Violence, Threats and Indiscipline Leave South African Teachers Facing Growing Classroom Challenges

Jam Sandwich

Jam Sandwich

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Teachers across South Africa face challenges that extend beyond teaching, marking assessments and preparing learners for examinations. Verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, physical assaults and persistent learner indiscipline have become major concerns for education stakeholders, raising questions about the safety and authority of educators in schools.


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Violence, Threats And Indiscipline Leave South African Teachers Facing Growing Classroom Challenges - PrimeTime News

Teachers across South Africa face challenges that extend beyond teaching, marking assessments and preparing learners for examinations. Verbal abuse, threats,
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This is a global problem.

In the US, teachers are discouraged from physically touching students, not even to separate students who are fighting. In some cases, they are even prohibited from physically intervening by their unions and school districts.

Even if the teacher themself is being threatened, they have to use ''appropriate'' force and are encouraged to use verbal de-escalation.
 
It's weird. Back in the day our parents tanned our hides if we stepped out of line. If we did it at school, the teachers did it. If we really overstepped we were expelled and if we criminally overstepped, we were expelled and the police got involved. And noooobody wanted that back then.

Everything turned out just fine and there was no madness and mayhem and the lesson was that there exists a line in the sand. But now? Well now everything is fscked.
 
Flanders said:
It's weird. Back in the day our parents tanned our hides if we stepped out of line. If we did it at school, the teachers did it. If we really overstepped we were expelled and if we criminally overstepped, we were expelled and the police got involved. And noooobody wanted that back then.

Everything turned out just fine and there was no madness and mayhem and the lesson was that there exists a line in the sand. But now? Well now everything is fscked.
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Exactly. Now all parents can do is make you watch youtube.
 
It is literally an unfixable problem in public schools.

Public schools governing bodies cannot expel, only the provincial HOD can. And they will look for any and all reason to keep the darlings in the current school because if they do expel, the province has to find another school that will take the problem. And that school has to be close enough for the family to go to, etc etc. Which is impossible given the existing financial constraints.

Even normal legislation wouldn't fix the problem because education is a "right".

This one of the cases where something with genuinely noble and good intentions (like the right to education), has absolutely horrific outcomes. Other countries have done perfectly fine with a public education system that doesn't have a constitutional right attached to it. Right now, the state is forced to keep the most disruptive and badly behaved kids in schools with limited resources. Which actually means the right of an education for all the non-disruptive kids is being infringed, but the system will never realise that because they are sitting in a school, and therefore legally they are getting an education.

It is so f__ked.
 
konfab said:
It is literally an unfixable problem in public schools.

Public schools governing bodies cannot expel, only the provincial HOD can. And they will look for any and all reason to keep the darlings in the current school because if they do expel, the province has to find another school that will take the problem. And that school has to be close enough for the family to go to, etc etc. Which is impossible given the existing financial constraints.

Even normal legislation wouldn't fix the problem because education is a "right".

This one of the cases where something with genuinely noble and good intentions (like the right to education), has absolutely horrific outcomes. Other countries have done perfectly fine with a public education system that doesn't have a constitutional right attached to it. Right now, the state is forced to keep the most disruptive and badly behaved kids in schools with limited resources. Which actually means the right of an education for all the non-disruptive kids is being infringed, but the system will never realise that because they are sitting in a school, and therefore legally they are getting an education.

It is so f__ked.
Click to expand...

Maybe the non-disruptive students need to be the ones to fix the problem.

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Agent_Smith said:
They did away with corporal punishment in 96, I think it was. The change in behaviour in the classroom was almost overnight. The stoutgatte who knew they couldn't get jacked anymore just became unbearable and made it unpleasant for the rest of us.
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That's because there was no youtube to make them watch yet.
 
PaulKempTheSecond said:
Agree with this, not beatings necessarily :) , but as social beings our peers should keep us in line.
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I can see it having its downsides, ie. promotion of mob justice and potentially the wrong students being targeted. But we've been having it. The other problem is one of race and that's bound to get messy. Seems though that fellow students are the only ones with the means to make a change. Personally, I prefer having the authority figure separate from my peers so that there is strength and unity within the community. But this is where we find ourselves.
 
I blame my generation of "we will never do to our kids what our parents did to us" whiners who then created a generation of reprobates who should be in prison. Of course, it's also as a result of the dominant culture in this country.
 
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