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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to be shocked about the amount of suppo rt a teacher gets when they nearly kill a pupil

349 replies

2shoes · 30/04/2010 08:26

now I know it sounds like the boy was not a good kid, but he was 14, the teacher nearly killed him, yet on here and in the media the teacher has been getting so much support.
yet a boy was nearly killed...........
(prepares to be flamed)

OP posts:
sleepingsowell · 30/04/2010 10:01

pofacedagain - school should NOT be there to 'help damaged children'

Health and social services are there to do that

School is there to educate not be an extra social service

of course teachers help children in all sorts of ways but that is not their role, their role is to educate.

SwissCheeseIsHolyCheesus · 30/04/2010 10:01

Marine, the conversation is bad because the only reason she wanted them to stop was so she didnt have to get off her arse to get her fags n beer from a shop further away

The amount of casual racism/ discrimination in my area is shocking, more so because of the 'it dosent matter' attitude of the parents. It bloody does matter, and it's those attitudes which are making little shits !

ScreaminEagle · 30/04/2010 10:02

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TheHeathenOfSuburbia · 30/04/2010 10:02

Would we feel the same if this story was about a man whose wife had 'goaded' him into beating her half to death?

sleepingsowell · 30/04/2010 10:03

actually I think there is sympathy out there for men who are the victims of domestic abuse, yes. Just like there is for women.

Reallytired · 30/04/2010 10:03

The man has been tried and convicted of GBH by a proper court. He has been punished and served a longer jail sentence than many men do for other serious crimes. He was aquitted of attempted murder. It has been a proper trial rather than trial by mumsnet.

Personally I think the schools management team should have been in the dock. They caused the situation to happen.

Maybe the parents of these children should take some responsiblity as well. They have failed to teach their SH!TS right from wrong.

wannaBe · 30/04/2010 10:04

so imagine this teacher hadn't snapped. Imagine that this behavior had continued, that the teacher had had a breakdown in front of the children, and that they had filmed him having a breakdown. Imagine that he had then gone home and committed suicide, and that this footage then made it on to youtube and thus into the media.

Would those of you sympathizing with them still be saying that they were just misunderstood? That they must have had horrible home lives and that we shouldn't judge them?

The problem here is that the outcome of these actions have distorted peoples' view of what was really going on. If you take out the end result, i.e. where the teacher snapped and hit a child, if you don't think about that, what is your view then of what the children did?

ScreaminEagle · 30/04/2010 10:04

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Pofacedagain · 30/04/2010 10:06

Well it is clear that the perceptions of children on this thread are pretty similar to those in Hard Times.

McSnail - it just does not work in practice though, the 'what's best for the child' It sounds nice but it is absolutely impossible given teacher work load, funding, class sizes and general attitude towards 'control' in the classroom. Also the lack of specialist teachers in music and drama, the lack of individual attention, it is just impossible to apply nicey nicey guidelines to children in the current system, despite some wonderful individual teachers, who are also let down by the current system and risk massive stress and burn out.

fiveisanawfullybignumber · 30/04/2010 10:06

I feel sorry that the teacher was put in that situation, and sorry that the child was seriously hurt, but what those kids did was unnaceptable. I have teenagers, so don't tar all of them with the same brush, but they were brutal & calous.
DD2 befriended a lad with Aspergers in her first year at senior school. Frequently the other boys & a few girls in their year group would goad, push around and generally bully this poor lad till he snapped. They weren't happy till they had caused him to lash out, then complained that this boy had hit them.
My DD would always try to explain the situation to the teachers, but eventually the boy was asked to leave because of his (provoked) outbursts. In my mind the school should have curbed the other kids behaviour and protected this boy more, similar situation to the teacher???
I truly believe that parents need to take more responsibility for their childrens upbringing & behavior, some should be forced to attend parenting classes.
Namby pamby parenting is useless, kids need structures & guidelines, just because they are teenagers doesn't mean they should be allowed to hang out and do whatever they like. This just leads to a society where everyone only thinks for themselves, and a nation of selfish youth with no moral values or respect.

ScreaminEagle · 30/04/2010 10:06

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SwissCheeseIsHolyCheesus · 30/04/2010 10:07

Can go halfs if you want 2shoes ??

There must be a buy one get one free hitman out there somewhere !!

OrmRenewed · 30/04/2010 10:08

What's wrong with feeling sympathy for him?

Pofacedagain · 30/04/2010 10:09

What's wrong with feeling sympathy for the children?

OrmRenewed · 30/04/2010 10:10

And the situation needs to be addressed. Yes that particular teacher was vulnerable and shouldn't have been in that position but the problem isn't there. The problem is that children seem to think it's Ok to treat a classroom like some sort of bear pit, with the teacher as the bear and the pupils as the dogs. Vile! That is the problem not the fragility or otherwise of the teachers.

MarshaBrady · 30/04/2010 10:12

Po, if you were the teacher, would you feel sympathy for children who told you to "fuck off and die"? etc etc

(as described in Sterry's post).

OrmRenewed · 30/04/2010 10:12

I feel sympathy for the poor 14yr old boy regardless of his behaviour - no-one deserves that. But not for the other children. Why would I?

McSnail · 30/04/2010 10:12

QUOTE (pofaced) "It sounds nice but it is absolutely impossible given teacher work load, funding, class sizes and general attitude towards 'control' in the classroom."

Yes, and there's only so much school can do for a 'damaged child'. As someone else said, school is NOT there to help damaged children - that's what social services etc are for. I think it's to the education system's CREDIT that they even attempt to 'help damaged children' with the systems they have in place (eg. guidance departments, outside entities being invited in etc)

School is, in the main, about EDUCATION and I think it's very unfair for people to expect it to be all things to a part of society who can't be arsed to bring their kids up properly.

McSnail · 30/04/2010 10:18

Oh, and somewhat off-topic, but I think mobile phones should be banned in school.

StableButDeluded · 30/04/2010 10:23

I don't understand why people are saying the victim is 'faceless' or anonymous; IIRC at the time the incident occurred there were pictures of the boy who was attacked on the news. I'm sure I remember him in a school photo- wearing a blue pullover, he had short, slightly spikey dark hair.

And I'm sure I also remember at the time reading comments from people-not necessarily on MN, could have been another website-saying he 'looked' like the type of boy who'd cause trouble

Which I didn't understand, as I thought he looked reasonably ok to me-just an average boy.

Maybe I'm confusing this boy with someone else, but I don't think so.

Pofacedagain · 30/04/2010 10:24

It is not about education. It is about sitting down and shutting up and individual potential being ignored.

Marsha I wouldn't want to be a teacher in that in environment. The system needs to be changed - that is my point.

MarshaBrady · 30/04/2010 10:25

Oh I absolutely agree with you about the system.

StableButDeluded · 30/04/2010 10:25

Oh, and I agree with McSnail, well said.

kitcat1977 · 30/04/2010 10:27

This is in response to Pofaced back on p2:

'You all say teachers need more support. Maybe children need more support. The education system is letting so many kids down. If they were properly stimulated and their potential was tapped instead of being despised and 'controlled' and herded in large groups around depressing buildings maybe things might be different.'

I'm a secondary school teacher myself. It's this constant pressure on teachers to entertain engage students in ever more mind-boggling creative ways that's one of the main factors in teacher stress. And if the kids play up no matter what the teacher does, it's often put down to their own 'ineptitude' in doing so.

Planning to do this sort of stuff, when in fact the way that knowledge and understanding is assessed at the end of a young person's education has stayed largely the same, is hugely time-consuming and demoralising when we know that if students would just take responsibility for their own conduct and learning, they would do very well without teachers having to play the performing monkey for them. I despair at constantly having to go back and rewrite schemes of work to meet the latest set of demands and constantly having to reference popular culture in order to motivate students. That is, of course, on top of ever more impossible rigorous demands for assessment and reporting.

As for the 'depressing buildings', they are in no way a reflection of the quality of the teaching that goes on in them. We have been in the process of trying to get BSF funding to improve our buildings throughout the 9 years that I've been teaching. Still no excuse for the pack-hunting mentality that some classes adopt.

OTTMummA · 30/04/2010 10:33

I feel sorry for the boy in the sense that he clearly hasn't been bought up right.

But, i doubt he will be treating any other adult like this again, ( hopefully if he's not totally stupid ).

He shouldn't of been attacked, but then he shouldn't of been bullying the teacher, he's alive and i think he should be gratful for that as being attacked by someone in a psychotic episode is extremely dangerous and he could of ended up worse.

It was his partly his own fault, he is old enough to know what he is doing, but obviously dumb enough to believe that he would never retaliate.
It wouldn't suprise me if his mother was the type to give him a whack every day, but shout at people who dared to disipline him reasonably.

The teacher, i feel for, I don't believe he wanted to murder the 14 yr old, he was in an unstable mental state and wasn't supported properly by his management, his homelife sounds depressing by itself and im not suprised he ended up doing this.

Its not like the teacher has denied what he has done, so i don't think anyone can be angry with him for that.

He souldn't of been tried for attempted murder, infact i don't think he should of been put on trial at all either, he should of been hospitalised and treated in a mental health facility.

The boy however in the court documents, lied about the 9 other instances he had been in trouble for during the previous term at school, dispite there being various documentation about them.

So since he hasn't really learnt much about being honest and decent im pretty glad he got some payback.