Compulsory lessons for parents of unruly pupils

[mia]

http://education.independent.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=648006


By Richard Garner, Education Editor
19 June 2005

Parents who fail to ensure their children behave at school or turn up on time for classes will be forced to attend compulsory lessons on how to bring up their children, the Secretary of State for Education, Ruth Kelly, says today in The Independent on Sunday.

Responding to our six-week IoS series Inside Britain's Schools, which exposed rising levels of classroom violence and indiscipline, Ms Kelly says parents of disruptive pupils will be made to "face up to their responsibilities to their children and their community".

Her threat follows shocking new evidence, first revealed in the IoS, that a teacher is seriously assaulted every seven minutes of the school day, and that the number of assaults has doubled within the space of a year....

Her "zero tolerance" stance on school discipline has been criticised both by Sir Alan Steer, the new head of the Government's task force on school discipline and headteacher of Seven Kings High School in Ilford, Essex, and Marie Stubbs, who turned around St George's School at Maida Vale, west London, where former head Philip Lawrence was murdered.


I can't help but like this idea. Parents of unruly students could use more training.

[uppityperson]

1. Got your asbestos undies on?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If the training is able to differentiate between modifying the student's behavior, and dealing with the student's behavior because sometimes you cannot MAKE someone behave in any way except for how they wish, and have to just deal with it.
:popcorn:

[ismnotwasm]

2. Maybe

There are circumstances that can circumvent the best parental training. When we had our grandson while my daughter was in Afghanistan, he was very angry and acted out. He attempted to choke another student. The school suspended him for one day. He also had difficulty following directions, difficulty sitting still and would smart off. Hit the teacher one day. It got to the point where they mentioned the "ADD" words to me. Pissed me off actually.
What I did, was sit in that kindergarten class on my days off, or sometimes my Dad would come down. I just assisted in the class. Monitored his behavior, and without embarrassing him, redirected him when needed. It helped. When my daughter returned, he was much calmer, and was able to pass to the first grade early, because academically he did fine. But it took time. I saw other little children who most likely needed a little more one on one attention at home, but I wonder, single parent? Two parents working? What is the extended family like? Are there drugs and/or alcohol involved? Is English the second language, is there a cultural conflict in the child life? Now these were Kindergarteners, not middle or high school student. The word "compulsory" bother me, because behavior is often a multi factorial issue. Of course, kids can't go around assaulting teachers, either. Early intevention is best when possible, is best, I believe.

[Whoa_Nelly]

3. Would rather see money spent on school/classroom funding

and many other areas of public education that have been scuttled in recent years. Public schools have become the whipping post of the government, and the real issues of overcrowding, underfunding, and not funding at all those programs that target the lower socio-economic urban areas, which need it most. There have been out-of-control kids in the past, call them unruly, if you will, and there have been miserable failures of people who call themselves parents, but the numbers have grown with population expansion per capita across the board, and the funding, the incentives to keep people working for the benefit of our children and their futures have been severely undercut. Teachers who really had the heart to try to make it all work, and to work on behalf of individual students, have given up. I know...I've been there.

To hear people reminisce about "the good ol'days", when parents were parents, and kids were better behaved is just bullshit in my book. Our society as a whole was repressed, things that happened within the home, such as abuse, were more readily ignored. There never really was a "Leave It To Beaver" American society...it was all just a cover-up since it was easier to live with denial than to act. Now the numbers of parents, children, low socio-economic and/or extended families, children in foster care or in places where people really just don't give a damn, only waiting until the kid reaches the age of majority so room can be made for more, is so much larger in population than ever before in this nation that it boggles the mind to think that taxpayer money will be wasted so Ruth Kelly can show those bad parents just what's what. And with that, the domino effect begins as those kids take the brunt of further outrage, more disdain, disregard, more emotional and/or physical abuse from their parents and/or peers.

You can put a curtain between what Ruth Kelly envisions and what really happens within the constellation of the family targeted, but it won't stop the the derailment of the crumbling of the public school system or undercut the real reasons these kids are in trouble and failing in a system that is failing them.

[AndyTiedye]

4. Will Those Lessons Include...

...anything on recognizing ADD, Aspergers, Tourettes, or any of the
other conditions that might cause a kid to be unruly despite anything
the parents might do or fail to do?

I didn't think so.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. Once again

The UK seems to be light years ahead of us.

[NashVegas]

7. Tony's Social Laws

I was over there a month ago, and my - very liberal - friends were complaining about Tony Blair's new emphasis on fighting hoodlums, as if that's the most important crisis in the UK right now.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=806603

[ElsewheresDaughter]

6. to much mercury in the UK environment too

[NMMNG]

8. Sounds good to me

From what I see of the kids in my neighborhood the parents need some training. They obviously don't teach the little hellions a damn thing about respecting other peoples' property. The kids romp all over my lawn with their bikes, roller blades and skooters and even if their parents are looking on nothing is said to stop them. One time the girl from across the street rammed her bike into my next-door-neighbor's car while her father looked on. He said nothing and didn't even come over to see if any damage was done--even though he saw me standing in my front window so he knew I'd seen the whole incident. Then the little brats always run around my car and put their hands all over it while they are chasing each other, and on more than one occasion have bounced their basketballs and footballs off it--again within view of parents who say not one reproachful word.

Then nearly every time I go out to eat there's at least one table where one or more child is talking loud and/or screaming the entire time. Apparently children these days are not taught the difference between "indoor voices" and "outdoor voices". They apparently also don't know that it is not polite to run up and down the aisles of stores screaming like banshees. But then maybe I just missed the part on the store sign that said "...and playground".

If this is the way they are being brought up, is it any wonder so many kids are turning into unruly, antisocial terrors?

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. I went to a concert in a park last week

and kids on scooters were all over the place. What is it about public events like that where parents just let their kids loose to run over whoever is in their way?

[NMMNG]

10. Beats me

It seems that malls, stores, museums, parks and other public arenas are just "free for alls" where kids are often allowed to run amok. If they are disturbing other people, so be it. Apparently those who are disturbed are the ones who have the problem, not those who aren't supervising their children or teaching them any manners. :eyes: