Well of course we can’t, we don’t know what they were going through yesterday. They could have been at tutorials until 5:00pm, and then had to get dinner at 5:30pm. Next they could have had to go to piano practice and they probably wouldn’t get home until 8:00pm when they have to help put the siblings to bed etc. until they finally get a chance to start doing their homework at 8:30pm. Because each subject is supposed to give you 30 minutes each of homework but most teachers go over that so they give you about 45 minutes and there are 4 subjects to complete. Mathematics was probably the last one to complete and they don’t understand it but Dad usually helps with it and has already gone to bed because he has to get up at 5:00am. So poor ‘Sally’ has to fight with it by herself.
This is what you could call a “lose, lose situation.” This seems to occur a lot in a school environment. Another example of this could be something simple that usually escalates to a big problem. This could be talking in class.
From a students point of view it could just be one quick remark that unfortunately cause an outcry of laughter throughout the class, which could irritate the teacher enough for the student to be thrown out of the class, resulting in the student missing out on an important lesson and the teacher wasting valuable lesson time.
These are small issues that unfortunately will not be resolved anytime in the near future because of an immense conflict of opinions. In every school there are underlying issues of neglect and stereotypical behavior. One example of neglect in most schools is of Physical Education. Most schools treat Games or even GCSE P.E lessons as free periods or secondary subjects. Most people still view subjects from a 19th century point of view, being that the core subjects are English, Mathematics and Science. This view is not relevant to today’s subjects because 2 hours of Physical education per week is now on the National Curriculum. But so often we see in schools that this is not taken seriously. In my own school I can say that during GCSE’s if you are taking Triple Science instead of P.E you only get 1 hour of games which is Half of the National Curriculum. Worse still, in the lower years you only get 1 period of games a week plus, depending on the term, an hour of projects. This is closer to the N.C. than the GCSE group but still does not give an adequate introduction to fitness and healthy living.
“It is not fair” that we as students are deprived of a real say in our education because most schools do not provide adequate facilities for students to voice their opinions and be taken seriously. Too often we are given chances to speak but not too often are we taken seriously about what we say. It is an injustice for students not to have any input into the way in which schools social activities or even curriculum are based. Students should be part of the process of running successful schools because they are the ones being affected by the changes or things that need to be changed. This process could be help by Student Government being a requirement for all secondary schools. By doing this there is always a way for students to voice their opinions and to be seriously taken into consideration. By doing this relevant authorities can be advised on methods or suggestion that might not have occurred to them because of ignorance on the subject or because of the age differences their trains of thought are different. Because of the inequality between students and teachers or other authority figures there is not an equal sharing of opinions and action between them.
Unfortunately it would be quite difficult to give students the authority to make important decisions regarding education. You have to remember that they do not have any expertise in running schools or choosing sufficient subjects and relevant topics to discuss in a school environment. Students are in school to learn and be educated by people who have already done this. You cannot have pupils running schools without themselves having an education. Yes, of course there are certain things that have to be changed in schools but this is why students are educated so that they are able to get qualified so that they can be the ones running schools and can then make the changes which can undergo sufficient scrutiny to say whether or not they will be making a good change or not.
Another issue that needs to be resolved in schools concerns stereotypical viewing of students. Too often in schools we see people, students and teacher’s alike, negatively stereotyping students. These stereotypes range from black students, particularly females, always having bad attitudes and causing trouble and people that are from lower class backgrounds aren’t as intelligent as pupils from wealthier families, to boys being pushed to playing sports because girls can’t play sports.
Too often do we judge people on what we have previously heard about that group of people, whether it is females or minorities, rather than on how that person presents themselves. A sad situation is when in school environments the minority gets blamed for any disturbance because staff or other people seem to think badly of your group of people. A bad situation gets worse when, for example, there is a female games instructor but she doesn’t encourage females to get into sports because she herself thinks that boys are better at sports so why bother. A known fact is that when most people think of black girls they think of bad attitudes and violence. This is a damaging stereotype because it doesn’t encourage them to prove things otherwise. It can seem that no matter how hard you try to excel in education the question of if you cheated always seems to come up. If you excel in sporting, people try to stop you because they think, “What is the point of this?” because some boy is going to come along and be better than you. If you don’t excel in anything you are saying to people that the stereotype is correct. Once again we have a “lose, lose situation”.
Once again there is this issue that occurs everywhere. It is not because it is intentionally done but as teachers you need to be able to judge characters before they get the chance to act badly. If you see someone that looks prone to trouble it helps if you keep an extra eye on them before they get the chance to disturb the lesson. Not all stereotypes are bad because for some teachers or staff through stereotypes you can help motivate pupils to break the mold and do really good in school and be well behaved or push them to sporting or musical pursuits. This way you are taking something negative and turning it into a positive.
My feelings are that most schools over the years are learning to try and push positive attitudes towards different groups and encouraging those groups.
