Wormwood Scrubs For Me, Thanks
Really, it is a wonder that anyone goes into teaching, and even more of one that anyone stays. It sounds a hell of a lot worse than being a prison guard.
‘One of the most important things about Classroom Chaos is that the schools were chosen randomly by Thomas’s supply teacher agencies, and most had been identified by Ofsted as being average or better than average,’ he said.
‘The situation was so constant that we can confidently say anti-social behaviour is an everyday reality in classrooms across Britain,’ he added. ‘It is an appalling situation and one which must not be allowed to continue: education is being strangled.’
Lest you think it’s any better in the US, it’s not. I have friends who’ve gone into teaching and gone right back out again, it was so hellish. I have other friends who’ve stayed, but they live with a lot of frustration.
Thomas estimates that, on average, she failed to teach anything at all in four out of six lessons a day. Experienced teachers to whom she spoke confirmed that they lose around two to three months a year of effective teaching through struggling to control antisocial classroom behaviour…Thomas assumed the fault must lie with her teaching methods until she asked heads of departments to visit her classes and found her efforts were praised. ‘It was when I heard lessons being taught by full-time teachers whose pupils were just as loud as mine, and who were having to shout at them just as much as I was, that I realised the state of my classrooms was normal,’ she said.
Teachers comment on this article, one confirmation after another. It’s a depressing read.
Update: link now added. How absent-minded I am…Probably my teachers’ fault.
Good teachers get it from both ends. If they don’t suck up to the administration and meekly follow its idiotic dictates, the administration makes sure those teachers’ lives become a living hell. And they can expect no help from the teachers’ union, which is solely concerned with avoiding any trouble. My two favorite high school teachers were eventually fired on trumped-up charges because they dared to disagree with the principal and criticize the corrupt local school board. The union was worse than useless: the two men’s hard work and devotion–and success with their students–made the other teachers look bad, so it colluded with the admin and hung them out to dry.
I taught high school for three and a half years before “escaping” into higher ed. As in the expereince noted in some of the comments to the Guardian article, my greatest challenge was parents.
I will offer two cases in point to illustrate the frustration of teachers. First, the mother of a young man I accused of plagiarizing claimed, “I write his papers. His writing is so poor that if I didn’t, he’d never pass.” That was in a Catholic school.
Second, during my three-month stint in a public school, an assistant principal warned me, “Your new student may ‘act out.’ If he does, do not approach him. Call the office and keep your distance.” When my blood pressure hit 135 / 95, I quit. And I love teaching.
Well, the teachers and pupils I have spoken to have told me that the picture is by no means this bleak. I have taught remedial maths to teenagers in inner city colleges, many of whome came to lessons armed with knives, and encountered no problems of the kind she had with those chidlren. I felt the classroom management tactics employed by that supply teacher were very amateurish.
If you have experience of teaching you will see that she breaks every rule of good practice. Of course in an ideal world pupils would not take advantage of inadequately prepared and poorly skilled teachers, however the fact that they do take advantage does not mean that education as a whole is doomed.
Also, I must concede that occasionally even good teachers will encounter hellish situations, which no amount of skill will allow them to overcome, but as a rule a good teacher will not encounter that type of problem.
Japan’s been having issues with classroom chaos as well the last few years.
We all think we’ll be different. And sometimes we are.
So we have a pretty clear likelihood of confirmatory bias – “schools are doomed, kids and teachers rooned… It’s all the fault of (insert favourite political opponent here)”.
This story is permanent, and provides excuses for the education system to NOT build excellence. There are so many good teachers producing good results within the limits of what they are allowed to do.
How’s that again, ChrisPer? There are no serious problems in today’s schools, so stop complaining or you’ll make things worse? There are serious problems, but people disagree about their causes and solutions, so stop complaining or you’ll make things worse? Forgive me: I was schooled entirely in public institutions, so maybe I’m too poorly educated to catch your drift.