“Disruptive pupils are making it impossible to improve Britain’s secondary schools.” A Prospect Magazine article on the growth of unruliness in school age children, from a British gradeschool teacher’s perspective. It gives short shrift to what for me is the interesting question:

Why do so many schoolchildren behave badly? The broader cultural and family background is clearly a factor, albeit an unquantifiable one. The combination of an “instant gratification” mass culture and more unstable families has led to rising insecurity and aggression in some children. High teacher turnover in key subjects reinforces the emotional instability of many modern families. Moreover, parents themselves have become more aggressive towards teachers and other authority figures; consider the increased assaults on GPs.

Most films and TV shows I’ve seen in recent years reflecting modern British social conditions, it strikes me, indeed show schools as places where the breakdown in decorum is the central fact.

Most of the article is spent arguing what seems to be the gospel in American schools, that the teaching profession has in most contexts become of necessity merely a disciplinary exercise.

…(E)ven in an anti-authoritarian age, schools should be able to offer the security, discipline and stimulation which disaffected young people need. To ensure that this is more often the case, schools need a core of committed teachers with the training to command a class and the freedom to inspire it. Is that too much too ask?

Is this all that education is destined to be in most settings?