Did you maybe think it was fiction?
A modern version of 'Grange Hill'?
Other incidents of indiscipline recorded in the notes include children “back-chatting” their teachers, swearing at the headmaster, causing mayhem in lessons and throw objects around the class.
Where did they find inspectors who were surprised at this?
At all the worst schools it was noted how pupils were continually swearing and making inappropriate comments, while one pupil sent out of class for misbehaving then hid in a cupboard.
At one school a lesson observation had to be cancelled because all the pupils had decided to “bunk off” leaving just the inspector and the teacher in the classroom.
The only surprise is the claim that this relates to five schools only. Clearly, it's
not that uncommon, though the conclusions the 'Guardian' draws (helpfully guided by the teacher's union, of course) are somewhat different as to cause...
Look, I'm not going over to the Guardian again, not for anyone's money.
ReplyDeleteLet me guess, is it the Torree Cutts to blame ?
Ahh, if ever an old saying .. "You reap what you sow" was true, this proves it admirably ..
ReplyDeleteWhilst I have no doubt as to the problems caused in schools by badly behaved little shits .. I find that the sympathy well has run dry ..
Current teachers are suffering the stupidity & pig-headedness of their predecessors .. you know, the Grauniad-reading modernisers .. the "Call me by my first name" mob .. the "Let's sit on the bean-bags and discuss this" brigade ..
Ably assisted by the "You can't physically discipline kids" adherents (again, mostly Graun readers & other assorted wet-nellies) ..
Those of us who tried to tell our kid's teachers that sitting in orderly rows & learning by rote was good .. that moderate punishment for the infringement of rules worked, were shouted down & lambasted as "fascists" ..
Well .. its all come home to roost & today's teachers don't like it one little bit ..
My answer ? ..
Tough titty .. crack on !
These young people are acting entirely rationally. They do not want to be there, they are forced into an institution against their will. There is nothing wrong with them. There is something very wrong with a society that thinks they should like it.
ReplyDeleteThey are "secondary school" age. That is, young adults. Their concerns after puberty are adult concerns, and they are repressed from pursuing an adult life by a society which insists- against all common sense and biology- that they are children.
Until recently, there was no teenage, and no "teenage rebellion". Why? Because you just moved from childhood into adulthood. Over the past century we've created this no-man's-land in which young adults are retained in imposed childish social structures. When they try to act like adults, they are condemned as disordered. It is madness.
Here's Orwell in The Road To Wigan Pier-
And again, take the working-class attitude towards 'education'. How different it is from ours, and how immensely sounder! Working people
often have a vague reverence for learning in others, but where 'education' touches their own lives they see through it and reject it by a healthy instinct. The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a 'job' should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will
leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the
notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly. The idea of a great big boy of eighteen, who ought to be bringing a pound a week home to his parents, going to school in a ridiculous uniform and even being caned for not doing his lessons! Just
fancy a working-class boy of eighteen allowing himself to be caned! He is a
man when the other is still a baby.
Ian B has it right. Education should end at 14 years, apart from the high-IQ academic elite.
ReplyDelete"Let me guess, is it the Torree Cutts to blame ?"
ReplyDeleteIsn't it always?
"I find that the sympathy well has run dry .."
Me too, me too...
" There is something very wrong with a society that thinks they should like it."
The problem is that society's moved on, and the 'teenage years' are one way of trying to cope with that. We might not have got it right, but what else is there?
And it's noticeable that so many adults these days behave as if they had a case of arrested development, it's hard to tell where the 'teenage years' stop!
Our local school sends all the trouble kids out for the day on a school trip. Drama practice and science experiments are rehearsed and then performed on the day. The kids told to be on their best behaviour and they still get reports mentioning the attitude of some of the school children towards staff.
ReplyDeleteI would love to see inspectors just turn up on a normal day and see the real every day reality as opposed to the staged managed, damage limitation ones.
A "head teacher" not a million miles from here has been quoted as saying that he's not interested in behaviour as long as the exam result figures are up. That may be why the school's like a zoo. I suspect that he's not alone and the sooner he, his fellow travellers and their egos are got rid of, the better.
ReplyDelete