Monday 2 July 2012

Lazy, Incompetent, Box-Ticking Public Sector, Part I

A primary school has banned children from playing football at break-time during Euro 2012 to stop fights breaking out.
Pupils have been told kickabouts and all other ball games are off limits at playtime during the tournament. Instead, staff at Hall Road Primary in Orchard Park hope pupils will skip and play with outdoor chess sets.
Fantastic! And the reason?
Deputy head teacher Kristina Frary said the ban was needed to prevent injuries and allow staff to get on with teaching.
But only for the duration of Euro 12? I guess injuries don’t happen other times, and teachers couldn’t give a fig for teaching outside of this one gap?
She said: "Passions are running high, especially with the Euro 2012 football tournament. Potentially, that's why children are wound-up.
"We have had a sequence of fall-outs and they were all centred around football. "It was only a small number of incidents – maybe half a dozen – but we have decided to have a break."
Oh, I know! It’s just so tiring, isn’t it, doing what you are paid to do! Why not see if you can make your job just that bit easier, eh?

What’s that, the kids? Oh, who cares about them? Or the parents. They’ll just have to lump it, right? It’s not like they are customers, or anything…
Mrs Frary said as well as playground spats, pupils were being overzealous in their tackles after watching their footballing heroes in action in Poland and the Ukraine.
Because such tackles are only ever employed in Euro 12 games, and never on any home or away games in the normal football season…
She said: "Children are really into their games and, just like the professionals, they will sometimes misinterpret tackles and perhaps reply in a way that would get them the red card if it happened during a real game.
"It was causing problems. Come the end of break-time, children were still upset and it was spilling into their lessons.
"Teachers ended up spending valuable lesson time sorting out problems."
Translation: ‘Teachers find it very stressful to handle playground disputes, when we’d rather just knock out a few by-rote copies of assignments on the office photocopier to give the kiddies so we can read ‘Heat’ in the breakroom and gossip about ‘Big Brother’.’
Head teacher Caroline Holliday said the ban has been imposed to show children the consequences of bad behaviour.
Rubbish! If that was really true, it’d be a ban on just the children displaying unacceptable behaviour, wouldn’t it?

Although it’s accepted that the more modern interpretation is that collective punishment applies because it’s easier for the hard-of-thinking and the want-to-be-non-judgemental…

Any dissenters? Apart from the commenters, that is?
Orchard Park ward councillor Julie Conner said she was disappointed to hear about the football ban, but would not condemn the school.
She said: "It is sad the school has had to take this step. Children enjoy letting off steam on the playing fields during lunch and break-time.
"It is especially sad that they can't do this during Euro 2012. With the arrival of the Olympic Torch in Hull this week too, the city has become very sports orientated."
Ms Conner said she had not heard about the ban until she was contacted by the Mail. She said: "Clearly, there must have been several situations at the school that has resulted in this."
In other words, ‘teachers know best!’. Even when it’s manifestly obvious that they don’t.

18 comments:

I am therefore I ban said...

Gosh, what will they pull out of the banning hat for the Olympics then ?

Won't somebody think of the children, please !!

James Higham said...

I used to love a good fight at school - it hardened you up, made you sharper and the worst that happened was a bloody nose or whatever.

i know it's hard to believe that I enjoyed a fight. Thank the Lord I wasn't growing up today.

Captain Haddock said...

Hull again .. say no more !

Teachers there claim the kids are thick due to inbreeding .. I wonder what the teacher's excuse for mongness is then ?

tolkein said...

It's more than female teachers generally don't like sports and find boys too boisterous. They'd rather they behaved like girls.

KevinWard76 said...

Daft question, but what do they do in their PE lessons?

A ban there for the foreign clan said...

watching their footballing heroes in action in Poland and the Ukraine

Guess the days when the fight was over who wasn't going to be in the England team are long gone.

Jim said...

What Tolkein said. I'll hazard a guess there's not many (if any) men in the staff room at this primary school. All the boys need is a bit of structure and someone to be in charge and they'd be fine. A burly male teacher watching over their games of footy and giving a red card to any over zealous tacklers would be accepted by all as fair. Thats all boys need - rules fairly applied and they are happy.

Jim said...

Just looked at their website, and its as I thought. There are 11 teachers, of which one is male. There are an additional 17 teaching assistants, all of which are female. The 3 office workers are all female, as are the 5 supervisors. The only other male figures are the 2 male caretakers, with 4 female cleaners. So 42 different people work at this school, 3 are men, and only one of them actually would have contact with the kids.

Can you imagine how the PC brigade would be reacting if it was the other way around?

Anonymous said...

Can you imagine how the PC brigade would be reacting if it was the other way around?

Same as for the NHS which is three quarters one gender ? i.e. Total silence.

Anonymous said...

"staff.......hope pupils will skip and play with outdoor chess sets." Have any of these idiots ever tried skipping and playing chess? It's bloody difficult and they should be ashamed of themselves for suggesting it. If they're concerned about pupils emulating international football players, just wait till the the female beach volleyball games start!

Captain Haddock said...

"Daft question, but what do they do in their PE lessons ? " ..

Hopscotch ? ..

Relay Macrame ?

Betting on "My Little Pony" ?

"There are 11 teachers, of which one is male" ..

And I bet he's either so pussy-whipped he daren't fart out of turn .. or he likes to eat, drink & be "Mary" .. ;)

Furor Teutonicus said...

Something we played (?!) in the army, which I taught my two nephews and all their mates on Saturdays in the park, MURDER BALL!

Imagine a cross between football, rugby, and kick boxing.

The only two rules were "THERE are the goals, and NO kicks to the head.

Great fun, and the odd broken nose, or arm, was just part of the fun.

Macheath said...

I suppose that all this non-competitive stuff in primary school has led everyone to forget the idea of sportsmanship.

Either that, or the practice of shaking hands at the end of a game has been deliberately disregardsd by staff as redolent of public-school right-wingery.

Jim has hit the nail on the head - apply some strict rules and firmly insist they leave all disputes on the pitch and the pupils should return to class having let off sufficient steam to be able to settle down.

If the problems persist, they don't need 'sorting out'; there should be a quick, sharp punishment for both parties concerned for continuing the argument off the pitch.

It doesn't necesarily need a man to do the job; my former primary teachers all did this as a matter of course - and that was in Celtic v Rangers territory - but I can't see it happening these days, somehow...

Macheath said...

Should have added that, in my experience, punishing both parties concerned almost always settles the dispute by uniting them in adversity.

A salt and battered said...

James Higham said...
"I used to love a good fight at school..."

Strange...I only enjoyed winning.

JuliaM said...

"Gosh, what will they pull out of the banning hat for the Olympics then ?"

Everything, probably!

" Thank the Lord I wasn't growing up today."

Well, quite! Today's fights go far beyond bare knuckles.

" They'd rather they behaved like girls."

I think you've hit the nail on the head. As Jim points out, the school is an all-female society.

And yet, it isn't the paradise the feminists would have us believe..

"Same as for the NHS which is three quarters one gender ?"

Ah, yes. The 'caring' gender.

JuliaM said...

"I suppose that all this non-competitive stuff in primary school has led everyone to forget the idea of sportsmanship."

Just as with James' fights at school, I guess?

A salt and battered said...

@JuliaM

"Just as with James' fights at school, I guess?"

The correctly applied apostrophe aside, there is nothing commendable in your inference that fight-pickers were or ever could be, 'sportsmen'.