I was also an unruly matric @ grey but never to the extent of those Little shits! Corpral punishment yes please! It made me a better person!

Matric 98

That shit was lank funny, though..”bloody bastards” ! I particularly liked that “shut up” after the brief pause. Classic!

Absolutely spot on. It’s sad really, the guy was wrong, he lost it, and it’s helping no-one, I still wouldn’t fire hime, but I wouldn’t be using him as an example of good practice either.

Bet he’s a hero in the staff room though…!

Whenever this topic comes up, the usual canards are trotted out to explain it. Kids, we’re told, are worse than ever before and we need to bring back corporal punishment. Neither are true: This may be controversial but the real reason for classroom indiscipline is the teachers.

Some of my teachers had absolutely no idea how to handle a class of teenage boys and as a result their classes were rowdy and chaotic. They were not respected and not regarded fondly by their students who took advantage of their weakness. Yet there were also teachers who could keep a class quiet through the sheer force of their presence, having both the respect and regard of their students. Changing classes was like night and day, chaos and disrepect in one and attentive silence in the next. Considering that it’s the same set of boys we’re talking about here, the only conclusion is that teaching styles matter more than we realise.

But the most interesting thing about this is that nearly all the teachers who could maintain discipline and respect were ‘old-school’ in their approach, they seldom raised their voices, never swore and never resorted to corporal punishment but they also refused to treat the students as equals or use any of the other methods recommended by proponents of sensitive teaching. And I think that’s the heart of the problem: Most new teachers are being taught a modern, supposedly more sensitive style of teaching that was dreamt up by sociologists whose only experience of the classroom was their days daydreaming at the back. It just doesn’t work.

Instead, universities and teaching colleges need to study the methods of those teachers who do succeed in maintaining discipline in their classes, figure out what they’re doing right and teach it as a mandatory subject to everybody that studies to become a teacher. In addition, schools need to create mechanisms through which older and more experienced teachers can share their methods with new and inexperienced teachers. They also need to be backed up by their schools, ensuring that punishments like detention are actually enforced and that they suck enough for pupils to hate them.

To be fair, I do feel for this guy. I know how infuriatingly annoying a class of teenagers can be and I can imagine how frustrating it must be to be up against a class of brats knowing full well that it’s beyond your abilities to discipline them. So his outburst is understandable, but it was unprofessional and unproductive – it will earn him neither discipline nor respect. Grey shouldn’t fire him because of this, but his days are numbered anyway if he can’t discipline his students. More’s the pity, it sounds like he’s a nice enough guy and an effective teacher aside from that.

As an added benefit, showing teachers how to effectively control classes will go a long way towards preventing many from quitting and encouraging students to become teachers in the first place, since it will empower them with something in place of the paralysed helplessness most of them feel in the face of indisciplined students.

I’m guessing people are just too scared to comment on the original post at Splattermail.