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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think that students have more rights than teachers ( and that this is not good.)

210 replies

malificent7 · 05/02/2018 18:41

If i treated my students the way they treated me id be sacked.

They swear, answer back, are extremely rude and patronising . One even tried to stroke my arm today.....ugggrrr!

OP posts:
TheFallenMadonna · 06/02/2018 21:26

And parents "home educating" their children against their choice will be better for us all in the long run? When the children are grown up?

coldstreams · 06/02/2018 21:28

In all seriousness, if this was enforced, you’d have packs of children roaming around vulnerable to not only predators but one another.

Have you ever seen Eyes of a Child? It’s on YouTube. Disturbing but shows pretty graphically the consequences of excluding children from school and therefore society.

OCSockOrphanage · 06/02/2018 21:29

TBH, Sri Lankan government probably doesn't concern itself with disordered people. If there's no basic provision or entitlement to education in any rudimentary form, then it's not going to be the priority.

Eolian · 06/02/2018 21:30

It's all very well placing the responsibilityfor poor behaviour on teachers, how they teach and how good they are at behaviour management, but schools and their senior leadership need to be realistic.

No school is ever going to beat poor behaviour by telling the teachers they need to just be better at it. At any one time in almost any secondary school, you are simply going to have some weaker and less experienced teachers, some long-term and short-term supply teachers who don't know the kids or the school well. No school has 100% outstanding teachers, and with the current recruitment and retention crisis, they are lucky if they have enough teachers at all.

School discipline policies need to target and punish the bad behaviour of the kids, not punish the teachers, because the kids need to behave whichever teacher they have - scary or nice, experienced or NQT. If some kids can behave well for all teachers, then that should be the expectation for all kids.

coldstreams · 06/02/2018 21:32

Does punishment work?

I’m not sure it does.

See if you read the OP she has said everyone hates her. I would politely suggest in that case she is the problem.

OCSockOrphanage · 06/02/2018 21:32

For the record, I am not advocating such a regime.

And yes, there are packs of feral children roaming around, though not as many as one might fear. The really hopeless, unhelped beg.

coldstreams · 06/02/2018 21:34

Why the comparison then?

I’m not trying to be combative but Sri Lanka has a system where only those with money are educated and those who step out of line are disciplined using physical force.

It’s certainly one way of ensuring behaviour isn’t poor but it’s hardly in any way desirable or indeed remotely realistic. Hitting children doesn’t make them respect you, it makes them frightened of you,

Thecrabbypatty · 06/02/2018 21:37

OCSockOrphanage dear god why did you have to drop that heartbreaking stone in here. We were having a nice, hostile bit of theoretical argy bargey, no personal insults thrown as yet and you had to throw that in. So sad. I think it should make some people really think. Thanks.

TheFallenMadonna · 06/02/2018 21:37

Teacher's, individual, no. The collected staff of a school, there is no alternative at the moment!

Greensleeves · 06/02/2018 21:39

Yes the Sri Lanka perspective certainly makes me think. It makes me think I am grateful that I live in a society in which education is a right and not a privilege, and that we have moved on from beating people into submission.

OCSockOrphanage · 06/02/2018 21:40

I guess I am arguing that there is a balance between complete intolerance of ordinary naughtiness and outright acceptance that bad behaviour has to be tolerated or condoned because of poor parenting, MH disorders et al. Mostly, teachers in the UK are quite good at it, but there are some who feel that a dysfunctional family excuses everything.

TheFallenMadonna · 06/02/2018 21:42

I think the aim is always to try to help the child to manage their behaviour better, not tolerant for condone poor behaviour.

meredintofpandiculation · 06/02/2018 21:42

Also to the poster who suggested that litter picking wouldn't work for her - are you suggesting that teachers not only differentiate teaching but also sanctions?
Some teachers are teaching 150 students per day.

Depends whether you want the sanctions to actually work or not, really, doesn't it?

TheFallenMadonna · 06/02/2018 21:43

Tolerate or condone

coldstreams · 06/02/2018 21:43

But you keep coming back to poor parenting.

That isn’t the only reason children misbehave. It’s unfair and over simplistic to assume that is the case.

Thecrabbypatty · 06/02/2018 21:45

Whatever. I'm done. I'm off to write a cheque to a Sri Lankan orphanage. You lot can sort out education between yourselves Wink

TheFallenMadonna · 06/02/2018 21:46

If only we could...

OCSockOrphanage · 06/02/2018 21:48

In a society where a free education is NOT a right, it is valued. Parents are much stricter with their children. Contradicting or arguing with a teacher, failure to do homework, is grounds for the parents to punish the child, not take its side against the school.

student26 · 06/02/2018 21:50

I once had a parent complain about me to the deputy head once ... because I had asked her daughter to pick up a piece of litter under her desk that wasn't hers. How dare I ask her daughter to help keep HER class tidy like the other children. Teaching sucks at times yet other times I love it. But I agree that the behaviour of students is appalling.

Greensleeves · 06/02/2018 21:54

Yes, but SockOrphanage, neither the parents nor the teachers have any kind of magic formula to elicit obedience from those Sri Lankan students that we are somehow missing. They do it with sticks. We outlawed those.

MissEliza · 06/02/2018 21:54

Removing education perpetuates the problem. I wholeheartedly agree. I can think of individual children I have worked with who exhibited extremely challenging behaviour but if you took the time to get to know them were vulnerable children. However I'm at least three cases, those children ended up leaving education very early without adequate qualifications or basic numeracy or literacy, all because the schools gave up. I honestly think of those kids from time to time. What jobs could they do and how has their experience in school shaped how they see the world? One would be about 30 now and I wonder what happened to him Sad. A former colleague of mine last saw him walking the streets at the age of 16.

MaisyPops · 06/02/2018 22:12

But you keep coming back to poor parenting.
That isn’t the only reason children misbehave. It’s unfair and over simplistic to assume that is the case.
It's not about saying it's always poor parenting but there is a difference between the attitude of some parents i deal with and my parents/my friends parents when we were at school.

E.g. well her skirt was knee length when she left the house this morning - very nice parent, i never mentioned the skirt needing to be knee length just that i shouldn't be able to see her crotch. The thing is, the skirt when rolled down was a good 3 inches abive the knee because the girl got it in a size down to sit higher. So although the parent was lovely, they bought a skirt in the first place whicb was stupidly short.
E.g. Timmy's mum has called up and wants to know what intervention is available for Timmy because he's under achieveing - Actually, Timmy needs to do his classwork to a good standard abd complete his homework. No discussion about extra is happening until he pulls his weight
Timmy's Dad is on the phone demanding to know why his child is in the same set as before when Danny has moved up. Timmy's Dad is annoyed that being in his current set is the reason for Timmy's poor grades - reality is that timmy is very lazy abd we don't teach in sets so Timmy's dad looks very silly trying to correct me on our setting structure and why i should have timmy moved to top set. Timmy's dad wants to speak to SLT because he is still insisting on Timmy moving yo a top set which doesn't exist.

Those attitudes were rare when I was in school. They are becoming increasingly more prevalent.

Most of the behaviour isuses in schools don't stem from trauma or deep rooted issues. They stem from otherwise nice enough kids being a bit lazy, pushing boundaries and getting away with it because it'll be worth working in y11 so why bother in y9? Then by y11 they've got into bad habits, have knowledge gaps and suddenly it's blame the teacher when really the child should have actually put some effort in. There needs to be a culture of personal responsibility and resilience so tjay students know (from home abd school) that THEY are the makers of their future and it is THEIR attitude which will detemine their success.

coldstreams · 06/02/2018 22:19

Do you really think poor behaviour is a recent phenomenon, Maisy?

It isn’t.

I can assure you your generation will have had children like the ones you mention, you just won’t have been friends with them.

In 1980 my parents were pushing a pram with their baby DS (my older brother) and bumped into some friends of theirs with a then 4-year-old DS who was starting at school the following week. “I’ll be right there if the teachers give him any trouble!” said the Dad Hmm

Likewise, I remember a parent coming into my Y5 classroom circa 1990 and screaming at the teacher for telling her son off.

It’s always happened.

cricketballs3 · 06/02/2018 22:20

See if you read the OP she has said everyone hates her. I would politely suggest in that case she is the problem

I don't think I was the problem when in one day I had to remove a couple of students from disrupting a lesson constantly due to constantly gossiping loudly, the same day breaking up a fight, got sworn at for asking a student to follow the rules regarding which stairs to use and finally getting a chair thrown at me for daring to tell another student to be quiet but if I am the problem then I'll happily join the thousands leaving teaching Hmm

coldstreams · 06/02/2018 22:24

Well, you don’t sound as if you like your job or the children much. Perhaps you would be happier doing something else.