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Discipline in schools
Mar. 19th, 2007 10:04 pmOne of the good things about working for JOLF is that they allow you 3.5 hours each month to spend on charitable and community activities. I use my allowance helping out at local schools with things like industry days, careers talks, mock interviews and so on. Today, for example, I gave a mock interview to a girl from one of the poorer schools in Plymouth who really wanted to be a music journalist. And she was really quite good. I don't know a lot about how you get to write for 'Kerrang!', but I hope I was able to offer good avice about getting relevant work experience. I suspect with that kind of job, that it would be work experience that matters most - I told her she should take every opportunity to write reviews and get her work published.
Anyway, I digress. What has prompted me to write this post is an event I helped out at in another one of Plymouth's weaker schools (the one named after a biblical scholar). This was a business game where the pupils run a pretend t-shirt wholesaler. They work in teams, have to design the t-shirts, negotiate with suppliers for the basic items, negotiate deals with retailers and keep basic accounting records. (I was a retailer.) Half the year (14-15 year olds) did it in the morning and half did it in the afternoon.
Normally, these kind of games are very popular. I've done several similar ones and I've actually done this exact one before. This time, a lot of the pupils were getting into it. The trouble was, in each group there would be two or three pupils who were either messing around or just sat there and did nothing. Which inevitably spoiled it for the kids who wanted to take part.
The thing that really annoyed me though was that there were about ten teachers in the hall while this was going on. And not once, not once did any of them attempt to impose any discipline. I spoke afterwards to one of the women who runs the organisation that runs these events (Tamar Education Business Partnership) and she was livid. I've done events like this at other local schools and you there hasn't needed to be a single teacher in the room.
It shows that there's no such thing as a 'bog standard comprehensive' any more. In fact there probably never was. (Actually, they all seem to be called 'community colleges' nowadays, at least in Devon.) I went to a 'bog standard comprehensive', but it was nothing like this school.
What I want to know is this:
Is this school typical or is it bad?
Little things that shocked me (that would never have been allowed at my school, admittedly 19 years ago):
* Not a single boy had tucked his shirt into his trousers
* All the girls wore trousers (not allowed in my day; strangely you go to other schools in Plymouth, especially the two girls only schools, and almost all the girls wear skirts)
* A lot of the boys had long hair, or 'surf' hair
* Boys with ear-rings (admittedly this is a generational / snob thing - like in that email circular, I'm someone who remembers when it was macho to have a moustache and gay to have an ear-ring)
This is by no means the worst school in Plymouth. That would be one in Devonport. One of my fellow 'retailers', a guy who owns a chain of shoe shops, was telling me about an event he did there where the guests had to be escorted around the school (for safety) and where the event was counted a success because only one person got hurt (a female pupil slammed a male pupil's face into a desk).
Anyway, I digress. What has prompted me to write this post is an event I helped out at in another one of Plymouth's weaker schools (the one named after a biblical scholar). This was a business game where the pupils run a pretend t-shirt wholesaler. They work in teams, have to design the t-shirts, negotiate with suppliers for the basic items, negotiate deals with retailers and keep basic accounting records. (I was a retailer.) Half the year (14-15 year olds) did it in the morning and half did it in the afternoon.
Normally, these kind of games are very popular. I've done several similar ones and I've actually done this exact one before. This time, a lot of the pupils were getting into it. The trouble was, in each group there would be two or three pupils who were either messing around or just sat there and did nothing. Which inevitably spoiled it for the kids who wanted to take part.
The thing that really annoyed me though was that there were about ten teachers in the hall while this was going on. And not once, not once did any of them attempt to impose any discipline. I spoke afterwards to one of the women who runs the organisation that runs these events (Tamar Education Business Partnership) and she was livid. I've done events like this at other local schools and you there hasn't needed to be a single teacher in the room.
It shows that there's no such thing as a 'bog standard comprehensive' any more. In fact there probably never was. (Actually, they all seem to be called 'community colleges' nowadays, at least in Devon.) I went to a 'bog standard comprehensive', but it was nothing like this school.
What I want to know is this:
Is this school typical or is it bad?
Little things that shocked me (that would never have been allowed at my school, admittedly 19 years ago):
* Not a single boy had tucked his shirt into his trousers
* All the girls wore trousers (not allowed in my day; strangely you go to other schools in Plymouth, especially the two girls only schools, and almost all the girls wear skirts)
* A lot of the boys had long hair, or 'surf' hair
* Boys with ear-rings (admittedly this is a generational / snob thing - like in that email circular, I'm someone who remembers when it was macho to have a moustache and gay to have an ear-ring)
This is by no means the worst school in Plymouth. That would be one in Devonport. One of my fellow 'retailers', a guy who owns a chain of shoe shops, was telling me about an event he did there where the guests had to be escorted around the school (for safety) and where the event was counted a success because only one person got hurt (a female pupil slammed a male pupil's face into a desk).
