Posted on 04/27/2005 10:23:30 AM PDT by Pyro7480
Secret film of classrooms reveals world of swearing and porn
By Becky Barrow
A documentary to be screened tonight offers a withering portrayal of the education system.
It shows pupils swearing in class, searching for porn on the internet, assaulting each other and refusing to co-operate with or respect their teachers.
After a 30-year gap from teaching, a supply teacher using the pseudonym Sylvia Thomas returned to 14 secondary schools in London and the North over an eight-month period.
She secretly filmed her experiences using a camera hidden in her briefcase and a microphone disguised as a jacket button.
Her experiences, chronicled in Classroom Chaos on Channel 5, will disturb parents who already suspect that their children are receiving a far from perfect education. At the end of her first day, the teacher describes how she went home and "sobbed my heart out, thinking: 'Is this what education has come to?' "
During an English lesson with year 9 pupils, which begins with several boys punching each other and swearing, a pupil responds to her attempts to discipline him by saying: "I'll come to your house and blow you up."
In another lesson, after several attempts to make pupils be quiet, a boy's voice can be heard calling out: "Suck me off, Miss."
A pupil aged 11 or 12 swears after being asked to be quiet and the teacher says: "Do not talk to me like that, please." He replies: "Don't talk to me like that - I've got my rights, you know."
Pupils drift into lessons, sometimes 15 minutes late. They use mobiles and hide under desks. They arrive with crisps and other food despite notices on the doors prohibiting eating or drinking during the lesson. They get up and leave lessons despite being told to sit down.
More than all the swearing and the disruption, it is the constant level of noise that may take viewers aback. When one class is silent and working hard, the teacher says she finds it "eerie" because it is such a change.
Of the six lessons that Miss Thomas teaches at one school, she estimates that pupils learn something in only two of them. The rest are lost to "low-level disruption" or worse.
Miss Thomas says that when she was teaching in large state secondary schools in the 1970s, "being cheeky" meant nothing more serious than whispering in the back row. During her recent experience she was shocked to discover that one school, which is not alone, had a police officer based on the premises.
When a boy is searching for pornography on the internet, he says to the teacher: "I just typed in anal, didn't I?". The police officer is summoned.
Miss Thomas said that in the past she "kept control of the class without ever needing to resort even to shouting". After her recent experiences, she was often hoarse at the end of a day's work.
The one encouraging note struck in the documentary, which was produced by the award-winning film maker Roger Graef, was the Sir John Cass Foundation school in Tower Hamlets, east London. It has been transformed by the headmaster's strict disciplinary policy.
Ten years ago few pupils returned after the lunch break, which lasted for 90 minutes. Now the lunch break is shorter and everybody comes back.
Miss Thomas admits that she could simply be accused of being incompetent, having been out of the profession for three decades. Working as a supply teacher, with subjects of which she has little or no experience, does not help.
But when she puts that point to other teachers, one replies: "Most teachers would watch that and say, 'I am not surprised. I am not shocked. That is my life.' "
They will have similar results if they did the same thing in the U.S., unfortunately.
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And is that any suprise when you consider WHO AND WHAT are running our education systems??? Hardly.
(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
A pupil aged 11 or 12 swears after being asked to be quiet and the teacher says: "Do not talk to me like that, please." He replies: "Don't talk to me like that - I've got my rights, you know."
Kids have more rights than adults and they know it. No wonder the prison population is growing especially among juveniles. Take God out of society and have no standards of right and wrong and tell parents they can't discipline their kids and this is what you have.
In SOME schools in the US, they would call watching porn in the classroom educational and quiz you on what you saw.
ping to self for later pingout.
So exactly what are the consequences of their actions? there are none. A lesson they have learned all too well.
In some places yes, in other places no. My wife does substitute teaching in a district where the kids are generally well-behaved, and the school environment is very good. Not surprisingly, the "clientele" for this school district tend to come from families where one or both parents are professionals.
By contrast, my daughter attends a school where the general student population sounds similar to what's described here. The atmosphere of her school is not nice (which is why we're home-schooling her next year). And, not surprisingly, the troublemakers are generally from single-parent and non-professional families.
Which is to say: although it's easy to blame the schools for this stuff, the primary problem is the culture from which the students come. Following from that is the response of the school to those who disrupt -- but again, there's not much they can do if the kids are required to be there, and their parents don't give a damn.
That kind of behaviour isn't tolerated at my school, a public middle school in Michigan.
Mike
My wife has taught in London state schools and provincial schools. We moved out of London so our kids wouldn't have to go to a state school there. Great place to live as a single person, but not for families. I doubt London schools are indicative of the average state school in the uk. The schools near us in Essex are excellent.
Paddling in school? Heavens no! They've got their rights, you know.
Swearing? Internet Porn?
SCHOOL?!
This reminds me of my OFFICE!
Yes indeed. I recall some five years ago or so Boston imported a few Filipino teachers in the middle of a teacher shortage. These were selected, highly competent teachers, the competition to get a US job (H-1 visa) was intense.
The Filipino teachers were shocked at the behavior of their students. They had never seen anything like that.
The state and federal teachers unions would prevent it. If such a film were made, the unions would block it in court. The grounds? Teacher/student "privacy". The "privacy" argument is more powerful than the 1st Amendment when it suits the interests of the Left.
But thats not a representative place either. In the US you can generally move a few miles and find an excellent school district. But that is a function of the local population. The schools are good because of who goes to them; bad schools are bad mainly because their input is bad.
Im not joking. We did get the paddle. I graduated High School in 1981.
Happened to me in first grade. A bunch of third graders who enjoyed picking on me (I was always the shortest, weakest member of any group) told me that they had planted a "talking Drew bomb" in my house which would blow up once I got home. One of them said "I asked the Drew bomb 'will you kill Drew's family for me' and he said 'yes, I hate Drew. I will kill him and his mom and dad and brothers'." It took a lot of coaxing to get me on and off the school bus at the end of the day...
Theodore Dalrymple, a psychiatrist who writes for City Journal and National Review, has described the "culture" of the children discussed here and tied it to the Nanny State in England. He sees it as a warning of the direction in which the USA is going--a direction in which "tolerance" is everything and "responsibiity" is unheard of.
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