To wonder what sort of "child" thinks it is ok to behave like this?

[KimiGaveUpStarbucks4Lent]

Picked DS2 up from school today, popped in to a shop then headed home,saw a group from the local sink high school out side the burger bar (nothing unusual about that often out there cussing and smoking) seemed to be a bit of a debate going on between one of the boys and a girl, the boy and two of his mates walk in to the shop clearly not wanting to talk to the girl and 3 other boys follow them in and beat the shit out of them and threw chairs and anything else they could get hold of at them.
The owner shouting at them to stop it got told to "fuck off pakie" and as I rushed my 9 year old across the road to the safty of my place of work one of the little fuckers sods went to chuck a chair through a plate glass window.

My boss was on the phone to the police as my son watch it all in shock (although he loved the police cars that raced in).

The local sink school has had more money thrown at it then any other school in the area, it has been on report, got a new head x 5 or 6 changed its name 4 times and is now in partnership with a very outstanding school to try and drag it out of the gutter.

I watch these kids and I think why even bother TBH when they behave like animals.

I live in Surrey so it is not as if we are in the bronx. I know one thing it will be a cold day in hell before I ever let DS2 near that school, even if I have to move house for 2011.

What the hell do kids like these learn at home if they think this is a way to live.. hell in a hand cart.

Blimey - what school was it (hopes deparately it's not the one dd willg o to...). Initials will do!

Actually i don't think there is a burger bar near dd's school....

Latest name initials T.K.

I don't think you can necessarily judge the whole school by the behaviour of a few of the pupils. I do agree that the behaviour was appalling and must have been very frightening or you and your DS, hope you are OK now.

I would contact the head of the school and report the incident.

I am a softy but I hate seeing kids described like that. Children are not born evil or screwed up like that, they become like that trough circumstances that normally they are too young to control. I work in a school very much like the one you describe, and schools can do very little to stop this behaviour, especially by secondary school. The demographic (i.e.: type of people that live the the catchment) does not change no matter how much money gets thrown at it (and the school cannot decide how to spend this meaning it goes on whatever random crap the government decides it should). The children come in with very little hope. The majority at ours have learned these attitudes from their parents, if they have significant ones in their lives. Many won't know a working adult. And many (at our school anyway) receive nothing in the way of love, guidance, support, appreciation...all the things we take for granted. When I hear some of the stories I kind of think to myself, "well, that explains that then." There are no expectations placed on them.

I know that there are some who break this mould and somehow learn to place expectations on themselves, but if you genuinely have no-one to learn our idea of good behaviour from, where do you get it? The exceptions don't prove the rule.

Again, I know I'm a softy who will get shot down for this opinion but I do think that in many cases you can't blame the child, as that is all they are. Blame whoever or whatever (society?) made them that way.

yes lequeen, kill the scum...

"Why even bother when they behave like animals"? Because they are children, not not animals. And they deserve a system that bothers with them, regardless of how they behave.

Routine poor behaviour from large numbers of the student body points not to the fact that the children themselves are all feral immoral monsters, but to the fact that the school is in such chaos and disarray that the children are fully aware that there are no real boundries or consequences for bad behaviour and are not being educated, guided and supported as they should be.

If the school (which you describe as "sink") has been beset by so many problems that the headship has changed five times recently, that speaks volumes about how much the staff are struggling and this obviously will impact on the pupils' experience and expectations of how they should (or can get away with) conduct themselves there.

Put it this way - if you worked in a company that was going down the pan, where no-one cared if you did a stroke of work or not, where there were no consequences if you didn't follow company procedure, where it seemed that everyone around you was on the make or taking the piss, would you be a model employee?

Their behaviour was unacceptable. But so is washing your hands of them when the system has already let them down horribly.

Kurri, TBH there is always some sort of thing going on with this school.
A few years ago one of the teachers was fired for allegedly getting one of his students in the family way.

Every morning you see these kids going to school fag in one hand and redbull/sausage roll/other junk food in the other.

They shout at each other with the sort of language that would make a Liverpool docker bluss.

I grew up in Brent, in a one parent family, went to one of the rough schools but in a million years would not carry on like this.
I had a breakfast before I left home, I never smoked (still don't) and the thought of yelling every cuss word I knew (and I knew most of them) along the street let alone calling a shop keeper a paki while beating shit out of someone in his shop while smashing it to bits would not have entered my head because my mother would have killed me if I had ever even thought of behaving in such a way.

DS2 is fine now (and as I used to work in a put I have dealt with worse, but not from 14/15 year olds) I have a 13 year old and he would not see the light of day for a month if he ever behaved like these kids. (thankfully he is in another school CofE half hour away on the bus).

Are press gangs not PC now days

I used to work for mcdonalds when I was at uni and there are so many incidents like this - we used to get our drive thru window smashed in weekly- and the little bastards never have to pay for the cost of replacing it

Excellent post, MrsC.

"I watch these kids and I think why even bother TBH when they behave like animals."

Perhaps the point could be to, I don't know, teach them not to behave like animals?

Interesting that the first thing you criticise is the school, not the parents. Neither the teachers nor the parents were actually in the chicken shop at the time; so why is the school most at fault?

Genuine question, not trying to bait you Kimi.

Mrsc2010 most of these kids are from outside the area as no parent round here wants their kids in this school

Not trying to bate at all.

We have 2 local high schools and it is only ever the kids from this one that cause problems.

These "kids" are about 14/15 and should know better.

x post with about a million others

The sort of "child" who thinks it is ok to behave like this is the product of an ongoing series of people letting them down:

their families
their primary school
their community
their GPs
their secondary school

you reap the benefits of the society you create and we have created a two-tiered society where we no longer believe in community

How can they know better if they have never been taught any better? If everything they see and learn reinforces that this behaviour is normal and desirable then they are acting in an appropriate manner according to what they know.

We have to bother with them, because they need to learn that it is not appropriate behaviour. The trick is figuring out how to do this. On one side you are going to have people demanding harsher punishments and on the other you are going to have people demanding no punishments and only softly softly, poor dears type actions.

I have no idea what the answer is, but you can't make them disappear so they have to be bothered with.

But what made you blame the school and not the parents?

"[...]would not have entered my head because my mother would have killed me if I had ever even thought of behaving in such a way."

You attribute your good behaviour to your mother not your school- so why not attribute their bad behaviour to their parents?

Good post Mrs C. I think one of the answers is that schools with a high intake of these children need to have their focus on creating an atmosphere you could get in a loving family - compassion, warmth, tough love, guidance, praise etc. rather than just ploughing through the curriculum. That way they might have more of a chance in life.

Yes Kimi, but by the sounds of things the one parent you did have played their role? Many don't have even that, hence getting fed at school or junk food. You say 'why bother'...but without meaning to sound rude, what do you do for them in the first place bar judge?

I am geuinely not 'having a go' at anyone because when I first started at the school I am at I had many of the standard preconceptions and truly believed that I would struggle to 'feel' for the children that crossed my path. I had a lovely, smug, privately educated childhood and never really came across children like the ones you describe bar seeing situations like the one you mention. But I can genuinely say that within weeks my preconceptions had been dismissed thoroughly, and thank god because I think I must have been a thoroughly hard, narrow minded person to have felt the way I did. Now that I know far more about the issues facing many (this isn't a teeny minority to be honest) of our children I find it really hard to hear them spoken about so harshly and dismissively.

I don't know what we do about it though bar keep trying and caring. Not caring will only make it worse. At school we try to show the children that we care through every aspect of school life, far more so than you would find at many 'Oustanding', 'middle-class' schools. There are many, many people within the school and associated groups (i.e. social workers and community police) who work tirelessly (and heartbreakingly)to try to improve the lot of children like this. But it very often doesn't work.

There is where I get stuck. If we can't help the children they will possibly produce more to feed into the same system that screwed them up. They have never seen real, proper, loving parenting so they don't know how to do it for their children. Ad nauseam.

Oh, and at 14/15 it is very easy to think that the world doesn't give a shit about you, so why give a shit about it. This is especially easy when no-one who matters (parents for example) actually does give a shit, if you see what I mean. If you have not been taught the norms and the benefits you receive from following them, how will you know to/have the incentive to follow them?

There are always exceptions that can figure it out for themselves, but that doesn't make them the rule to judge all others by.

Whatever you insist, not all the children at the school will be like this. That is why it is still worthwhile spending time and money trying to make a difference there.

LeQueen
I expect my dh, with a family background of neglect, poor behaviour and attendance at school and lack of respect for authority would have been press ganged and become canon fodder in your ideal world.

Fortunately, someone took the time and effort to mentor him and he is now a very successful and productive man.

Your post is smug and nasty, and I sincerely hope you are not as awful as it makes you sound.

Ok, they should know better.

Firstly, I'm willing to bet that lots and lots of the pupils are decent young people, but they are all being unfairly judged as terrible based the behaviour of the small numbers you see engaging in anti-social behaviour out of school hours. So many of them do know better and do behave better.

Secondly, as you've identified yourself, "...most of these kids are from outside the area as no parent round here wants their kids in this school". So what are the parents of the children who end up at this "sink" school like, Kimi?

Basically what you're saying is that the parent who give a shit do their best to send their children elsewhere. The kids who have parents who do not value eduation, or are intimidated by the complex admissions system due to language or education barriers or are anti-social themselves are not able or willing to send their children elsewhere or work with the school to improve the current situation for pupils.

If the school is not providing them with clear boundries and and expectations of behaviour and the parents aren't either, then it's no surprise that those who behave in the way you have described don't know better.

I'm just saying that huffing, "why bother" and "they should know better" is no solution.

Knowing that you go to a 'sink' (word picked from OP) school that all others look down on and judge you by is hardly going to do much for your self-esteem. And whatever people say, self-esteem is one thing normally sorely lacking in this kind of child, leading to many of the problems described.