To think - how awful schools really are

[Ippimi]

I remember hating school when I went to school. But that was a long time ago now. I'd kind of forgotten about it.

I work for a training company that usually delivers training programmes to businesses. I usually teach adults. I'm not working in the UK at the moment. I'm working in a different country in Europe.

However we recently got asked to design a training programme for a local school. So for the last couple of weeks I've been going in and talking to the children in a school about a topic.

Going into the school- and looking at it as an adult - I just think it's so so awful. Why do we do this to children

The children are not allowed to move , they're not allowed to talk. The teacher yells at them to be quiet all the time.

I understand this is the school system everywhere. I remember that I hated school as a child and I felt trapped. But when I look at it from an adults eyes, it looks even worse.

when I look at it as an adult, it really seems like emotional abuse of children.

It also seems like such a waste of their young years.

They should be playing and having some fun.

They're not allowed to move or talk. And they get shouted at A lot. It just seems like they're getting indoctrinated to not think for themselves and to follow orders. The school system is just awful and needs to change in my opinion

Hi OP. I work in a school and can totally understand what you're saying. Kids being made to sit still is against their nature. They're meant to move, meant to socialise
Being sat listening and then performing a prescriptive task isn't natural. Even good listeners and instruction followers struggle at times and a large chunk of the rest are labelled - and distressingly believe themselves - "disruptive". I am highly sympathetic to the kids who rail against the school system, the ones who won't "shut their mouths". A lot of them are telling us - through their inability to sit and listen - that the school system doesn't work for them.

Just to add - there are some flipping amazing teachers out there who despite everything manage to find a way, bring the "disruptive" kids along, strike a balance, inspire and educate - they are worth their weight in gold.

I can understand how the op is feeling, although it’s 10 years since I worked in a large secondary school, teachers were struggling then to maintain control of the classroom. I think for many schools the answer is an “army style” approach, yelling at the students and other controlling draconian measures to make sure the students behave. To be honest, with good teachers leaving in droves, I honestly don’t know the alternative. The reality is there are classes of 30+ and there is no other way to realistically keep them under control. Of course it depends on the make up of the class, attitude of students and many other factors, but unless you half the number of students per class i honestly can’t think of a better way when faced with 30 unruly students who have no intention of learning. It hasn’t been helped by raising the school leaving age to 18, yes I know that can mean in school, work with training or a college course. However the reality is it isn’t always easy to find an employer to take on a 16 year old and organise training for them so there are plenty of young people in school who don’t want to be there. I can understand how they feel, as a rebellious 14 year old in the early 70s, eagerly looking forward to leaving school at 15, only for my plans to be thwarted when the school leaving age was raised to 16.

My granddaughter attended a lovely local village school, class of 30, with quite a few “challenging” pupils. She was young for year and was very unhappy at school. Two years ago she started a small independent school and has flourished. When I asked her what she liked better at her new school she said “there’s not shouting all the time (teachers and pupils), everyone wants to learn and you don’t get made fun of if you get things wrong, because we all help each other out if we are stuck on something”.

I live in Spain and teach here, although thankfully not in a state school, also have a 15 year old in school here. On the whole the state school classes are pretty chaotic with low level bad behaviour. Many teachers can’t teach properly because the class won’t stop talking/shouting, kids are constantly late, lots of fights in the playground at high school level etc. Be careful what you wish for. I don’t agree with draconian discipline either, but it’s a fine line these days as children and teens have more “rights” as you call it than ever, both at home and school, and it takes very skilled teachers with a strong leadership team to get the balance right before it turns into chaos like it is in so many classrooms here, or on the flip side something resembling an army boot camp. I take my hat off to the schools that get it right. The problem is manners, good behaviour and self discipline were expected back in the day and teachers didn’t have to behave like Sargent majors to keep a level of harmony in the school, but now kids know and feel they have more rights and less expectations, so they will behave in a way that comes naturally to them - rowdy - given the chance. I don’t envy state school teachers one bit.

@LaDamaDeElche , we had a holiday in and Air b and b opposite a Primary school. There seemed to be lots of unstructured running about kicking a ball. The kids not involved in football were mooching about for quite some time.
I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing. But it was interesting to observe.

Yes, my 13 y.o. tells me that exactly what you describe is her daily experience and the things she tells me sound exactly like bullying but coming from the teachers / school regime. I know several other schools are the same, and only one locally that isn't. It is horrendous, and it's stupid. The kids are just miserable. There is hardly any time for education because the teachers are constantly telling pupils off for barely anything.

I work in lots of schools and think that mainstream education in this country works well for children with no trauma, neurodiversity, or other additional needs. If young people have anything extra going on the schools are so stretched they resort to totalitarian rules - including isolation which i hate with a passion- rather than addressing the underlying difficulties.

2 of my children did extremely well in mainstream education. My 3rd has struggled so much that he now thinks the reason he cant do well in school is his brains fault. How sad?

Also, and I know that young people say some horrible things to school staff, but the amount of times I've heard teachers screaming at kids or speaking to them like utter shit is wild.

Do you guys remember the 2015 "Chinese school" documentary where they had Chinese teachers come and teach Chinese style in UK classrooms.

No I don’t…what happened?!

i remember a ch4 mini series around the same time where they created a kind of “future school” with what educators said would be subjects and structure that the curriculum should be working towards. But I can’t remember much about it, what the pupils learnt or how the classes were structured etc

I mean the kids taught the Chinese method ended up getting better marks. Also I remember something about how the teachers said that students in china are better behaved.

The Chinese teacher expected them to sit down and work. Its not surprising the results were better.

This method was recommended to the UK schools in 1982 in the Cockroft Report but was ignored for decades.

Parents here would not accept it.

I completely agree OP!

Sorry I’m late to the party but wanted to add some points. I guess documentaries may show children being removed from a class if they are disrupting the learning of others but of course children can talk at appropriate times. Do you think it’s ok for kids to have a chat while the teacher is trying to teach at the whiteboard? No, because that would disrupt others and the chatters obviously aren’t learning either. Then try and teach when 30 kids are all having a chat. Of course there have to be rules about talking but that’s not all through every lesson. As a teacher most of the practise you’ve described is not appropriate. “Shouted at a lot”? and “Close your mouth” particularly worry me. I would raise this with the headteacher as this particular teacher may need some up to date training and/or support. Please be reassured most schools are not like this. I would say 50% of my teaching is through practical fun activities and outdoor learning, where children are encouraged to work together, negotiate and ‘experience’ the learning.

Your not wrong at all. Most people saying you are obviously haven't worked in a school for a long time or ever

I have for a long time and just this year alone I've seen
-kids pass out from not being allowed to remove a blazer
-not allowed a drink
-be denied the toilet even during a lunch break
-kids not having long enough in a lunch break to even get something to eat
-one class only having two practical science lessons in 8 months because SOME were messing about
-girls not allowed to go change a pad as it was in lesson time and that's not when toilets are for
-kids being given detention for their pen running out of ink and their spare not working
-detention for a kid stepping out of line up to hand a dropped book to someone else that hadn't noticed

I could go on but from what I've witnessed schools are becoming really horrible places for kids and not something we should be striving for

They don't reflect the real world

A pen running out would not result in being reprimanded at work

I wouldn't be reprimanded for stopping another human and handing them something they had dropped

No wonder kids are depressed

They have hardly any practical lessons as it's all about the maths and English.

Clubs at lunchtime are poi toes as they only have a half hour to eat, use the bathroom and then get back to the part of the school they need for the next lessons

They get punished for putting their hands up in some schools or asking questions

2000 kids and I hear no laughter throughout the day or debate or passion

Learning is more than sitting in a room copying off a smart board

Well it should be

You really should go and work somewhere else; you’ll then realise that this is not the norm at all.
Where the hell do you work, anyway?
Dotheboys Hall?

To me this sounds like what people make schools out to be, not what they actually are.

" schools" it's a massive topic isn't it?
What is expected at Primary level is insane. Children haven't developed enough to take in the concepts. They are exhausted at the barrage of informationa and then when it goes wrong they are deemed to have some sort of syndrome.

Secondary schools obsess about doing up your top button.

Many children and teens suffer from constipation because they are afraid to use toilets.

I just wanted to comment on this. Several posters on this thread have written that the OP was lying, about being alone with the class.

First of all she works in a different country to the UK. So rules and safeguarding practices that happen in schools in the UK, do not happen in every other country in Europe.

I worked for two years as an ESL, (English as a second language), teacher for a language school in Italy.

Mostly, I taught English classes to children that came to our own language school.

However on Fridays, I went out to teach English in a public school in Italy.

I'm not exactly sure of the funding for this. But I believe that the government funded this, and the schools don't pay anything. It's part of a programme to improve the English abilities of young Italian children. So the government pay my language school, and my language school sent a teacher (me) out to the public Italian schools.

When I was there, the class teacher was meant to stay in the room with me. This was advised by the programme. My boss said to me "the teacher will stay in the room with you".

Every week that I went out to the school, the teachers, (I had three classes), made some excuse to leave. They had to photocopy, mark homework, get a cup of tea.

So i was left on my own with thirty six year olds every week.

Just to say that it does happen. If you go out to a school in Italy anyway, you can definitely be left totally on your own with children.