Duncan Lay: Teachers aren’t to blame for a class of selfish brats
I WASN’T surprised that the first reaction to the terrible story that a young boy was attacked at school last week was to blame the teachers. But it’s a mistake, Duncan Lay writes.
Opinion
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I WASN’T surprised that the first reaction to the terrible story that a young boy was attacked at school last week was to blame the teachers.
Parents were very quick to apportion blame on Facebook. This was not a surprise, although it was a mistake.
But it was a mistake even before the full story was revealed, which appears to be that a rough-house game provoked a medical episode.
It’s another example of why the biggest problem with the school system is not NAPLAN or a lack of funding.
Parents need a lesson about what life is really like in schools.
Teachers would be horrified if anything happened to a child while they were on duty. But they can’t be everywhere at once.
Many parents are probably imagining the playground as they experienced it a couple of decades ago, with one or two teachers slowly patrolling and keeping a watchful eye. After all, what kid wants to hang around a teacher? You see more than enough of them in the classroom.
But this is a new generation of children, utterly convinced they are the most important thing in the world.
Today, teachers are surrounded by a flock of children, all crying out for attention, all believing whatever they have to say is more important than the other 15 children also doing the same thing.
Meanwhile teachers are supposed to be watching everything else that is going on, while weighed down with EpiPens (in case a friend of an anaphylactic child had peanut butter on toast the night before), action plans for all the children that are not able to play safely with others, as well as for those on the autism spectrum who could do something unexpected.
This is their “break” time after a morning that started at least an hour before any child walked into school.
Then we come to the problem kids. Every classroom has them, kids who literally cannot control themselves when things don’t go their way.
We’re talking about teachers being bitten, kicked, strangled and punched, about classrooms regularly evacuated because chairs are being hurled across the room. About windows kicked in and children and parents stabbed with pens, pencils and rulers.
This is what happens every day in our schools.
The teachers’ union, meanwhile, is more than eager to shout about Gonski but rather quiet about violence in the classrooms and playgrounds.
And the principals and executive teachers are more concerned with NAPLAN results and spreadsheets than the fact their staff are turning into punching bags for a generation of self-obsessed brats.
Parents aren’t helping enough. If they teach their children anything, it is to despise a profession of “bludgers who only work six hours a day and get heaps of holidays”.
When something terrible happens at a school, the first reaction is to point the finger of blame.
Usually, that is at the teachers. It’s never the fault of the “innocent” children.
I would merely say that parents need to remember the old parable about casting the first stone.