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Scenes From The Battleground - Getting “Terrored”
At the Metropolitan School “terror” is a verb, not a noun. “To terror a teacher” means to subject a teacher to a continual stream of intimidation and abuse with the intention of causing the maximum amount of stress. The main purpose of this is to intimidate the teacher into giving up on any attempt to enforce the rules. Also it can also be used to attempt to drive the teacher out of the school, or as a way for students to assert their status or authority with their peers. Consequently it is aimed largely at teachers who are new to the school, or at least new to the class, although if a class is arrogant enough it will be aimed at any teacher who expects them to behave.
Terroring begins with low level disruption. Admittedly everything at the Metropolitan school begins with low level disruption. However, if you are getting terrored then any effort to prevent the disruption or enforce the school rules will lead to escalation through the following stages:
I lived in England for three years, and english children are the most obnoxious, bratty, smartass kids I have ever seen.
There is a culture of hooliganism that pervades the almost the entire country. I would rather work in the worst urban school in American than work in a middle class school there.
Hat Tip: Education Wonks Carnival of Education
7 comments:
No one can butcher the English language quite like the English.
"Terror" is a noun, plain and simple. The verb that means "to subject ... to a continual stream of intimidation and abuse with the intention of causing the maximum amount of stress" is "harass", or possibly "terrorize".
That is AMAZING.
Unbelievable.
I had no idea.
Wow.
So, the teachers automatically water down their classes to accomodate the disruptive students? Seems to me that these middle class folks won't stay middle class very long if the kids are all flunking out because they are screwing around in class instead of learning.
Perhaps the teachers don't care either and are just getting a paycheck or maybe there is some wierd legal atmosphere that prevents administration from taking any action against troublemakers.
I hang out on an expat board because I'm hoping to be transferred to my company's UK division soon. Apparently, one of the only highly skilled professions they are still offering working visas for is social work. Englad is importing an astonishing number of social workers, because they can't produce enough domestically to cope. Try googling the word "asbo" sometime.
Some friends who have taught in Britain say the same thing - British kids are a terror and far worse than NZ kids.
Some of my friends have succeded in discipline and having tightly run classrooms, but it sounds like a far tougher job than it would be in NZ.
Thanks for the link to my blog.
It's all true I'm afraid.
The blog entry in question has now moved to:
http://oldandrew.edublogs.org/2007/03/18/getting-“terrored”/
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