Charles and Charles
On the other hand. One letter to the Independent on the ‘Charles tells lower orders to stay in their places’ matter makes an interesting point.
How ironic that on the same day that Charles Clarke says that Prince Charles is out of touch for commenting that children want to be pop stars and the like without having to do anything to earn it, he chooses to announce that “every school must take its fair share of unruly pupils”. As a supply teacher in this country for the past two years, I think that, at least in this instance, it is Mr Clarke who seems more out of touch than the Prince. When was the last time Mr Clarke was in a classroom? There are many disruptive students who ruin it for the good children. From my experience, these disruptive ones fit the description given by the Prince, thinking that they don’t need an education as they will make it as pop stars or footballers in their teens and early twenties.
The letter-writer then suggests that disruptive students should be isolated so that no school would have to deal with them in their disruptive state, and he points out the burden those disruptive students are to both teachers and students who want to learn. Which is true. That’s a conversation I’ve had more than once with various friends who are teachers – the fact that they often have to spend more time being a cop than being a teacher, and how bad that is for the students who don’t need policing and would rather learn something, as well as for the teachers themselves. Teaching is teaching, not crowd control, not prison guarding, not military basic training. Teachers should be able to devote their energies to teaching their subject matter, not struggling to establish dominance. It’s a waste of everyone’s time and energy to make teachers do that, plus it’s a hell of a good way to discourage people from being teachers at all. If I ran the world, students would either act like students or leave.
However, Charles was talking about his adult secretary, not school children, and he’s still a prat.
Classroom management is one of the largest parts of a teacher’s job. If you cannot master this skill, then you cannot be a good teacher. The idea of getting up in front of a class and just teaching all day has little connection to the real world. Teaching is crowd control actually; that is just how a situation where one adult is responsible for 30 children works.
Also, there is no subset of unruly children. Different kids cause different problems at different times. Sometimes unruliness is caused by the teacher being a poor instructor. Bored kids are unruly kids.
Granted, a small minority of kids are habitual troublemakers, but by law eveyone is entitled to “free and appropriate public education,” even them.
The good teachers are not discouraged by this challenge. In fact, the ultimate dream and pleasure of many great teachers is turning a tough student around. If the challenge turns you off, you probably belong at the college level, or out of education altogether.
Also, at least in California, the really good students end up in honors classes anyway. They are very easy to teach because they tend to run smoothly and have attentive parents. For the real problem students, being sent to continuation school, or even being expelled, are possibilities that happen regularly and with surprising efficiency.
I guess what really bothers me about the “shape up or leave” position is that it has the flavor of giving up on kids who are having problems. Teaching is about the kids, not the teacher’s desire to come in and do nothing but impart wisdom and learning all day, a fantasy ed schools attempt to disabuse candidates of. The reality is messier, more complicated, and possibly more rewarding.
Well…some good points, Eric, but I have reservations all the same. I think it’s asking a hell of a lot – too much, in fact – to expect teachers to be able both to teach and to do crowd control. And I think it’s a waste of their time and skill, too.
I don’t think teachers should teach 30 children at a time – that’s way too many. Of course I know that’s reality, but so is the crowd control requirement, and that’s my point: they shouldn’t be. I’m talking about ‘oughts’ here.
Granted, some great teachers can do both, and granted, some great teachers find it rewarding (and certainly useful) to turn a tough kid around. But it doesn’t seem to me to be at all reasonable to expect that – in addition to actual teaching – of all teachers, any more than it would be reasonable to expect all doctors and nurses to deal with violent aggressive patients as a routine part of the job.
I know, about the giving up aspect. But then again disruptive students make it impossible for all the other students to function.
“Teaching is about the kids, not the teacher’s desire to come in and do nothing but impart wisdom and learning all day”
Yes, but the presence of disruptive students is not exactly a gift to the other students, is it. And why the implicit sneer at “the teacher’s desire to come in and do nothing but impart wisdom and learning all day”? Why shouldn’t teachers desire to do that?
Teachers in places where students are desperate, ravenous to learn expect exactly that, and no one thinks it odd. I don’t think we should decide that disruptive students are just normal and part of life and part of the job, and I certainly don’t think we should frown on teachers who want to teach rather than being a drill sergeant.
And then there’s the realistic aspect. There are a lot of teacher jobs out there, and if teaching is too horrendous, guess what, fewer and fewer people will do it, and they’ll be less and less good at the job. I think expecting them to be cops first and teachers second is one way to do that. (Though of course they do have to have presentation skills, as you point out, but that’s part of actual teaching, not policing.)
Eric – do you think Charles Clarke’s idea is a good one? I assume the theory is that if there is only one ‘disruptive’ child in a class he/she will (i) be easier to deal with, and (ii) be affected by the peer pressure of the ‘non-disruptive’.
As you obviously have a lot of experience in this area, do you think these are valid assumptions – is it likely to be a better approach than the current one?
Eric, yes, we do basically agree. Your account of the right way to go about it is a good one – inspiring, even.
But still…I’m not sure it’s true that it’s inevitable that 20 or more students will be unruly unless the class is well managed (well except in a tautological sense – if the class is so badly managed that students have to flee for their lives, sort of thing). I think that expectation is at least partly cultural. There are cultures where students however young and in however large a class, simply don’t expect to be able to shout or run around, and don’t do it.
As for who else would do it: well there used to be the old ‘send them to the office’ thing. That probably only works if it’s rare and kind of a disgrace for the student (rather than for the teacher), but it suggests other possibilities, I think.
Or there could just be a firm school-wide understanding. Some schools do manage to have that. Students could be told how to behave before ever going in.
And then, it would help if they wanted to be there. Which is hard to arrange, if they don’t. I certainly never wanted to be there when I was in school, so I have no ideas on how to do that…
Chris:
Since every bad student is bad in their own way, I have no idea what kind of effect just spreading them out among schools would have. I wouldn’t think about it too much anyway, since local school districts are responsible for all students in their geographic area. This is very little “spreading out” to be done. You can’t shift problem students out of the district except under very rare circumstances involving criminal activity or disability.
“And then, it would help if they wanted to be there.” Oh, definitely. This is why teachers will hang around and build up seniority at a school in order to get a full slate of honors (“GATE” in CA) classes. I’ve had the opportunity to teach one of these a little bit. They are so fucking easy, even if the content is a little more advanced. It’s like teaching with training wheels. If every class was like these you would have people lining up around the block for every open teaching position at a school.
I would like to add that the state school rankings really make the sharing of bad students an impossibility, even if it is a good idea. A district would never make a move that would potentially drag all of their good schools down a little bit in the testing and rankings. It is much more likely that they would intentionally sink one already struggling school by putting all the bad kids there.
One concern about the idea I have is that it arbitrarily cuts troubled students off from the counselors and administrators who know them best. These are very important people in the disciplining of students. It may not be a good idea to switch kids out of a school that knows them for no good reason.
“It is much more likely that they would intentionally sink one already struggling school by putting all the bad kids there.”
– Eric, to a first approximation, this is what is happening in the UK right now, and what fatty Clarke is trying to stamp out. Of course, since he is unable to institute comprehensive education, this is unlikely to work either.
How about putting them all in one school but then giving that school a lot of extra resources. (Then that would be an incentive to be disruptive students…I have a headache.)