06 Apr 2012
What can be done to reverse the collapse in discipline since the banning of the cane?
When I was in my second year of teaching, I asked a 15-year-old boy to leave the classroom as he was being disruptive and rude. He refused, and swore at me several times. I wrote down what he was saying – because as a teacher today, your word is never enough. He marched towards me, and stood there, towering above me, his fist raised. “Gimme the paper, bitch!” he shouted, trying to grab it from my hand.
I held on, knowing that if I let go, I’d lose the rest of the class for ever. After several attempts to scare the wits out of me – which, I have to say, nearly worked – he let go of the paper and left the room. His punishment? To sit outside the deputy head’s office for the next couple of lessons.
It comes as little surprise, then, that a report to the annual conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) has revealed that a quarter of the union’s members have been physically attacked in the past 12 months. Or that half of the teachers say that low-level disruption has got worse in the past two years. Or, as this newspaper reports today, that teachers are winning hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation for injuries received at their pupils’ hands.
Mary Bousted, the leader of the ATL, claims that part of the problem is that middle-class children aren’t given enough chores to do at home: the result is a generation of spoilt and precious “little Buddhas”. Clearly, families have an important role to play when it comes to instilling discipline. Bousted is right to point out that we have allowed children to take control, with parents running around trying to please them with a bigger television set, the latest iPad, or the most expensive birthday party. Gone are the days when parents were considered to have the authority, and when a teacher’s threat to tell Mum or Dad was enough to keep the child in line. On the contrary, it is rather more common to hear “I’m gonna tell my mum on you!” being shouted at the teacher.
The problem, however, is rather more complex than just children not doing the washing-up. Part of it is the rise in low-level disruption. The inordinate emphasis on group work and the general pressure on teachers to be “facilitators of learning” who roam among a bustling class, rather than teaching to it from the front, is part of the reason why general noise and inattentiveness is considered normal. In some places, it is simply expected.
With the boundaries shifted in this way, so that “good” behaviour is what we would have considered bad some 20 years ago, a naughty child has to go even further to stand out from the crowd and attract attention. This explains why rudeness and swearing at teachers are on the increase. In my experience, children think nothing of responding to teachers with a flippant, derisory “Yeah?”, and expect teachers to ignore it because they have been trained to do so.
Sadly, many younger teachers are made to feel inadequate when they complain about this. It is not unusual for their seniors to believe that if there is bad behaviour, it is the teacher’s fault for not having been engaging enough. I cannot tell you the number of times I have heard children explain away their bad behaviour by saying that the lesson wasn’t interesting enough. The result is that history classes seize upon Titanic or Jack the Ripper because of the gore, English teachers make project work out of The Simpsons, and anything considered “too boring” is pushed aside.
So what’s the answer? Julian Perfect, a teacher from inner London, pointed out at the ATL conference that the decline largely dates from the cane and slipper being banned in 1987, since when no equivalent disciplinary measure has been introduced. That’s certainly true – I have known many children, in particular the naughty ones, who wonder why the cane was ever taken away. Many even wish it would return, so as to “help them behave”. Detentions are sometimes effective, but when children come from chaotic families, they can be actively grateful for them, since it allows them to stay away from home for longer. Exclusion is another option, but schools shy away, because of the harsh repercussions if they are seen to exclude too many children.
But while reintroducing the cane might be effective, it is also a bit of a red herring. In the old days, it was normally used only in extreme cases. What kept the vast majority of children in their chairs was not fear of corporal punishment, but a sense of right and wrong – of duty, pride and obedience, of not bringing shame on their parents’ heads.
Of course, there are schools today that maintain discipline, despite the challenges. They do so by offering a structured environment, imposing extremely high expectations and refusing to accept the excuse that discipline is the job of the family as a justification for bad behaviour on their premises. Many other schools would do well to learn from their example.
