pupil rapes teacher...what CAN be done about schools?

[aloha]

Pyschopathic 15 year old rapes teacher. It's not the first attack like this. What is going on and what on earth can be done to prevent it. If this is what is happening in my area (SE London) in secondary education, how can I send my kids to a local school. It sounds terrifying.

[happymerryberries]

Blu, thinkg about what you have writtedn, much of which I agree with 100% I have to say that I don't think that the answer is simply poverty.

My mother was a child in the 1930s and grew up in real, grinding poverty. No shoes and malnourished povery. She was one of 4 and her father dies when she was small , leaving her mother to raise her alone, a one parent family. The difference between what happened to my mother and what happenes to some of the kids I teach isn't caused by the poverty they see, but everything else around them.

Much of their probelms are caused by the social chaos that they live in. The constant changing of parental partners. The effect of drugs and alcohol, the inability of the parents to provide a stable, consistant, loving dicipline for these kids.

To my mind it isn't finacial poverty that is an issue so much (since many of these kids are better dressed than mine!) but a soul destroying poverty of the spirit, where little or nothing is valued.

[hub2dee]

v. interesting point hmb about difference in 'financial poverty' and 'poverty of the spirit' - I'd be keen to read what are the key factors which differentiate the two in your opinion / experience. Addressing / acknowledging these would obviously be key in securing succesful schooling outcomes to disadvantaged children.

[dinosaur]

HMB - hear hear. But how do we break the vicious circle of parental low expection = low-achieving, disruptive children who don't feel valued, and who become parents much too young themselves and do the same thing with their kids?

[Blu]

hmb and hub2D - I do agree, and certainly hesitate to lay all problems at the door of poverty, and so disregard the honour and achievements of 'old' working class such as you describe. That's why I mentioned the effect of the Thatcher years. I do think that the huge rise of consumerism during those years took away the ability to be poor with dignity, and the will to work for a generation towards a better future for your children. I benefitted directly from that spirit - my grandparents were miners, and my dad was the first in the family to go to higher education and have an indoor toilet.

I agree completely with the 'poverty of spirit' comment. I was having a v interesting RL conversation with Aloha a couple of weeks ago and she talked of the the huge appetite for the arts in poor inner-city areas after the war, when people had the chance for the first time in years to express themselves and be inspired, and feel that the world could be theirs.

Now I see young people for whom Europe means nothing - they cannot see beyond the horizons of their housing estates, dodgy scams as a way of making quick money, and their parents are definitiely bereft of any ability to be role models or support.

[Blu]

Dinosaur - I think by giving them access to things that expand their horizons. Good teaching in schools that enalbles young people in the borough where Eurostar operates to get the English/French speaking jobs currently going to French working class kids! A chance to steer a saililng boat or communicate with someone in a different country as a way of geting a perspective on your own life, the chance to re-discover the excitement and achievement in the process of learning through arts activities....all the extra-curricular, youth organisation stuff that is being cut left right and centre!

[aloha]

I think that the expansion of childcare/surestart etc is supposed to help....but will it? agree consumerist culture is having a dreadful effect on us all - being poor and not having things is shameful and humiliating. See intelligence being wasted, peer pressure - esp in cities I suspect - terribly strong. To speak well or to turn your back on the prevailing culture can be very difficult, but is seems so entrenched now.
Both my parents came from v working class backgrounds - tenement housing etc, but still thought that they could do things with their lives - they were the children of the war who benefitted from teh post-war spirit. Both went to grammar schools which did provide a real chance of social mobility - but at the expense of other kids whose education was distinctly substandard in comparison. Don't have any answers!

[Caligula]

I think we have to remember as well that in the past, there were widely accepted norms of behaviour which everyone agreed on.

One of the downsides of our celebrated diversity, is that diversity means some people will have different ideas about what constitutes reasonable behaviour and what doesn't. I think one of the major difficulties of organising any society (school being a mini-society) is where you have groups of people who simply don't agree on what is acceptable and what isn't and you don't have a standard to which everyone adheres. Schools simply don't have the resources to be that diverse - there has to be a level of behaviour which is understood throughout the whole of school community to be the minimum standard. And I don't think that exists anymore. However much poverty there was in the thirties, there was an understood norm. Now there isn't.

[happymerryberries]

Some very interesting points made.

My own background, grandfather miner, father factory worker, mine the first generation to have any tertiary education. We were all encouraged to grab the chances that had been denied to our parents. My grand parents generation worked in the most dreadful conditions possible and at the end of a long day went on to help to builf a vibrant community, with chaples and workingmens associations, started the first basic health service and tried to educate themselves to imporve their lives.

I teach children who have far more material comforts than my grandparents. They live in warm houses, they have acces to a vast range of information sources, books in school, the internet, television etc. They have free education that is compulsory until the age of 16. We pay them to stay in school after 16. We are aiming for 50% of all children to go to university. These are chances that would be beyond the dreams of my grandparents.

And It amazes me that they kids will fail to take the chances , more than that they will activly make sure that they don't learn anything. They have only the most shallow understanding of the world around them, and have few interests beyond the getting of material goods. They openly despise their teachers because we don't get paid enough, and in their world that makes us losers.

They are absoluty convinced that they will leave school and walk into a job that pais £50,000 a year. And all of this with no qualifications, few aspirations and very few life skills. And when they leave they find that like isn't like that!

We must start with children in primary and make them see that their behaviour has consequences, both for them and for the community. We must give these children the basic standards of behavior that society expects. And when we have that , then we can inspire them that life can mean more than watching satelite TV and getting the latest designer clothes. But until we can crack the behaviour, and give them self pride and self dicipline, we are all just pissing into the wind

[JoolsToo]

Amen

[Caligula]

HMB, why do these children think they will walk into very high paying jobs without any qualifications? Where exactly do they get these ideas from? Growing up in the eighties, I can remember mass unemployment and it being impressed upon us that unless we went to university, we'd be unemployed (not the best career advice, but a tad more realistic than teaching us that very high paying jobs were the norm). What is the culture surrounding these young people, that their expectations are so far removed from reality?

[WideWebWitch]

I was thinking about this today hmb and wondering what the hell we will do when NO-ONE, and I mean no-one, wants to be or become a teacher because the pay is crap, the work is tough as hell and the prospects are limited (I mean you can't go anywhere other than head of dept or headteacher). Where would we be without nurses, teachers, midwives? And these jobs are SO undervalued and underpaid that actually, you pretty much have to have a streak of altruism to want to do them don't you: you sure as hell won't do it for the money alone. Or for the satisfaction in a lot of schools/hospitals/insert vital public service here. I live in a v cheap and fairly grotty area which is populated by teachers, social workers, public servants because they can't afford to live anywhere else. And they're clever, interesting, good people. But they are demoralised, most of them because their crappy salaries get them a small house in a grotty area. When my dad first qualified as teacher (so that would have been the 60s/70s I think) it was a hugely respected profession, on a par with doctors/accountants etc and now it isn't it seems. Somewhere it's all gone horribly wrong and it's so depressing. Sorry, there isn't really a point to this post, just random thoughts.

[WideWebWitch]

I was thinking about it because I had lunch with a friend who's a teacher and apparently she recently bumped into someone she hadn't seen since university who said 'oh, you became a teacher? And what about your husband?' and when my friend said 'oh, he's a social worker' the friend said 'oops, you planned that badly!' and she said if only she'd have known in her 20s how hard it was going to be now in their forties they'd have both done something else with their degrees.

[happymerryberries]

Caligula, I'm not sure that I know. In part I think the 'reality TV' nature of society doesn't help much. They all think they can be ike Jade. Or get spotted for a band. They don't actualy play anything you understand! All the boys are going to be professional footballers, even the ones with major weight probelms.

Or else you get the 'I'm going to be a nail technician/ beauty therapist and earn a fortune' line. I'm not knocking those jobs for a minute, but I do know that they are not that well paid. My mate is a hairdresser and she is tired of an endless stream of would be trainees who just want to muck about and have not idea of how hard the training is or how crap the pay is.

[happymerryberries]

WWW, thank goodness dh gets a good wage in the RAF, so we do OK. But I see what you mean.

[wheresmyfroggy]

In answer to caligulka question on why young people have all these expectations...

If you look at all the role models young people have today, footballers, rappers/bands, models etc etc. Most of whom would not have been to university but are rich and famous for other (debatable) talents. Giving young people a warped view of what it requires to become successful

[JoolsToo]

quite right froggy - thats why you get so many awful singer on Pop Idol auditions - they all want to make a fast buck (talent or no!)

[JoolsToo]

anyone watching Corrie at the mo - Candice is a case in point

[wheresmyfroggy]

Bring back the cane eh jools

[JoolsToo]

the cane? ooh no - how about the stocks?

[Caligula]

Talking of soap operas Jools, I wonder how much influence TV has. In Brookside, ordinary characters who started off as girls with no prospects (Lindsey worked in the chip shop) suddenly acquired enough money to own a night club. Ian Beale in Eastenders (a most lacklustre and uninspiring young man), became some sort of sandwich magnate overnight, apparantly with very little experience. They were just the most absurdly economics-free zones, but they don't portray themselves as escapist TV, they market themselves as hard-hitting reality. I wonder how many of these other "realistic" TV genres, where a couple of young people decide to move house and buy themselves a semi-mansion, with no discussion about the dull business of mortgages, incomings, outgoings etc., are promoting this very unrealistic idea of what the future holds?

[Caligula]

Ooh yes, and the Candice storyline is great, isn't it!

[wheresmyfroggy]

Oooooh yes! outside the school gates for everyone to see

[happymerryberries]

Rather like my very nice sixth form who are quite sure that they are going to pass, while doing no work! They seem to want me to do the learning for them!

[JoolsToo]

quite simply there is little or no respect for people or property - its a dirty word

I started a lengthy post about the simple things like kids not climbing and bouncing all over the furniture and then thought I sound like a sad old git so thought better of it!

[wheresmyfroggy]

Haha jools i know that one

You've been typing for about ten mins and it suddenly dawns on you that it's all a load of tosh