LET US SALUTE A TEACHER. Roger Griffin 66, once of Beechview Primary School in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, is a music teacher who has been summoned before a Teaching Agency conduct hearing being held in Coventry.
Mr Griffin, a music teacher, is facing a disciplinary panel because of the language he used toward his pupils. He branded some of them as ‘pests’ ‘idiots’, ‘clowns and buffoons’. He is also being accused of playing his piano in the school hall while an Ofsted visit was in progress. He had been told by assistant head Beatriz Melero to remain at home for the day, but, as Mr Griffin wisely counselled, 'Surely it is a function of Ofsted to identify bad teaching as well as good. They should not have the decision made by the school management for them.
'I would have thought that I was entitled to have Ofsted see my work as much as anybody else in the school. I don't see the fuss about my reaction to being told I couldn't have my work inspected.'
The Deputy Head, Miss Melero, also lays accusations that Mr Griffin disregarded her directions that he should follow the National Curriculum in his music lessons, to which the increasingly likeable Mr Griffin, agreed that he had not used the National Curriculum in his teaching of music because; 'I made it quite clear that I never will follow the Qualifications and Curriculums Authority (QCA) schemes of work as they contain an error and I will not teach an error’. He went on to insist that the schemes he devised himself were in advance of those created by the QCA; 'My scheme of work is much better than the QCA scheme of work,' he said. 'My work supports the National Curriculum to levels that by itself the National Curriculum can't reach [probably because of dumbing down].’
As for the language he used toward his pupils, he justifies such expressions thus; 'Persistent miscreants who act like delinquents can expect to be treated as such.
'If they don't like being called idiots, fools, clowns, buffoons or any similar epithet, there is a very simple solution: don't act like one.'
MR GRIFFINS’ appearance before such a body tells us a lot about modern teaching in this country. Miss Melro it appears, was seconded into her role as a trouble shooter to boost the school’s ailing fortunes after its previous head teacher went absent on a ‘long term basis’.
Something tells me that all is not well with Beechview School; and why was Mr Griffin told to take the day off during an Ofsted visit? Did he have something to tell which Miss Melro would have sooner been kept from Ofsted?
Beechview School seems to have been an unhappy one before Miss Melro took over to boost it. It must have needed boosting, if Mr Griffin’s use of such language was necessitated. He seems to me to be a man that will not tolerate fools gladly and should have been elevated to the same position in the school as the previous absentee head master.
All Mr Griffin, it seems, wanted to do throughout his teaching career was to advance knowledge; in his case the advance in knowledge was concerned with his love of music. He was a man who believed, as any teacher should, in educational standards, whatever the subject being taught.
In the modern era where the slipper or the cane causes a seizure among modern educationalists; what is left in the teacher’s armoury to eradicate bad behaviour if not language? Mr Griffin never used common (and I do mean common) swear words toward his pupils. He told it as he saw it in terms of the children’s behaviour, and his own life-long experience as a teacher.
Mr Griffin has lived long enough to see both sides of the teaching coin. Remember, he was taught under a far stricter disciplinary regime than exists today.
I, like Mr Griffin, was inducted into this country’s education system at about the same time. My school years covered the decade between 1955-1965. During these years teachers were allowed to physically punish pupils; but, as with modern ASBOS, a certain minority looked upon such a punishment as a badge of honour – but one which they were loath to repeat. Once was enough for recalcitrant pupils then. The slipper and the cane were, like the sword of Damocles, hung over the heads of pupils, and this proved enough to keep discipline in the classroom then.
The cane was the nuclear option which was rarely used and only by the headmaster; but we pupils knew it was there, and the teachers also took comfort in its existence. No teacher then, would have taken the type of behaviour from a pupil that they are expected to take today without the option of physical punishment.
Mr Griffin is obviously old school, while Beatriz Melero represents all that has gone wrong within the modern school. Pupils need discipline at school and boundaries set at home – a very high proportion of today’s pupils are unfamiliar with both concepts; and Mr Griffin realises such slackness can only increase innumeracy and illiteracy , as well as the criminal population.
Children are untouchable and they know it. They hold all the cards as has been shown by the way Mr Griffin has been treated.
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