David Knight: Daily misery of Aberdeen teachers shows how woke rules backing brutal kids have gone too far since my day |
I haven’t been in a classroom for a long time, but I dare say it’s a far cry from the days of Please Sir! on television.
I’m afraid to say that you would have to be of pensionable age to recall this old 60s/70s TV series.
It didn’t quite reflect real life as it was a classroom comedy about a good-natured game of cat and mouse between teachers and pupils.
Apart from a couple of controversies about a black caretaker storyline and girls showing a little too much, it was generally harmless by today’s standards.
I think teachers still had the upper hand in those days, whereas now they seem to be cowering in a corner from pupils who are like “lunatics running the asylum”.
One whistle-blowing Aberdeen teacher turned to the Press and Journal to express the desperation the teaching profession was feeling over violent pupils abusing staff, intolerable work pressures and lack of support from top brass.
On the back of these disturbing revelations, supposedly out-of-touch managers issuing improbable edicts from afar were challenged to rejoin the frontline for a lesson of reality in class.
Education bosses should lead from the front
To lead from the front, I suppose, which tends to earn more respect in any........