Risinghill and the Ecology of Fear

Abstract

This piece attempts what may be the first significant published reconsideration of the circumstances surrounding the rise and fall of the controversial Risinghill School, a secondary co-educational comprehensive school established by the London County Council (LCC) in 1960 and closed 5 years later. This is accomplished through a critical re-evaluation of Leila Berg's book Risinghill: Death of a Comprehensive , a 'biography' of the eponymous school and of its first, and only, headteacher, Michael Duane. The translation of events at Risinghill by Berg into the narrative of Risinghill , the semi-mythical, Manichaeian story of Duane's enlightened struggle against the LCC is analysed as a set of rhetorical/discursive practices with theoretical insights borrowed from the US scholar Mike Davis. Berg is charged with subscribing to a distorting deprivationist discourse.