Monday 15 June 2009

Frightening Times Ahead

Did you think exclusion was a problem for the middle schools, in the main?

Think again:
Thousands of very young children are being excluded from primary schools for physically attacking pupils and teachers, research by The Times shows.
Now, I'm sure that a certain percentage of these are the kind of squabbles and 'physical violence' (a slap, a tantrum) that wouldn't have been seen as a problem - and would have been dealt with appropriately - twenty years ago, before we entered our current health & safety, 'touchy-feely' litigious modern times.

But this kind of rise is far too big to just lay at the door of overreacting heads:
More than 1,200 of the fixed-term exclusions in 2007 involved children aged 4 and under. Another 12,000 were under the age of 8.

Our survey paints a picture of teachers struggling to deal with violence from ever-younger children, some of whom in effect drop out of the education system before reaching secondary school.
Which families with children attending these schools may breathe a sigh of relief about.

At least, until they stop to wonder where they are spending their days, if not in school...

And it seems more and more teachers are beginning to echo the words of education bloggers like Miss Snuffleupagus and Frank Chalk:
One teacher from a primary school in Norfolk told The Times: “I have worked at several schools and there has been a marked deterioration in behaviour in the last five years. Behaviour strategies don’t seem to work because schools have no power. Teachers are left to get on with it.”
Anyone wondering what these children will be doing in 10-15 years time?

Well, they'll probably be doing this.

Or they'll be amusing themselves like this little charmer:
Annika Avery, 20, of Leicester, was given a five-month prison sentence, suspended for two years. She had already admitted dangerous driving.

The court was told that Avery overtook the ambulance at speed and slowed down, causing the vehicle to brake suddenly.

She did this even though the siren was on, Leicester Crown Court heard.

Avery, of Tatlow Road, Glenfield, was said to be under stress at the time of the incident in July 2008, although no other reason was given for her behaviour.
It's normal for people to look for 'reasons for her behaviour', because normal people can't quite grasp the fact that she did it simply because she could.

And because it amused her and her passenger at the time:
The driver of the ambulance said at one stage Avery pulled alongside him and she was travelling at 60mph (96km/h) in a 40mph (64km/h) area. The paramedic said he looked across and saw Avery and a male passenger laughing and making obscene gestures.
Not a lot of 'stress' shown there. Perhaps someone in the CPS might want to rethink that suspended sentence.

No?

Thought not...

But there's soon going to be more and more Annika Averys out there, and more and more fawn-killers, if we don't start to look at every aspect of how we deal with problem families and their children.

9 comments:

sobers said...

I'm not a Christian, but the Bible says 'spare the rod, and spoil the child'. I think we have conclusively proved this point is correct. Can we go back to what worked now please?

Paul said...

I recommend a viewing of Mark L. Lester's Class of 1984. In my opinion it was a visionary piece of filmmaking. It's all come true!

Macheath said...

The word 'feral' is much overused these days, but I can't think of a more appropriate one for some of the children arriving in primary schools.

What distinguishes the modern underclass from all their historical predecessors is the relative isolation of their children; until the slum clearances of the 20th century, extended families almost always shared limited living quarters.

The resulting overcrowding, while bad for their health, meant that an aggressive or violent small child would be routinely suppressed by older siblings or relatives because such behaviour inconvenienced the rest of the family. In effect, they had to learn to live alongside other people.

The child's modern counterpart, in the comparative luxury of a self-contained household for the nuclear family, may never learn those social skills.

Angry Exile said...

It's normal for people to look for 'reasons for her behaviour'...

I must be abnormal then, because assuming genuine mental illness has been excluded I couldn't give a tuppenny fuck what the reasons were. I didn't care why some thieving shite nicked my car radio and some tools many years ago, I would only have cared what punishment they'd have got had the police - don't laugh - caught them (of course there wasn't even an investigation beyond recording the complaint and giving me a crime number for my insurance). Equally, and at the other end of the scumscale, I don't remotely care what reasons Steve Wright had for killing half a dozen prostitutes. Honestly not interested and unable to see the relevance. Beyond establishing a motive to help prove the case at trial the reasons why criminals commit crime should be of interest to academics only. For the rest of us banging the bastards up for an appropriate length of time is all that matters.

JuliaM said...

"Can we go back to what worked now please?"

Little chance of that. The do-gooders are too burrowed in to be extracted from the various systems without a hell of a lot of effort...

"I recommend a viewing of Mark L. Lester's Class of 1984."

I'll have to check that one out.

"In effect, they had to learn to live alongside other people."

I think you may well be onto something.

"For the rest of us banging the bastards up for an appropriate length of time is all that matters."

Yup, agreed.

Croydonian said...

You would not believe how difficult it is to pupils excluded, in part because school funding is part predicated on maintaining low figures for expulsions. I am not making this up.

JuliaM said...

"You would not believe how difficult it is to pupils excluded, in part because school funding is part predicated on maintaining low figures for expulsions."

Oh, indeed. Making these figures all the more worrying...

Pavlov's Cat said...

At least this little charmer got jail time.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/8101480.stm

In mitigation, the court heard Luke-Clarke committed the offences "because he wanted to relieve stress and because he got upset about things."

That's mitigation, WTF , I mean seriously What The Fuck !

JuliaM said...

And he's 23! Hardly a bored kid...