YOUR report about the number of violent incidents directed against teachers by pupils gives cause for concern ("Teachers reveal stress of working in the classroom", the Herald, January 14).
Such moments are even occurring with greater frequency at primary level, and nursery teachers have reported similar incidents at that tender age.
This puts teachers in the position of canaries in the mines.
If they are meeting such conduct on a much more regular basis, there has to be an awareness that there is a festering sore at the heart of our society, making teachers, who are in the front line of encountering youngsters in groups, the first section to be confronted with such feral outbursts.
What is coming further down the line is prefaced by this type of indiscipline in our schools.
Perhaps the sanctions available to schools are not effective and are contributing to the malaise met by teachers, whose job is stressful enough without that added burden.
Steps will have to be taken to remedy this breakdown before it becomes endemic and drives more out of the profession.
Failure to tackle this problem will also result in more incidents where public order will be at more risk as we are already seeing with attacks on NHS staff and assaults on firefighters out on emergencies.
Denis Bruce,
5 Rannoch Gardens, Bishopbriggs.
YET again we read of assaults on teachers by “vulnerable” children.
It is astounding that political discussion of the indiscipline crisis engulfing Scottish schools never mentions the elephants in the room. Education Scotland is moving to eliminate punishments and replace them with weak and indulgent “restorative practices.” And pupils are being fed a diet of children’s rights that often conveys the message that “no one has the right to tell you what to do”.
Causes are also left un-analysed, beyond the simplistic poverty-is-the-root-of-all-evil narrative. How about family breakdown and fatherlessness, excessive hours in day care in the early years, and the undermining of parental authority through the children’s rights preaching in schools?
Scottish education is an ideological echo chamber. Challenging the monolithic progressivism seems futile, so many teachers are just voting with their feet.
Richard Lucas,
Leader of The Scottish Family Party, 272 Bath Street, Glasgow.
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