I was foaming at the mouth at the smug,patronising Byrne.No one has the right to attack free speech in the way he did.Only snobs object to slang.Nor did I care for his interrupting candidates' speeches-I'd have voted for Lauren,I think.Trudi's selling out disgusted me almost as much as her revolting brother!
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I'm 53. I don't believe that Heads should be dictators. I do believe in free speech.Oh -text SPEEK?
shareI,m 43,and think head teachers should rule a school with a rod of iron.Teenagers must know their place.Free speech is only an excuse for kids to run riot these days and must be banned in school.All this 'taping' their faces was an excuse to get out of a lesson...the head should of expelled that Trudie out of school...she was a naughty trouble maker.
shareShould of? And how their taping their faces stops them attending lessons is beyond me.If Heads were elected by the staff and all schol rules subject to the approval of school council,schools would be a lot happier.
shareYes, it's 'should have', but for what it's worth I'll throw in my lot to this debate!
I am a teacher (aged 44, not that that's got anything to do with it) and am currently teaching GCSE English in our local F.E. college, but have worked in a variety of schools, and worked closely with children with challenging behaviour within a mainstream school (so a lot like WR).
Believe it or not, having high expectations of behaviour does work. If you expect a lot of students they will generally strive to give of their best. If you expect little, then little is exactly what you will get.
To manage behaviour, although it may seem draconian, it works to have a set of class rules (no more than 3 - agreed with the students if they are old enough), and where appropriate individual rules for individual students (again, no more than 3). When the rules are broken then there are consequences which are commensurate with the rule that has been broken (in other words, if it's a classroom rule that's broken then it it must be a classroom based punishment - no docking playtimes unless it's a playtime incident, and so on.). You also ignore the bad (unless it's dangerous) and play 'catch me being good' - in other words, you praise the children who are behaving and give them all the attention. A badly behaved child is often only doing so to gain attention, even if that attention is a telling off. If you deprive them of the oxygen of inappropriate attention by focusing on more appropriate behaviour as exhibited by other, more settled students (who are often over-looked when badly-behaved children are more noticeable to the teacher!) they soon learn that in order to get the teacher's attention then they need to be 'caught being good'.
The most important thing is that all teachers, and staff, are consistent in applying the rules across the entire school. Children of all ages actually crave boundaries, not total freedom. Total freedom is scary and leads to insecurity, and when children are insecure they can react in inappropriate ways. I've seen previously almost 'wild' children turn into model students by using these approaches.
Now, whether you feel that is draconian or a deprivation of free speech or any other kind of freedom then that is your right, but a lack of appropriate, and stringently-applied rules, are what gets schools into trouble to start with. Trendy, progressiveness doesn't work, although of course an 'anything goes' approach in the name of 'behaviour management' is easier for staff than applying rules consistently. That's why it's been so popular. But we have paid the price in a generation of children who don't know how to behave responsibly, appropriately, or with any respect for authority.
Regarding 'text speak' it's rife these days - entire essays can be littered with it, and other kinds of slang. Unfortunately, whether you agree or not, it is enough to lose marks in an English exam, and so I was right behind Michael Byrne when he banned slang, although I wouldn't have gone so far as to ban it during free time, only in class and in work. There is a whole generation of teenagers now who don't know how to spell common words correctly because there is a slang/text-speak spelling for them which is all they know. It's not depriving anyone of their freedom of speech to expect them to apply appropriate English to appropriate situations - quite the opposite, you are equipping them to deal with real life where proper English still matters. (Litter a job application form with text-speak and see how far you get...). To send our students out into the world without a working knowledge of proper English is sending them out in the world with a literacy disability. I can't see how anyone could possibly argue that the alternative is preferable!
WR is fiction, and there is a fair amount of licence used in how the school appears to be run, but they also have some things exactly right, or are on the right road in terms of how things are in the world of good teaching today.
Jerseyporter
"The end is where we start from." (Captain Jack, "Torchwood")