Shelinia Schoeman: 21802874Discipline in South African Schools
Ask any teacher whether or not not they feel “in control” of their charges within the setting of the school and you are unlikely to get an uncertain“yes” for an answer. Many of them will openly admit that coping with indiscipline in schools is one of the foremost challenges of the teaching profession. The offences are many and varied and can range from minor classroom or playground altercations to incidents of violence that require the intervention of the police.
But the challenges associated with maintaining discipline often go well beyond isolated incidents of aggression. There have been re-ports of violent gangs, sexual activity on school premises and in at least a handful of cases, the sale of drugs in schools.
If these occurrences are hardly unique to the local school system, many teachers admit that they feel “intimidated” and “fearful,” their feelings of insecurity arising in many cases out of a concern that the standard of discipline in our schools is on a continual downward spiral.
V.P GABANELE
ReplyDeleteMany teachers in school are demotivated because they dont know what to do about the discipline situation anymore. The state is not doing much about it. They just tell educators to discipline the learners but they are not helping the educators with it.
S.O. Schoeman
DeleteI agree, it is a bit difficult to bring in discipline in the schools today, especially our local schools. The question here would be, "how exactly do we as teachers discipline learners today"?
It is much easier to monitor, control and discipline younger learners, then to discipline learners that's in higher classes: Intermediate and Senior phase. Because these learners tends to challenge the teachers, and some even becomes physically violent towards the teachers. That is why teachers are demotivated and don't know what to do about the discipline situation anymore.
S.O Schoeman: 21802874
ReplyDeleteI personally feel, that the education Department should really look into this matter of Discipline in schools, because as it states in the above article; "It is on a continual downward spiral". And when the teacher wants to discipline the learners, the learners tells them about their rights, the parents also comes to school to face the teacher(s). And at the end of the day the teacher is seen as the bad guy and is been reported.
What about the rights of the teacher? What about the rights of all the other learners who actually wants to study and learn at school? Both the teacher(s) and those learners eager enough to learn, their rights are been invaded and violated by those learners, who has a discipline problem, by being ill mannared and uncontrolable.
This is a very big problem in our schools and needs to be attended to ASAP. The Education Department should work together with the teachers and parents, to come up with a solution about the Discipline problem in our Schools today.