A closed community based on fear

This is the second in a series of blogs about how the education system is inadvertently killing educators, It stifles them, straight-jackets them, expects them to behave in 'old-fashioned' outdated ways.

Educators do excellent work in the development of the social-economic conditions in which we collectively live. They should be fully supported and have their experiences included in the ongoing discussions that inform the necessary changes to the system.

Each of these stories - based on my personal experience - has a few suggestions for developing the education system to better support teachers.

​There are five educational communities described in these stories:

1. Hierarchical community
2. Closed community based on fear 
3. Loving community, financially anaemic 
4. Alternative community, desperate for solutions
5. Education community, financially driven 

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A closed community based on fear 
- Corporal punishment still rules here

As a young teacher, aged 24-26, I had no trouble at all being in charge of a room of 15 and 16-year-olds.

Yes, they were cheeky, energetic and occasionally rude. Yes, they got frustrated and angry too. What teen doesn’t? Yes, I understood that they were going through puberty at the same time as they were going through the education system. But the education system had nothing to say about what was going on inside them. Such matters were suppressed.

Some of the teachers at the school had issues with the behaviour of certain teens. It didn’t take me long to identify which teens were getting into trouble with certain teachers. Or should I say, it didn’t take me long to identify the teachers who were having trouble with certain teenagers.

The standard discipline procedure at the school was to issue a verbal warning, a so-called ’telling off’, by the teacher concerned, then by the Head of Department and perhaps by the Headteacher. 

The so-called ‘three warnings’ system was used. The second level would be to send a letter home to the parents saying that the misbehaviour must stop and that the parents should get involved. The level after that involved corporal punishment.

In case you have never experienced this, at that time in the UK, it was common practice for parents to hit their children at home, and it was fairly common practice for teachers to hit students at school. The ‘tougher’ the school, the more likely it was they would use corporal punishment. Sometimes a paddle was used, sometimes a cane. You may have seen pictures of teachers wearing caps and gowns, carrying a cane. That’s what the cane was used for. 

It was enough to swish the cane through the air to remind students that they could be hit as punishment. There were teachers who used this technique a lot. I never did. I never possessed a cane! I would never need one.

The procedure after the verbal warning and a written warning was for the Headteacher, Head of Year, the offended teacher, and offending teenager to be assembled in a room where the punishment would be administered behind closed doors. There was a ritual for this involving the reason being read out to the teenager, rather like a charge being read out in a court of law. The punishment was administered by forcing the teenager to bend over a chair if necessary with the assistance of a teacher who would hold them down. The other teacher or headteacher would use the cane to strike the student on their backside a certain number of times. Depending on the ‘crime’ the number of strikes could be one to six.

The maximum punishment was the so-called ’six of the best’.

Whilst six of the best was a joke amongst the students, it was also a sign of pride to go and get your ‘six of the best’, without crying.

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SUGGESTIONS

• Forbid corporal punishment,
  
• In fact remove all punishment (detentions, exclusions, reports) and replace them with (meditation, conversations and self-set goals)
• Train teachers to see ‘bad behaviour’ as a cry for help,
  
• And train them in how to respond professionally