Thursday, December 3, 2009











Yes Sir, No Sir, F*** You Sir!

I once got detention at school for peeling an orange in Religious Education class. I had finished the set work and the teacher said I could do whatever I wanted. I was a bit peckish,so I decided to eat my break time orange. How was I meant to know Mrs Hill meant I could do anything I wanted, as long as it was educational! I was mortified that I had a detention. I was terrified at having to tell my parents. I was 9 years old and this for me was like having a police record! When I was 12 the deputy head teacher stopped me in the corridor and told me off for wearing a necklace to school- I nearly wet myself with fear. At 16 Mrs Cox, my history teacher, caught me passing a note to a fellow classmate- the note said “Mrs Cox has fingers like sausages.” That stupid note almost cost me my university place- Mrs Cox failed every single one of my A Level essays and predicted me an F in the actual exam (I got an A in the end-ya,boo,sucks Mrs Sausage Fingers).

Getting slowly to the point- when I was at school the majority of us had huge respect and fear of teachers. There have always been “The Rebels”, but the majority of us did our homework, studied for exams, followed school rules, sat when told to sit, stood when told to stand and NEVER, NEVER answered a teacher back! If the teacher had asked me to run round the school play ground, naked, singing Morning Has Broken (my favourite school assembly song) I would presume she had good reason for making me do this and I would jolly well do it!

I am shocked by the behavior of children in schools today. I am out of mainstream teaching now (just select, well behaved groups in my home) but my daughters keep me up to date on what is going on. Children have zero respect for teachers-they swear at teachers, throw objects round the classroom, never do homework, talk amongst each other all through class and more. As for fear….what have they got to fear? The teachers are powerless. Teachers can not give detention, extra work is not done, children are happy to be sent out the classroom or excluded from school. They say what they want to say, do what they want to do and wear what they want to wear (generally as little as possible!) and the teachers can do zilch about it.

Schools are no longer a place of enlightenment and learning and teachers no longer respected. Now schools are holding cells- the inmates just passing time until they are set free to wreak havoc on society and the teachers are prison wardens just trying to survive each day.

The Three R’s are now- Rebel, Riot and Rampage. Sad.

1 comment:

  1. My kids call their teachers by their first names at 6th form college. Shocking. I don't even let them call me by my first name.

    Right, award pickup. This is how I did it, which is probably wrong but works:

    1. Save the award image to your PC by right-clicking on it and 'save image as'

    2. Upload it to blogger using the image tool in the post editor; you'll now have a web-name for your image of the form http://4.bp.blogspot.blah blah blah

    3. Use that web-name to drop the image wherever you want to on your blog

    4. You can make it clickable by wrapping it in an html "a href=" tag. If you don't know how to do that I can buzz you an example in a text file. Set up a temporary gmail address if you don't like publishing your own. I'm at ubergrumpy@googlemail.com.

    5. Phew. Make a nice cup of tea.

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