Classroom Chaos

[Doug Belshaw]

Behaviour management is not a question of age (though good experience helps). It is a set of learnt behaviours that an intelligent young teacher properly trained should be able to master quite quickly.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You're right Andy - and thankfully I'm seen by the pupils as a 'strict but fun' teacher! However, if one's colleagues aren't setting the correct example it can be very difficult. I believe that for the first few times you try to correct a pupil's behaviour in a lesson you're the specific teacher - i.e. Mr Walker or Mr Belshaw. After a while, though, of persistent misbehaviour and attempts to address it, in the eyes of the misbehaving pupil you turn into just 'a teacher'...

Doug

[Graham Davies]

Jean writes:

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.

This is exactly my view too.

My wife and I were fairly strict with my two daughters when they were teenagers in the early/mid 1980s, e.g. we always wanted details of where they were going and we set a time for them to be home whenever they went out. We always expected them to be home on time for our evening meal, where we sat down together round the dinner table chatted over problems and had a lot of laughs exchanging funny stories, etc...

However, we were very much aware of the fact that we were in many respects exceptional parents. I recall the regular battles I had with my daughters when I refused to let them go to night clubs at the tender age of 14. "Jane's dad lets her go" was the argument I heard over and over again. And this was indeed true. Many parents that I knew did not object to their 14-year-old daughters going to such clubs (which themselves often had a minimum age limit of 18 or 21 - and which they didn't always apply) and drinking alcohol. And I can think of many other similar situations. Most parents seemed to be rather lax, we felt.

My wife and I always stood our ground, gradually relaxing the rules as our daughters grew up - into charming and happily married young women. But I wonder how our grandchildren will fare. I hope something that we instilled into our daughters will rub off in the next generation, but peer-group pressure and the stupid behaviour of other parents are hard to defeat.

[Jean Walker]

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?

[Guest]

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?

I would indeed hope that the collective intelligence, expertise and experience of your trade union might well come up with something more helpful than that

It is a spurious tactic to throw extreme examples at this forum in the hope that it might convince me and others that children are worse now than they have ever been. Jean actually highlights a number of crucial causal weaknesses in the school environment she describes - none of which can be "blamed"on the child.

I teach in challenging conditions every day, (I doubt very much whether Jean does) and have to tell you that children are pretty much as they have always been. Adults often set up bad structures, appoint bad managers, under-resource schools, create societies of vast inequality.... children do none of these things, they just experience them.

It is equally spurious to claim that someone like myself only "blames the teacher" when difficulties occur.

Perhaps we need to look beyond "blame" in such cases to the broader causes of disruptive pupils. As we do so it would be good to remember that we are the adults and that in reality we call all the shots if only we had the wisdom to realise it.

[Graham Davies]

Andy writes:

It is a spurious tactic to throw extreme examples at this forum in the hope that it might convince me and others that children are worse now than they have ever been.

I don't need convincing. I'm already convinced by what I see and experience all around me that young people's behaviour is worse now than it was 35 years ago. Our town centre - in repectable middle-class Berkshire - is a no-go area on Friday and Saturday evenings. Binge drinking is the main cause of the bad behaviour - although the situation has got better now that CCTV has been installed at strategic points, now that all the pubs employ bouncers, and now that mounted police appear at chucking out time. The town centre pubs were a pleasant place to go for a quiet drink over the weekend when I moved into the area in 1972 - and the age-range was wider. Now I would double the average age if I walked into a town centre pub over the weekend. The situation began to deteriorate in the 1980s, got seriously out of control in the 1990s, and now - thanks to the measures indicated above - it's slightly better.

Older residents remember the running battles in the High Street between gangs of Teddy Boys during the 1950s, but this was short-lived and peace was restored by the 1960s.

[Guest]

Andy writes:

It is a spurious tactic to throw extreme examples at this forum in the hope that it might convince me and others that children are worse now than they have ever been.

I don't need convincing. I'm already convinced by what I see and experience all around me that young people's behaviour is worse now than it was 35 years ago. Our town centre - in repectable middle-class Berkshire - is a no-go area on Friday and Saturday evenings. Binge drinking is the main cause of the bad behaviour - although the situation has got better now that CCTV has been installed at strategic points, now that all the pubs employ bouncers, and now that mounted police appear at chucking out time. The town centre pubs were a pleasant place to go for a quiet drink over the weekend when I moved into the area in 1972 - and the age-range was wider. Now I would double the average age if I walked into a town centre pub over the weekend. The situation began to deteriorate in the 1980s, got seriously out of control in the 1990s, and now - thanks to the measures indicated above - it's slightly better.

Older residents remember the running battles in the High Street between gangs of Teddy Boys during the 1950s, but this was short-lived and peace was restored by the 1960s.

Perhaps if I had more contact with the badlands of Berkshire and Tasmania I'd more more inclined to agree with you both. Unfortunately all I can go on is my daily experience of a working class non selective secondary modern school in urban Dartford

[Graham Davies]

Andy writes:

Unfortunately all I can go on is my daily experience of a working class non selective secondary modern school in urban Dartford

I get around quite a bit as a free-lance teacher trainer, and I have visited around 20 schools in London and the Home Counties over the last two years. I often arrive in the "twilight" hours, namely when the children are on the way home. I reckon that in around one third of the schools that I visited behaviour appeared (on the surface) to be good or acceptable. As for the rest...

Kent is one of the areas where I have delivered training courses. The school that I visited there was highly respectable - but, as a Man of Kent, I am probably biased.

[Jean Walker]

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.

[John Simkin]

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.

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. Anyway, I think leaving the classroom gives you certain advantages over those still at the “chalk face”. For example, a high percentage of teachers find it difficult to talk about discipline problems they are having in the classroom. That is why the TES forum has had so many comments about this topic (teachers rarely use their own names on the TES forum).

As far as I can see all the published evidence suggests a decline in the standard of student behaviour. That was mirrored by my 25 years experience in the classroom. I would be interested to hear from other experienced teachers about their view on the standard of student discipline. I am willing to be convinced that there has been no decline in standards.

[David Richardson]

The key period for me was 1979-1980, when the bottom was removed from the British economy by Mrs Thatcher's incoming government. When jobs were so scarce that you'd routinely get hundreds of applicants for each post, you could no longer, as a teacher, run the argument "keep your nose clean and you'll pass your exams and get a job". Getting a job was something that occurred because of random factors outside your control.

At the same time, "there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals and their families" was the government's official line in just about everything. And then there was the explicit assault on teachers. Now I know teaching's a funny business - everyone's been to school, so everyone knows how to do it properly. Lots of people have at least one unpleasant memory from their time at school (with so many ex-pupils and so many teachers, it'd be strange if it were otherwise). However, my experience from the time was that the general grousing about teachers was raised to the level of an orchestrated government campaign.

My take on this was that education represents a large slice of the national economy of any country. It's also a very visible slice. You don't see the tank that costs as much as a secondary school everyday (defence is another very large slice), but lots of people are in regular contact with schools (even people without school-age children have friends, grandchildren, acquaintances, etc who are in contact with schools). Thatcher was looking for a diversion from the attention being paid to the fact that the economic prescription which the Tories had been pushing for decades had been an instant and near-total disaster. It's easy to forget that the Tories were mightily unpopular in 1980-1983, so thank you General Galtieri for invading the Falklands and getting them off the hook. And when you look at the charts of the 'Tory success story', nearly all of them use 1981 as their starting point, rather than 1979 (because nearly a quarter of the British economy went needlessly down the drain between 1979-1981).

In those circumstances, it was natural to turn on the teachers. The fact that the Tories had to seriously undermine what had been a reasonably good educational system in the process was just … politics.

I'm sure, for example, that there might have been good reasons for introducing the national curriculum, league tables, testing, etc, etc, but the justification from the time that I remember was the absolute necessity of 'controlling' teachers, and wresting the right to make statements about the 'quality' of the education system out of the hands of the universities (who set the GCSE exam papers). This is why the later years of the Thatcher-Major governments regularly featured the August follies, when the Junior Minister would be in one briefing room telling journalists about yet another success in increasing GCSE pass rates, whilst the Minister was in the one next door telling another set of journalists about how the A level boards were diluting standards yet again … to make it look as if more people were getting better grades.

And then there was 'Loadsamoney'. You've shafted manufacturing industry and removed the quality controls on private industry one after the other. You haven't got many economic sectors left which are going to give you the illusion of a functioning economy. Loadsamoney was a plumber, if I remember right, and one of the first things Thatcher's first government did was to cripple industrial training and the apprentice system. At the same time, council houses were privatised, but the need for maintenance still existed. I don't know what the situation in the UK is like now, but one of the major problems for householders in the early 1980s was just finding someone who knew how to repair the roof, or fix the pipes. You could earn much more than a teacher earned by setting up as an entrepreneurial fixer, and there was such demand for the service that you didn't actually need to know much about what you were doing. So why waste your time getting an education or training?

So … my bottom line is that you can't blame teachers or pupils for the disregard so many pupils and their parents have for schools and education. The problem now is knowing what to do about it. My oldest daughter is 13 now, and is the kind of kid who does well at school (she's inherited my ability to remember meaningless factual information!). I'm so glad, though, that we made the decision not to return to the UK when she was 5. She's just taken the first of the (advisory) tests in core subjects at school … and those are the only tests she'll take, apart from the ones teachers set her. I'm so glad she didn't have to go through the testing regime that exists in schools in England.

Edited May 2, 2005 by David Richardson

[Jean Walker]

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.

[Guest]

I would be interested to hear from other experienced teachers about their view on the standard of student discipline. I am willing to be convinced that there has been no decline in standards.

25 years ago children could be hit by teachers using sticks and straps - this much is fact - whether it was desirable or not is a moot point.

Whether children had more respect for their elders and their country, had greater moral fibre, never cheeked policemen, were more likely to conform, and had greater sense of the importance of family and property is also highly debatable. I for one rather hope things were never quite that bad but I'm an old fashioned sort of bloke in this respect.

Young people have always quire rightly spent a great amount of their time being outrageous, loud, sexually experimental, kind, angry, drunk, stoned, unselfish, anti-capitalist, anti- conformity, anti-family, anti-establishment........ in short 'being young'.

Perhaps that's why we 'crumblies' find them so annoying.

That said it is undeniable that teachers are increasingly complaining of poor pupil behaviour in schools

The introduction of a market in education has undoubtedly caused the development of sink schools (market losers) where pupil behaviour has become a media exaggerated problem but a problem all the same. Standards of teacher training have declined with the introduction of 'in school' training on the cheap. Too many teachers today are not therefore equipped to deal with classroom problems as they emerge. Economic mismanagement has led to a decline in opportunities for young people and considerable regional poverty. Some children therefore calculate that there is very little material point to working hard and doing well. Educational mismanagement has transformed the educational experience of children from a voyage of discovery to a turgid round of swotting for tests - this is not only dull and dreary for pupils but also extremely stressful. All of these factors are important in explaining why bored young people can kick back against the system.

Am I the only person here capable of understanding that none of these things are in the control of the children themselves? If things are much worse that they were in Jean's or John's or Graham's day it is because we have made them thus.

[John Simkin]

Am I the only person here capable of understanding that none of these things are in the control of the children themselves? If things are much worse that they were in Jean's or John's or Graham's day it is because we have made them thus.

I agree entirely. So I imagine would Jean and Graham. But we have not been saying that it is young people who are to blame. As a character said in one of my favourite films (Memories of Underdevelopment) “You are too innocent to be guilty. I am too powerful to be innocent”. The film was made by a Cuban. On the surface it was a middle-class man talking to a working-class woman. However, it was really about politics (one of the reasons it was banned by Castro).

[Guest]

Am I the only person here capable of understanding that none of these things are in the control of the children themselves? If things are much worse that they were in Jean's or John's or Graham's day it is because we have made them thus.

I agree entirely. So I imagine would Jean and Graham. But we have not been saying that it is young people who are to blame.

Not sure I agree with you there John - remember THIS POST?

[Graham Davies]

Andy writes:

Am I the only person here capable of understanding that none of these things are in the control of the children themselves? If things are much worse that they were in Jean's or John's or Graham's day it is because we have made them thus.

I think Andy has missed the point. As I have said or implied many times before I don't BLAME the children. The blame lies fairly and squarely on the adult population for allowing children to develop bad behaviour. But now that we have a problem we have to fix it rather than ignoring it or pretending it doesn't exist, and if this means imposing stricter discipline standards, police action, etc then unfortunately this has to be done as a short-term solution. The longer-term solution is in the hands of ourselves and those we have elected to represent us.

I interpreted Jean's post quite differently from Andy. There comes a point when the perpetrator has to be held responsible for his/her own actions. I am not sure exactly at which point this should occur - but it may be relevant here to mention the age of criminal responsibility. In some countries parents continue to be held responsible for the actions of their children up to what we might regard as a ripe old age. The age of criminal responsibility in England is 10. In Germany, however, it is 14 and in Belgium it is 18. Parents might act more responsibly if they carried the can rather than wringing their hands in dismay and saying "There's nothing I can do with him/her" and expecting other members of society (e.g. teachers, youth workers and the police) to sort out their problems. See:

http://www.billofrightsni.org/hrc/responses/includeyouth.pdf