Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
no. what can we do to avoid this situation arising again, however?
Teacher Batters Pupil ....
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Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
Have they fuck - its all 'serves the little bastard right/the poor man couldn't help himself/justice done'.
This just in - kids piss about- kids take the piss - its normal behaiovour - if you cant deal with that you shouldn't be a teacher.
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
Frenzied violent assult = communtiy sentance and the judges sympathy.
I find that pretty fucking sickening.
Others seem to find it a cause for celebration and an occasion for the vindictive enjoyment of a child being battered.
The kids knew he'd been having difficulties, knew he was unstable, knew how to wind him up, and push his buttons. Such things as singing a pastiche of a Michael Jackson song (i.e. Psycho in the Mirror), with words deliberately mocking his mental state can chip away at a person's resilience.
And this just in as well: some teachers, being only human, might crack when constantly put under pressure by kids who know that teacher's weaknesses and deliberately up the ante in a bid to make them suffer further.
You have no idea what justice even is.
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
Is it a kid with his skull smashed in?
No. And neither is it giving kids license to make a teacher's life hell and then sueing the school when something bad happens.
BlueSquareThing
With chips
I reckon that's a bit disingenuous.
Fwiw he'd already spent 8 months in jail I think, or a combination of jail and secure mental hospital. That, afaik, is why he wasn't sent down - he'd already served more than the maximum sentence he could have been given. I'm still a bit surprised by the not guilty verdicts, but I suppose if you have to prove intent then it looks very much as if he'd completely lost it, a state of mind which doesn't necessarily mean you have any intent.
And, fwiw, I don't support, enjoy or practice extreme violence on either my own children or the ones I teach.
BlueSquareThing
With chips
Actually I think one of the lessons is probably that teacher's mental health needs to be taken really very seriously and reviewed on a regular basis, if necessary with a way of using ill health retirement as a way to make sure that people don't go in classrooms when they probably shouldn't. They also probably need to make sure that when they are in the classroom that they can be supported effectively without being made to feel like they're a burden.
But I wouldn't want to suggest that there aren't other lessons which can (and should) be learnt. To try to boil it down to *a* lesson is far too simplistic.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Sensible words.
Like you say, schools need to monitor their teachers. But combine that with measures to improve or, that's not possible, expel disruptive pupils. Just reacting to chaotic classrooms is no answer.
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
well yes.
My ire is irked becasue all the sympathy is being directed towards the perpetator - notably by the judge whilst there is a definite undercurrent of beliving the vicitim deserved it.
If it had been an adult on the recivieving end - say a bullying manager, or indeed a teacher - the assailant would be demonised as a psycho who needed to be locked away for the good of society.
But because the victim is a badly behaved teenage boy its 'poor man' and 'little bastard'. Its like hes struck a blow for everyone against the feral youth who haunt the nightmares of daily mail readers. But really its the discourse of the powerful smacking down the disempowered when they get too uppity.
The man should never have been employed as a teacher becasue he suffers from uncontrollable rage when provoked - and the school were seriously negligent allowing him to teach when they were aware of the problem.
All of this is purely subjective, addressing nothing of what's actually been said in the thread. Congratulations, too, on being the first (at least in recent pages of the thread) to mention the red herring of the Daily Mail.
Just let your liberal guilt go; you'll probably feel better for it.
The disempowered in this case was the teacher, by the way.
BlueSquareThing
With chips
I can understand that - I don't know if it's possible to get transcripts of evidence and so on, although I should imagine it's six of one. I certainly wouldn't argue that he deserved it - might have deserved something, but certainly not being whacked around the head with a bloody great weight.
I disagree that he should *ever* have been allowed to work as a teacher. From what I understand he'd worked for getting on for 30 years and done an entirely reasonable job. To have snapped at the point he did doesn't suggest at all that for the majority of the time he was in the job that he was a timebomb. And, as I've said before (err, probably), he should have walked away.
I would like to hope he was being monitored, counseled and managed effectively, with lots of support and a gradual reintegration etc... I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't the case though, although I don't know all the details obviously. There was probably some but, knowing schools, neither the time or money was there to do the job properly.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Would he have snapped if the school had proper discipline, and troublemakers been expelled? We'll never know.
Don't support corporal punishment in schools due to the lack of due process. Rapid suspension and expulsion are perfectly effective alternatives.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
I don't think anybody is really condoning smashing in pupils' heads like they were overripe pumpkins. Hopefully the teenager's skull will heal with little lasting damage and he will be able to reflect on his oafish ways and strive to become a more pleasant and productive member of society. The other children will have learnt the dangers of provoking people with mental health problems and the teacher will get on with his life in a less stressful environment.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
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