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All Saints RC School, Peter Harvey and Jack Waterhouse
by Simon at 12:37 12/07/09 (Blogs::Simon)
It's extremely depressing to read the comments being posted on the various Facebook groups that have been set up after the incident at the All Saints RC School where a teacher injured a pupil during a physics lesson.

Both sides have degenerated into posting vitriol.

What's obvious is that there is no longer any effective sanction that can be applied to disruptive children, with the equally obvious result that those who want to learn are being denied the opportunity to do so.

In the 1970s when I was at school, corporal punishment had yet to be banned and streaming of children into different ability groups was the order of the day for many subjects.

The use of corporal punishment wasn't widespread, but I'm sure the threat of it must have served to limit the lengths to which the few troublemakers in class were prepared to go.

The streaming principle allowed more able pupils to be stretched while also enabling the less able to be taught at a more appropriate pace.

I'm not an educational psychologist, so I can't know whether being put into a low 'set' had a long term adverse impact on the self-esteem of those who were placed there, but promotion to a higher set based on performance (and also demotion to a lower set) was part of the system, which I feel must be a better methodology than condemning everyone to be stuck in a mixed ability group for the duration of their school career.

Somewhere along the way the educational policies lost sight of the benefits of a disciplined and challenging environment and replaced the system with one where no-one is permitted to fail and where punishment has lost its deterrent effect.

Perhaps those in charge had the mistaken belief that somehow we had reached a state of civilisation whereby all that was necessary was to provide the opportunity and everyone would be wise enough to behave responsibly.

Sadly, such utopian ideals often fail because they don't realise that humanity is - on the whole - not very civilised. Those few percent who are tend to be dragged down and drowned out by the overwhelming number who aren't.

This is blindingly evident when you read many of the comments being posted in those Facebook groups I mentioned above.

--
simon

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