Discipline in schools

[lemonysnickett]

When did things go wrong with the school system. Not so long ago everything seemed a lot simpler. The stress of the whole process did not exist.Tthe local slchool was good enough for most and children (with supportive parents) generally did well.
Now the talk seems lto be about having a good state school locally, lmoving and paying over the odds for property in certain catchment areas....why and when did it come to this.
I think the main factor has been the deterioration in standards at state schools..mainly down to lack of discipline..poor language and disruptive behaviour in schools. This is a result of lack of discipline in the homes of some pupils. I am a teacher and have done a lot of supply teaching. I would consider myself to be quite strict and have high expectations in the classroom.I have a low tolerance of bad and disruptive behaviour and refuse to allow this behaviour stop me teaching those children that are keen and eager to learn. Classroom rescouces in state schools are not the problem ..nor are class sizes. The main problem is behaviour. does anyone have any views on this..i would be interested to hear them.

UCM I happen to agree with you. However it is done disruptive and rude pupils in secondary shool should do what they are told. To me it is somewhat irrelevent why. I fail to see how a person can turn round and be able to say "Yes I did this and that but it 's not my fault" Whatever the reasons they still did it. If there is a possibility of taking away the root cause of the problem without spending too much money and time and making others suffer consequently then I think that should be looked into.
Kids must do what they are told at school, all the time and obey the rules all the time. If they chose not to there must be punnishment not excuses.

erhem, sorry for ignorance, does lower income parents dont bother turning up and supporting their children because they are not earning enough money or are we talking lesser educated parents dont turn up or dont support their children. Which is it? If it is lower income how does that equate to lack of support? Just curious.

excuse my English

Not sure Tenalady. That was just my experience. The school I worked at was in an area of low incomes (closed mines, on 2nd/3rd generation unemployed in families). School didn't seem to figure as being important for too many in the area. Hence, not showing on parent's evenings, etc. I don't know the reason why.

And I say this as someone who came from a similarly deprived area. y parents were in a minority of actually promoting education to us at home and to push us/ encourage us to want to do well at school, and to broaden our aspirations and look beyond the world in our area.

In the area I was working in it was very much seen as this is orur village, this is where we live, we don't need to go anywhere else - even though there were no jobs there. It just didn't figure. We had problems getting sixth formers and Y11 to do work experience anywhere outside the village - even the 5 mile bus ride to town seemed an alien concept to some! I was amazed at how insular it all seemed.

As someone else I worked with used to say - it was as if they were waiting for the pit to reopen.

Humphreycushion, your son's unfortunate experience is a very good reason why extreme shortcut behavioural controls through corporal punishment fail to address genuine issues in children which trigger the misbehaviour. Thus failing the students ulimately.

I am all for discipline in schools, but not for corporal punishment. Hulababy, I am not a teacher, but what you have described sounds very plausible. The root causes of poor discipline (not arising from special needs) stem from the home and larger environment. By the time it reaches the schools, it is to a large extent too late.

tenalady, the school I work in has a ostly working class catchment area, with average family incoms below the national average but te parents are very supportive and motivated to make sure their kids succeed.

While it is true that it can be difficult for poorer parents to get to a parent teacher meeting, things can be got around, if the will is there....For example the parent could phone the teacher or make another appointment at a more appropriate time. Finaces are not the reason, it is attitude that matters in my experience. One thing that is true is that the parents I most need to see seldom attend.

There can be lots of reasons for this. Poor attidie to ecucation byt the parenys is one, but so is outright hatered of schools following their own experiences, lack of self confidence, drug or alcohol issues.

In general dicipline works well in schoo if all the teachers and staff sing from the same hymn sheet. If you put in place the small rules, the rest tends to follow, mad as that sounds.

I don't agree with corporal punishment, however I do agree with real punish ment....for example little picking if a child needs to have a detention, clearing chewing gum from desks etc (with gloves and appropriate safety gear)

Corporal punishment does not install disclipline or respect. I was smacked at school and I can honestly say I have to this day never been so angry, I wet myself which is the only consolation that the teacher had to go and change her clothes because she has no right to do that and if anyone hit my child I would knock their head off their shoulders, no matter what the consequneces.
Havind said that mine will not be getting out of detention even if they have to walk home in the rain.

While it is true that some teachers are better at classroom dicipline than others, in general standards have slipped since I was a girl

My sil is a primary teacher and has been called a 'fucking cunt' but a child in primary. That never happened when I was in primary.

I went to quite a rough school but no teachers were threatened and their word was law. Mostly this was because the paernts would back up the school.

Ps Malory, I love you and want to have your babies

I don't think that corporal punishment teaches respect, but I think it went a long way in my school to making sure that we behaved & listened during lessons.

It's never going to be bought back but I would like to see something that really is a deterrent which works there & then, that all children in lessons are worried might happen to them if they are disruptive.

Most of the parents on here would never see their children in trouble anyway as pretty much everyone who posts on here has a huge conscience as far as parenting is concerned and would support the school. But there are children who attend school whose parents really don't care/don't discipline, those children are likely to ruin it for our children and where is the deterrent. Lessons used to run for about 40 mins, if 20 of that is spent sorting out disruptive kids, again not what teachers are paid for, surely that can't be right.

What it boils down to is everyone who DOES parent their kids trying to get theirs into certain schools, where pretty much all of the parents are the same. The rest just end up in crap schools and I don't for one minute blame teachers. I think that teaching today is a rotten job and have 2 friends who have left the profession because of the lack of support.

Yes, certain teachers at my old school commanded respect just by the tone of their voice and a haughty stare. But there were some fab teachers who were extremely knowledgeable about their subject and could teach brilliantly but needed to rely on what the head/deputy head would dish out to keep order.

Rightly or wrongly, children from whatever background should be made to behave at school as they do not realise that they will need that education for later life which many of them don't at puberty.

This is possibly my longest post, ever.

As I posted in the first thread an average lesson in secondary school costs £120. How many parents would let their kids wreck something that cost that much and not do something about it? Not very many I'd bet. But when a kid plays up in class this is what they are doing and lots of parents ust shrug their shoulders and say 'Well kids will be kids'

I had one parent tell me that he wasn't surprised that his lad played up in RE because he didn't like it as a child either! To which I told him that I didn't care if his son disliked a subject, but I could expecet him to behave in it! The father looked shocked at the concept.

The sad thing is that the most disruptive kids are often in with children who need the most help from the teacher, and because of disruptive behaviour are unlikly to get the help and assistance they need

Agree with Snow leopeard about scary teachers - there are some people who you just dont mess with. Its not just an age thing either because I remember having a student teacher when I was 11 who was the scariest man on the planet and he must have been in his early twenties. He was very good at ridiculing miscreants so the whole class laughed at them (not with them).

We send my two eldest two to private secondary school (they went to a good state primary that I was a governor at). We did it not because we thought they would do any better academically (one of them passed the entrance to a very good state grammar) but because the school does not tolerate bad behaviour and could simply tell any child who did not behave to leave without being hamstrung by the LEA which often just let them back in, and which completely undermines the governors and teaching staff.

No holidays now for 6 years and a 14 year old car but we felt very strongly about it - violent badly behaved children are practically feral and I truly believe they are too dangerous to be let loose on other kids and teachers who cant or are not allowed to protect themselves. Sad world . I too dont agree with corporal punishment in normal schools but I am beginning to think there is an argument for removing violent pupils and putting them in some army type institution for "reprogramming".

MB, I am saddened for you and all of the teachers in situations where this happens. The parents & kids just don't realise that this time in school is so utterly important.

I hope that one day soon, something will happen to give you back the power whatever it might be.

When I was a school, I behaved because I knew that my parents would be absolutely furious if I brought home a bad report. They would not be interested in listening to excuses. I was expected to behave at school just like I was expected to behave at home.

These days, the expectations are different. There are a lot of parents who think their cherubs can do no wrong and will have words with anyone who suggests otherwise. However, I think society as a whole has to take some collective responsibility because many parents now feel paralysed by the invidious disapproval that their way of disciplining their DC equates to child abuse even though it is not.

My DM's friend has a daughter and this daughter reported her mother to social services because her mother stopped her going out with her boyfriend. She is 14yo. The SS told her mother that she had no right to stop her and that she was infringing her human rights. What on earth is going on? If that girl now ends up pregnant, the fingers will be pointed at the mother and people will be asking, where was she blah, blah, blah. Why have we got to the stage that the rights of the individual child supercedes the right of an adult to parent that child according to their own moral compass that would instil respect for rules, others and self?

sm, I have in the past, stood in front of my lab door to stop a child absconding from the lesson (she would then go missing for days.....god knows where and why). My friend is a social worker and she laughed when I told her this and said I was wasting my time.

WTF??? THis was a child, a minor, and she wasn't going to run when I was in loco parentis. The social services didn't agree

Wait until they start to work. Rules, authority, time keeping, responsibility, accountability, probity, respect, deadlines, going the extra mile. These kids are in for a major shock.

HumphreysCushion - I know that the majority of bad behaviour in schools is unrelated to SN but your post brought back some memories for me. At primary school there was one particular boy who was notorious for being a troublemaker. Until the slipper was outlawed he was regularly on the receiving end of it. Eventually he was expelled and IIRC also had to leave another secondary school. The boy's parents were fairly strict wrt discipline and his siblings did well at school. It was only as an adult that anyone realised that he was actually autistic.The thought of my 2 autistic ds'es going through what he did is horrific IMHO.

There was a boy at my school who was bullied by a teacher for daydreaming and not paying attention- it turned out he was dyslexic and epileptic, and his 'daydreaming' had actually been petit mal fits (sorry don't know current terminology).

I personally don't agree with corporal punishment, for lots of reasons, but what shocks me is how parents let their kids carry on these days. I'm 30 and i think social standards have slipped even in my time- being heavily pregnant at the moment I've noticed that young people don't give up their seats on buses for pregnant women or the elderly now, which is terrible imo. And kids are allowed to clamber around all over and distract the driver etc. I've seen kids running riot in restaurants, and the language you hear is terrible from even very young ones now. Things like happy slapping and disrupting classes can only be a logical extension of this- if you teach little Johnny he's the centre of the universe and his wants, needs and rights supercede everyone else's, you are bound to see these results.

We were disciplined with the 'mum face'- you know the one!!! One look from my mother and we would freeze in our tracks while being told to 'BE-HAVE!!!'. Also by learning that respect is a two way street, and that adults were to be respected in particular. Obviously some kids present more challenges, but smacking doesn't increase respect unless the child already has a good moral framework and sees it as shaming.