Is poor behaviour in the classroom really preventing teachers from teaching

Chaos theory

It's amazing how all the worst cliches come out when anyone mentions bad behaviour in schools. The response to the Channel Five programme Classroom Chaos, aired last week, has been a litany of hand-wringing or worse. Simon Jenkins in the Evening Standard hit the lowest note with his diatribe against “immigrants and 'rough boys'”. His claim that classrooms are “riots without police” depicts a paranoid fear of young people that he would do well to keep to himself. The general clamour for “zero tolerance” has reached fever pitch. I can't say I expected any different. That is why, when I was asked if I would like to be interviewed for the programme, I was keen to insist that teachers shouldn't simply blame poor parenting for the behaviour of youngsters. (Although it is hardly surprising that they do when, despite the protestations of the NASUWT general secretary, Chris Keates, that the programme was “sensationalising pupil indiscipline”, her union has made such a fuss about refusing to teach unruly pupils in recent years.)

I can hardly say I relished the idea of being involved with the kind of crude exposé that sends a supply teacher into schools with a hidden camera. This was always more likely to close off debate than encourage it. However, having talked to “Sylvia Thomas” — the pseudonymous ex-teacher who went back into the classroom after a 30-year gap — I recognised that she was at least open to the idea that there was more to the programme than simply joining in the cheap arguments about feral children and feckless parents. She gave the impression of someone who honestly wanted to try to understand what has happened to schools.
None the less, I accepted the chance to be interviewed with a degree of apprehension, to say the least. It was the most uncomfortable interview I have ever had. It is not that the programme-makers approached me in an underhand way. They were straightforward about their intentions and honest in their attempt to elicit my views.

The trouble is, bad behaviour is one subject teachers don't discuss freely in public. The reason is simple. Every teacher has painful memories of the time it went badly wrong for them.

But, as most aspiring teachers come to realise when they begin their careers, getting the kids to behave takes effort and confidence that comes with years of hard-earned experience. It is clearly possible to captivate a class or inspire even the most troublesome teenager. To do it requires an adult who has the belief that young people deserve an education, and the certainty that they as a teacher have something worth imparting to a new generation. There are, thankfully, plenty of teachers who care enough to insist that they have something worth listening to.
Teachers do not work in isolation, however. The schools we spend so much time in are not immune from social pressures. In fact, they have become the cauldron into which the lacklustre political elite is throwing trumped-up charges of ill discipline and crusades against poor parenting. They shout loudest about “low-level disruption”, the mild disobedience which to Tony Blair reflects a lack of deference to authority. Children who answer back and wear poor uniform are the enemy.
In fact, it seems most of the efforts to reform schools are focused on the “small things” such as uniform and reasons for absence. But why focus on behaviour? Is it really so bad in our schools that teachers can't teach?

Well, no, it's not, actually. Largely, poor behaviour in lessons results from boredom on the part of pupils. It is true that young people are difficult to handle, especially by adults they don't know. Youngsters quickly learn that most adults are scared of being accused of abusing them. In response to this, teachers are encouraged to adopt behaviour-management techniques. The trouble is that handling youngsters using crowd-control techniques hardly engenders a trusting and caring relationship between teacher and pupil.
Even children's relationships with each other are made a focus of intervention. We are told that peer pressure is an evil that needs to be averted. Cries of bullying invite an intense scrutiny of a child's life by various official channels. Children are even encouraged to formalise their own relationships — schools appoint older children in the role of counsellor, using conflict resolution techniques to deal with petty playground squabbles.
Every part of a young person's route into adulthood has become problematic. The focus on behaviour underlines a belief on the part of the government that no adult should be trusted to deal with young people without outside help.

A consequence of the obsession with behaviour is the emptying out of our understanding of what education is for. Education used to have an implicit purpose. Matthew Arnold saw culture as “the best which has been thought and said in the world”. According to Arnold, public education was to be entrusted to schools to transmit this culture to the masses to stave off social anarchy. For those of us who became idealistic leftwing teachers, education offered working-class children a way out of drudgery and the possibility of transcending class barriers.
But the hollowed-out shell that is an apology for an education today simply reinforces the need for young people to learn basic skills such as numeracy, literacy and transferable skills in information technology and communications. At every turn, we are told the curriculum is too content-led and examinations are too hard.
If we don't know what to teach, it is not surprising we don't know how to teach. It is all too tempting to hand out 30 laptops and let the children teach — or rather, amuse — themselves. I suppose that is what is meant by “learning to learn”, another fashionable transferable skill.
But if as a society we have given up on education and instead see a return to deference as our goal, then why send children to school at all? Why not just send them straight to work instead?

David Perks
23 May 2005

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/teach/story/0,14037,1474936,00.html

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