Maintaining conducive learning environments

AS THE curtain came down on the first term of this academic year, teachers are breathing a huge sigh of relief. Many are grateful for a much-deserved rest and an opportunity to refocus on the festivities of the season as well as family duties. This break is critical for the maintenance of work/life balance given the highly stressful tone of the term.

It is no secret that many schools would have experienced unprecedented levels of student indiscipline, a continuation from the preceding term. Teachers at both the primary and secondary levels have all been lamenting about the increased amount of effort required to maintain conducive learning environments in the classroom and school, as well as to generally keep children safe.

This renewed focus on teachers’ duty of care almost precludes the delivery of academic curriculum, forcing school officials to convert schools into almost exclusive moral agents.

Increasingly, students have been showing poor levels of interpersonal skills, with minor differences escalating into violent conflicts. There has been a significant reduction in children’s ability to negotiate and dialogue with each other, with violence – both verbal and physical – being the first option to treat with conflicts.

Intolerance among them has assumed new proportions and teachers are now being forced to engage an inordinate amount of their time in and out of school in conflict mediation and resolution. The violence spans the entire spectrum, overwhelming school authorities, student support services and even the police.

Schools in their current configuration are unable to adequately cope with such unprecedented levels of student indiscipline. They were never designed or equipped to carry such an enhanced and expanded moral mandate.

Disrespect for self, others and authority is routinely displayed by large numbers of students on a daily basis. Basic rules of social conduct and engagement befitting of civilised societies have been rejected. Behaviours once frowned upon by society at large have now become normalised and acceptable.

The social deficit basket of the average student reflects an almost parallel society where a different social order prevails, clashing with the school’s moral code and resulting in confused students owing to conflicting value systems.

The mediating/counselling/social worker dimension of schooling has been significantly expanded to the point of teachers expressing a sense of frustration and exasperation; almost fighting a losing battle.

Preparing children for school for many parents has been reduced to giving them uniforms and sending them to school, devoid of fundamental concepts of limits of behaviour and self-regulation.

Paradoxically, the phenomenal rise of social media use has seen a concomitant increase in anti-social skills among students and is very often the basis for the escalation of many conflicts. Social media is now the dominant shaper of behaviours, norms and values among Generation Z, with schools being faced with the seemingly exclusive challenge of arresting the consequential social decay and moral rot.

Delivery of an academic curriculum has now been relegated down the priority order for many teachers owing to the social deficits of their charges. Unfortunately, commensurate resources to deliver on this pastoral mandate have been a huge challenge. The national community must ask some serious fundamental questions:

What is the nature and purpose of schooling and consequently the role of the teacher in this new social paradigm? To what extent are we prepared to hold parents accountable for the proper upbringing of their children? How can social and mainstream media be held accountable for the miseducation of children?

The statistics on student violence and child abuse paint an alarming picture of parental neglect and abdication of responsibilities.

Children are products of their socialisation and will learn what they see, hear and experience. If they see, hear and live emotional, verbal, physical and even sexual violence, that is what they will consider normalised behaviour and will bring such behaviours to school.

This, in turn, inhibits their capacity to take advantage of the schooling opportunities owing to a culture clash. Many of them are victims of circumstances which render them unprepared and unable to use educational opportunities to empower themselves and broaden their choices is life.

The unacceptable social behaviour exhibited by many students is merely a reflection of a radically altered social order of hate, anger, mistrust and perceived social injustice. This has severely disrupted the learning environment of the school and must be addressed from a broad-based national perspective in an expeditious manner. Unfortunately, the new term will merely promise more of the same for teachers for none of the forgoing is new.