Jean Walker

No need to light a candle if you don't know you're in the dark but good to light one up when you find yourself in it.

I know that not all "scientific evidence" can be trusted, but two more articles in our papers today. 1. A well-known Australian has committed suicide and was known to have bi-polar disorder. Doctor here saying that bi-polar is on the increase probably due to changes in diet, pollutants and increase in illicit drug taking. 2. Doctors saying that middle-class parents feeding their children "adult" diets of pasta/lasagne/spices/too much fruit and vegs can be as bad as take-away diets because children's digestive systems not mature enough especially for tomatoes, and the results include eczema, other skin problems, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome etc Why am I quoting these? Because it's another example of why children "aren't what they used to be". More and more children are being brought up by parents who have mental disorders and drug related problems. More and more children are a bad result of what they ingest, eat and do, or don't do. As a consequence an increasing number of children have physical and/or mental disorders, behaviour syndromes, are obese and socially immature. Can we then say that this won't manifest itself in the classroom?

http://www.tes.co.uk/section/staffroom/thr...1&messagePage=1 Another intersting thread on TES

Interesting article in our papers today: "Medcal experts fear Australia's current crop of kids are a "bubble-wrap generation", prone to obesity and mental disorders because parents are too protective. Although Australian infant death rates have halved in the past 20 years, doctors believe weight problems and conditions such as anxiety, depression and ADD are rising.'They fear that focusing so much on children's safety and security has had unintended consequences such as limiting their physical activity and opportunities for social development." How can we then say that nothing has changed, that children are the same as they've always been? And I'm certain that if children are "over-protected" in a country such as Australia, the same is likely to be true of the UK. If we add to this the fact that the incidence of autism has increased dramatically in a decade, much more than could be accounted for by better diagnosis, (we have had to recently appoint several more autism consultants despite the fact that our population has been declining) then I think we have to admit that this generation of children is not the same as the last. Also read recently an article describing research that provided evidence of abnormally accelerated maturation in children resulting from excessive viewing of adult TV programs - in other words a huge overdose of "virtual experience" affects brain chemicals. Another interesting theory about the increasing incidence of ADHD suggests that it may be a result of a few generations of "like attracting like" and therefore strengthening the genetic factor for the syndrome. In earlier generations people were more inclined to marry for other reasons. But will we learn from all this? I doubt it.

Exactly. Perhaps in my frustration I sounded if I was blaming the children, but that wasn't what I meant, although I agree with Graham that even if it is not ultimately the child's fault, there does come a time when the child or at least the adolescent must begin to take responsibility for their own behaviour. It is almost always true that many of these children CAN behave when it suits them and at that point they are choosing their behaviour and do understand the differences. Like Graham, I believe that behaviour is worse than it used to be. In my school days of course there were students who misbehaved quite seriously, but they were not supported in that behaviou by their parents or the civil rights movement, or by "human rights" legislation and they were quickly removed from school to a job or a special unit. That may not have been ideal, but it certainly made the job less difficult than it is now. Another aspect is the inclusion policy which Andy hasn't responded to. It is simply a fact, and not arguable, that teachers did not have students with severe physical/emotional/behavioural disabilities in their classrooms 20 years ago. I can clearly remember the beginning of the inclusion policy here and it began with a few children with normal intellect who were in wheelchairs or mildly physically impaired and that was fine, no real problems. But when teachers have to deal with severe behavioural disabilities such as autism with no proper training and insufficient support, on top of 28-30 other children, then it is expecting too much and not surprising that teachers become stressed and burnt out. What would YOU do if you had an autistic 7 yr old in a class of 28 who constantly attacked TAs, you, other children, was not able to sit still for more than a few seconds, bit, kicked, spat, ran round and screamed loudly all day, and then told by the mother that it's all your fault because you don't give him enough stimulating activities? This is not an "extreme" case, at least not here where we have full inclusion and parents know their rights. This mother refuses to have him in a special school and blames the school and teacher for the problem rather than the disability - it's less guilt creating that way. To get him to a special school we will have to go through a long, complicated, expensive and stressful legal battle with the mother. Is that fair on the teacher who will of necessity be dragged into the case? This would not have happened even 10 years ago. Like Graham, I am asking what we can do about it. Punish more strictly in the short term? Punish parents? Change society? How?

I am afraid that all of us who have left the classroom will be accused of being out of touch with the current situation. However, in my case, I held these views while I was still teaching. Yes, me too. I held the same views about the deterioration of behaviour while I was teaching and I haven't been out very long. I should also add that I taught in an EBD unit in Kent for a year, and for another year in a tough comprehensive near Maidstone, as well as being Head of Special Education in three different high schools here. Just as a matter of interest, I am the first unpromoted classroom teacher to ever have been elected to the role of president of our state teachers' union (out of the previous five, covering more than 25 years, four have been Principals and one was a HoD)and one of the main reasons I won the vote of a majority of teachers was that it was the first time that they had had an opportunity to elect someone who was in touch with what was going on in classrooms rather than being management. You're right - teachers are often afraid of speaking up on these matters, for fear of being told it's all because they are not doing their job properly, or that, "if only you were as good as me, you wouldn't have any problems". This is the easy way out for management because if you refuse to acknowledge there is a problem, you don't have to find a solution. I, too, will be interested in others' opinions, although I'm not sure that the teachers who stalk these boards are a very representative group of English classroom teachers.

The case I mentioned was not a rare one - quite the contrary. We deal with cases like this and worse almost every day. I take exception to the immediate assumption that I do not know what I am talking about because I am not currently in the classroom. I was there until 16 months ago and spent almost all of my nearly 40 years of full-time classroom teaching in very difficult schools. I was in the "good" school I mentioned for only two of those years. In the 16 months I have been in this job, I constantly visit schools where teachers are working under hugely stressful conditions that should not have been allowed to develop. I realise I am never going to change your view of the world, Andy, but your rather aggressive reactions won't put me off trying.

Behaviour Management may well be a set of learned techniques, but if you teach in a school where you are not even able to articulate one sentence before you are verbally abused, physically threatened and have management which prefers to back the parents rather than the staff, those techniques are pretty difficult to put into place. A few years ago I taught in a wonderful all girls high school where it was possible to stand in front of a class of 30 and regularly deliver a fairly traditional, chalk and talk lesson with no behaviour problems at all, because they were almost all from decent homes, most parents wanted their girls to be at that school, and management was strict but just. No problems - but it didn't cause me to believe that it was solely because I was a brilliant teacher or that I could use the same techniques on other kids with the same results, or that all schools are like this. Because we have a state transfer system here, a friend (a good creative and imaginative experienced teacher) has just moved from that school to a totally different one where kids come from poverty, unemployment, bad parenting and on top of that poor school management. She has six classes of 28-30 kids who simply don't want to be there. In the space of a couple of months, she is not sleeping, exhausted, completely stressed out that she cannot make any impression on their lack of desire to learn and is telling me that she is seriously considering leaving teaching for good. Is it "her fault"? Was she in a good school too long and so that is "her fault"? Here teachers cannot just look for another post as in the UK as it is a state system like France. She is a 40-something single mother and totally reliant on her income - what do I tell her as President of her union - get back into that school and apply a few more behaviour management techniques and you'll be all right?

Just one more, then I'll go away - this one from a school SMT member is worth reading http://www.tes.co.uk/section/staffroom/thr...&messagePage=25

And another one - THIS is the reality of schools, both in the UK and here: "I'm appalled by some of the opinions in this thread slamming that supply teacher. How can you justify pupils abusing a teacher like that? NO teacher deserves this kind of abuse or behaviour. I think she did a very commendable job considering the circumstances. She put in a good effort for a supply, I've seen much worse. I would love to see some of you 'blame the teacher' posters do some day to day supply in tough London secondary schools in the poorest boroughs. Go on, bring em on! I worked at one of the schools shown in the documentary a few years back (it used to be in special measures) and I've seen far worse behaviour there with the full time staff. The doc wasn't edited to make schools look bad, it actually happens day to day. I've taught and worked in some of the toughest inner city schools in London, even one of these fancy new academies that had loads of statemented nutters that should really be in a borstal. All had atrocious behaviour, particularly lower sets...jumping on tables, chucking stuff at the teacher, insults, chucking chairs around the room, fighting and strangling, cussing each other, leaving the lesson at will. It goes on and on.

Two more pastes from TES with which I heartily agree: To be fair about the teacher, she did admit to not being a brilliant teacher with all the new teaching strategies. Yes, she did bite too easily, but she has a whole day like this. I witness this kind of behaviour in most lessons, but i think to a lesser extent because I am a full time teacher. Lets not start blaming the teachers, and look at the behaviour of the children. Should you have to spend all your time producing all singing all dancing lessons for students to behave. They should learn to have respect and behave whatever. I plan all singing, all dancing lessons and am unable to deliver them. This demoralises me and I stop for a while. And shock horror, lo and behold I do get a text book out. Hang on a minute, wasn't that how we all learnt at school 2 | Posted by: at 29 Apr 2005 22:21 Agreed. Supply, like permanent teaching, is something that you get better and easier with when you have been a while doing it. That lady did her best, and she didn't deserve all that. If kids only behave for 'super teachers', then there will not be much good behaviour. Judging a teacher's right to expect decent behaviour by his/her gifts as a teacher is the height of stupidity: do citizens only accept arrest from 'inspirational' police officers? Next time I see a middle-aged police constable, shall I ignore him because at his age he should be a sergeant? Is there such a thing as an 'advanced skills police constable'?

If parents, school, teachers and other agencies sing the same tune rather unsuprisingly it tends to work today as it ever has done But that's the crux of the problem, Andy - they don't any longer. Parents defend and condone their badly behaved children insread of correcting or chastising them. Legislation, taken to ridiculous extremes, backs them, schools no longer have effective sanctions and students know it. They also "know their rights" to the degree of threatening teachers who are doing nothing more than their job, with discrimination laws, civil rights and harassment. I understand that YOU manage your students very well with your techniques and approach and that's wonderful. What you don't seem able to acknowledge is that this is not happening everywhere and that in the majority of cases it is not the fault of the teacher, but a result of bad parenting, changes in society, and that it IS getting worse. You can blame the national curriculum if you want to and maybe it doesn't help, but here in Australia we don't have one, with our outcomes based framework we can teach in individualistic ways, have permission to use all sorts of "untraditional" approaches, teach what should interest and engage students, yet our teachers are still suffering an increase in verbal and physical assault. I could quote you figures to prove that from our records. I don't think we are ever going to agree on this one - I guess I just see it from a wider perspective as I deal daily with teachers whose lives and careers have been ruined because no one in authority will take responsibility for children who are out of control.

Paste below from TES site. A reply to someone else who said, "Bad behaviour is not the children's fault". ............................................................ "Stuff that. So they get lousy food. So their parents are morons. This still doesn't make it even remotely "all right". There's too much of "it's everyone else's fault but the little f*ckers who throw chairs", and THAT thought process is the real problem, not the food or the parents, all of which are consequences of it. No, it's the fault of the children." ............................................................. My middle son part owns a bakery and employs apprentice bakers. This year he had to put one of them on "a behaviour contract" because the boy wants to become a tradesman but doesn't have any control over his temper, is rude, lashes out at other employees, turns up late, takes many days off etc etc, Under new laws he cannot be sacked, but has to be placed on a behaviour management contract at 18 years of age. What sort of world are we creating by "never blaming the perpetrator"?

http://www.tes.co.uk/section/staffroom/thr...n/&threadPage=1 The discussion of the TV program on this TES site has now run to 24 pages in the space of a couple of days. I find the debate about bad behaviour being the teacher's fault because the teacher is "too old, too middle-class, out of touch, female" etc absolutely amazing. The few who said this were promptly put in their place and rightly so - we shouldn't expect students to behave only if the teacher has the "right" personality or is the right gender or age - do we say that about policemen or employers? What is this teacing kids? That you only behave if the person you are dealing with has the characteristics you approve of? My god, I can't believe intelligent people are saying this. I just read a very recent account of Russian schools in the Phi Beta Kappa journal - kids run wild during breaks, screaming shouting,chasing each other around, but the moment they walk back into the classroom they become polite, attentive and well-behaved. What this says is that most students CAN control their own behaviour, but in our societies thay choose not to and we let it happen. I still cannot come to terms with Andy's conviction that thing are just the same as always. How can they be if you even just take inclusion let alone increased bad parenting - 20 years ago there would not have been any autistic children in mainstream classes. I'm not saying that was a good thing, but it does mean that teachers are now dealing with highly aberrant behaviour without adequate trraining or resources. How can you possibly say that things are no different to the young teacher I had in my office last week, wanting to resign because she has a severely autistic 7 yr old in her class throwing, spitting, attacking other children who has actually inflicted wounds which needed hospital treatment on two TAs and the mother refuses to have him in a special school? The whole class is in chaos because of this one child and the DoE's answer is to "try a different approach" as if it's the teacher's fault. All of this makes me so angry when day after day we have to support teachers who are burnt out, poorly manages, under resourced, ham-strung by bureacracy and legilation, and getting out of teaching because by their 50s they cannot take any more. i wish they all worked in a school like yours, Andy, but they don't. Please read the TES thread.

Interesting debate on this program on the TES staffroom chatline

Graham I know you probably didn't mean this, but it worries me that you appear to be putting the entire blame on the teacher and none on the badly behaved students (and/or their parents) and the lack of ability teachers have to apply any meaningful sanctions on students. Also, many teachers eventually become defeated because of system and managerial support, but have to struggle on because of family,housing, finances etc by which time it is often too late to leave teaching at an age when there is still a good chance of finding another job with a similar income. Unless the teacher was unwilling to help herself, which seems unlikely, then I believe it's management who should be sacked for allowing this to occur, but how often does that happen?

Asking for assistance again, but I know how good you all are at this stuff! Can anyone point me to any international research on the cconnection between literacy and numeracy standards and teachers being specifically qualified to teach those subjects? Or just generall the connection between specialist qualifications and student outcomes. We have more and more teachers here being compelled to teach outside their areas of expertise and I would like to have some info about the effects.

If I were living in England and could vote (I do have a British passport and will be there from May26 - July 7 on holiday) I wouldn't vote for Blair either and my totally Labour partner wouldn't either. Serious reasons are those listed above by most others, plus what appears to an outsider to be a shambles in education and health (no better here) but, also, less seriously, because I can't think of a PMs wife who has been less suitable than Cherie. What a stupid, embarrassing, dreadful woman she appears to be. Is the Lib-Dem wife an improvement??

I have written to him asking him to list the specific countries to which he refers. I will pass on the reply I get, if any. John I think it's OK to think as long as you think the same thing (as him)

Below is article from our local paper today. Can anyone anywhere in the world verify the statement in bold? I can't get a straight answer from our DoE as to exactly which countries are looking at us. Any help greatfully received. Tassie school reform hailed 12apr05 TASMANIA had nothing to fear from a move toward a national schools curriculum because such reform would be similar to the Essential Learning curriculum already developed in the state, a conference heard yesterday. Education Department Curriculum Standards and Support executive director David Hanlon said the state was leading the world in curriculum reform. He told the Tasmanian Learning and Skills Authority conference in Launceston that Essential Learning was being looked at internationally as a way of teaching which promoted the capacity to think. "It's not good enough to be saying we want science or we want maths being taught," he said. "We have to ask what do we want them to achieve, and how are we going to deliver them so they do achieve what we want." He referred to studies which showed even high achieving students often had a fragile grasp of key concepts. Mr Hanlon said as well as having a framework for learning in meaningful contexts which promoted the capacity to think, the other key of Essential Learning was a seamless curriculum stretching from birth to Grade 10. He said without such a curriculum, learning could be lost. "Too often in the past, the clock is always being wound back to zero, most notably going from primary school to secondary school, but sometimes even from the end of one school year to the next," he said.

That's not the opinion of many Australian teachers who go there to teach - most appear to be very glad to get back.

I still disagree with you. The behaviour you quote was then outside school, not in it, and was still small numbers compared with today. We have never had SATs here but that has made no difference to the fact that behaviour has deteriorated. BTW, Just to see the reaction, I cut and pasted the Greek quotations to the TES website and asked teachers there for their response. In the 60s and 70s I taught in what was considered the toughest school in my state, but in 9 years, no student ever threw chairs at me, threatened me with a pair of scissors, constantly told me to "f... off" in class, constantly told me "you can't make me do anything" or "if you touch me, I''ll get you for sexual harassment", or spat at me, or exposed themselves in class, or vandalised my room. All of which actually happened to me in the last two years I taught in what was considered to be a normal rural high school. This sort of behaviour is the "norm" for many teachers now. Then add to that the included students, such as the one his teacher told me about last week - 7 yrs old in prep, severely autistic, mother refuses to have him in a special school because "she knows her rights". He has caused 2 TAs to resign, one sdent to hospital with a bleeding cut inflicteed by him, he kicks, bites, throws anything he can get hold of, moans and screams incessantly. Yes, after a long drawn out legal battle, we might get him forcibly removed, but who suffers through the months/years that will take? And yes, we had kids in special schools before who shouldn't have been, but is this any improvement?

But as I said somewhere else on this site in reference to those same quotes wich are regularly trotted out: All things are relative. What Plato and Socrates described as "wild" behaviour may bear little resemblance to what we think of as "wild" now. It all depends what you are comparing it with. Bad manners in their day may have amounted to speaking with your mouth full, not pushing old ladies down in the street and robbing them of their life savings. It's just as easy to trot out these quotes as it is for others to say that things are worse. They prove nothing. How many students were stabbed and murdered by other students in school 50 years ago? Now we're barely shocked by it. I have been teaching, or closely involved with teaching, in the same state, for almost 40 years and I know without a doubt that the behaviour and attitudes of students have deteriorated in that time. I go back to the schools I taught in through the 70s and 80s quite regularly and the aggression, the disrespect, the constant low-level disruption simply wasn't there in the same way. Yes, there were a few "bad" kids but they were a samll minority and were dealt with either by sanction or removal into the workforce, Now neither of these options are available. And no one will ever convince me that so many parents were the way they are today, 30 years ago - rude, aggressive, unsupportive, gullible, indulgent, inconsistent and dishonest. So, sorry, Derek. I don't agree with you. Yes, there are nice kids still, and nice schools, but they are becoming the minority instead of the norm.

I agree with most of what you say, but the big problem is how to fix it. Here in Australia, as in France, teachers are employed by the state and can be moved around within 65kms - this is a powerful weapon for keeping teachers in line. As is the intimidation of management and their potential effect on a successful career and promotion chances. As president of our teachers' union, I constantly see teachers who would love to "rebel", and whom we encourage to do so when their situation is unjust and unfair, but when you have a partner, and/or a family, it is not so easy to stand together against the status quo. Teachers are bullied, threatened and emotionally blackmailed into putting up with a great deal of cr*p, put into place by people who will never have to be in the classroom, but have the power to impose on others. Unless the bureaucrats are seen by their political masters to be "doing something" for their large salaries (ie constantly changing things) then they too are in trouble. This continuous cycle of imposed reform is an inevitable part of a bureaucratic system. It is interesting that an earlier poster points out that in Spain, student expectations of education are different. (Perhaps religion plays a part here as it does in Italy also) I suspect the same is true in many Asian countries and in places such as Africa. When something is a privilege, not a right, it's amazing how much more valued it is. I can't see this aspect of our society changing much. We do pander to our students too much - that is a reflection of the society we have become. And many more parents do not support the teacher and the school and are often worse than their offspring - again I don't see how this will get better in the short-term without a revolution. It would be wonderful to be able to impose effective sanctions but society won't allow that either. Everyone has civil rights, including out of control 5 year olds. Sorry to be so negative but I think we have let things go too far to get them back without some form of social revolution, or that there is a generational moral backflip like the Victorians after the previous century. I try to be objective, and tell myself that there never was a "golden age" and that not everything was rosy in the past, but I still can't convince myself that the education and childhood I had in the 50s and 60s wasn't a whole lot better than today.

And I should have added that my job still provides me with strong emotions, not always joy, but definitely excitement. I regularly have to make speeches to large numbers, sometimes with politicians in the audience, and I always get a buzz from people telling me I moved, inspired or even angered them. I get angry about govt and departmerntal stupidity quite frequently which then prompts me to action which still excites me. I came to this position late in life, and I can now see, if I'm absolutely honest, why many people are attracted to power. I hope I'm able to use it in the right way, but it is quite exciting to know you can influence and change important things. When I come out of the Minister's office having made a successful point and achieved some change or improvement, it is very satisfying. My partner is a few years older and he's to-ing and fro-ing about retiring, and worries he will be bored, not enough to do etc. That's partly because like many men he has put a lot of his energy into work for many years. He doesn't have many active hobbies - he reads, loves cinema, theatre, TV etc but probably wonders if that's enough to fill up his days satisfyingly enough. That aspect doesn't bother me at all. I have loads of things I want to do, including writing, travelling more etc. However, I'll put it off for a few more years.