What to do with kids - retrain troops as teachers!

[Orcish-Horde]

Interesting thoughts, I to agree that someone coming into the profession with life experience, like someone from the military, could bring invaluable ideas and new ways of looking at the curriculum.

But, being a 23 year old teacher trainee at the moment, I can quite honestly put it to you that I know of no teacher trainee of similar age to me that believes they are a font of all knowledge. I think you need to dispel this narrow minded view you have, as it simply is not possible to get through teacher training without being prepared to reflect and regularly admit that you know very little, if barely anything at all outside of your degree and limited work experience in your life so far.

The trainee teachers who cause the most issues by far in a way are the ones with supposed 'life experience'. For some reason, with age, people seem to get a closed out view of the world and feel only their opinion, perceptions, or pedagology are the only way that matters.

Now that would be tarring people with a broad brush, which is not my intention. At the end of the day, a good teacher is not someone who has necessarily got 20 years of military experience and medals to show for it, it's all about someone who can relate to the cohort of children they are dealing with in that particular lesson at that particular moment in time. A good teacher can be 23 or 63.

When I left school I could hardly read or write, it was not because of a lack of ability. It was the lack of discipline and the fact that the teachers just didn't care. People with military experience(more than the minimal 3 years) alway seem to have that in them, they care about what they do. They also expect everyone else to care to, that is were the system fails. 23 year old teachers in general don't care. What I mean by that is if lets say the younger me was not paying interest and messing about. Their way of dealing with it would be to get ride of me so that they could get on with teaching.(See the contradiction). Were as someone who realy cared would force the issue and ensure conformity, ex-military would be good.

 

[atpbx]

My experience of your average squaddie is that they are marginally less socially adept than your average 5 year old so no, its a terrible idea.

And those who progress further in the army tend not to need to bother with teaching jobs as their big fat army pensions look after them quite nicely.

 

[Sm1ffy]

My PE teacher at secondary school was an ex Royal Marine PTI. With out a doubt the best teacher I have ever had, probably the funniest too! Personally I think we should just round all the little gits up that cause problems, havbe asbos etc and send them to a military academy. Then once they got a proper education maybe even gcses etc let them fill the void in the army by promising to pay for the to do a degree after 5 yrs service, well it works for the septics

 

[Deleted member 11679]

They also expect everyone else to care to, that is were the system fails. 23 year old teachers in general don't care. What I mean by that is if lets say the younger me was not paying interest and messing about. Their way of dealing with it would be to get ride of me so that they could get on with teaching.(See the contradiction). Were as someone who realy cared would force the issue and ensure conformity, ex-military would be good.

Do you have evidence support this argument outside of conjecture or anecdotal evidence? I have seen nowhere which highlights that Newly Qualified Teachers offer any less care or support to mis-behaving/dis-engaged pupils'.

I would in fact argue the opposite, as everything in that first year of teaching is assessed against Teaching standards and that you can fail the first year as a teacher with the consequences being you lose your Qualified Teacher Status. I think 'in general', you will find a young, just qualified teacher would be very keen to pursue many lines of options to try and engage pupils' in a lesson. The difference between a young inexperienced teacher, over an experienced, hardened teacher, is that they may not be able to see the strategy straight away.

 

[Syph]

When I left school I could hardly read or write, it was not because of a lack of ability. It was the lack of discipline and the fact that the teachers just didn't care. People with military experience(more than the minimal 3 years) alway seem to have that in them, they care about what they do. They also expect everyone else to care to, that is were the system fails. 23 year old teachers in general don't care. What I mean by that is if lets say the younger me was not paying interest and messing about. Their way of dealing with it would be to get ride of me so that they could get on with teaching.(See the contradiction). Were as someone who realy cared would force the issue and ensure conformity, ex-military would be good.

As a 23 year old teacher, I can tell you you're (politely) talking BS.

I don't try and get rid of anyone, I might send someone out for 5 mins after telling them that's what would happen should their behaviour continue - but that's what I've been trained to do.

I can tell you I care about all 420 kids that I teach, and because I'm not a cynical, experienced hardened person, I actually bother to read kids IEPs and find out why they shout out or fidget or act like a plonker. I don't just see them as being a pain in the ass that needs to 'drop in line'.

The reason kids try it on in schools is because they can, because some kids just don't care about a detention, being shouted at, getting excluded or expelled. I teach at an Ofsted rated 'Outstanding' school, I was the first teacher observed that day, yet we've had about 50 exclusions this year. Someone out of the military wouldn't automatically have the tools to sort this just because of their past disciplinarian background. That's not to say they wouldn't make good teachers - it takes all sorts, clearly. You'll get good and bad from the military, same from all walks.

 

[Andr3w]

Ohhh, been a teacher in an inner city school...me? Nah....

 

[HaX]

This is a subject close to my heart as both my parents have been teachers, my dad having taught for over 30 years when he retired.

When my dad first started teaching, unrully or disruptive pupils were punished by force - eg cane or a slap. Discipline was much better back then, as were general standards of education.

By the time he took early retirement, discipline both in schools and wider society in general had deteriorated dramatically. Being an "old-school" disciplinarian, he wouldn't take any nonsense, and frequently used to instill the fear of god into his pupils. As you can imagine this used to go down a treat with the chav type parents, who used to complain about him whenever he admonished their darling Keanu or Kiera for bad behaviour

I don't think we need any military personnel in schools, what we need is for the government to stop protecting the human rights of the protagonists and give those who want to work hard a fighting chance. Let teachers give out the cane again!

As for teachers not making any effort, the vast majority of teachers who taught me seemed very well motivated and keen to help. However, just imagine teaching a set of bottom set chavs and how demoralising it must be - trying to help people who don't want to be helped and actively disrupt what you are trying to do for them.

 

[Freakbro]

An 8 year thread /necro!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35595424

So, this scheme was adopted by the coalition and started in Sept 2013.

It may be a bit early to judge, as this will be the first lot to qualify, but so far with a £4.3M cost and hoping for 2,000 applicants to retrain as teachers, we have had.....28!

It must be so frustrating coming up with these ideas, investing years of time and millions of £££ only to have them perform like a damp squib.

 

[Twirlywoos]

As long as you restrict them to p.e and carry out a full mental and criminal background checks.

 

[Nismo]

At school level it was always going to be hard to make it work. My brother for example, an ex. squaddie, would have been **** at teaching kids, but excelled in a more adult environment training on fork lifts etc.

The 28 that made it through would probably have been good teachers anyway, regardless of being in the forces. Forces discipline and regimented thinking does not make you a good school teacher, not these days anyway.

 

[marmalade]

It might work in theory, but you can tell a mile off the ****heads that held senior posts in the army that work in our company.

very true only today the quality of teacher is often poor This emanating from low standards of entry to Universities.. So why not get a squaddie who has been doing nothing but spud bashing in the forces teaching - their discipline at least should be better - but could run foul of the PC Brigade that rule the UK
Imagine the lads in "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" retrained as teachers - Windsor Davies was a teacher.

 

[danielanthony]

Military types rule through fear and intimidation - disobedience can lead to physical and/or financial punishments in the military.

These tools are not available in a school setting, so ex-servicemen/women may find it difficult to adjust to having to earn respect rather than it being automatically given.

Young graduates with no military experience but a desire to teach will be better suited as they're more prepared to deal with discipline from a civilian perspective and will see the job as a vocation rather than just something to pay the bills once booted out of another branch of the public sector.