According to a report commissioned by the NUT, primary school pupils are increasingly difficult to teach as they throw tantrums during lessons if they fail to get their own way…
Teachers blamed highly permissive parents who admitted to indulging their children, often for the sake of peace or simply because they had run out of alternative incentives or sanctions says the report. Echoing the above, Mr Justice Coleridge, one of the country’s most senior judges has said, “Britain is suffering from an epidemic of family breakdowns affecting all levels of society. We are experiencing a period of family meltdown whose effects will be as catastrophic as the meltdown of the ice caps.”
In no small part the issue is one of boundaries, boundaries that once served us geographically, politically, socially and emotionally are either blurred or non-existent. We are not sure where to draw the line and the rules are regularly challenged and changed. We have forgotten it seems, that our children cannot live healthy lives without boundaries, structures or rules.
We are running out of time
As the crisis deepens government has stepped in and sought to fill the void left by our ‘new age’ condition. But in a world of accelerated change there is little time for the rules to take hold as they are swallowed up by the insatiable vortex of change followed by rules upon rules upon rules…
The result is chaos, chaos in our schools, homes and community.
In a world without traditions confusion reigns.
The trouble however did not start ‘out there’ in the world, if so the mire in which we find ourselves would be much deeper. We cannot change the world out there and fortunately we don’t have to. The chaos is much closer to home; it’s in you and me. The apparent chaos is only a reflection of our own inner turmoil.
We cannot afford this kind of chaos much longer; we are running out of time. The proportion of teachers finding weapons on pupils on a weekly basis had almost quadrupled from 2001 to 2008. Warwick University, interviewing 1,500 teachers for the National Union of Teachers, found those finding drugs on pupils weekly had doubled and a staggering one in 10 teachers had discovered children dealing in drugs.
“For these are all our children and we shall pay or profit by what they become”
