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?

I'm not saying the same about a plate of whipped cream, in front of others.

This is sitting in some water, and no one (apart from the wetter) was aware, according to the OP.

I'm not saying ignore is a rule for everything, but as anyone who has had a toddler knows, if you can ignore bad behaviour, at times, and pick your battles, it's a heck of a lot more effective than going OTT at every opportunity.

You cannot make direct parallels between adult life and children's. Children are not mini-adults, but are still in training for adult life - that is why we have an age of criminal responsibility below which children are not legally responsible for their actions. One of the most important lessons children have to learn in order to fit into adult society is that everyone has to accept legitimate authority: for children, this is represented by parents and, at school, teachers. For adults, it is obviously the law, backed up by the criminal justice system. Eight-year-olds are still at the stage where they are being taught that this authority exists. Sadly, many children are now going to school without any sense of having to obey rules for the good of the majority or having to forgo their own desires to fit with a group. The person taxed with controlling , educating and leading the large, disparate group of children that constitutes a class is the teacher snd she cannot do this without the respect and obedience of the pupils. The kind of action described by the OP strikes directly at the teacher's authority and status by making her a figure of fun -a legitimate target for practical jokes to provide a moment of amusement for the prankster and his/her friends.

It was to protect the status and authority of the teacher that the sanction was imposed - to send a clear message that her position with regard to her class was inviolate, even though it necessarily penalised the innocent members. This upholding of the teacher's position by the school - and it should be seen as the leadership of the school acting together to protect its standards -is in the best long-term interests of the whole class as, without recognised authority and respect, the teacher cannot lead or teach effectively.

Crikey. You tactically ignore low level stuff. Like if I pulled my roller board down and there was a penis drawn on it, I'd just rub it off. Not a deliberate act of humiliation against the person of an authority figure. That's not low level! It'd be thumb tacks next.

It's a wet chair.

I've missed the post where Op said it was known to be a 'deliberate act of humiliation'.

This would be something I would be in speaking to the school about, because I don't believe collective punishment is how you enforce a sense of authority and membership of society, and I think getting that right is more important than the 3Rs to get right first time, in childhood.

nocheese, so somehow you've deduced that no-one in the class became aware of the fact that the teacher's clothes were wet apart from the teacher and the child who poured the water on her chair? So are you assuming she pretended not to have noticed through the entire lesson and just carried on regardless?

No I am not saying it should be ignored; I think that is the teacher's choice depending on the circumstances. But I don't think it is ever defensible to react by punishing the innocent. The teacher can ignore it or try to find the culprit or ask the head to talk to the class about respect or something else, but not impose a collective punishment.

poster PourquoiTuGachesTaVie

That's the ideA so the bad children are not seen as funny or smart are resented and quickly outed

Being the class clown is not so funny when everyone hates you for having to serve your punishment people soon stop laughing

No, I don't know. OP has said that most of the kids were unaware of the whole thing until the punishment, and there was no class laughing etc, so I'm basing it on that. I don't know what she did. I know what I would do, which is essentially front it out (teach from sitting on the desk, avoid turning round)- I don't know what she did at the time, but it can't have been much if most didn't know it had happened until the next day?

I'm only going on what the OP said about this incident. I am opposed to collective punishment of the innocent in all incidents, so that can be extrapolated, but please don't extrapolate what I have said about this story of a wet chair, described by OP, onto other incidents (eg. the cream on a plate, which was totally different, and collective punishment wasn't relevant to that, so I don't know why it was brought into the discussion?)

Doesn't always work out like that though when the rest of the class is too scared of the naughty ones to stick their own necks out and the "snitch" or "grass" who doesn't feel it's fair to be punished for something they didn't do starts getting picked on.

I explained why I brought the custard pie incident into the discussion, nocheese.

I think you'll find the post on the previous page.

Because me saying water dries is just like a plate of cream? Yeah, still don't get it.

When I said where the post was, I thought you'd actually read it, nocheese!

As you didn't, here it is again:

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).

teach from sitting on the desk, avoid turning round

I'm guessing you're not a teacher if you think this is practical advice.

Yeah I read it. Still don't get the link between water (which, honestly, is harmless, unlike the blood/pee/vomit I have had thrown at me at work) and an incident unrelated to the OP, not involving collective punishment, witnessed and not using water.

I am making no comment here in that case. I am commenting on the incident described by the OP (most of the class not knowing it had occurred until they were shouted at the next day, so it's unlikely she was 'humiliated', just wet), and the chosen punishment by the school.

No, I'm not a teacher.

I'm saying that when similar stuff happens in my job, I have to apply the 'oh well, onwards and upwards' mentality, and thinking how I could apply that in the classroom. She must have managed somehow, this teacher, as most remained unaware she was wet!

I'm not sure why posters keep referring to "a wet chair" - surely it's a wet teacher we're concerned with. The OP herself refers sniggeringly to her having "a wet bum" - is it likely that a class of eight-year-olds would react any differently? This "joke", if unpunished would definitely have led to the humiliation of the teacher in the eyes the children, even if they did not describe it in those terms - the teacher would definitely have been seen as a figure of fun, at the mercy of the malicious tricks of some pupils. Not to mention the sheer discomfort of having to wear cold, damp clothes while trying to teach, possibly with rhe damp patch actually visible.

nocheese, it's the response to the teacher that's similar! I stated that quite clearly in my post. You are minimising the effect of the incident on the teacher on the grounds that you think its no big deal to have to wear wet clothing for a whole lesson, while teaching. In the same way that supporters of the boy who threw the custard pie felt the teacher should have treated it as a prank and not made a fuss.

nocheese, if you have to deal with blood, urine and vomit in your job, I feel for you, but presumably it's part of the job?

I'm guessing you work in healthcare in some capacity?

Sitting in a wet chair should not ever be part of the job of a teacher.

Oh, I see. Yes, I do minimise a wet bum, unashamedly. I wouldn't minimise cream in the face, being as they are two completely different things.

I minimise it, because the OP has said most of the boys were unaware she'd had a wet bum, until the HOY shouted about the wet bum.

I'll throw this out there: did the HOY shouting about Miss X's wet bum not make this more humiliating (as more people now know about it, and find it mildly amusing, including parents) than if it had been handled differently?

Being assaulted is never 'part of the job'.

Now who's minimising?

And this is one of the many, many reasons no amount of money or other incentive could ever induce me to become a teacher. Managing the children would be really tough.... coping with the various demands/commandments of many of the parents- an absolute nightmare. No matter what they do, they'll upset someones sense of "justice".

Group punishment isn't entirely "fair" but this incident cannot go unaddressed. I don't think the HOY saying "It's not a nice thing to do, it has upset your teacher. Please don't do so again" would quite cut it. I don't imagine the person who was responsible did it because they thought it was a pleasant thing to do to their teacher. The rest of the class probably know that this isn't nice behaviour too. I really doubt that none of them know about it- I doubt many 8 year olds could keep this sort of thing to themselves.

If this happened at DDs school, I wouldn't create a massive fuss.

I am gobsmacked that parents on here think a teacher should just accept this sort of behaviour without making much of a fuss, let alone some that think it's not that serious/a little amusing.

Parents want discipline, but so many parents don't want their child disciplined in any way which doesn't match how they would do things. Many seem to think it appropriate to pick and choose which school rules/disciplinary actions their children must follow, which I also find surprising.

There's a reason standards of behaviour and discipline is slipping. I can't help but wonder if this kind of parental attitude may be partly to blame.

No cheese, if you have blood and vomit thrown at you regularly, I can see why you might think that a wet bum is no biggie. You've had your expectations ground down by a constant diet of appalling behaviour. I once worked in a school where teachers being assaulted happened so regularly that people weren't shocked by it any more. That's not necessarily a good thing. You should expect to be treated better.

And besides, if more teachers manage to impart the impression that authority figures should be treated with respect, then perhaps fewer people will be throwing vomit at you.

I hope people who throw vomit at you don't get away with it, btw.

I think it is absolutely right that a teacher should be able to make a fuss about this. I do not think that people who are innocent should be punished.

I'm a lawyer and I work for a charity that addresses social justice issues; that clearly affects my views on this. But before I was a lawyer, I was a teacher. I felt the same way then.

I teach.
I have never, in twenty years, had any child do something so disrespectful.
To minimise this kind of thing is not doing the perpetrator any favours; he or she needs to understand that such a 'prank' is unacceptable
Would any of us sneak into the boss's office and pour water on it? It's like something out of the Beano.
However, I don't do group punishments. Would feel very guilty punishing children I knew were totally innocent.
But if you genuinely don't know who did it, you can't just keep back, say, the children you think might have done it.
And you don't want to waste teaching time sorting out the issue.
So maybe this teacher has decided to keep them all back over lunch time and get them to name names or say 'I don't know', or ask them individually for info one by one.
What saddens me most is the jumping to conclusions that this teacher is doing the wrong thing. None of us actually know that.
If I were OP, I would simply have a chat with the teacher and ask what the current situation was. It's not hard.

I don't think I've ever issued a whole-class punishment, and on paper I'd agree that they're unfair and divisive. However, in this case it's highly likely that there was more than one pupil involved. And quite possibly a fair few of the class were in on the joke and keen to watch how it panned out. Maybe, they were even egging the main culprit on?

If this is the case, then a half hour detention for the whole class is not so outlandish. And for those who were not involved at all (on this occasion) it does no harm for them to see that the school will not tolerate such behaviour.