The latest from dougbelshaw.com/blog
- Google Apps (Education Edition) vs. Microsoft Live@Edu
- Things I Learned This Week – #30
- Weeknote #11
- One week until #GTAUK
- 3 things I need to maintain my productivity.
- Motivation comes from within.
- Intention vs. Effect
- You are what you habitually do.
- Is it time to get rid of secondary schools?
- Productivity: value your time
-
They’re just naughty
24 CommentsThere’s a good short piece in the TES this week (not available online, unfortunately) by Mike Kent, the head of a London primary school. In it he vents his spleen about precisely the issue which gets me – the ‘medicalisation’ of bad behaviour and the lack of simple ‘telling off’ that goes on in schools. Here’s what he has to say… :s
I’ll start off with a quotation from Mike:
Why can’t we accept that young children are sometimes naughty, and need to be told off?
We’re told to make behaviour ‘contracts’ for them, or organise circle time so that angst can be unloaded when it’s their turn to clutch the furry hedgehog. We’re encouraged to have in-depth discussions with Cynthia to discover why she kicked her chair across the classroom. We’re persuaded to give certificates, trophies and treats when they behave well, as if good behaviour was unnatural and something to be joyously celebrated. We spend vast amounts from our school budgets sending lunchtime supervisors on training courses which tell them how to ‘manage’ poor playground behaviour. Or we find excuses. The children have attention deficit syndrome, hyperkinetic disorder, oppositional defiance syndrome… Label them, reason with them, tolerate them, but whatever you do, don’t tell a child off.
Meanwhile, every seven minutes of every school day, a teacher is verbally abused or physically attacked.
And that’s just primary school. When these young people move onto secondary schools and the hormones kick in, things just get worse. As Mike says, the government seems to think that spreading these students around many schools is the answer as they will soon learn to conform. Will they? I doubt it. Meanwhile, pressure to reduce the number of permanent exclusions has seen the number of fixed-term exclusions rise considerably.
A real-world example: a Key Stage 3 pupil with whom I recently had a run-in shouted back down the corridor at me as he was running away ‘I’ve got behaviour problems!’ Telling me…. As soon as you allow students (and their parents) to think that their behaviour and attitude isn’t their responsibility you’re in a lose-lose situation. Students need to learn to take responsibility for their actions, but many simply need to be told off. To modify one’s own behaviour one must have the powers of self-reflection to be able to do so. I seriously doubt whether a lot of young people I’m talking about have those powers.
I’m all for trying to make children reflect on their actions, but sometimes they just need to be trained with a series of tellings-off. The softly-softly approach isn’t always the best policy…
Published on June 30, 2006 · Filed under: Uncategorized;
24 Responses to “They’re just naughty”
-
mark said on June 30th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
totally agree [except for the lunchtime supervisor training - that was a joke right!? :)], and it is a huge problem. I see it from nursery up, parents seem to want to follow nature in nurturing the child into adulthood. It’s a form of neglect, that has become pervasive. Once in school, as you say, a softly softly regime does the child no favours. I’m seeing children grouped with those charismatic staff that can subvert good behaviour from them. This is the result of the inadequacies of the current fashionable state of political correctness.
-
ClETk6 znqiqpplufmn, [url=http://mnugkjnhhixm.com/]mnugkjnhhixm[/url], [link=http://vddimeuizckb.com/]vddimeuizckb[/link], http://rwbifvwjxpyl.com/
-
AXhJMO qategbqjchlj, [url=http://tpapqfpadzzm.com/]tpapqfpadzzm[/url], [link=http://yclrqcfqgktz.com/]yclrqcfqgktz[/link], http://ssxxmjdzmwli.com/
Leave a Reply
