Back in March of this year, London Telegraph reporter Julie Henry noted that schools were being overrun by students who were taught no manners, discipline, or polite behavior by parents. I have the feeling that the comments of the Government's Chief Inspector of Schools were provocative - and extreme - enough to inspire Julie to go undercover and see what she could find.
And boy, were her eyes opened. One article on the documentary that was produced notes:
On returning to teaching after a 30-year absence, a supply teacher using the pseudonym Sylvia Thomas secretly filmed shocking examples of lessons ruined by large numbers of pupils over a three-month period. The documentary shows children aged from 12 to 15 completely ignoring her and other staff while they shout, scream, fight, swear and wander around the classroom at will. In one scene a full-scale fight breaks out and a 6ft tall boy is seen wielding a rubber truncheon, as the terrified teacher calls for help. In another, pupils throw books, pens and balls of paper across the room for a full 15 minutes as the teacher protests, before they declare that they "don't give a shit". In yet more disturbing scenes, a boy in a computer class is filmed accessing hard-core porn sites and then protesting his innocence, saying "I just typed in 'anal', miss".
An email circulating on the Bill Evers list cites another Telegraph article that I can't find online (this might be a transcript of part of the documentary), and what it includes is just as shocking:
What struck me very early on was that poor, even outrageous indiscipline -children leaping across tables or wandering around brandishing fire extinguishers - had become acceptable. At one school, I was calmly advised by a female colleague to lock the classroom door while I was teaching, to "protect" myself and my class from the marauding groups in the corridors. The look of surprise on my face did not seem to register with her.Time and again I would be surprised, and shocked, and eventually deeply
saddened by what I saw in the state school system. A combination of
classroom disorder, endless supply teachers, conscientious but jaded staff
and school managers who seemed prepared to pretend that all was well had
created a situation that was a million miles away from the Government
rhetoric of rising standards.
Kudos to Ms. Henry for all of her articles, which chronicle the decline of discipline in many (but not all) British schools, and for pointing out that zero-tolerance brutality by teachers doesn't seem to be a feasible solution, either:
St Aloysius Roman Catholic College for boys in Islington, north London, should have been a showcase for New Labour, with a rise last year of 19 per cent in the number of pupils gaining five A* to C grades...At this school, the behaviour balance seems to have gone to the other extreme, under the Government's banner of "zero-tolerance". Staff called pupils "total scum" after an incident of vandalism, and shouted at them to "bugger off, go home, we don't want you".Posted by kswygert at August 1, 2005 07:32 PM