Who is to blame?

Who is to blame?

The continued decrease in respect at schools is alarming but who is to blame? This clearly didn't happen over night, but rather over several years and through several laws that has been implemented. There is no doubt about it, discipline started to deteriorate after teachers lost the right to physically discipline pupils. I know a lot of you will disagree with me and this debate could go on for years (wait, it actually have been going on for years) but you have to agree that we didn't have these problems 25 years ago. I do understand that some teachers did abuse this right and punished learners to the point of them being seriously physically abused, but totally removing corporal punishment from schools has had a great impact on the disrespect, violence and even decrease in marks at schools. Teachers can't function optimally if they don't have control over classrooms. There needs to be some way of forcing children to respect teachers and allow for optimal teaching to take place. I guess I can rant all day about this but the likelihood that corporal punishment will return is basically ZERO, seeing that parents aren't even allowed to discipline their children at home.

Then we also have the parents. What is their role in discipline at schools. It's almost impossible to teach a child who does not have a background of learning and who doesn't see the importance of an education. We as teachers are faced with problems that originate in the communities our children come from. These learners idealize criminals and drug dealers, not doctors and lawyers. This makes it very difficult to teach them, because they are not in school for the right reasons but rather to trade with drugs and built gangs. Parents don't give their support to teaching staff and hardly ever attend school meetings or events, unless they feel that their child is being treated unfairly. They always seem to be on the defense and seem to work against the schools, rather than with the schools. This negative attitude towards schools rubs off on their children without them realizing it and soon enough we all sit with an extremely serious problem (parents included). Everything really does start at home and parents need to start accepting responsibility for their children and do their part in educating them, with RESPECT being the most important value that needs to be addressed.

Okay, that was a mouthful and with everything being said, I don't wish to take any responsibility from schools and teaches because without a doubt we also have a role to play. We can only expect to be respected by learners if we treat them with respect. We should also try not to treat learners a certain way, due to their history or behavior in another class or grade but we should try to start anew with each learner. This however does not mean that we have to give learners endless chances and let them walk all over us.

We are currently in a very dark place in our country but if we fail our children and our education system fails (which is what is busy happening), we might as well give up now.
Nelson Mandela: "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

-A concerned teacher