Sweet FA
✪ Three rounds Lord, in my .44 ✪
You've got a very odd idea of how people/society work/s if you think that in 2021 you can say 'OK, from tomorrow; no phones in school'.It seems there literally is nothing we can agree on then.
You've got a very odd idea of how people/society work/s if you think that in 2021 you can say 'OK, from tomorrow; no phones in school'.It seems there literally is nothing we can agree on then.
I think it's less about who, and a lot more about how. Which, in my book, is pretty definitely not how Birbalsingh et al are doing it.Well I'd say I was asking the correct one.
Look, we obviously both agree that boundaries of some sort are required, so it's not as if simply stating that is dangerous, or neccessarily leads to right-wing populism. What it does mean, however, is that all the questions you asked me above also need to be asked of you.
What do you think the boundaries should be? Who should they be set by?
At a national level?
School by school?
Classroom by classroom?
Pupil by pupil?
etc.
I got busted a lot for "dumb insolence" in primary school. I guess that was the 20th C equivalent...One school I visited had the pupils stand behind their desks and lay out the contents of their pencil cases in front of them. If they didn't match the photograph of the prescribed layout that every teacher has a laminated photo of, they were whisked out of class - for "defiance" - before they got a chance to sit down.
That's the sort of "boundaries" we're dealing with in schools in 2021.
signal jammingYou've got a very odd idea of how people/society work/s if you think that in 2021 you can say 'OK, from tomorrow; no phones in school'.
All schools have radiators: they're there to "split your head open" should you dare to rock back in your chairYour school had radiators? Jammy bastard
Autistic spectrum children tend to value rules and structure, routine is important and easier to navigate - it’s when an environment is unfamiliar they can freak out. A friend worked with a lot of severely autistic kids and they tended not to make a fuss on their birthdays as it would usually upset them if things were different.unless you're ADHD, or on the autism spectrum, in which very tight rules applied ridgidly and without flexibility, will, in all likelyhood, be very damaging.
And you've won the thread. Great post.It's probably unnecessary, but here's a personal example of how well "strict" works.
I'd have been around 7 or 8, and our "nature" class was taken by a stern and stony-faced headmaster who was well known for not tolerating any kind of deviation from his rules. We were doing "blackbirds", and one of our tasks was to draw and colour in a male and female blackbird. Which I duly did, and was reasonably pleased with the result, which we had to hand in.
The following week, the teacher walks in with a pile of exercise books under his arm, and starts handing them back, with a few comments for each one. As the pile grew smaller, I grew more apprehensive, until there was just one book left, which, by a process of elimination, I realised must be mine. Whether it was my discomfiture, or something else, that fact was pretty obvious to the other 30 kids in the room, and all eyes were on me as he, in a voice like thunder, demanded I came to the front of the room, and he brandished my exercise book at me, open at my picture of the two blackbirds. "What is this?", he raged. I didn't have to profess incomprehension, because I had no idea what he meant. His finger stabbed at the picture of the female, "WHAT IS THIS?", he asked again, and, terrified, I couldn't answer - not just because I was terrified, but because I had no idea what he was on about. I can't remember what I said...I just stammered something. I was ordered to bend over the front desk, while he - unbeknown to me - went somewhere and took out a plimsoll, which he then hit me on the backside with several times. Actually, it didn't hurt that much, but having to hide my pain while looking directly into the face of the child sitting at the desk I was leant over was rather more distressing - it's that I remember rather than the pain of the beating: I felt utterly, utterly humiliated, for some crime I didn't know I'd committed. Shame, and the unlikelihood of parental intervention, meant that I never told anyone of it.
But I recall asking him what the beating was for. He replied, "Dumb insolence", and I then had to do the walk of shame to my desk, with every eye in that classroom following me. I didn't cry - I'd already learned that crying usually made things worse, but seven-year-old me died a little inside as I went and sat down. He must have shown the picture to the class, because I recall a few chants about "green" in the playground later.
Some months later, the school nurse did her rounds, and one of the things she asked me/us to do was some of the Isihara colour-blindness tests, which resulted in the revelation that I was red/green colour blind. I have no idea if it was just me who did those tests, or if it was routine. But, either because somehow I was told, or because I figured it out myself, I realised that my inability to distinguish brown from green was what resulted in my public humiliation and beating: I had coloured in the female blackbird green, not brown. And, I assume, because this teacher was all about compliance and conformity, he automatically assumed that my error was a deliberate one designed to spite him, and punished me accordingly.
Meanwhile, incidentally, my (dyslexic and left-handed) brother was having his hand hit with a ruler every time a teacher caught him using his left hand to write.
OK, I know we don't beat primary school kids any more, but we certainly haven't moved past the stage of humiliating them in public, and that experience was an extremely formative one for me, which, some half a century later, still influences my thinking.
And the biggest lesson of that experience was that powerful people can be wrong. And their power often lies in their refusal to admit that. Nobody came to me and apologised, or explained what had happened: it was left to me to figure out - alone - why I had had to suffer like that. If ever there was a moment when I learned that injustice could be done without consequence, it was then.
Which has had two effects on me: one, a deep and profound disregard for those who exercise overweening power and control over others, and two; a burning rage against injustice and callous conformism, which manifested as a growing and increasingly blatant defiance of authority. If I was going to be punished for "dumb insolence" for an honest and unavoidable mistake, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, and what they got was not-always-so-dumb insolence. I wrote essays in which the protagonists would use language that was decidedly outwith the acceptable norms. I developed a style of passive-aggressive satire which formed the foundation of a lot of how I write nowadays. And, in something of a masterstroke, I defied my teachers by mastering writing with my left hand, sometimes even in mirror writing (not very good), in some kind of misguided gesture of solidarity with my brother.
And I got hit a lot. But I'd learned not to care, not even - or so it seemed - about the humiliation.
So when I see the antics of the likes of Birbalsing, I am taken back to those dying days of the 1960s, and the deliberate humiliation I was made to suffer for being "different" - because they assumed that any difference meant defiance. And a part of me - that increasingly angry, idealistic 8 year old - will not let that go unchallenged. Were fifty-something year old me to be back in that situation, that teacher would have been equally publicly humiliated by me in a way that small child could never have achieved...though I suspect that my efforts went some way towards pushing back at the system in general.
Which is why I cannot, and will not, accept that forced conformity will ever be a humane or valid way of enforcing discipline on children, not least because you will never know, as you clamp down ever harder on those children, and as that headmaster didn't stop to consider, that there may be very valid and unavoidable reasons why any given child is apparently "refusing" to conform.
And that is a hill I would happily die on. I reserve the deepest disdain for adults whose need for control is so overwhelming that they choose to inflict it on a group of people who have no possible chance of standing up for themselves. Fuck that.
Beautifully written, painfully evocative and getting to some core truths there. Thanks.It's probably unnecessary, but here's a personal example of how well "strict" works.
I'd have been around 7 or 8, and our "nature" class was taken by a stern and stony-faced headmaster who was well known for not tolerating any kind of deviation from his rules. We were doing "blackbirds", and one of our tasks was to draw and colour in a male and female blackbird. Which I duly did, and was reasonably pleased with the result, which we had to hand in.
The following week, the teacher walks in with a pile of exercise books under his arm, and starts handing them back, with a few comments for each one. As the pile grew smaller, I grew more apprehensive, until there was just one book left, which, by a process of elimination, I realised must be mine. Whether it was my discomfiture, or something else, that fact was pretty obvious to the other 30 kids in the room, and all eyes were on me as he, in a voice like thunder, demanded I came to the front of the room, and he brandished my exercise book at me, open at my picture of the two blackbirds. "What is this?", he raged. I didn't have to profess incomprehension, because I had no idea what he meant. His finger stabbed at the picture of the female, "WHAT IS THIS?", he asked again, and, terrified, I couldn't answer - not just because I was terrified, but because I had no idea what he was on about. I can't remember what I said...I just stammered something. I was ordered to bend over the front desk, while he - unbeknown to me - went somewhere and took out a plimsoll, which he then hit me on the backside with several times. Actually, it didn't hurt that much, but having to hide my pain while looking directly into the face of the child sitting at the desk I was leant over was rather more distressing - it's that I remember rather than the pain of the beating: I felt utterly, utterly humiliated, for some crime I didn't know I'd committed. Shame, and the unlikelihood of parental intervention, meant that I never told anyone of it.
But I recall asking him what the beating was for. He replied, "Dumb insolence", and I then had to do the walk of shame to my desk, with every eye in that classroom following me. I didn't cry - I'd already learned that crying usually made things worse, but seven-year-old me died a little inside as I went and sat down. He must have shown the picture to the class, because I recall a few chants about "green" in the playground later.
Some months later, the school nurse did her rounds, and one of the things she asked me/us to do was some of the Isihara colour-blindness tests, which resulted in the revelation that I was red/green colour blind. I have no idea if it was just me who did those tests, or if it was routine. But, either because somehow I was told, or because I figured it out myself, I realised that my inability to distinguish brown from green was what resulted in my public humiliation and beating: I had coloured in the female blackbird green, not brown. And, I assume, because this teacher was all about compliance and conformity, he automatically assumed that my error was a deliberate one designed to spite him, and punished me accordingly.
Meanwhile, incidentally, my (dyslexic and left-handed) brother was having his hand hit with a ruler every time a teacher caught him using his left hand to write.
OK, I know we don't beat primary school kids any more, but we certainly haven't moved past the stage of humiliating them in public, and that experience was an extremely formative one for me, which, some half a century later, still influences my thinking.
And the biggest lesson of that experience was that powerful people can be wrong. And their power often lies in their refusal to admit that. Nobody came to me and apologised, or explained what had happened: it was left to me to figure out - alone - why I had had to suffer like that. If ever there was a moment when I learned that injustice could be done without consequence, it was then.
Which has had two effects on me: one, a deep and profound disregard for those who exercise overweening power and control over others, and two; a burning rage against injustice and callous conformism, which manifested as a growing and increasingly blatant defiance of authority. If I was going to be punished for "dumb insolence" for an honest and unavoidable mistake, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, and what they got was not-always-so-dumb insolence. I wrote essays in which the protagonists would use language that was decidedly outwith the acceptable norms. I developed a style of passive-aggressive satire which formed the foundation of a lot of how I write nowadays. And, in something of a masterstroke, I defied my teachers by mastering writing with my left hand, sometimes even in mirror writing (not very good), in some kind of misguided gesture of solidarity with my brother.
And I got hit a lot. But I'd learned not to care, not even - or so it seemed - about the humiliation.
So when I see the antics of the likes of Birbalsing, I am taken back to those dying days of the 1960s, and the deliberate humiliation I was made to suffer for being "different" - because they assumed that any difference meant defiance. And a part of me - that increasingly angry, idealistic 8 year old - will not let that go unchallenged. Were fifty-something year old me to be back in that situation, that teacher would have been equally publicly humiliated by me in a way that small child could never have achieved...though I suspect that my efforts went some way towards pushing back at the system in general.
Which is why I cannot, and will not, accept that forced conformity will ever be a humane or valid way of enforcing discipline on children, not least because you will never know, as you clamp down ever harder on those children, and as that headmaster didn't stop to consider, that there may be very valid and unavoidable reasons why any given child is apparently "refusing" to conform.
And that is a hill I would happily die on. I reserve the deepest disdain for adults whose need for control is so overwhelming that they choose to inflict it on a group of people who have no possible chance of standing up for themselves. Fuck that.
Autistic spectrum children tend to value rules and structure, routine is important and easier to navigate - it’s when an environment is unfamiliar they can freak out. A friend worked with a lot of severely autistic kids and they tended not to make a fuss on their birthdays as it would usually upset them if things were different.
Had a vaguely similar encounter at a similar age back in france when I grew up, one of the few memorable experiences from that time in my life and a healthy distrust/dislike of authoritarianism has followed ever since.It's probably unnecessary, but here's a personal example of how well "strict" works.
I'd have been around 7 or 8, and our "nature" class was taken by a stern and stony-faced headmaster who was well known for not tolerating any kind of deviation from his rules. We were doing "blackbirds", and one of our tasks was to draw and colour in a male and female blackbird. Which I duly did, and was reasonably pleased with the result, which we had to hand in.
The following week, the teacher walks in with a pile of exercise books under his arm, and starts handing them back, with a few comments for each one. As the pile grew smaller, I grew more apprehensive, until there was just one book left, which, by a process of elimination, I realised must be mine. Whether it was my discomfiture, or something else, that fact was pretty obvious to the other 30 kids in the room, and all eyes were on me as he, in a voice like thunder, demanded I came to the front of the room, and he brandished my exercise book at me, open at my picture of the two blackbirds. "What is this?", he raged. I didn't have to profess incomprehension, because I had no idea what he meant. His finger stabbed at the picture of the female, "WHAT IS THIS?", he asked again, and, terrified, I couldn't answer - not just because I was terrified, but because I had no idea what he was on about. I can't remember what I said...I just stammered something. I was ordered to bend over the front desk, while he - unbeknown to me - went somewhere and took out a plimsoll, which he then hit me on the backside with several times. Actually, it didn't hurt that much, but having to hide my pain while looking directly into the face of the child sitting at the desk I was leant over was rather more distressing - it's that I remember rather than the pain of the beating: I felt utterly, utterly humiliated, for some crime I didn't know I'd committed. Shame, and the unlikelihood of parental intervention, meant that I never told anyone of it.
But I recall asking him what the beating was for. He replied, "Dumb insolence", and I then had to do the walk of shame to my desk, with every eye in that classroom following me. I didn't cry - I'd already learned that crying usually made things worse, but seven-year-old me died a little inside as I went and sat down. He must have shown the picture to the class, because I recall a few chants about "green" in the playground later.
Some months later, the school nurse did her rounds, and one of the things she asked me/us to do was some of the Isihara colour-blindness tests, which resulted in the revelation that I was red/green colour blind. I have no idea if it was just me who did those tests, or if it was routine. But, either because somehow I was told, or because I figured it out myself, I realised that my inability to distinguish brown from green was what resulted in my public humiliation and beating: I had coloured in the female blackbird green, not brown. And, I assume, because this teacher was all about compliance and conformity, he automatically assumed that my error was a deliberate one designed to spite him, and punished me accordingly.
Meanwhile, incidentally, my (dyslexic and left-handed) brother was having his hand hit with a ruler every time a teacher caught him using his left hand to write.
OK, I know we don't beat primary school kids any more, but we certainly haven't moved past the stage of humiliating them in public, and that experience was an extremely formative one for me, which, some half a century later, still influences my thinking.
And the biggest lesson of that experience was that powerful people can be wrong. And their power often lies in their refusal to admit that. Nobody came to me and apologised, or explained what had happened: it was left to me to figure out - alone - why I had had to suffer like that. If ever there was a moment when I learned that injustice could be done without consequence, it was then.
Which has had two effects on me: one, a deep and profound disregard for those who exercise overweening power and control over others, and two; a burning rage against injustice and callous conformism, which manifested as a growing and increasingly blatant defiance of authority. If I was going to be punished for "dumb insolence" for an honest and unavoidable mistake, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, and what they got was not-always-so-dumb insolence. I wrote essays in which the protagonists would use language that was decidedly outwith the acceptable norms. I developed a style of passive-aggressive satire which formed the foundation of a lot of how I write nowadays. And, in something of a masterstroke, I defied my teachers by mastering writing with my left hand, sometimes even in mirror writing (not very good), in some kind of misguided gesture of solidarity with my brother.
And I got hit a lot. But I'd learned not to care, not even - or so it seemed - about the humiliation.
So when I see the antics of the likes of Birbalsing, I am taken back to those dying days of the 1960s, and the deliberate humiliation I was made to suffer for being "different" - because they assumed that any difference meant defiance. And a part of me - that increasingly angry, idealistic 8 year old - will not let that go unchallenged. Were fifty-something year old me to be back in that situation, that teacher would have been equally publicly humiliated by me in a way that small child could never have achieved...though I suspect that my efforts went some way towards pushing back at the system in general.
Which is why I cannot, and will not, accept that forced conformity will ever be a humane or valid way of enforcing discipline on children, not least because you will never know, as you clamp down ever harder on those children, and as that headmaster didn't stop to consider, that there may be very valid and unavoidable reasons why any given child is apparently "refusing" to conform.
And that is a hill I would happily die on. I reserve the deepest disdain for adults whose need for control is so overwhelming that they choose to inflict it on a group of people who have no possible chance of standing up for themselves. Fuck that.
Yeah, think existentialist's post above pretty much says all that needs to be said, but just to add on a (possibly redundant) further example: not long ago, I was talking with a mate - a really intelligent person, very sharply insightful, was labelled an underachiever/academically hopeless etc while at school, did pass her GCSEs but dropped out of college without getting any FE qualifications. She was reminscing about her schooldays and how one of the ways her ADHD manifests is that she has to keep her hands busy while she's listening to someone, so in order to pay attention in lessons she had to be doodling at the same time. And some of the teachers were alright with this, and some saw it as disrespectful, not paying attention, etc, and strictly banned her from doodling in their classes, so she was just unable to learn anything in those lessons. So yeah, thinking about that story makes me somewhat skeptical of the "we need strict rules and structure because it's so important for the neurodivergent kids" line.Rules and structure, yes. Arbitary rules, rigid structures, and unfair punishments, the product of a narcassistic 'this is how children should behave in MY school', definitely no. Or in the case of ADHD, defiantly no!
Judging from my own experiences at school as a neurodivergent pupil, I'd say that structure can be important, but strict rules are bullshit, simply an excuse for psychopathic adults to go on power trips.
That "present your stationary in good order for inspection" horror story is an absolute shit-show. Such nonsense exists in the military as a way of indoctrinating individuals into the hierarchy, but it has no place in any institution that purports to educate children into becoming citizens of a free society. Funny how the culture warriors aren't all over that shit, it sounds like something straight out of North Korea.
Probably going off on a bit of a tangent here but - I am not able to read that at the moment, just not up to it. But it reminds me of when I used to be a cleaner at a special school. They had those secure rooms they'd put kids in. Just didn't seem right at all. Seemed like it was like a prison cell. And sometimes you'd hear the teachers talking badly to the kids who had to stay behind, that happened once atleast. I used to wonder if the kids who were put in those rooms ever really 'deserved' it, but seems to me they should not have had such rooms anyway. I don't think I'd want such people as 'educaters' or to go to such a place for my 'education' or anyone's kids tbh.
I wonder if this was written from an office. Or even in this country.
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Funnily enough, Richard, I think you'll find callous right wing bastards work from home too.