We need some innovative ideas - there has to be an answer.

Dear worldwatcher,

You ask a tough question and I found a few answers in
the book, "Teacher and Child," by Dr Haim Ginott.
It might be a bit dated by today's standards but
much of what Dr Ginott says still makes sense. He states:

"The stress in schools
does not change, the mood is monotonous. The
monotony only emphasizes the main motif: the
dissatisfaction, disappointment, and despair of
young teachers. Their pain comes from the nature of
life in school. Some of the teachers lose faith and
give up hope. Others clamor for reform. The more
radical seek to change systems in midstream.
Meanwhile life in the classroom marches on. There are
children to teach, parents to appease, and principals to
account to. They all make demands on teachers' time and
energy."

There's a story about a man in dire trouble who came to
his rabbi for help. the rabbi listened and advised.
"Trust in God. He will provide for you."
"Yes," answered the man. "But tell me, what do I do until
then?"

Teachers apparently ask similar questions: "How can I survive
until the system changes?" "What can I do today to improve
life in the classroom?"

Dr Ginott points out that what counts in education is
attitudes expressed in skills. As one teacher put it:
"I already know what a child needs. I know it by heart.
He needs to be accepted, respected, liked, and trusted:
encouraged, suported, activated, and amused; able to
explore, experiment, and achieve. Damn it! He needs too
much."

cont'd ...

cont'd ...

In theory, teachers already know what good education is.
They have all the concepts. Unfortunately, as Dr Ginott
points out one cannot educate children on conceptions
alone.

Children present problems which don't disappear even
when teachers believe in democracy, love, respect,
acceptance, individual differences and personal
uniqueness. Though magnificent, these concepts are too
abstract and too large. Dr Ginott tells us that:
"For classroom commerce, teachers need psychological
small change. They need specific skills for dealing
effectively and humanely with minute-to-minute
happenings-the small irritations, the daily conflicts, the
sudden crises. All these situations call for helpful and
realistic reactions."

Therefore as Dr Ginott says, "A teacher's response has crucial consequences.
It creates a climate of compliance or
defiance, a mood of contentment and a
willingness to learn or
contention and rejection.
A desire to make amends or to take
revenge. A teacher can affect the child's conduct and
character for better or for worse."

These are the facts of emotional life which make teaching and
learning possible or impossible.

For children to achieve better academic results we need teachers
who recognise this core truth. Because as Dr Ginott states,
"Learning is always in the present tense, and it is always
personal."

a simplistic suggestion that is not well received is to work harder to ensure children have a loving dad and mum at home. I am sure statistics would bear that simple fact out. Social engineers however create havoc and then insist on spending billions to mend failed experiments. Personally I have seen my own children go from a good home where the father barely passed high school to achieving the highest academic achievements ( one commencing medicine). While other factors are in play the single most important is the dad and mum.

Lexi,

John Taylor-Gatto who was an awarded schoolteacher, wrote "Dumbing us Down". In it he told of the "seven Lessons" that school instills in children.

Found a version here:

http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

Most would think his ideas radical, but as I mentioned he was awarded by New York state for his teaching - except that he saw what he was really doing. Even those who disagree with independent thinking would glean a germ of truth in the "seven lessons".

It is really simple.

Bring back the teacher training from the 40s & 50s.

Bring back the instructions for teaching from the same period.

Bring back the bl00dy stick, to instill the discipline of the same period.

Lastly let the kids who are never going to learn another thing at school from age 15, get out of the places, & start their trade or vocational training.

One of the few good things for the less academic kids today, is the in school apprenticeship program. Unfortunately this is available to very few, but those few have responded extremely well. The rest would be better off starting work, where they can behave like men, not kids.

Lexi, Runner and Poirot,

There is another teacher - Ron Clark. Not completely sure of my facts, but remember seeing a film which I think demostrated how it was Clark who turned lives around for kids in Harlem when other more comventional teachers had virtually dismissed them as 'no-hopers'.
Researched him, and found he was what would be termed an unconventional [ and extremely successful] teacher with as much insight into the best approach to use as John Taylor Gatto. As a result of his methodoly, he turned these children into high achievers.

Both men diligently pusued a path that benefitted the children, while aware that the system in use was, and still is very flawed. Clark's results were incredible, and his dedication was such that he stayed in contact wth many of the kids until they were looking for employment.

If anyone knows the film to which I refer, I would like to know the title. It would be worth watching it again to refresh my memory.

Hey there worldwatcher,

We have to start caring about children in general. Because in general they get abused, drugged, and ultimately ignored by anyone not profiting from them here. Everything would improve for children if they were a priority in our society.

I don’t know of Ron Clark but he sounds like one in a million and that’s not good enough.

Dear Poirot,

Thanks for the link. Hopefully many teaching problems will
be solved in the next few decades. There will be new
learning environments and new means of instruction.
One function, however, will always remain with the teacher:
to create the emotional climate for learning. No
machine, sophisticated as it may be, can do this job.

There's a teacher that I'll never forget. Betty Bowen,
my English teacher. She helped me to change my view of
myself and the world. Until I went into her class I had a
very black view of some of my teachers at high school.
Many of them were angry. They accused, bullied, and blamed.
They provoked and punished. My other teachers were
indifferent. As long as I was silent, they were satisfied.
If I dropped dead quietly, they wouldn't have minded.
I was none of their business.

Then I met Mrs Bowen. She was different. She delighted in
our company. In her presence, we felt important; what we
thought made a difference. She believed in us and guided us,
appealing to our pride and imagination. "The world needs
your talents," she would assure us." In every situation, you
can become part of the solution, or part of the problem."

Her words still ring true in my heart and affect my life for
the better.

Dear Hasbeen,

There are better ways to discipline children
than using "big sticks."

I still have nightmares about Sister Mary Virgilius
and the noise her cane made as she swooped down on
her victims. She terrorised us.

Dear worldwatcher,

I think the film is called, "The Ron Clark Story."
The actor Matthew Perry played the lead role.

I know a number of teachers who have told me that one major problem they find in discipline is that parents often side with their kids believing somehow the teacher is out to get them. In the indulgent eyes of many parents the kids can do no wrong and have successfully learn't to manipulate every situation. In many schools kids are suspended for a week in order to go home and sit on play stations. Go figure. You are 100% right Hasbeen however I doubt most want to accept simple truths.

Again, I notice some people waffling on about academic results. Forget them, what we need is young people who can rad, write & add/subtract.
Academia has hijacked this plain but proven philosophy. Let the young people choose what they want to pursue as a career. Don't stuff them up with this nonsensical academic quibble.
Many good trades people are lost because of this push for academic results by academics who know nothing themselves. Make University entry exams what they used to be when only the real smart got into Uni. The rest get a proper job. Stop stuffing up our society with this academic nonsense. The armed forces can provide the change-over for those who want to start off on the academic track but then realise they're not smart enough. Unlike now they could still be useful members of society rather than the diploma-waving hangers-on they've become under Labor.

Sorry Lexi my sweet, but I'm afraid that thought "There are better ways to discipline children than using "big sticks." is a very large part of the problem.

It is since this fallacy has been promoted that the delinquency in youth has exploded.

If you ever can actually produce evidence that any softly softly approach works with more than a few special cases, I'll be all ears.

Meanwhile just why do you think the worst kids gravitate to gangs? Has it ever occured they are seeking a structure with discipline, & they get that in spades in gangs

Dear Hasbeen,

I can only speak from my own experience.
I've found that an enlightened adult does not look
at children as his natural friends but sees them as
complex human beings, capable of hating, loving, and
feeling ambivalent.

Children are dependent on their
parents in so many ways. A parent should provide
children the opportunities to experience independence.
Get them interested in an activity they enjoy - like
a sport, or martial arts, or the scouts, and so on.
The more autonomy, the more self-dependence.

Parents have to take an interest in their children's lives
and give them a voice and a choice in matters
that affect their lifes.

Even in anger we shouldn't yield to sadism or insults.
Communication, like health, depends on acts of
prevention. An enlightened parent learns to omit messages
that demean a child. A parent that shows respect for the
child, treats them as a person, will get better long term
results. The parent who attacks and insults the child
won't. One educates; the other emasculates.

Lexi we are not talking about parents here, we are talking about academic results.

Where we have failed, or simply disinterested parents, sending unruly delinquent kids to school, every other kid suffers.

In this stupid feminists school system, where streaming is a dirty word, the kids who can profit from school are held back by this rabble. Teachers without the means of enforcing discipline in their class watch helplessly as the chances of the worth while kids fly out the window.

I am disappointed with you talking about sadism, & emasculating kids, this is emotive rubbish, & beneath you. A few cuts of a head masters cane never did anyone any harm, & helped many.

The way we can enforce discipline at home is not available to class teachers. Having them have to concentrate on the less suitable so called students is wrong, achieves nothing, & robs most.

I an not interested in the rabble, except to minimise the disruption they cause, & perhaps reduce the chance of them becoming career criminals, by enforcing some discipline before it is too late to save them, & I do mean save them.

If you can find the interest & time to put into turning a few rabble around, I commend you, but it is not the job of the average teacher, who has enough to do as it is.

Individual,

When I was at school, our primary school 'streamed' us. Those who were thought bright enough went on to Grammar school, and the others went to what was called secondary school where they learned more practical, mainly manual skills.
It's anyone's guess what percentage from both types of school became successful in the adult world. At that stage many other factors would determine their future. In my own family, our home environment must have also come into play as we went out into the world, as 3 out of 4 children followed in my father's footsteps, and became small business owners.

Runner,
You say loving parents, but in our society it is so often parent in the singular - usually the mother, and probably a working mother.

Hasbeen,
With such confusion parents have induced in their kid's lives, maybe we can forgive them to some extent for gravitating to gangs in place of the nuclear family they don't have for their support. It is not so unusual for children to share one mother, but they and their siblings to have different fathers, and in some scenarios no father at all. Then we have 'blended' families which can also prove problematical. Or the fathers who show up occasionally and indulge the kids, then hand them back to mother.

How about a school for parents, to teach them how to be responsible ones. That too would alleviate the burden on teachers, the police, the courts, and society in general.

Pied Piper,
Well said! Children do seem to come well down in the list of priorities, don't they? A few thousand Ron Clark's would also help.

Lexi,
Thanks for the info. I'll see if I can drum up a copy of that movie. Don't you think it would benefit some of the current crop of educators to watch it too? Wonder how much difference we would see if it became mandatory for all new teachers to watch this before they ever set foot in a classroom for the first time?

Worldwatcher you write

'Runner,
You say loving parents, but in our society it is so often parent in the singular - usually the mother, and probably a working mother. '

hence a large part of the problem. Where is the dad? drunk, on drugs, with someone else. Sure puts the kid at a great disadvantage and often in a rebellious state.

Hasbeen,

I remember just the sight of that cane made me really, really, not want to be on the receiving end.

I was lucky to have both parents so interested in my achievements, and the sight of the pride on their faces when I took home my school reports was enough reward for my efforts.

I also remember my 8th birthday. My parents presented me with a set of encyclopedias, and we explored them together. There was a reference to the Anasazi indians, and photos of their cliff dwellings. It became a dream of mine to actually go see them one day. Many years later I was able to show my parents the photos I had taken on my own visit there. They were as excited to see the photos I showed them as I had been all those years ago, and my father especially was so happy that he'd been the one who planted the dream in my head, along with so many others.

BTW, you may have heard of Timbertop school in Victoria. When discussing education with a friend, he mentioned that this was a school with a difference. Wanting to learn more I Googled it. Oh yes, it's different all right. No cell phones allowed, no t.v., tablets used for school work are locked away at night, and children in bed by 9.30. If they want heat they chop their own wood, they do their own chores, etc. etc. Sounds like a make or break school, and must be quite a shock to today's kids to be so deprived of their 'goodies', but would think overall the experience can only be to their benefit.

Labor's answer to everything is not to reform the union dominated industry, but to throw more money at it.

Thus perhaps you could motivate the kids by paying them for results?

My random thoughts…

I don’t believe discipline is a problem, I believe the teachers’ taking the time or learning the skills to promote it is. We know kids can be little undisciplined spoilt horrors in their homes but act completely and instantly different when placed in another environment. And nah discipline does not require any kind of violence.

Moving children forward in school based on age instead of accomplishment is bizarre to me.

The schools for difficult children in my area cater to boys only.

Why do my latest group of kids know about washing their hands and healthy food choices via schooling but can’t tell me the letters of the alphabet?

I think parents would often prefer the school does not try to parent. I also think teachers would rather teach than parent outside of the kindy classes.

“Most children grow up in couple families — in 2006-07, 73% of young adults reported they had lived with both their birth parents until age 18.”

How can we encourage children to achieve better academic results?

Send them to another country....the academics and bureaucrats here have not got a clue....they do have ideology....but ideology does not build bridges or machinery, it builds dead ends.

Dear Hasbeen,

Misbehaviour and punishment aren't opposites that cancel each other;
on the contrary, they breed and reinforce each other. Punishment
doesn't deter misconduct. It merely makes the offender more
cautious, more adroit in concealing their traces, more skillful in
escaping detection. When a child is punished they resolve to be
more careful, not more honest and responsible.

I remember a friend telling me, "Our teacher gave a long
sermon on integrity. I listened and laughed inside. The teacher
teaches dishonesty and doesn't know it. I was late to school once
because I overslept. The teacher said, "That's not a good
excuse," and he punished me. I got the message. The next time I was
late, I made up a convincing story."

Punishment is pointless. It fails to achieve its goal. No child
says to himself, while being punished, "I am going to improve.
I am going to be a better person - more responsible, generous,
and eager to learn."

How the blind belief in punishment is passed from generation to
generation is dramatically illustrated in Willard Motley's book,
"Knock on Any Door." Upon hearing that his son Nick was
sentenced to death for murder, his father said, "I can't
understand it ... I always whipped him when he did wrong."

Hasbeen, you may well ask, "Don't children have to be taught
responsibility and respect, if not by persuasion, then by
punishment?"

Ethical concepts such as responsibility,
respect, loyalty, honesty, charity, mercy,
can't be taught directly. They are learned in
concrete life situations from people one respects.
One grows into
virtue; one can't be forced by punishment.

Methods of punishment not only fail to correct; they provide
the troubled child with justification
for past misbehaviour and with an excuse for future offense. A teacher's authority comes from
competent exercise of personal prestige and persuasion because
in the last analysis the true disciplinarian is the teacher
who can move children from terror to trust - and inspire them
to want to achieve.

Garbage Lexi, I'm sorry to say.

Punishment worked when I was a kid. I was a bit of a goody goody, & only got the stick once, but it was in the back of my mind when in doubt about misbehaving.

Tough kids, who boasted the stick didn't hurt still became better behaved to avoid getting it.

We have tried all this "nice" persuasive rubbish, & tried it for far too long. Comes a time when those who advocate it must bite the bullet, & admit they were W R O N G wrong. It is a totally failed concept, & the time to abandon it is now, before yet another generation suffers from this foolishness.

A wise man said, only an idiot keeps doing the same thing, expecting a different result from the last time. How much longer are we to be idiots?

We know what worked, it did for decades, time to step back to a proven formula.

Dear Hasbeen,

I can see that we're not going to agree on this issue.
But that's allright. Each of us is entitled to our
own opinion, each speaks from our own experiences
of what we believe works.

To me the essence of discipline is finding effective
alternatives to punishment. Unlike ships, human relations
founder on pebbles, not reefs. A teacher can be most
destructive or most instructive in dealing with everyday
disciplinary problems. Good discipline is a series of
little victories in which a teacher, through small decencies,
reaches a child's heart. A teacher never abdicates his
moral authority. A teacher does not enter mud-throwing
contests with children. Discipline is never bizarre or
sadistic. A good teacher lives by the law of compassion,
even when challenged by children to defy it.

See you on another thread.

Wait up Hasbeen, if it worked so well how come the generation that went through it changed it?

It’s not like the kids protested, lobbied govt and said stop hurting us in school, I’m pretty sure it was their parents and grandparents who had been through the system that made it end.

I think what happened is something was stopped and then not replaced with anything else.

You could be right there Piper.

However I think it shows how easy it is to brain wash human beings, particularly of the female variety.

They fell hook, line & sinker for that Doctor Spock bloke. It sounds so nice, "you'll never have to use real discipline on your child". Us men have become so much SNAGs that rather than lay down the law, we just stepped back, & let them go.

Perhaps we weren't really sure ourselves, that the old way was tried proven & right. As you can see, we got what we deserved for such a lax attitude.

Maybe we or they just got it half right. Some schools do very well and children do learn. Generally they have excellent discipline, school pride and high expectations of their students.

In my area there seems more concern over what the child has in their lunchbox and teachers will go out of their way to tell me what they believe should be in there. On matters of what they’ve actually learnt that day – nada.

Teachers now have instruction on various techniques when handling students. One recently explained how if a child is hitting another child you may grab the victim in a hug from behind and then turn your back on the aggressor so that the teacher gets hit from behind instead.

Crazy stuff offering up an aggressive kid a new victim.

Wow! Piper you are even harsher than me. I just thought they had stopped doing the right things in our schools, but you believe it is what they are doing wrong that is the problem.

We do agree it's what is coming down from the top that is the problem, & not the individual teacher so much.

Still in my experience, the nice little girl teacher of today, is basically a waste of space. Even 25 years ago, the only one of my kids that we did not have to teach to read & do their math was the one taught by an old duck. She was like an authoritarian granny, & still used the despised techniques she had been taught in the 60s

When she retired the next couple had a bright young thing, very professional & very incompetent. In a small country school, she did not have a discipline problem, most country people discipline their kids, the bush is too dangerous not to, so she had a good opportunity.

The kids liked her, however she never taught them a damn thing. This was probably as you say, down to her training.

Hasbeen: ”Wow! Piper you are even harsher than me. I just thought they had stopped doing the right things in our schools, but you believe it is what they are doing wrong that is the problem.”

Please remember I am a product of the type of schooling that you disagree with and I didn’t understand a word of that.

Poor teachers they get complained about a lot and investigations carried out on every little whinge a child has as well as some serious and very real allegations they might have. Everything but schooling appears to go in schools.

But back to the original how can we encourage children to achieve better academic results, maybe by balancing it with a bucket load of discouragement for not achieving better academic results. And I do believe some of them aren’t academic at all and never will be and will still be successful peoples so let’s get them out of the classroom and deal with them a different way.

Did the “old school” ways really work?

Wait up Hasbeen, if it worked so well how come the generation that went through it changed it?
The Pied Piper,
It was that other Pied piper Big Goaf who removed National Service & replaced it with moron attracting increased public Service positions with no plan for the future. Hence why we are where we're now !
If you want to ask him what made him make these idiotic decisions better be quick.

Individual, the majority of us thought education was doing fine, & paid it no attention.

Meanwhile the feminists decided that girls were better at home work/assignments, than boys, while boys were better at long term retention of information & examinations of those facts.

They worked their way into positions of authority, & slowly changed the whole system from one of imparting knowledge, to one of producing nice open book assignments.

Now we have a university student body who know nothing but how to Google, although all too often can't understand what the search actually throws up.

We find that the feminists have changed education to a sewing circle type organisation, where other realities are becoming accepted.

Do be careful crossing any bridges designed ten years from now, they just might be using some other reality to keep them standing..

Did the “old school” ways really work?
Pied piper,
Yes, those pupils built Australia whereas the new pupils are tearing the Country down & strip-sell it. Yes, I'd say definitely the "old schools" did work !

Once past the essentials of teaching the thre r's. maybe teachers should concentrate more on encouraging children to open their minds and think, as opposed to stuffing them with facts only, and no opportunity to contribute.

They need to be able to challenge and discuss what is put before them, and teachers should welcome their participation. Maybe putting aside time for group discussion would not only give the teacher feedback, but challenge children to think for themselves.

Usually in a classroom the disruptive children are either bored becuase they are bright, or the ones who can't grasp what is being taught, so are also bored.

So, should we start by training future teachers to take more heed of the children, and concentrate less on just presenting facts, and leaving it at that?

Quite so, worldwatcher...except that teachers are trained to present the facts that children are required to be stuffed with. They are doing society's bidding. Modern industrial society doesn't particularly want it's minions to be able to think for themselves, so it trains them up to depend on others to think for them so they can do their bit and toe the line.

Here's a good quote (that would probably sit well in your new thread :) from George Bernard Shaw.

"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child."

Poirot,

Your observations are spot on.

George Bernard Shaw summed it up in a nutshell. Wish I could do that.
You should post that quote on the other thread too, together with any more good ones you can think of to share.