punishing the whole class, AIBU to make a fuss?

[georgeousgeorge]

So, some bright spark in DS1's class (he's 8 / y4) decided to pour water all over the teachers chair, she sat on it. 35 boys are "in the frame" and have been shouted at by the HOY.

Unless someone confesses they all get a half hour detention.....with the view being that the HOY assumed they all knew about it and that someone is going to dob in the culprit.... However none of them seems to know who did it, my DS certainly doesn't have a clue.

This is teaching my very good DS precisely nothing, he's polite, helpful, good reports, and has never been in trouble.

However, I do support the school, it is generally good.

However for the first time I'm turning into THAT mum - AIBU to make a fuss?

No hand dryer in our toilets, and it isn't that warm really, not for drying clothes. And the teacher cannot just go and leave the classroom anyway, what with needing to supervise the class.

And tbh it really isn't the point.

As a side issue I dont think that parents do need to support their childrens' school in everything it does. We have frequently agreed with our DCs when they have been upset by this sort of thing. What we have also done is explained to them that they need to be very careful about even minor rule infringements as their school would be very happy to come down hard on one of the 'good kids' to make a very visible example. We have never said this is right just that it is what it is.

BTW all three of my teenage DCs have exemplary school discipline records with the only detentions any of them have had to go to being whole class ones (about which they the felt a huge sense of injustice).

Threads like this make me feel really old. It is no wonder that schools struggle with discipline and that standards are falling with the lack of support shown by some parents.

Indeed, you go to school to learn, not to harass teachers and misbehave. On the way to greater knowledge, you might learn a few valuable life lessons. One of them is that careless people will affect your life. Our school is an academy, and as well as an academic curiculum they have a behavioural one about social responsibility. I think it is called life skills. There is nothing sad about it, even if it sounds a bit pathetic.

The teacher can choose to punish the whole class, and you can choose to ignore the punishment. That is up to you. The punishment is irrelevant (and half an hour of detention is mild), the point that is being made by the school is that brattish behaviour will not be accepted, and bad things will happen if it goes on.

I don't agree at all with the notion that eight-year-olds would see a teacher as "weak" or "lose respect" for him/her as a result of a communal detention - unless, of course, this idea is put into their minds by fulminating parents. They are much more likely to realise that there are certain people who are imbued with a legitimate authority during school hours who cannot be treated as the butt of practical jokes and that any attempt to subvert the situation will meet with a punitive response.

As several posters have already pointed out, half an hour's detention is not a severe punishment and all the "innocent" children can console themselves that there is nothing personal about it -they are all in the same boat. But it sends out a clear message - much needed in these times - that teachers cannot be humiliated and discomfited with impunity.

I would be very unhappy with the use of collective punishment- there is a reason we don't use it for adults, and that is because it is unreasonable.

Sometimes, the perpetrator of an undesirable act is not found, it's unfortunate, but that's life. The teacher needs to deal with that. In all probability, the child who did it will do something else stupid, and will get caught.

I do feel wetting a teachers seat is unreasonable, but very Malory Towers-esq, and therefore just one of those things for teachers. I think the most effective thing, if there wasn't sniggering from the class, and no one, in fact, knows who did it, or that it was done (apart from whoever did it) the best thing to have done would be to ignore it. With no reaction, why would the pupil bother again? And if they do bother again, they risk being caught by a newly alert staff.

Can I clarify- is your DS at an all boys' school?

chunderella

As you re-posted it I take it that you agree with it.

The school system isn't perfect and neither are its available sanctions but at least we are willing to change.

YANBU

This would not be allowed to happen to adults.The police have to find the actual purp, the legal system doesn't just punish everyone who 'might' have done it.

therefore just one of those things for teachers.

Fuck that. Pranks and humiliation are not just one of those things for teachers.

I have heard it all now - going around with damp clothes all day, having someone (or more than one) in your class who wants to humiliate you are 'just one of those things' for teachers? . Do these kind of parents realise the shockingly detrimental impact their children have on the education of their peers?

Whole class punishments are not ideal, but neither are they the end of the world as long as they are not a regular occurrence.

And, yes, school is absolutely the place where people can start learning that 'shit happens', but it is how you deal with it that is important.

Sitting in a bit of water is annoying, but much much worse things happen to me as a matter of course at work, sometimes as an accident, sometimes not.

When I knelt in pee in an emergency last week, I got up, rinsed, sprayed some impulse, and moved on. It sucks, but it doesn't justify using unfair punishments on children. This is definitely 'two wrongs don't make a right' territory, and the school need to take the high road.

I just don't see why ignoring wouldn't have been the most effective option.

And, yes, in a class I'll bet there's always one pupil who wants to humiliate their teachers. Whatever happens, whether a teacher is actually humiliated is down to the teacher.

I'm not saying the pupil who wet the seat should do unpunished- if they are caught/confess. I'm saying the 30 odd pupils who knew nothing about it should not be punished, and that by punishing them, the teacher is putting themselves in the wrong.

Nocheese, if it was the headteacher who sat in the water would you still be recommending ignoring it? A visiting dignitary? How far up the food chain would you need to go before recommending taking it seriously?

For someone sitting in water? I'd expect the Queen/Pope/whoever to have more dignity and self-respect than to give any little oik the pleasure of knowing they'd got to them.

It's water, it'll dry. Worse things happen.

So kids can do what they like to teachers and teachers should simply rise above it?

It doesn't matter to whom it happens; you don't punish the innocent. This is a basic principle of law in any decent society. Why would we make an exception for children?

It's water, it'll dry. Worse things happen.

This is starting to sound like the incident earlier in the year when an A level student pushed a plate full of whipped cream into the face of an unsuspecting teacher coming through a door way.

As I remember, there was a good deal of vitriol directed towards her and people saying she should see it as the "prank" that it obviously was (not).

Scone, I'm not advocating collective punishment. The suggestion was that the teacher should have just ignored the whole thing.

They do this at my sons cadets works a treat usually the peer group put pressure on the culprit not to repeat their behaviour

And if any others are coving that soon fades

I wouldn't make a fuss about it- I would save that for important things.