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Potty mouths

By Alexander Deane - posted Wednesday, 21 September 2005


But failing to give children discipline or rigorous instruction isn't doing them a favour. Instead, it's a strange kind of cruelty. It produces ignorant adults, ill-adjusted to society's rules and mores. In effect, it asks children to be more responsible than they are capable of being. This process is not only unhealthy but also bizarre, since it comes at a time when the responsibility of adults is greatly eroded by the rights culture. We treat children like adults and adults like children.

All this is relevant because discipline in schools isn't just an educational issue - it's a societal one. Speaking about school discipline in the House of Commons recently, Tony Blair said that when he was young, if you got in trouble at school, you were in trouble at home too. The problems we see in schools come from the fact that this is no longer the case.

The problem is that whilst it sounds good, nothing's actually done about it.  In this example, the school concerned isn't reprimanded by a Minister. Blair's tough-sounding words float away without corresponding action.

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While we wait for proper leadership from government, those possessing this school’s kind of thinking will continue to dominate in education. Fine words from Government paper over what's going on, as the statistics show.

A teacher is assaulted by a pupil in a British school every seven minutes of the school day. Recently, 17,000 students were expelled in a single term - and that's with the under-reporting that occurs since schools don't exactly boast about discipline problems. A third of teachers leaving the profession cite discipline as the prime factor in their decision.

Perhaps it is naïve of me, but my image of Australian schooling suggests this is not the same "down under". I hope not.

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About the Author

Alexander Deane is a Barrister. He read English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge and took a Masters degree in International Relations as a Rotary Scholar at Griffith University. He is a World Universities Debating Champion and is the author of The Great Abdication: Why Britain’s Decline is the Fault of the Middle Class, published by Imprint Academic. A former chief of staff to David Cameron MP in the UK, he also works for the Liberal Party in Australia.

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