The terrible events in Mansfield leave a 14 year old seriously injured in hospital and a teacher on a charge of attempted murder - which will inevitably be reduced to GBH over the course of time.Only those who have stood in front of a class of louts could possibly understand the true nature of this tragedy.
Over decades, literally tens of thousands of teachers have been driven out of the profession, broken by taunting, abuse, low level disobedience, pig ignorance, idleness, bad language, contempt, violence and even advanced apathy.
What is so amazing is that what occurred yesterday does not happen more frequently - or even regularly!
That is not to defend this man at all - but rather to take all of the circumstances into account.
I would guess that my readers will already know where the true blame for all of this lies.
You KNOW who they are already. You KNOW what they have done to destroy respect, decency and discipline.
In my second week as a student teacher at a sink school in Rotherham, I gently asked a pretty, sweet-looking 12 year old to move some books.
"F**** off, you!" was the response which, coming so out of the blue, shocked me silly.
It got worse. I went to the Senior Mistress to report this whereupon her precise words to me were, "When you get to be more experienced, you will learn to avoid these sort of confrontations." - I was so shocked that I didn't even reiterate that there had been nothing whatsoever to precipitate this.
What a sad world!
