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The Forum > Article Comments > The lost art of discipline > Comments

The lost art of discipline : Comments

By Kevin Donnelly, published 11/10/2013

The real problem - and one of the main reasons so many teachers leave after three to four years in the profession - is noisy and disruptive classrooms.

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The lost art of discipline?
What does the Author really want? The return of the cane?
Good discipline starts in the home and with the parents.
If one sees a spoiled "child" still sucking on mummy's breast at four or five, forget it!
The reasons Asians are able to exert more discipline? Is tiger mums expect more from an earlier age and simply won't tolerate insubordination!
The children are not in charge the parents are!
Bring back compulsory military service (boot camp) and school cadets.
No need to flog kids when you can demand forty-fifty-sixty pushups, or worse, ask it of the whole class; and then let peer group pressure sort out the miscreants.
Give the biggest bullies the responsibility, (badge of honor) of prefects and protecting the most vulnerable from the most aggressive.
Bring back Compulsory Phys Ed. And get some physical activity going.
[Give me ten laps around the perimeter Mr Jones, and if they're not completed in the half hour, do twice as many more.]
Say what you mean and mean what you say, don't ever repeat yourself; and do whatever you threatened to do, be it send them to the principle or send them home!?
Excused Pys Ed students will need to produce a doctor's report that claims they are medically compromised or unable. Hole in the heart or cerebral palsy, no legs sir or some such?
Don't dismiss the effective use of an always carried, rarely used authoritarian cane, slammed with effect on a table, with a pistol shot crack, to emphasis a particular point or lambast a disruptive male, feeling all the new found testosterone coursing through his veins. And for all practical purposes, is just a pair of walking gonads!
Separate the boys from the girls, but particularly at puberty. Which seems to be the most problematic time for co-ed classrooms/classes. And yes, the Finnish model is an excellent and effective example!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Friday, 11 October 2013 10:56:15 AM
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Rrhosty is spot on. If parents have not instilled - not inculcated - discipline right from the start, delaying gratification, ignoring tantrums etc, then by the time the kids get into kindy, it's all about over, red rover.ipline

My father was a big man but never had to raise his voice, my brother and I knew our place, and we toed the line, not out of fear but respect.

Discipline cannot be imposed by force, it must be instilled from within to work properly. And never by force.
Posted by SHRODE, Friday, 11 October 2013 11:22:34 AM
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And here I was thinking this would be about shot selection and playing a straight bat, wearing down the bowlers and playing to the conditions.

Damn.
Posted by Houellebecq, Friday, 11 October 2013 12:17:25 PM
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When I was a kid and if I told mum or dad I was in trouble with a teacher at school I got a back-hander to go on with. Post-modernist parents march into the Principal's office and bang on about their children's victimization, rights, and the terrible teacher.

Rather than building a phalanx of protective concern around kids who are bemused to see all the hand-wringing over them when they don't give a toss themselves (nor, often, do their parents), it's time to pull them out for special care before Oz loses further ground through their disruptive classroom behaviour.
Posted by Luciferase, Friday, 11 October 2013 12:56:19 PM
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A recent visit to a state primary school left me shaking my head. It was during the first period (when we used to be studying maths) and the noise from the classrooms was appalling. I am sure nothing was being taught or learnt. I made a comment to someone I presumed to be a parent and was told that the place was like that all the time. What hope do out youngsters have with that level of discipline? Maybe we do need to return to the times when if you were in trouble at school you knew you would be in a hell of a lot more when you got home.

Just for interest, my aunt (now in her 80s) after graduating with a science degree went to teach in north Queensland. She recalls being treated like royalty and was held in the highest esteem by the community. She had no problem with discipline. Getting a senior education back then was an honour and a privilege.
Posted by Sparkyq, Friday, 11 October 2013 1:37:09 PM
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Yes but how? I understand the Finnish localise a lot. Surely if parents were engaged with the school and its teachers (and vice-versa) it would be far more difficult for aberrant students to disrupt or for their families to play the victimisation card.

If much more responsibility was placed in the hands of families with, for example, a voucher system for each child, there would be the beginning of a transfer or responsibility from state management to local, personal and family management. We would then see more clearly where parents/guardians needed support and could establish local resources to provide it. The current top down, state management approach which pays lip service to local management, simply leaves too many unfilled gaps and degrades individual rights and responsibilities.

I taught in schools for three years in the 1970s and saw the beginnings of the unionisation of the teaching 'profession' and have watched with some horror as the Australian public school system (with notable exceptions) has deteriorated since then. The decision to unionise rather than professionalise has made a significant contribution to teachers' loss of status and to a reduction in their stature in their communities. Many more teachers perceive themselves as powerless and have joined the workers collective in which there is less and less individual responsibility, rather than seeing themselves as self-assured, professional, figures of authority and respect in their communities. The loss of pride in these people is saddening. I think this situation is inextricably linked to the way we permit the state to control and manage our childrens' education.
Posted by richierhys, Friday, 11 October 2013 4:19:26 PM
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This is another politically correct whitewash by the left wing teachers union who refuse to admit that the primary problem with school indiscipline is in those suburbs who have the highest concentration of crime and violence prone ethnicities.

Nowhere in Kevin Donnelly's article does he point out who the real troublemakers are, or what schools are experiencing the most trouble. He does not say that relief teachers, (especially female relief teachers) are refusing to teach in schools in the "troubled" South west of Sydney, where immigrant Middle Eastern boys have been taught by their foreign culture that females are inferior, and that females have no place telling "men" what to do. In "Boys in Schools" author Richard Fletcher told how one teacher at the notorious Canterbury Boy's High went on playground duty wearing a full face helmet because of violent attacks upon teachers by students. Some teachers have been threatened with rape, others have had rocks thrown onto their homes at night, and others have had their cars vandalised.

It is amusing in a way. The left wing teachers union supports multiculturalism when its own members are frightened of the very ethnic students they champion, and which are idiotic immigration policies are allowing to immigrate to Australia. When the problem becomes so bad that the teachers are getting frightened, people like Kevin come out writing absolute balderdash where the dreaded 'E" word is never mentioned.

John Cleese once said "don't mention the war", today's buffoons say "don't mention the ethnicity."

In the cause of Egalitarianism and Multiculturalism, Kevin tries the three monkey approach, and defines the problem as one affecting all schools and all ethnicities. It is just amazing how educated and supposedly intelligent people like Kevin can ignore self evident reality when it contravenes their Egalitarian ideology. Faith is an amazing thing.
Posted by LEGO, Friday, 11 October 2013 7:23:23 PM
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What should we do then Lego, throw all the 'ethnic' kids out of our schools?
If that were the case, we would only have Aboriginal schools left.

Trouble in schools has happened for years, despite the ethnic makeup of the classrooms.

Discipline does not have to be physical.
Many private schools have effective discipline methods for their pupils, so I don't see why they can't be followed at state schools.

Whether or not they get appropriate discipline at home or not, these kids need to have it at school. Any parent who doesn't like that discipline can move their kids to another school. They will soon run out of options.

I believe all schools should be divided into male and female classrooms for all grades.
Kids work better if there is no showing off to the opposite sex in the classrooms.
They can still socialize together at break times.
Posted by Suseonline, Saturday, 12 October 2013 2:29:08 AM
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Hi Susieonline.

When you find yourself stuck in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. The time has come for the Teachers Federation to admit that the importation of certain ethnic and religious groups has been a social catastrophe for teachers in Australia, and that Australia should discriminate against those ethnicities and religions in future immigration programs.

Instead, when the problems of multiculturalism become so severe that we can no longer ignore them (like the fact that teachers are now refusing to teach in schools containing high proportions of students from these ethnicities and religions) we get articles written by ideologues like Kevin Donelly who complain about the effects of multiculturalism while ignoring the fact that multiculturalism is the problem.

I have spoken to NSW teachers of left wing and humanitarian persuasion who have ruefully admitted to me that some ethnicities are a real problem to teach. One teacher friend who married a man from Bathurst refused to live in Bathurst with her new husband, but eventually relented and said that she would do it for one year only.
She eventually divorced her husband, but now lives and teaches in Bathurst because the white Anglo Saxon country high school kids are so well behaved and are a pleasure to teach. She said that she could never go back to teaching in inner city high schools because of the problem of violent and disruptive students who are most commonly ethnic male students.

My objection to Kevin Donnelly's article is that it totally ignores this fact and presents the problem as a general one involving all ethnicities, religions and cultures in the same degree, when I am sure that he knows that this is not true. When people deliberately ignore the truth because it violates their ideology they destroy their own credibility and have no right to think of themselves as socially progressive. They have morphed to become the very social conservatives that they once reviled in their youth, who are struggling to hold on to a failed ideology by refusing to even acknowledge self evident truth.
Posted by LEGO, Saturday, 12 October 2013 6:45:11 AM
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I had a friend who when she was a young attractive women, became a teacher, only to met in the classroom with "Show us your tits Miss!". Didn't stay in that profession as I recall.

The irony of it is that on the one hand, the State makes schooling "compulsory". But then to enforce it, it has no compulsion. Why not? It's been abolished. (In fact the punishment nowadays for truancy is ... wait for it ... suspension.

Why no corporal punishment? Because people thought it was bad to use violence against children. And I'm not advocating it. But think: then why is it okay to use violence against people to force children to school in the first place?

We need to understand that there is nothing about the democratic process that co-ordinates its inputs to make them coherent, or add up to a sensible whole. Schools are on the receiving end of whatever dictates are politically fashionable from time to time. Modern compulsory so-called public schooling comes from old "blood and iron" Bismarck. You can be sure he had no principled objection to violence. The modern aversion to the cane comes from the political input of the 60s generation. Fact of the matter is, they're inconsistent.

Then the State, in a classic failure of interventionism, blames the victims - the parents who were forced to surrender their child to this sausage-factory indoctrination camp.

It is child abuse to force children to sit through that environment all day. It's mental torture for the extra bright or extra dull children who are outside of the core normal demographic aimed at. And what makes you think it's any better for the rest?

State schooling should be replaced with a voluntary system, abolishing the monopoly powers of the Board of Studies, and more freedom of choice. The State does not know better, and it's meat-axe approach, at best, is not as good as the many better alternatives available.
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Saturday, 12 October 2013 7:12:49 AM
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Susieonline

How do you square your support of separate-sex classrooms with your equalitarian views?

Sex discrimination should be illegal when you arbitrarily decide you don't like it, and compulsory when you arbitrarily decide you do, is that it?
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Saturday, 12 October 2013 7:17:35 AM
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Jardine, it is not discrimination when knowing that boys and girls learn differently, and it would benefit both sexes if this was done.

I was educated in a girls school and I have turned out very well :)
There was certainly plenty of discipline from the tough Nuns!
Posted by Suseonline, Saturday, 12 October 2013 11:15:08 AM
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Hi Rhrosty,

I'm with you, as is Kevin re parental responsibility but what if the parents are irresponsible?

Nothing wrong with the cane within guidelines as I recall from my school days.

Sounds like the Finns could teach us a thing or two.

Until State Schools can fix the problem parents will continue to opt for church and other independent schools where they seem to have a better handle on the problem.
Posted by David Palmer, Monday, 14 October 2013 10:17:35 AM
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Huge part of the problem is deadbeat parents. They breed deadbeat kids more often than not. Such parents rarely give a rats about their offsprings education or future job prospects because that's what Centrelink is for. Discipline is usually either non-existent or thuggery - either way the kid has little example and less guidance.

Then, I agree, there are the ethnics with attitude and/or a chip on both shoulders and they know all their rights .....

Public schools don't have much choice regarding enrolments. Private schools do, plus they have reputations to build or preserve and the expectations of their paying clients to meet. If parents opt to fork out hard earned money on a better quality educational experience for their child/children, they are more likely to be the people who ensure other needs are also well met - including discipline. Frequently the desire to have similar good behaviour instilled and upheld at the school as in the home is a strong reason for many parents when investing in their childs future.

I largely blame the social engineers who have been busy undermining the authority of parents, elders, schools and law enforcement for many years now. Our society is reaping the harvest
Posted by divine_msn, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 12:29:12 AM
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