This is story that should surprise absolutely no one, but three teachers and a 14-year-old have been injured at a school in Renfrewshire. The thing that may surprise some is that a 16-year-old female former pupil is the person the police are looking to charge. Forget lunatics running the asylum, we are now dealing with children physically assaulting multiple adults.
Now this isn’t new. It happens in most schools at some point: a pupil kicks off and then chaos ensues. Sometimes classrooms need to be “evacuated” or the police need to be called. It’s a disgrace. The reason behind all this seems to be threefold. First off, pupils with real behavioural issues are not being segregated as they used to, because of lack of resources and deliberate policy changes. Secondly, there’s no real discipline in schools. Third, it’s not worth your job to physically fight back as an adult in the school when a child gets violent.
The old school idea about disruptive pupils, or pupils who were educationally below par, was to segregate them into different classes or even different schools so as not to interfere with the mainstream education for most children. This way, teachers’ resources and attention were not diverted away from the majority of the class to deal with a single problem child. Nowadays, it’s been decided that the best way forward is to lump everyone in together. This seems to be a deliberate ploy, as it will have a detrimental effect on more pupils than segregation would have on the one pupil being segregated. The majority must now suffer. If we wind the tape forward a bit, we can imagine where this might be intended to lead.
Then there’s the appalling levels of discipline In the schools these days. One of the latest ideas to bring children into line is a system called Pivotal. In this system, the child isn’t punished, or shouted at, or kept in at playtime. No, they’re spoken to as if they were an adult and they’re asked if they can remember a time when they behaved in class and asked if they could choose to be more. The child is encouraged to discuss how they feel and to think about how they would act the next time this situation occurs. And this doesn’t include the numerous bribes disruptive kids are given to try and keep them sweet during the week: trips to McDonald’s, hot chocolate, “golden time”, etc. All while hardworking kids get ignored.
And lastly, self defence is not a realistic option for teachers. Their jobs, pensions, everything is on the line. If a pupil decides to get violent and starts assaulting members of staff and other pupils, what is the black and white of a teacher getting physically involved to quell the situation? No one really knows. But any teachers I’ve spoken to suspect that they would be reprimanded for putting their hands on the child, If not from the school then certainly by the child’s parents.
A real government would have nailed all this issues years ago in Scotland, but the SNP seem to be continuing on their path of deliberate sabotage of our nation’s children. A real party that put its people first would ensure discipline was instilled in pupils, that they took pride in their school and respected their teachers. This liberal-driven idea of putting power in the hands of 11-year-olds does not work.
This is not the homeland we want, where children assault teachers.
We deserve better.
