Teach us to sit still

The BBC website seems designed to provide me with things to whinge about! The latest is that schools in Glasgow are offering free iPods and other incentives to make children eat healthily. They complain that, otherwise, the kids will just be off down to MacDonald's. Well, maybe I'm old, but when I was in school there was no way we were allowed off the grounds without a teacher, certainly not to pop down to the village chip shop for a deep-fried Mars Bar! The reason we have different words for "child" and "adult" is that these are two separate, though related, categories of person. The child needs guidance, and needs to be "trained" into good habits, such as politeness, respect, and healthy eating. That guidance should come from the parents first and foremost, with the backing of the school. This should not be a question of "if you behave as we would expect you to behave, we will reward you", but rather "if you do not behave as we would expect you to behave, we will take sanctions". I do believe in positive encouragement for children, as it helps them to learn, but to spend education budget money on bribes for healthy eating is absurd, as is the scheme that was introduced to pay children to stay in school. What needs to happen is for society to begin valuing education and educators, so that children will grow up believing in their value too.

That said, in order for this to happen, the education system really needs to pull its socks up. You can't expect a child to respect someone just because they're a teacher, if that person does not respect the child in return. This is difficult, when the children come in with no respect or value for what they're doing, and in some cases prepared to use violence against their teachers. But I experienced teachers who told me that I was useless, would never make it to University (two degrees form Oxford later, and another in the running, I have to feel a little smug), was a burden on the school (having participated in every choir, drama group, public speaking competition they asked me to), etc. I know of teachers who have told children they belong in the gutter, who use their classroom as a forum for expressing their repugnant homophobic or racist views... I could go on. This kind of behaviour is unacceptable. Good teachers know how to admonish without resorting to insult. Unfortunately, even good teachers are let down by bad schools, bad curricula, bad inspectorates...

Is there a solution to this problem? Or is our society just too far stuck in the rut to ever return to a basic decent standard of behaviour from children and education from schools?