As a former teacher myself whose knees used to tremble and heart started to race when he heard and saw 30, mixed ability year 9s marching like an invading army into the classroom, a 'shmoking taser' would have come in very handy. I attended a school in the late 1970s/early 1980s where you were shit scared of the teachers. You learnt nothing but you didn't misbehave and this provides the answer to the immortal Maths question "What came first the chicken or the egg?" Weeeeeelllllll if we insist in 2017 of educating to pass exams, in the head factories that are quaintly called schools, then without doubt impeccable behaviour must come first. How can you hope to learn anything when you are threatening to throw a fire extinguisher out of the window as a Year 10 once did on my watch? We hear daily on radio phone ins that teachers are leaving the profession in their droves. The irony is, that even though you are surrounded by people all day, it can be the loneliest job in the world. You are surrounded by little people who think they know better than you and they often do about the whys and wherefores of the world but not about the useless subject that you are trying and failing miserably to teach them. For some unknown reason, Staff Rooms are even more unfriendly than the Classrooms especially for supply teachers who are generally treated like pariahs by contract staff. Staff rooms are 'neurosis central'. Everybody is so close to having a nervous breakdown. The main complaint we hear on the airwaves is about bureaucracy, administration, no home life, marking homework and preparation but in my experience it is about pupil behaviour. Unless the school is run like a draconian, Victorian workhouse then learning by wrote to pass exams does not stand a chance. In my now hazy memory, in all my 13 years of Forced Education as a pupil was it ever explained to me what I was learning and why? They just taught us, these fucking useless human beings also known as teachers, all they did was teach us. In my case, they taught me to fail exams. A failure as a child leads to failure as an adult, not always but it did in my case. My inability at school to understand what the hell we were all meant to be doing and why has led to this very irascible blogger that you read in front of you today. In some of my lessons, when I became a teacher in the vain hope of trying to understand life from the other side of the barricades, a taser would have come in very handy. An hour Drama or English lesson was very often ruined by a modern day Molesworth sans the charm who would just launch into a one man/woman circus freak show. Now if I could have just tasered the little fucker and got the caretaker to remove the body, then we could have got on with the lesson but no, everybody's education is ruined by the little love who is not getting enough love at home. We are hot housing human souls from sometimes very disfunctional backgrounds! Imagine how many young people we could stop joining gangs or becoming radicalised, if teachers, like the police were able to taser the wretches and return them, retching to their incredulous parents or care givers at the end of the day. Care Giver? What kind of term is that? The Care Givers who dreaded Parents Evening as much as you did. I used to lie to the Parents and tell them that their spring offs were little angels with the hardened criminal squirming in the seat next to them in the vain hope that when they came to my lesson again that they would behave. A quick taser shot to parent and child under the table, blow the whistle to get the caretaker in to take the bodies out and I could have been a Government Academy Headteacher in no time.
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