ABSTRACT
It is 8.20 a.m. in the downtown area of a large Northern city. As the bleak morning light flickers across the broken tiles and the for years unpointed brickwork of the grim terraced houses round about, the first few pupils and teachers are arriving at school. In the playground lies a dead rat. How had it perished? There is speculation among pupils and staff. Perhaps someone had shot it with an air rifle, or maybe it had just finally breathed its last in the grimy environment in which it had spent its brief existence. It lay there, another symbol of decay and neglect in a crumbling inner city. Meanwhile the head greeted our project researcher with the news that this was a tough school in a tough area. There had been thirteen break-ins in the last thirteen months-even the few plants in front of the school had been dug up and removed. In a nearby school we visited, a pupil proudly told his teacher that his father had been on television. Pleased at this mark of recognition of an otherwise ignored sector of society, she enquired what programme he had appeared in. The answer was BBC national news. He had been shown throwing slates from the roof of a prison during a jail riot.
