Corporal punishment - should it be considered?

[Bambiraptor]

After spending some time teaching in a comprehensive in a deprived area of this country, I have been asking myself what will help the children who are so difficult in school. With the best of a teacher's intentions some children are just not interested in learning, and teaching becomes a battle. It is more about classroom management than anything else.
There are no consequences for poor behaviour and alot of the time no parental back up at all.
I totally disagree with corporal punishment. Full stop. My dad was is a retired headmaster of a private school in Kent and he is an advocate of corporal punishment as it worked in the school.
By brain is addled.
WHat do you think? DO you think teachers and schools should be given more power to deal with problem students?

i think it should be brought back, kids are stabbing each other.

Apologies for the errors (in the post).

Message withdrawn

No - not good at all!

There needs to be a consequence for bad behaviour that the pupils actually care about. At the moment there is nothing. It is vrey difficult for teachers, and does nothing for the education of the pupils who actually need a 'kick up the backside' to get going!

Corporal punishment is never going to prevent stabbings. It may have worked on nice middle class children, several years ago,for fights over conkers, but the kids you find in schools in deprived areas need a huge amount of guidance, probably far more than the school can ever provide. More power to deal with problem students? Yes, but whacking them won't help. Maybe more staff, smaller classes, more vocational subjects, mentors, etc. Sounds expensive. Oh well, just give them the cane then!

whacking them won't help, so we'll just wait until they kill their classmates then.

The children in ' nice middle class areas' have their parents who are breathing down their neck making sure they are doing well, or being mortified if their dc's are rude to the staff.
It is the poorer areas that have the problems as there is no motivation to do well from the home and no consequences.
Exclusion from school is seen as a failure on the schools part so atleast the school should have some power to discipline its pupils.

I have grossly generalised in my last post.

Corporal punishment is NOT the answer. It will only make the problem worse.
I agree that teachers need more power. I think the parents should be held more accountable for their dcs behaviour.

parenting classes. making parents more interested int heir children. we shouldnt beat the children for the failings of the adult. d'ya know hte horrors of everyday life that these kids endure? nd then you want to beat shit out of them at school. probably their only sanctuary.

if they are THAT disassociated from society

why go to school?

they obviously want something out of the experience - if their parents dont rightly give a shit why not just stay in bed?

we need HUGE i mean HUGE investment in parenting skills.

schools have been turned around in deprived areas

i think it has to be a case of giving the parents back self esteem as well as the kids

supporting people in communities who do want to change things and whenever there are stabbings or gun incidents almost invariable someone comes forward in the community eg a parent wanting to move on and take control and those people need a team building round them

areas need cleaning up

i beleive in working on lots of different areas and also making schools more relevant to the area with more vocational work and more links with employment which mean something not a ring round for "work expereince" for a few days which is a total waste of time

I agree with custardo

Imagine how terrifying it must be for a teenager going to school in a deprived area?

If discipline was enforced through corporal punishment, at least the more vulnerable kids would be protected. And the ones who do want to be taught could be. As it is kids in deprived areas are not getting an education and instead required to spend their days in a zoo.

My best friend teaches in a rough school - her stories of chairs thrown at her, obscene remarks, graphic threats etc give me the creeps. If she did any of those things she would lose her job but they have no effective way of punishing the kids involved.

That is no kind of preparation for real life - any school leaver who behaves like that in the workplace will be fired. They need to learn discipline in school.

Out of control bullying is much more frightening to me than a head teacher with a cane.

Some parents would not attend parenting classes.
Alot of schools now have had to resort to literally bribing their students with cash rewards to attend and behave.
Surely there is a better way. We shouldn't have to pay young people to behave better. It should work the other way round, ie they behave or there is a real consequence.

we also need huge investment in these kids

does anyone really actually talk to them in school or take an interest in them?

For kids with no parents with A levels even, school is a place where they don't tend to feel at home. they also have little expectation of sucess there.

unsurpsing then that behaviour is bad.

Agree upwind, though not sure about corporal punishment.
In my experience there were no boundaries at all between student and teacher.

that doesn't mean that the boundaries should be enforced by corporal punishment. parenting classes could be a mandatory part of getting a state education. We need to take back the 'norm' and we can. it wasn't so long ago breastfeeding wasn't the norm for poorer families. and although not perfect we are getting there somewhat slowly - but still we are taking back the norm through investment in parents.

Custardo, I think that breastfeeding is still not the norm for poorer families.

I do think that parenting classes as part of state education are a good idea as is more vocational work and links with employers. I just don't have any faith that they will fix this.

An alternative to corporal punishment could be routine exclusion for persistent troublemakers who could then be sent to some type of boarding school with specialist teachers.

But something urgently needs to be done about our schools - my friend had to have a tetanus shot last week because a child bit her and drew blood. These schools must be a living hell for vulnerable children.

To add - I think corporal punishment should be used only as a last resort if at all. The possibility is sometimes an effective deterrent in itself.

It was used for hundreds, if not thousands, of years and shown to work. Sadly, I don't think we have become more civilised in recent times.

but we are taking back that norm through investment IMO.

i smirk a the vulnerable children comments. vulnerable is?

i'm sure you dont mean the agressive children, yet i think they are the vulnerable ones. shit on by parents and society, given no guidence, no rules, no life skills except a knife or gun culture which gets them into the prison system.

I did see what looked like a good scheme in Devon for excluded pupils but it is for a few and the culture is with more than the few

we were commenting at the weekend how rough and intimidating it is now where we live..the town centre and periphery

I went to babysit for my dd on saturday at 6.30pm and the corner shop where we stopped had a group of teens outside who were mitheringn between themselves about something

I felt a bit funny about them so dp left the engine running and went in to get something

inside the shop there was a group of eastern europens who wer rifling the shleves

they came out with stuff they had nicked and i thought one was going to open the car door and nick the camera and laptop I had with me but he seemed to change his mind
they had a tussle with the teens

and then one teen lad went to grab the wing mirror and then just banged the door and they all mooched off!

not relevant but these are issues which are all intertwined with community and school

By "vulnerable" I mean the ones I remember from my own school days with no support and no self confidence who might as well have had a target tatooed on their forheads.

Often they were shit on by parents and society.

I agree that the more brazen ones are also vulnerable in their own way but they are a threat to other children's well being and need to be disciplined as well as helped.

how was it shown to work?

society is much different now. what are you goin to say to the child who through a chair at a teacher and told him/her to fuck off?

"bend over please whilst i whack your arse with this cane"

"certainly miss - would you like bare skin of will through my trousers be ok?"

not likely is it, what is likley is that the kid will say " whatever, you dumb bitch, fuck off2 and walk out of school

so then we help to disenfranchise and not educate the poorer sections of society the sections of society that need more help.

the cane only worked in past time ( i would argue) becuase there were rules instilled by parents, expectations of automatic respect for authority from parents. teachers could beat shit out of the kid and the kid would get a good hiding when he/she got home becuase the parents would be mortified, embarassed and ashamed their child behaved like that.

society has moved on.

Custardo - I take your point but if you were the head, what would you do about that violent, agressive kid?