Violence in the classroom.

I have heard several people’s view that many of the young men who carry knives are boys who have been excluded from school.
The inference is that this is what frees them to hang around at night threatening people’s freedom.
The next step is clearly going to be that schools should be unable to exclude those children who make life difficult in the classroom.
During the time, thankfully brief that I taught on supply in Essex I encountered several young men intent on causing trouble in school.
Unless you have witnessed the lengths to which these anti social young men are prepared to go you might well think that they shouldn’t be banned from school.
This would be a disaster for both the class teachers and the bulk of young people who do actually want to learn.
I have witnessed knives being pulled, lessons being completely disrupted by casual threats backed up by the threat of violence.
The rest of the class were clearly both fed up with it all and wanted the trouble makers out of the classroom in order to actually learn something.
"Put him out miss." A common request in fifth year classrooms.
I tried to get difficult children to be reasonably behaved in the classroom and mostly this worked but several encounters with young lads determined to cause chaos meant that I gave up teaching in my fifties.
No amount of money could compensate me for the daily battles in the classroom.
Being able to exclude these young men from school does give the rest of the children a chance to learn. And that is what most of them want.
If there is an easy solution to this I would like to hear it.
My memories of classroom violence are still vivid...but no knives were pulled thankfully....
I still remember a school trip though where one young man pulled a gun from his pocket to threaten some children in the group, so persuading him to hand over the small revolver became the main task of the day.
If children feel the need to take a weapon to school it is a small step to actually using it.
But stopping a head teacher from expelling trouble makers would be a disaster for the children who really want to learn.


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