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Bouncers, ex-soldiers and former police officers are being brought into schools to provide "crowd control" and cover absent teachers' lessons, a teacher has revealed.
One school, thought to be in London, employed two permanent cover teachers through an agency for professional doormen, the National Union of Teachers annual conference in Cardiff heard today.
Bouncers, who more usually work nights keeping order in pubs and clubs, are being employed in schools because they are "stern and loud", said Andrew Baisley, a teacher at Haverstock school in Camden, north London.
Here is the story.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 16, 2009 at 12:13 PM in Education | Permalink
Comments
Why not just use a T-800, perhaps with cattle prods instead of plasma rifles? A kinder, gentler infiltrator.
Posted by: Andrew at Apr 16, 2009 12:29:25 PM
Here in the states we have seen this go the other way. Rich Franklin used to be a HS Math teacher before becoming a MMA Fighter with much success in the UFC.
Posted by: Freeman Mester at Apr 16, 2009 12:41:47 PM
Rich Franklin's deep understanding of the geometry of the Octogon gives him an unfair advantage.
Posted by: Steve at Apr 16, 2009 1:38:47 PM
As parents of public school students know, discipline can be a massive problem.
One growing difficulty: in many schools these days, the main discipline tool is for teachers to threaten, like E.T., to phone home.
Yet when they do call the parents, it frequently doesn't work because:
- Mama and papa don't speak English, so they put the miscreant himself on the extension to translate, with predictable results;
- Or the parents (especially the father) aren't around much;
- Or they don't care;
- Or the parents mean well but just aren't very effective people. If these parents were better at accomplishing their goals, they wouldn't be sending their kid to such an undisciplined school, now would they?
In fact, since problem-solving has never been their strong suit, the parents were kind of hoping, reasonably enough, that society's giant institutions would help with disciplining their kids—not just try to dump their problem with their little hellion right back in their laps.
Sometimes phoning home works a little too well. The kid comes to school the next day with a black eye. Students know that's a get-out-of-jail-free card for the rest of the semester—because the teacher is then terrified that if she calls Papa a second time, he'll smack the brat with his bottle and put him in the intensive care ward.
Still, on most middle and high school campuses, there are school employees who are reasonably good at getting energetic, muscular young males to obey them. They are called football coaches.
Clearly, some of their success is due to being able to bench or toss off the team players who won't subordinate themselves. But good coaches also have the right kind of alpha male personalities to first intimidate and later impress young males. As Tom Wolfe mentioned to me a couple of years ago, lots of men have made it their life's study to dominate other males through force of personality.
You don't even have to pay them a huge amount of money to impose their wills on students. They like doing it.
Of course, many of the best disciplinarians were hellraisers themselves when young. Bad boys generally have no philosophical objection to authority in the abstract; instead they just object to somebody else being in charge.
That's why wild young males are more likely to respond positively to authority figures whom they could imagine themselves growing up to be. They'll never grow up to be a Nice White Lady. So the schools have to provide the teachers with a second line of disciplinary defense, composed primarily of men with necks thicker than their heads.
So, as a public service, let me offer my plan for improving school discipline:
Hire two more assistant coaches, one for football and one for a spring sport, such as a shot-putting coach for track and field.
Huh? That's it?
Pretty much, but there are a few wrinkles:
* Their day jobs will be as Assistant Deans of Discipline. They will trade off running after-school detention in the fall and spring. They will be hired largely because they like imposing order.
* They will be encouraged to develop psychologically creative and effective punishment techniques, such as having disobedient students scrape gum off the underside of desks and other distasteful detention duties.
* The requirement that administrators must have a college degree will be suspended for the Dean of Discipline position. Ideal candidates would include retiring Armed Forces sergeants. Demanding only a high school diploma sends the message to young troublemakers that they don't have to turn magically into nerdy brainiacs to grow up to hold positions of respect and power.
I realize that there's nothing innovative about my plan. It's just old-fashioned common sense.
But, in our PC era, common sense is under siege.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Apr 16, 2009 3:43:26 PM
True story: when I was in third or fourth grade, and our regular teacher was quite sick, we had a substitute teacher for a couple of weeks who was 94 years old. She could barely walk and actually fell asleep in front of the class on a few occasions. The principal later explained that she had retired more than 30 years earlier, on a pension that by current standards was ludicrously small, and basically needed the meagre substitute teacher's pay to survive.
Posted by: Peter at Apr 16, 2009 4:18:30 PM
Steve, I know this isn't your point, but most sergeants I know ARE highly educated and did so in less than ideal circumstances. That makes them yet more qualified to fill the role of teacher.
Back to the original post-- hiring bouncers is just the informal way of doing what the US education system does through its teacher education requirements. The US system requires completion of a mind-numbing, anti-intellectual, multi-year certification process. This English program is simply allowing for alternative certification criteria (in education-speak).
Posted by: The Other Eric at Apr 16, 2009 5:41:53 PM
The feminization of the teaching profession (not just in gender composition but in its aversion towards discipline) has made for a huge demand for anyone with the ability to actually lay down the law.
Posted by: athelas at Apr 16, 2009 6:07:48 PM
Heh, I should have guessed the authoritarians would come out on this one. That culture is obsolete in the middle-class west, though. It's not a good way to raise your kids to be successful. OTOH, if you are a crackhead, then your kids probably do need a lot of discipline. But they're not going to learn anything anyway because they're not motivated.
Posted by: Dave at Apr 16, 2009 9:36:23 PM
