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This was posted on our staff room notice board today and I thought it was so 'spot on' I just had to share it with my fellow JUB "chalkies". It relates specifically to the Australian public education system (and certainly to my experience as a public high school teacher for the past 30+ years - especially the last 10 years), but I'm sure teachers the world over can identify with the views expressed. I'd be very interested in reading your reactions.
It's long-ish but well worth reading. Sorry, but I don't know the source of the article .....
SCHOOL DAZE
Why today's classrooms are turning good teachers into bad crowd controllers.
Take another deep breath. It won't slow your heart rate or curb the spurts of adrenaline, but it might help conceal the fear in your voice. Where you are going fear is fatal because you can't follow your normal instinct to fight back or run away.
Inside the classroom your charges await. You can tell by the volume what to expect. Teenage girls bitching, texting, writing nasty letters and flirting with farting teenage boys who are throwing pencils and punches. Soaked with hormones, rampant with adolescent egocentrism, these kids are only interested in improving their lot in the pack hierarchy .... and drawing penises on the whiteboard. The last thing on their minds is learning, yet that is what you, dear teacher, have been entrusted with.
Marking the roll, you have to shout over their iPods and indifference. Waiting for silence doesn't work on those without conscience or respect. You have designed your lesson to engage all your students, including those of 'diverse abilities' (edu-babble for those with the attention span of a junk-food commercial). But your worksheets are being converted into spitballs, paper planes and confetti faster than you can hand them out.
Trying to organise the class over the din, you wonder what the hell you are doing there. No-one is listening. No-one cares. The high-minded pedagogic ideals of the education degree you completed are a distant, irrelevant fantasy. Bugger Piaget and Vygotsky; their child psychology doesn't mean a thing now that you've learned the brutal truth: teaching is crowd control. But unlike the sadists who caned you in the 60's and 70's, you're a riot cop without a water cannon; a lion tamer without a whip.
William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, was a teacher. He understood that, in the absence of authority, the fragile social order of the adolescent world collapses frighteningly fast. We all know authority without consequence is meaningless - that's why we have fines and prisons. Yet today's public-school teachers are expected to manage and teach large groups of adolescents without enforceable rules.
For the vast majority of public schools, the sacred tenet of Quality Teaching - a classroom environment in which learning of significance and intellectual merit can take place - is pure rhetoric; fancy sounding fluff on the noticebaord in the corner of a dilapidated staffroom.
Teachers today age one year in just nine-and-a-half months. Either you give in to the madness of the system - selling your soul like a spruiker ignored on a busy street - or you burn out trying to fight the impossible fight. You find yourself struggling to sleep, waking at first light with dread like a brick in your heart: What will today hold? Another 15 year old screaming "Fuck off!" in your face with impunity? Being cast as the lead villain by some vindictive vandal from a dysfunctional family? It's not teachers that schools are protecting by refusing to install security cameras in classrooms.
You learned all this the hard way, of course. You varied your approach; you worked on making the syllabus as user-friendly as possible; you held meetings with staff, your class and individual students. But undeveloped adolescent frontal lobes are simply not designed for cooperative collectivism. No amount of namby-pamby common sense is going to persuade a pack of adolescents to do only what's in their best interests.
"To hell with the carrot!" I hear you cry. "Where's the stick?" Herein lies the paradox. When your Department Head agrees that lunchtime class detention would help improve behaviour, but then shrugs his shoulders and says it's probable no-one will turn up, you realise you're in a deeper hole than you thought.
Stunned, you pay the Deputy Principal a visit. But the touchy-feely bureaucrat you encounter is a far cry from the demagogues of days gone by. Reassured by assertions of how important discipline is to the school, you are smoothly directed back to your long-suffering Head of Department (who now has the look of a hunted vole whenever you approach), wielding the school's thick and glossy discipline policy like Don Quixote's lance. It is full of policy. Beyond the non-existent detentions and 'responsible behaviour' classrooms, there are punitive actions such as sending letters to parents warning them that their child could fail if his behaviour doesn't improve, or her work is not completed. Getting the parents involved sounds great in theory. They should care that their child isn't learning. The school agrees, but then points out that that they can only send one or two letters. In other words, pick on two out of 27 who are just as bad as each other.
Then it finally dawns on you. What you thought was an institution devoted to education is actually something else. It is a holding pen for youth. Education is second to keeping young people off the streets. Kids with no intention of learning attend so they can get the dole. As one rowdy fellow told me: "I'm only here for my youth allowance, not to learn, so get off my back."
School executives have betrayed their long-suffering staff by implementing department directives and government policy that directly contradict the discipline policies of their schools. In a monstrous act of double speak, they have made teachers paper tigers; de facto minders for the dysfunctional and disinterested. Those kids willing to learn are hugely disadvantaged because their teacher's time is wasted on management that is doomed to fail.
No wonder parents are abandoning the public school system and going private in search of discipline. Catholic schools are alarmed at the weight of numbers seeking their services. Twenty years ago, the proportion of non-Catholic students attending Catholic schools in Australia was around 20% - now it's 40% and rising.
If there's one thing guaranteed to infuriate a teacher it's a non-educator glibly announcing that at least things are much better than they were "in the old days." I'd like to sentence them to one day - no, that would be inhumane - just one lesson teaching a difficult class and watch them implode. Few teachers would suggest returning to the bad old days of the cane - beating kids into submission is not the answer - but if learning is actually to take place in today's classrooms, then something has to be done.
The funny thing is that when you take one of these adolescent miscreants out of the pack and have a one-on-one conversation with them, they invariably revert to their individual charming selves; the person their parents know and love. You can reach them and you can teach them. But a teacher can only serve the educational needs of the individual when the classroom is under control. Until public schools address this fundamental truth their decline will continue.
Corporal punishment is not the answer, nor is chucking millions of dollars into better computers or meaningless reports, but perhaps something like a Green Corps is. Unmanageable students could be painting benches, planting trees, sprucing up their school or their local community and learning practical skills that might help them find a job. Some will love it; for those that don't, the trials of the textbook might seem like an attractive option after all. Either way, such meaningful discipline would provide a much-needed life lesson in a system that is dragging schools, teachers and students down to the lowest common denominator.
It's long-ish but well worth reading. Sorry, but I don't know the source of the article .....
SCHOOL DAZE
Why today's classrooms are turning good teachers into bad crowd controllers.
Take another deep breath. It won't slow your heart rate or curb the spurts of adrenaline, but it might help conceal the fear in your voice. Where you are going fear is fatal because you can't follow your normal instinct to fight back or run away.
Inside the classroom your charges await. You can tell by the volume what to expect. Teenage girls bitching, texting, writing nasty letters and flirting with farting teenage boys who are throwing pencils and punches. Soaked with hormones, rampant with adolescent egocentrism, these kids are only interested in improving their lot in the pack hierarchy .... and drawing penises on the whiteboard. The last thing on their minds is learning, yet that is what you, dear teacher, have been entrusted with.
Marking the roll, you have to shout over their iPods and indifference. Waiting for silence doesn't work on those without conscience or respect. You have designed your lesson to engage all your students, including those of 'diverse abilities' (edu-babble for those with the attention span of a junk-food commercial). But your worksheets are being converted into spitballs, paper planes and confetti faster than you can hand them out.
Trying to organise the class over the din, you wonder what the hell you are doing there. No-one is listening. No-one cares. The high-minded pedagogic ideals of the education degree you completed are a distant, irrelevant fantasy. Bugger Piaget and Vygotsky; their child psychology doesn't mean a thing now that you've learned the brutal truth: teaching is crowd control. But unlike the sadists who caned you in the 60's and 70's, you're a riot cop without a water cannon; a lion tamer without a whip.
William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, was a teacher. He understood that, in the absence of authority, the fragile social order of the adolescent world collapses frighteningly fast. We all know authority without consequence is meaningless - that's why we have fines and prisons. Yet today's public-school teachers are expected to manage and teach large groups of adolescents without enforceable rules.
For the vast majority of public schools, the sacred tenet of Quality Teaching - a classroom environment in which learning of significance and intellectual merit can take place - is pure rhetoric; fancy sounding fluff on the noticebaord in the corner of a dilapidated staffroom.
Teachers today age one year in just nine-and-a-half months. Either you give in to the madness of the system - selling your soul like a spruiker ignored on a busy street - or you burn out trying to fight the impossible fight. You find yourself struggling to sleep, waking at first light with dread like a brick in your heart: What will today hold? Another 15 year old screaming "Fuck off!" in your face with impunity? Being cast as the lead villain by some vindictive vandal from a dysfunctional family? It's not teachers that schools are protecting by refusing to install security cameras in classrooms.
You learned all this the hard way, of course. You varied your approach; you worked on making the syllabus as user-friendly as possible; you held meetings with staff, your class and individual students. But undeveloped adolescent frontal lobes are simply not designed for cooperative collectivism. No amount of namby-pamby common sense is going to persuade a pack of adolescents to do only what's in their best interests.
"To hell with the carrot!" I hear you cry. "Where's the stick?" Herein lies the paradox. When your Department Head agrees that lunchtime class detention would help improve behaviour, but then shrugs his shoulders and says it's probable no-one will turn up, you realise you're in a deeper hole than you thought.
Stunned, you pay the Deputy Principal a visit. But the touchy-feely bureaucrat you encounter is a far cry from the demagogues of days gone by. Reassured by assertions of how important discipline is to the school, you are smoothly directed back to your long-suffering Head of Department (who now has the look of a hunted vole whenever you approach), wielding the school's thick and glossy discipline policy like Don Quixote's lance. It is full of policy. Beyond the non-existent detentions and 'responsible behaviour' classrooms, there are punitive actions such as sending letters to parents warning them that their child could fail if his behaviour doesn't improve, or her work is not completed. Getting the parents involved sounds great in theory. They should care that their child isn't learning. The school agrees, but then points out that that they can only send one or two letters. In other words, pick on two out of 27 who are just as bad as each other.
Then it finally dawns on you. What you thought was an institution devoted to education is actually something else. It is a holding pen for youth. Education is second to keeping young people off the streets. Kids with no intention of learning attend so they can get the dole. As one rowdy fellow told me: "I'm only here for my youth allowance, not to learn, so get off my back."
School executives have betrayed their long-suffering staff by implementing department directives and government policy that directly contradict the discipline policies of their schools. In a monstrous act of double speak, they have made teachers paper tigers; de facto minders for the dysfunctional and disinterested. Those kids willing to learn are hugely disadvantaged because their teacher's time is wasted on management that is doomed to fail.
No wonder parents are abandoning the public school system and going private in search of discipline. Catholic schools are alarmed at the weight of numbers seeking their services. Twenty years ago, the proportion of non-Catholic students attending Catholic schools in Australia was around 20% - now it's 40% and rising.
If there's one thing guaranteed to infuriate a teacher it's a non-educator glibly announcing that at least things are much better than they were "in the old days." I'd like to sentence them to one day - no, that would be inhumane - just one lesson teaching a difficult class and watch them implode. Few teachers would suggest returning to the bad old days of the cane - beating kids into submission is not the answer - but if learning is actually to take place in today's classrooms, then something has to be done.
The funny thing is that when you take one of these adolescent miscreants out of the pack and have a one-on-one conversation with them, they invariably revert to their individual charming selves; the person their parents know and love. You can reach them and you can teach them. But a teacher can only serve the educational needs of the individual when the classroom is under control. Until public schools address this fundamental truth their decline will continue.
Corporal punishment is not the answer, nor is chucking millions of dollars into better computers or meaningless reports, but perhaps something like a Green Corps is. Unmanageable students could be painting benches, planting trees, sprucing up their school or their local community and learning practical skills that might help them find a job. Some will love it; for those that don't, the trials of the textbook might seem like an attractive option after all. Either way, such meaningful discipline would provide a much-needed life lesson in a system that is dragging schools, teachers and students down to the lowest common denominator.
](/images/smilies/bang.gif "Brick wall ](*,)")
