To think this is outdated and needs to be removed?

This is the crux of the whole argument for me.

There’s a lot of talk on this thread about children “facing the consequences” of their behaviour. We look at this with small children like this: the consequence of throwing sand is that you get taken out of the sandpit. The consequence of not being kind to your friend on a playdate is that you get taken home.

So… The consequence of disrupting others’ learning is that you get removed from the classroom: makes total sense. The consequence of wearing the wrong coloured socks is that you get put in a classroom by yourself for a day (and we know this happens, there are stories about it every September!): what?!

You make a fair point, I'm not sure what the answer is. I suppose the question is whether isolation is used as a method of keeping the child away from the environment they are causing trouble in, or whether it's used as a punishment for things like uniform violations or homework not done.

Got it in one. My Head is just great at telling everyone what they're doing wrong in the classroom, but hasn't taught a lesson in 10 years.

@TitaniasAss (I lay the blame for our school situation firmly at the feet of our SLT, who hide away in their ivory towers and are appalling).

I think this is often the case. They decide on the policies but because they never actually teach any lessons or see the behaviour themselves they neither know nor care whether those policies have any effect or not.

Whatever some people may say, it is simply not true that all disruption and poor behaviour is down to either trauma or a good kid messing up but not really meaning to. Every teacher knows this. Hell, every kid in every school knows this. Unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning adults somehow choose to forget that kids can indeed be little shits, even if it's only a temporary phase.

I 100% agree with this, but some people will just not accept it. 90 of our kids are fantastic and want to do well. Sadly, 90% of our time is spent on the 10% who refuse to let them learn. So many people will mention SEN children, but I include a vast majority of them in our great kids so it's really not that.

Well in my school, 'isolation', usually for fighting, racist comments, constant disruptions to the learning of other kids and other similar delights, means sitting at the back of another teacher's classroom and disrupting those lessons for he entirety of the day. Or, even better, going to The Haven where our poor pastoral staff have to firefight for the day to avoid physical and verbal abuse. One of the children opened the fire door from there last week, ran into the car park and dragged their key down a couple of cars.

It's awesome.

Still, it's great when people who have never worked in schools come up with a magic solution. (I lay the blame for our school situation firmly at the feet of our SLT, who hide away in their ivory towers and are appalling).

I haven't said my kids shouldn't be sanctioned. You sound like a great teacher who doesn't write them all off as little shits if they mess up

Thank you. It's easy to do that at my school, because behaviour is generally great. But it's worth remembering that there are plenty of students who aren't 'messing up'. They are persistently and deliberately disruptive. Low-level disruption because they don't care, aren't interested in engaging, and would rather chat to their friends and ignore the teacher. Or high-level disruption where they actively seek to cause trouble, sometimes because they have serious issues, sometimes because they simply want to (same effect on the lesson either way).

Whatever some people may say, it is simply not true that all disruption and poor behaviour is down to either trauma or a good kid messing up but not really meaning to. Every teacher knows this. Hell, every kid in every school knows this. Unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning adults somehow choose to forget that kids can indeed be little shits, even if it's only a temporary phase.

Are the only two options a glass isolation box of shame or a medal?

So what do you want OP? Give them a medal instead for misbehaving?

@warmheartcoldfeet I think you’re conflating a couple of different things. The sort of teacher you objected to as a child sounds almost like Severus Snape: no-one likes a teacher who is sarcastic, snarky, rude, judgemental or unfair. But the post you were quoting referred only to strictness: the poster suggested that pupils behaved better for teachers who didn’t hand out punishments for every little thing. It’s entirely possible to be extremely strict and hand out plenty of punishments while still being totally fair.

I’d argue that actually pupils do behave better for teachers who are punishment-happy - but whether they get the most out of their pupils is another matter. I remember forgetting my history textbook one day at school and learning absolutely nothing that lesson because I spent the entire time paralysed with fear that the teacher would notice and give me a detention. (This is one of the reasons why I’m not terribly strict as a teacher: I need pupils to feel comfortable enough with me that they’ll ask for help if they don’t understand something.) No-one learns in an atmosphere of fear, but no-one learns when there’s disruption from others in the class either: clearly a balance has to be struck, but I don’t believe that punishing every tiny transgression is helpful for anyone.

I got sent out of class a couple of times for giggling and talking.
You had to take your desk and put it outside the classroom door and sit there in the corridor. When break time came all the kids would file past and see you looking a bit of a chump sitting outside classroom knowing that you'd been naughty.

I was a good kid though. Positively angelic compared to some kids and what they get up to now. I certainly wasn't scarred by the experience. It was character building. It taught me not to trust authority which was a bloody good lesson.

Back then parents would support the teacher. Now a lot of them would probably complain and starting quoting Human Rights legislation. Ive got a friend whose been a teacher for over 30 years. He says its a bit of a nightmare these days - they're under seige from everyone from the kids to Ofstead.

Look, I'm telling you how I felt as a young teen. I'm trying to explain why I was disruptive and what prevented me from feeling this way.
I doubt I'm the only young person that felt like this.
I was once told I was hated by my PE teacher as I was wearing a SWAPO t-shirt.
I'm not saying that the way I behaved was right. However, there are some teachers out there that rile the children and this carries through to other areas of the school. It's no coincidence that there's often 1 or 2 teachers in every school that ALL the children hate. It's usually because they are ridiculously strict and indiscriminate, rude and judegmental about the children.
I've seen it so many times.
I work in many schools.

But you reserved the right to ruin everyone else's education if you felt that the teacher hadn't demonstrated being respectful according to your personal worldview.

No, teachers that demonstrated being respectful. It shone through in their behaviour and language towards both children and adults and in their attitude towards different communities, races, religions.

Teachers that you judged to be respectful.

And of course, only your opinion mattered to the extent that you would disrupt everyone else's education if you weren't happy.

Literally thousands of children's centres have closed in the last 14 years, Surestart doesn't exist. Youth services don't exist.
Family and children support services have gone down the pan. There are no government led early years, children or family intervention schemes anymore, just the odd charity trying to help.
What support are you talking about?

Teachers that were respectful got my full respect, my full attention and a good standard of work.

Not rubbish. There’s less than there was individually as we now have so many individuals with ‘needs’, but not less overall. The public are needier than ever.

But YOU weren’t affording anyone any respect.

endless resources thrown after them

Rubbish. There are no resources. There are barely any resources even for those that really need them.

No not really. I couldn't abide eye rolling, sarcastic, egotistical, control freaky teachers.
If we were spoken to like humans, given the level of respect other people were afforded, then all was good, not shouted at degraded, belittled or made fun of.
If I saw a teacher treating anyone unfairly - not me I hasten to add - it could have been any other pupil or staff, in or out of the class, or speak in a derogatory or sexist or racist way - I instantly hated them forever. I couldn't get past it.

But we can’t personally intervene and save everyone. It wouldn’t even work. If a kid is being brought up badly and is backed by their useless parents what can we actually do about that?

Society has become a gigantic life support system for people who are frankly black holes of ‘need’ - people who are offered chance after chance and have endless resources thrown after them, but they couldn’t give a fuck and just feel emboldened by the soft touch, supported by those who insist they need even MORE resources to change.

They’re a lost cause, they’re dragging us all down. I don’t really care what happens to them, I just care that those of us who behave responsibly and decently can live our lives in peace.

This was my e school experience. It was the same group in every single lesson. They just couldn't shut up for ten minutes to let the teacher teach and everybody else learn.

Why does the education system revolve around these kids and not the 26+ kids that want to learn?

I'm all for isolating them and, if they still don't improve their behaviour, shipping them out to a specialist dunce school.

To be honest I think it's great. I'm fucking sick of dickhead kids ruling the roost. How about let the kids who want to learn come first for once.