Teachers have been put in impossible situation that could lead to many opting for different jobs.
When I was at school, Miss McPhedran just had to give you one of her stern looks and the whole class instantly fell silent and became completely attentive.
She was a brilliant, inspirational teacher who took no nonsense and would never have anyone disrupting her class and preventing her pupils from the important business of learning.
These days, teachers are on the back foot, thanks to a skewed sense of pupil power that has backfired horribly and made it almost impossible for them to do their jobs.
That’s why we had a frustrated teacher plonking sticky tape over the mouths of pupils who simply refused to stop talking, and why kids think they can get away with all kinds of ignorant, disrespectful behaviour.
Of course, I don’t think this teacher was right to put tape over their mouths and she has since been suspended, but I can understand her quietly seething with rage and then losing it.
Who knows what she had to put up with before she simply snapped.
Nobody wants to go back to the days when little kids were beaten with canes and thick leather straps, but the pendulum has swung so far the other way that teachers can’t even raise their voices without being threatened with accusations of bullying.
Things will have to change or no one will venture into a classroom and take on one of the toughest jobs there is that would be an utter disaster.
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