Quote:
Originally Posted by Gordon Booth
egg&chips, I'm guessing you are a teacher so you see things from the inside.
Can you tell us what teachers in general(not necessarily your own opinion) feel about the problems of discipline in schools? How would they like things to change? Are they restrained by rules they don't agree with?
I understand if you don't feel you can comment.
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It is a tricky one and I wouldn't presume to speak for others in general, but would say that some definitely, and I suspect many, despair at the state of discipline in schools. However I don't think that it's just an issue in schools but is endemic in society, magnified in schools because of the concentration of disaffected youth there. Perhaps the factor that has changed most since I was at school and even since I started teaching about fourteen years I ago is the involvement and attitude of a growing number of parents. Too many abdicate responsibility for their kids or simply don't have the skills to parent them properly, a major factor in my school being the lack of a positive father figure in the home. I'm not saying that a return to the social stability of yesteryear's families would be a magic cure, but it wouldn't hurt. Family with five kids, three absentee fathers and a mum who is in her twenties and still acts like a seventeen year old = potential behaviour problems. Anyone who watched the 999 what's your emergency? programme re kids in Blackpool episode will know what I mean.
Changes? I wouldn't want a change back to corporal punishment, there are far too many flashpoint incidents where a physical response would be inappropriate and dangerous for all involved. I do find it objectionable that schools who choose to exclude children are penalised as a result however via OFSTED and local authority investigation / interference. It's a bit like a policeman managing to safely arrest detain and secure the conviction of a number of criminals who assaulted them being reprimanded for their actions and trained to modify their behaviour in order not to get attacked in future.
I'm afraid that one result of this increasingly distressing situation that only the most dedicated and self sacrificing of decent teachers will stay in schools where behaviour is a major issue. Such places face the prospect of becoming "sink" schools, especially when academies are allowed to select their intake and are not answerable to a local authority for many of their actions. I used to think that I was in the right place and was making a bit of a difference, but seeing more and more past pupils turning up in court for serious offences including murder makes me wonder if all I, and my colleagues are doing is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic
.
Going in now to see if there's any sense to be made of a fight between a non English speaking girl recently arrived as a war refugee (you should see her drawings
) and an autistic child, after school, both of whose guardians did not materialise to ensure their safe journey from school to home. Whoop blinking ee.