Thursday 16 April 2009

”Stop Engines! Reverse course! Reverse..!”

A three-year Government study into classroom behaviour will call for greater use of parenting contracts for mothers and fathers failing to keep children in line and £50 penalties for those condoning truancy.
Which will no doubt either go unpaid, or, for those on benefits, be paid by the taxpayer…
More schools will also be encouraged to use traditional methods such as detentions, suspensions, isolation rooms and lunchtime curfews to punish badly behaved pupils. They will be told to order pupils to remove caps and confiscate mobile phones.
You mean, all those old traditional methods that the progressives and their helpers in the teaching unions have spent decades undermining, campaigning against, sidelining and ridiculing?

Don’t you think it’s a bit late to now expect the teachers you’ve put through training academies, learning the best way to boost self-esteem in little Kylie and Jason and encourage creative use of spray paint and matches to express themselves, to act like a paramilitary bouncer instead?
Guidance also calls on schools to punish rowdy behaviour, bullying and fighting outside the school gates, including incidents on public transport, to stop poor behaviour spilling onto the streets.
So, as well as suddenly becoming Robocop in the classroom, they are going to be expected to become Judge Dredd on the streets and buses too…?

And how many, seeing a crowd of their pupils smashing up a bus shelter or abusing a child from another school, are going to flash on the reports of headmaster Philip Lawrence’s murder, and wonder if in their midst lurks another Learco Chindamo? And so walk quietly on by.

If they did, could anyone blame them?
Jules Donaldson, from the NASUWT teachers' union, claimed some headteachers were fuelling the problem by handing out prizes if children promise to behave instead of setting proper boundaries.
Really..? A reward for doing what they were supposed to do in the first place?

Can’t think where they got that idea, myself….
More than six-in-10 teachers said they were unaware of their rights to discipline pupils, including the freedom to impose detentions, search children, confiscate mobile phones and punish bad behaviour occurring outside school.
Perhaps that’s because, for so long, it’s been drilled into them that they have no such rights?

That children’s ‘human rights’ are paramount, even to the extent that nursery staff are unable to do more than follow a toddler at a distance as it leaves the premises and walks home?

You’ve broken the system, Righteous, perhaps irreparably. Resolving these problems is going to take far, far more than a three year report and the promise of legislation and more legislation, to be carried out by the people you’ve spent decades training to be the antithesis of what you now find you actually need, after all.

6 comments:

Ross said...

"Really..? A reward for doing what they were supposed to do in the first place? ".

No a reward for promising to do what they were supposed to be doing anyway.

JuliaM said...

Ah, good point...

Dr Melvin T Gray said...

Truancy was almost unheard of during my schooldays, as were assaults upon teachers. What I do recall with toe curling shame, was the dreaded 'Detosh'. Hearing my name read out in Assembly for detention more than a dozen times over a six year period, was as memorable as it was reformative.

A once deterrent to bad schoolboy behaviour in the 60's, would be rather hip today. Speech Days were also destined for serious degradation after "Now to the awards for worst performing students making a bit of an effort'.

Anonymous said...

Is this not a pro temps strategy for a pending election.

Uponnothing said...

Are you a teacher, or do you have any personal experience of education?

Just curious because this reads like a typically ill-informed Daily Mail rant against the young.

Not all schools have to deal with bad behaviour and those that do struggle to do so because the problems are much wider than simply trying to make a child behave. There exists a social problem in some areas that needs to be fundamentally addressed, this is only going to be achievable by considering the heart of the problem that causes their bad behaviour.

If this is a 'loony-liberal' view then so be it, but the way bad behaviour is going to be eradicated is by addressing the fundamental problems faced by certain sections of society, not by ill-informed romanticised ranting about how 'In my day we wouldn't dare misbehave' etc.

JuliaM said...

"Truancy was almost unheard of during my schooldays, as were assaults upon teachers."

Ditto. But we don't do 'shame' anymore.

We can't. Most people don't seem to feel it...

"Is this not a pro temps strategy for a pending election."

I wouldn't be too sure. After all, it would take courage, and we know that's one thing this government lacks.

"Are you a teacher, or do you have any personal experience of education?"

No, and yes. If the answers had been 'no' and 'no', would they have made my opinions invalid?

"There exists a social problem in some areas that needs to be fundamentally addressed, this is only going to be achievable by considering the heart of the problem that causes their bad behaviour."

I agree with you there, at least, on the first part.

About the actual causative problem, I suspect we'd be worlds apart...

"..the way bad behaviour is going to be eradicated is by addressing the fundamental problems faced by certain sections of society.."

Oh, let me guess. We need to give them more 'resources', and not be 'judgemental' about 'lifestyle choices'. How am I doing so far?