Weapons, Violence, Disruption and Drugs all on the rise in Britain's schools.

Tittle: Weapons, Violence, Disruption and Drugs all on the rise in Britatin's schools.
Author: Richard Garner, Education Editor.
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education-news/weapons-violence-disruption-and-drugs-all-on-the-rise-in-britains-schools-799650.html?r=RSS
Date of Publication: Sunday, 23 March 2008.


Vocabulary:
-Hard Core: noun. the small central group in an organization, or in a particular group of peolpe, who are the most active or who will not change their beliefs or behaviour.
-Manhandle: verb, to push, pull or handle somebody roughly.
-Crack, to find the solution to a problem, etc.; to find the way to do something difficult.
-Restrain: verb, to stop somebody or something from doing somenthig, especially by using physical force.
-Referral: noun, the act of sending somebody who needs professional help to a person or place that can provide it.
-Sin bin: noun, slang, (in some sports), a place away from the playing area where the referee sends a player who has broken the rules.
-Bash: verb, informal, to hit somebody or something very hard. /"bash, beat or knock the living daylights out of somebody", informal, to hit somebody very hard several times and hurt them very much./"frighten or scare the living daylights out of somebody" informal, to frighten somebody very much.
-Premise: noun, the building and land near to it that a business owns or uses.
-Warrant: verb, formal, to make something necessary or appropiate in a particualr situation.


Main ideas:
-According to a recent research, every week up to 8,000 teachers will deal with a pupil carrying an offensive weapon in the US, such as a knife or a gun. Teachers are facing worrying levels of violence, drug dealing, poor behaviour and disruption in schools. The study also showed that one in 10 teachers reported being pushed or manhandled by pupils.
-The study, by Dr. Sean Neill, of Warwick University's Institute of Eduction, revealed that serious incidents were increasingly concentrated in a "hard core" of schools serving disadvantaged areas. According to Steve Sinnott, General Secretary of The National Union of Teachers, which comissioned the research, there is a polarization taking place. He added that carrying weapons to schools does not make students safer but more vulnerable and that they need to get that message across.
-Jhon Bangs, Assistant Secretary of the Union, said that teachers are reporting they are encountering these problems, especially in some of the toughest schools in the toughest areas, particularly among boys from socially deprived backgrounds.
-Teachers reported that boys from disavdvantaged backgrounds were more likely to have lower aspirations, be worse behaved, to comitt offences and to become gang members and teenager fathers, and that girls showed similar problems.
- Mr.Sinnott said that they need to change the Government's slogan from "education" to "eductaion and equality". Teachers in the survay said that rather than tackle the problem with more pupil referral units they would preferred action to reduce class sizes, make curriculum less restrictive and get more support from parents for school discipline.

Personal Reaction:
That violence in schools is rising, is not new for us. As many other countries around the world, Argentina is also experiencing this drammatic problem.
There was a tendency years ago, to believe that serious problems of behaviour and violence within the classromm were more likely to occur in schools situated in poor areas. And eventhough that is what often happens, we have already seen violent episodes occur within students from the highest social clases as well. Anyway, the surprising violent actitudes of teenagers nowadays does not have a clear connection with their economical or social backgrounds.
One of the major factors which contributes to the rise of violence is that children are growing up alone and with no limits, with both, their mothers and fathers working outside home and with too much bad influence from TV, the Internet and the mass-media.
At the same time, there's a general crisis in our Educational System which has reached a national level, with the consequence of schools responsibility being displaced from educating and forming students, to feed them and support them with their personal problems. This actitude from part of schools, ends up to contribute negatively to the problem of violence since to form students in their manners and behaviour, has been unfortunately left aside. To form them in a pedagogical aspect is just one of the schools' task. And they seem to have forget that schools are also responsible of creating good people.