Contractual behaviour

So what, pray tell me, is this new idea that you can't get your kids into a school these days unless he or she has signed on the dotted line to be good, work hard, obey all of the rules and generally demonstrate flawless prosocial behaviour? What's more, it seems that Mum and Dad also have to sign the document “so that's it, isn't it, all extraneous problems buttoned up at the stroke of a pen? Clever chaps, these teachers.

Make a helluva difference to our lives as child and youth workers. “Well now, Tony (and Toni), let's just get the paperwork out of the way as you're admitted to Youth House Treatment Program. Just sign here, this won't hurt a bit, and we'll be good friends from here on in ..." The signature will be solemnly appended to undertakings to forswear drinking, smoking, drugs, theft, violence, assault (with or without grievous bodily harm), naughty words, missed homework assignments “no, of course, that last one is already covered in the School Contract.

Why on earth didn't we think of that before. Now that we're on a roll, we can transform the residential treatment experience by adding all those other things “beds made according to the provisions of paragraph 3, sub-section 12 (a) (iii) within three minutes of waking; dorm floors polished and shined before breakfast, school uniform sartorially correct in terms of specifications 3.5.72 (male) and 3.5.73 (female); polite conversation over meals in Received Standard English; bathrooms left “in the condition in which you would like to find them" “and toilet seats left down! And so on. This way we can spend our days in the staff room, doing the crossword puzzle in the morning paper (over coffee and croissants) and the program will look after itself.

What those school teacher chappies are going to discover “especially when they try to get extra mileage out of this great idea by, for example, adding things like “long division solutions will be expressed to three decimal places" or “geography maps will be ratified by GPS confirmation to within 0.1% of longitude and latitude readings" “is that you have to first teach this stuff. And that the effectiveness of what one teaches is a factor not only of the quality of one's teaching but also of the teacher-pupil relationship which one has established prior to the the teaching.

Child care workers already know this, so we won't, after all, even attempt this fraud. We know that we have to earn the trust and respect of young people, and that they will never be able to move into new ways of doing things until we are risking ourselves alongside them, demonstrating new possibilities, and taking the trouble to teach ways of responding, and picking it all up again when it crashes.

So have fun, self-deceiving teacher colleagues who are in sad denial, believing that you can simply demand conformity. We won't laugh at you when you quietly file your silly contracts under “Dirty Tricks" or “Adlerian False Beliefs", because we understand your feelings. It's just that we know there are no short cuts in this game. We have to go the long way around to catch up with kids who have been thrown off course, confused, hurt, misled, short-changed, patronised, abused, cheated ...