School's punishment of all boys in year 6

it is very related to both the sex and gender. School are not acting in accordance with individuals behaviour (regardless of sex M or F) and so are ignoring personal accounatbility for any mean actions towards another group (girls). But in segregating the groups into sex (M/F) and doing a collective punnishment it reinforced binary gender roles. I doubt the teachers who came up with the plan really thought it through. Better to deal with the individuals concerned but that is probably more difficul for the school so they do it as a whole group without considering consquences.

So to recap, some people think children who behaved well should be punished anyway because:

• They should have policed their peers and prevented anyone from misbehaving. Even if they weren't in the vicinity.
• It's character building and will create resilience to be subjected to shit teaching and poor practices.
• Parents who care about behaviour management strategies backfiring in their child's school are pandering to the children who are affected.
• Boys have more responsibility than girls to make sure paid teachers aren't bothered by poor behaviour and in a position where they have to do their jobs well.
• Adults are busy and overwhelmed and can't be bothered with the responsibility of raising kids fairly.

"Probably" is doing a lot of lifting there.

They were all told off because the school decided to punish all for the actions of a few.

And you are right its not that deep. If you want children to act with respect you treat them with respect and as individuals.

You don't teach respect by disrespecting those that have done no wrong.

And frankly even if this was just a cack-handed way of teaching a lesson that was missed or even needed, it should have been given to both sexes and not at the end of a week where treats were promised and missed out on.

Ridiculous comment upthread about boys being taught STEM Subjects whilst the girls are taught cooking etc. It sounds like something from Victorian times up to 1940's maybe. Poster is not living in the world as it is, female med students outnumber males for example

Yes, that was exactly my point in response to the bizarre sexist suggestion that a treat was automatically 'relevant' to girls whilst a punishment was 'relevant' to boys as part of their school education.

It's funny but "I've got far too much to think about" is what you hear at multi-school teacher training events from those teachers who can't be bothered to improve their practice. Because children aren't in a position to make adults listen to them, lots of people get very tempted to tell them to put up and shut up. It's less work, right?

The ironic thing? It's actually less work to do things properly the first time! If kids have a good relationship with their teacher, understand the rules, and know they won't get punished unless they misbehave... astonishingly enough you get better behaviour and have less behaviour corrections to do. If you speak to parents proactively, they too will help you manage behaviour. If you empower your TAs to have good relationships with the children and to speak honestly to parents, you'll have their help as well. Amazing isn't it? If you wait for parents to track you down after you've made half arsed, lazy decisions, hoping the parents will equally not care about their child's response to, and reflections during punishments, then you'll have a conversation brewing that takes a LOT more of your time.

Ridiculous comment upthread about boys being taught STEM Subjects whilst the girls are taught cooking etc. It sounds like something from Victorian times up to 1940's maybe. Poster is not living in the world as it is, female med students outnumber males for example
The innocent boys were given a lesson on respect as a punishment...whatever next, madness.
Girls need a lesson on respect too...at my son' primary a group of girls, year 5 and 6 were ogling the boys changing for a sporting activity in their mobile classroom...if it had been vice versa parents would have been contacted, boys punished. No reprimand for the giggling girls...the young boys were humiliated, embarrassed.
OP is not pandering to her 10 year old son, she is rightly getting the truth of why this happened, supporting her upset son, and, if necessary, calling the teacher concerned to account at HT and governors level...we'll see what transpires

It's very sad that you seem to see considering the feelings of children, empathising and hearing them out when they've been treated unfairly as 'pandering' to them.

I wonder how you would feel if you were upset about somebody's unfair treatment of you, or being blamed for something that you had no involvement with, and your spouse/partner/family/friends waved you away and told you to be quiet and run along, as they didn't want to 'pander to you' by caring about your concerns?

They aren't being given equivalent lessons taught from different perspectives - the girls are being given a promised treat and the innocent boys are losing their promised treat purely because of their sex.

It's no different from, say, if a child who had been bullying other kids happened to be black, the school responding by giving all of the black kids (including those who may have been victims of the bully) a detention to punish them for the one bully's behaviour.

Even with sex and development education, I think a lot of schools are now realising that separating the two sexes is unhelpful. They used to do that back when I was a child and, apart from anything else, it led to a generation of boys (who are now middle-aged men) with no real idea of periods and wondering what on earth girls and women were complaining and 'making a fuss' about.

Your comment is needlessly immature and silly.

Sometimes boys and girls need to be spoken to separately. It would happen with sex ed for example.
There is a real, known problem around mysogny and boys' attitude to girls at the moment - as the conversation around Adolescence highlighted. Maybe the school's approach was heavy handed or misguided or, maybe, just maybe, they know what they're doing better than those of us speculating on a forum do.

The OP is going to update if she finds out more. It will be interesting to hear what that update is.

They are both collective punishment. If we bring up our kids to believe collective punishment is acceptable we deal with the consequences of those beliefs.
Kids grow up to be adults and one day will be running this country
Its a perfectly acceptable and relevant comparison

it sounds more like they were given some kind of lesson relevant to boys

Yet more sexism. Do you also think that girls should only be taught cooking, sewing and housekeeping, whilst the boys learn maths, science and English separately - so that they'll all have the skills that are 'relevant' to their future lives as either the important person in the household or as his domestic service assistant?

And going by that way of thinking, surely the girls who wanted to play football were pursuing something that wasn't relevant to or appropriate for girls - so the nasty boys who stopped them from playing were doing the right thing anyway?!

Were they actually punished though? The OP seems quite vague on this really - it sounds more like they were given some kind of lesson relevant to boys amongst other activities.

I think post- Adolescence, and the conversation around that TV drama, schools are probably paranoid about not dealing with perceived mysogny and are worried about being accused of not calling this behaviour out and providing education around it.

If this is the case (hopefully the OP will clarify once she has found out the facts) then ALL boys should be there because it's relevant education for them all, irrespective of whether they were playing football or not etc

oh how ridiculous. it’s not that deep. they were punished probably because of toxic masculinity. mothers shouldn’t pander to girls or boys when it comes to these situations. just let it go and let your child figure it out. This generation of parents is an absolute mess

@WhenYouSayNothingAtAllI understand that but rules should be applied across the board. There are a lot of ND children in the class and rules need to be consistent to be fair otherwise what’s the point of rules at all?

Some of the people on this thread actually remind me of the 'logic' that the incels use, only the other way around.

I really cannot think of any other reason why boys who were in another part of the playground from the boys playing football should be told that they deserve the same punishment as the nasty sexist footballing boys - just by virtue of also being boys.

I mean, there are a lot of scam call centres based in India - does this mean that I should be cold prejudiced towards and automatically blame all people of Indian ethnicity or heritage whom I meet in my town 'for being part of the wider problem'?

We may not be talking about the gaza strip.
But we are talking about boys, behaviour, toxic masculinity and andrew tate.

You may not consider it a massive deal, but telling boys to "grow up", "get over it", "stop being pandered to by his mother", all toxic traits that you and others are complaining about.

I had hoped that we had got beyond 'boys don't cry', 'boys should hide their feelings' and 'boys being mean is boys being boys'.

But no lets chase them (figuratively) down the path that pushes them towards tate and the incels that are so hated on here and then pretend that our actions had nothing to do with it.

That the head of year or headteacher (probably both) thought that this was a good idea means (IMO) that they are not fit to be in the position of power that they are in.

There are only two sexes. Gender is a load of hooey.

there’s only two genders

oh dear god. please do go bang your drum somewhere else. we are talking about a group of primary kids not the gaza strip fgs. it’s not a massive deal. i have boys and girls and ive got far to much to think about rather than worry about idiotic school events. The boy needs to grow up and stop being pandered to by his mother.

I’m amazed the teacher (or head of year) didn’t tell the parents clearly what had happened at pick up time (or with a letter home).
That would have been the correct course of action. Now there is speculation, assumptions and children telling their parents a version of events which may or may not be true.

Fair enough, and I’ve just noticed how that sounded - sorry. Some parents* *think that way (or did, at my son’s school). Clearly not you though!

I guess it depends on the setup and the school. However, I have seen similar complaints from boys/parents of boys. In two of your examples , is that boys normally end up in trouble because they pushed it too far. Talking… ALL kids talk in class tbh, however , some of them learned to be quiet about it and whisper or to choose their timing. While some boys do it too , it’s predominantly girls. So yes, Suzie might’ve been talking quietly but she wasn’t shouting out (across tables) during input, or laughing out loud or telling jokes, or literally turned around, back to the teacher while they’re explaining something important . Sticks , similar issues. Some kids will just build nests,bug hotels, dig holes etc. Again, these tend to be predominantly girls. Most of the boys will use them as guns, swords, playfight, chase each other with them, throw them at each other, use a branch instead of a stick etc. It always ends up with someone in tears , or worse.

I’ll add another example. Piggy back rides. One class all the children are banned from it. The girls did it sensibly, however the boys used to jump on each other (including when the carrier was unaware) or throw each other on the ground. The girls and the quieter boys miss out on this one, because a big number of boys in the class can’t or won’t do it properly.

It’s hard to get the boys to see there is no unfairness and it’s all driven by their own behaviour, especially when the parents buy into the same narrative. When they’ve been supportive and listened and understood, we’ve actually seen significant changes in behaviour and bans lifted.

It doesn't matter which gender a group punishment targets, or whether the whole class is group punished. Group punishment is incredibly outdated,bleaves children feeling untrusted and a sign of icebergs ahead of the Titanic. There's no way these teachers are well trained.

Oh my gosh! Judgemental much…I have a daughter too. I was clearly pointing out double standards in schools. Try to read the posts before responding

sounds like your the one with a problem