Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Learning factories
In the absence of anything to watch on freeview (it is rare that there is anything I want to watch on otherview), fell to musing on the state of our education system, prompted by something in the DT about how discipline in schools is falling apart.
Item 1, it is hard to know whether this is true or not. And it gets harder the further back one tries to go. Hard enough for a teacher to be able to convince one that it has got better or worse during his or her working life, let alone to go further back. Not easy to get a firm grip on this one either by talking to teachers or conducting surveys. I wonder what I might find out about all this if I started burrowing in educational statistics? Maybe tomorrow.
Item 2, corporal punishment was common in the past and is, I think, forbidden now. For example, FIL tells me that at his school in 30's Portsmouth, there was usually a caning a day. And then there were the more vicious instruments used in Scotland and Ireland, in the former case at least, until quite recently.
Item 3, class room discipline was a minor issue in my (country) primary school in the fifties. One teacher out of the ten or so had discipline problems bad enough for parents to complain about the classroom in question not being a fit place for their children to be taught.
Item 4, class room discipline was not an issue in my (town) secondary school in the sixties. Nor, incidentally, was theft. Property was left in open desks and cloakrooms and I don't recall there ever having been a theft. I do recall one case of corporal punishment.
Item 5, I have heard it alleged that a decent teacher can control more or less any class by force of charectar. While I believe this to be true, the allegation may be setting the bar for decent unreasonably high. We do not have enough teachers who are that decent, and are not likely to have until we pay them a good deal more.
Observation: I have also heard teachers say yes, they can keep control, but it takes up 99% of their available energy, leaving little for imparting useful or any other knowledge.
Item 6, I do not think it fair that a teacher is not allowed to use reasonable force to deal with a pupil who is being violent in one way or another. If a pupil is bashing me, I should not be held to account for bashing him, undesirable though that might be. It does not make much sense to me to say at the outset that the teacher is not allowed to use force, whatever the pupil might get up to. I believe that there are pupils who will take full advantage of such a rule, if indeed there is one.
Item 7, in a similar way, it does not help maintain discipline if the head teacher is not allowed more or less absolute discretion and command in the day-to-day running of his school. Bad pupils and bad parents are going to play up if they know that they can always appeal to some bunch of good intentioned lay people detirmined to do good (aka sub-committee of the board of governors, or worse some sub-committee of the local authority. At least the first gang are more likely to have some regard for the school in question).
Observation: the human rights of one pupil should not be allowed to grossly interfere with the human rights of others. Going further, one forfeits such rights by bad behaviour. Or in the memorable words of some freeview film or other (which go rather further than I would): 'this guy hasn't got any human rights. We are due to hang him in three hours'.
Item 8, I would hope that we never have to go back to the level of teacher violence that I believe was both prevalent and acceptable in FIL's day.
Having got that little lot off my chest, I do believe in some vague way that the DT is right. That classroom discipline is worse than it was. But what to do about it is another matter.
Item 1, it is hard to know whether this is true or not. And it gets harder the further back one tries to go. Hard enough for a teacher to be able to convince one that it has got better or worse during his or her working life, let alone to go further back. Not easy to get a firm grip on this one either by talking to teachers or conducting surveys. I wonder what I might find out about all this if I started burrowing in educational statistics? Maybe tomorrow.
Item 2, corporal punishment was common in the past and is, I think, forbidden now. For example, FIL tells me that at his school in 30's Portsmouth, there was usually a caning a day. And then there were the more vicious instruments used in Scotland and Ireland, in the former case at least, until quite recently.
Item 3, class room discipline was a minor issue in my (country) primary school in the fifties. One teacher out of the ten or so had discipline problems bad enough for parents to complain about the classroom in question not being a fit place for their children to be taught.
Item 4, class room discipline was not an issue in my (town) secondary school in the sixties. Nor, incidentally, was theft. Property was left in open desks and cloakrooms and I don't recall there ever having been a theft. I do recall one case of corporal punishment.
Item 5, I have heard it alleged that a decent teacher can control more or less any class by force of charectar. While I believe this to be true, the allegation may be setting the bar for decent unreasonably high. We do not have enough teachers who are that decent, and are not likely to have until we pay them a good deal more.
Observation: I have also heard teachers say yes, they can keep control, but it takes up 99% of their available energy, leaving little for imparting useful or any other knowledge.
Item 6, I do not think it fair that a teacher is not allowed to use reasonable force to deal with a pupil who is being violent in one way or another. If a pupil is bashing me, I should not be held to account for bashing him, undesirable though that might be. It does not make much sense to me to say at the outset that the teacher is not allowed to use force, whatever the pupil might get up to. I believe that there are pupils who will take full advantage of such a rule, if indeed there is one.
Item 7, in a similar way, it does not help maintain discipline if the head teacher is not allowed more or less absolute discretion and command in the day-to-day running of his school. Bad pupils and bad parents are going to play up if they know that they can always appeal to some bunch of good intentioned lay people detirmined to do good (aka sub-committee of the board of governors, or worse some sub-committee of the local authority. At least the first gang are more likely to have some regard for the school in question).
Observation: the human rights of one pupil should not be allowed to grossly interfere with the human rights of others. Going further, one forfeits such rights by bad behaviour. Or in the memorable words of some freeview film or other (which go rather further than I would): 'this guy hasn't got any human rights. We are due to hang him in three hours'.
Item 8, I would hope that we never have to go back to the level of teacher violence that I believe was both prevalent and acceptable in FIL's day.
Having got that little lot off my chest, I do believe in some vague way that the DT is right. That classroom discipline is worse than it was. But what to do about it is another matter.
# posted by Jim @ 1:34 PM 
