar Primary, yet Margaret Reid states: ‘It is ridiculous to expect 5 year olds to travel
8-9 miles or more for school each day’. But, if the road itself is not considered dangerous
enough, let’s try another tactic: attack the suitability of the busses, which dominated the
‘schools up-date’ section of the Helensburgh Advertiser (16 December 2010). One cannot
help but feel at this stage that, with time running out, the campaigners have decided to really
scrape the barrel for something which might give their opposition campaign some substance.
The reason for there being such a lack of valid, concrete arguments, where the
educational benefits at Luss are concerned, is quite simply because there are none about
which one could boast. Linda Graham says, ‘its [sic] our childrens [sic] right to go to Luss
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Primary’. No, it is not the children’s right to go to Luss Primary. It is the children’s right to
be provided with the best possible education which is available to them, whether that be
private or LEA is up to the parents. I would argue that Hermitage Primary is in a far better
position to deliver this than Luss is, and ever was. On Facebook, Valerie Philips says that
Luss ‘fulfils a role for children who need special tutoring’. Any teacher qualified to deliver
Additional Support for Learning (ASFL) would have to travel to Luss Primary in order to do
so. I can recall an ASFL specialist attending Luss when I was a pupil, who adopted the role
on a peripatetic basis. It seems obvious that any children who require the support of an ASFL
specialist would be better catered for in a larger school, where the teacher could be employed
on a full-time basis. The opportunities which exist for children in a larger school are
extensive, from better ability-level grouping and additional support provision, to facilitating
extra-curricular activities and accessing a fuller body of teaching expertise. In her article in
the British Journal of Educational Studies (Vol. 45, No.3, Sept. 1997), Emma Phillips says
that, ‘for all subjects the expertise amongst teachers in small schools was less comprehensive
than amongst the staff in larger schools’. It is also much easier to have teachers of specialist
subjects such as Music to visit the school, enhancing the pupils’ learning experience.
In 2004, Scottish Opera presented a school workshop based on the story of ‘The
Minotaur’. It was a fantastic opportunity for the pupils to engage in the expressive arts, and
have this input from one of Britain’s most respected opera companies. There was, however,
one obstacle which stood in the way of the children gaining the full experience – logistics.
The project was between both Luss and Colgrain Primaries, with the final production being
staged in the assembly hall of Colgrain Primary. It must have been extremely difficult for
Scottish Opera to coordinate the project when the participating pupils were divided by some
12 miles. By staying isolated in Luss, pupils are disadvantaged in the respect that they miss
out on a number of touring workshops, who will give Luss a miss, purely due to its location.
The concern of all should be the provision of the best possible holistic experience
which children of primary school age can be given. It is crucial to ensure that children have
the best start in life, not just educationally, but socially and culturally too. The notion that a
smaller school will contribute to higher attainment is a myth. As Phillips argues, ‘Rural pupil
achievement in studies conducted in the early 1950s was lower than that of urban pupils’, and
‘higher attainment in rural schools may now reflect the professional backgrounds of most
parents rather than the effectiveness of the schools’. And, as I have already discussed, Luss
Primary School has little to offer in the way of a social/peer-interaction experience.
The arguments against the closure are either founded upon nonsense, sentimentality or
an ‘appeal to tradition’, sometimes known by the misnomer ‘proof from tradition’, which is
one of the biggest logical fallacies. I would argue that, even without the weight of the
economic crisis pressing down on this situation, the disposure of Luss Primary School would
have come eventually. ‘Clustering has been adopted as a strategy amongst many smaller
schools as a way of broadening pupils’ peer groups, reducing teacher isolation and, most
importantly, improving the range of expertise available to deliver the National Curriculum’
(Phillips). In other words, the holistic experience provided by rural schools is not good
enough. It does not cater for the educational, social, and cultural development of children in
the 21st century.
From the turn of the century, let us look at the past, examine the present, and consider
the future of Luss Village. The local police station closed in 2003, and is now a thriving bed
and breakfast; the school will close in the autumn of 2011, presenting excellent development
prospects; and, if the accelerated abandonment of religion, and decline in church attendance
continues at the current rate, it will not be long before the church follows suit. The Church of
Scotland itself predicts that the last church in Scotland will close its doors in 2033. But,
perhaps the nightclub, party culture Òran Mór (formerly Kelvinside Parish Church) style of
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conversion would not be in keeping with ‘tradition’. Perhaps a museum would be more
fitting for this place, which was traditionally labelled by the Gàidheals ‘Clachan dubh’,
meaning the ‘dark village’. It is interesting to note that the Gaelic word ‘dubh’ is also
translated as ‘disastrous’ and ‘lamentable’. It was probably a good idea to ditch that tradition.