THE alleged murder of teacher Ann Macguire in full view of her pupils, has once more thrown into the public glare the issue of school discipline.
The fact that it is a 15-year-old boy charged with her murder also highlights the role of society in this and many other tragic examples of antisocial and aggressive behaviour by pupils.
Antagonism between some parents and teachers has opened up a responsibility gap that is widening by the week.
Just who is responsible for our kids' behaviour? Arguably, responsibility must begin in the home; too many homes in our fragmented society abdicate that responsibility, leaving it to schools to sort out.
Teachers, however, are not in school to wet-nurse these kids; their job is to educate them – very difficult when too many kids enter schools without boundaries, without behaviour parameters and bereft of ambition.
But, they do know their rights conveniently forgetting the responsibilities attached to those rights.
In the mid 1950s, a similar situation to the attack on Mrs Macguire arose in the music class at my school in Colchester; a classmate pulled a knife on our music teacher and threatened him in front of my fellow classmates.
Our teacher was a diminutive and inoffensive man who, on that black day, deservedly gained our esteem by calmly standing up to the boy and, after several minutes, persuading him to hand over the knife.
I understand that the boy in question, although, like myself, now well retired, used to run a successful business. Counselling was non-existent; we were shocked, consoled each other and got on with our lives; those pupils who witnessed the frenzied attack on Ann Macguire, were shocked beyond belief, but I am not sure that 'counselling' is the natural panacea for this kind of savagery.
Were these pupils shocked by the death of a well-loved teacher, or were they shocked at witnessing real violence in real life as opposed to virtual violence in video games, computers and iPads? We now live in a violent society fuelled by violence depicted on screens large and small; spewed out of an internet service that is ungovernable and beyond the reach of our justice system. The failure of both society and government to arrest a serious decline in moral standards and to tackle the curse of 'life on benefits' syndrome, has produced an underclass of social outcasts, many of whom, with good reasons, are angry and bitter with their lot in life.
Life itself now has become cheap. The casual approach to taking a life, whether it is real or virtual, has set us on a path unrecognisable to those of us of a certain age. The horrifying range of weapons taken over the last three years into schools by pupils, some as young as 10, is a wake-up call to the authorities.
But a combination of years of unnecessary political interference with our education system, a stifling politically correct millstone around all our necks, a paranoid fear of litigation and a watered down justice system in thrall to a Human Rights Act that should be dumped back in the dustbin from whence it came, have all combined to create the current climate of anxiety and fear felt by so many of us today.
Bleeding heart school governors, undermining head teachers' discipline decisions, unprovoked physical attacks on teachers, pupils and school buildings in too many cases have led to school-leavers thrust into the world of work, illiterate and/or innumerate. When will our supine politicians grasp this nettle? Too busy feathering their own nests I suspect.
