ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what typified the ideology of the 'straddlers' was a willingness to take from the 'stabilizers' a concern for the child as an individual in difficult home circumstances, and from the 'stretchers' an optimism that the children at Rockfield could succeed academically. At the level of classroom practice, the 'straddlers', like the 'stabilizers', were able to empathise with their pupils and to make exceptions for lower standards of work and behaviour if there were good reasons beyond the pupil's control to explain them. The analysis of teachers' ideologies at Rockfield School has purported to show that, although different groups of teachers did not always share each other's views, there was little surface antagonism among them. Relations between the classroom teachers and those in the Immigrant Department were not always cordial, as this comment by a classroom teacher suggests: They think they know what the child needs.
