Violence in Schools: Is Your Child's Learning Compromised?

On September 7, 2019, education writer Caroline Alphonso of the Globe and Mail newspaper published a damning report on the state of order and discipline in Canadian schools.  She relates the story of Jen Hare, a special education teacher in Barrie, Ontario, who was brutally assaulted by a student who delivered forty-five blows, leaving the teacher with traumatic brain injury and unable to work. 

"Biting. Kicking. Spitting. Scratching. Punching. Blows to the head. Aggressive, often violent, reported incidents against educators are on the rise,…"  As teachers report more violent incidents in schools, boards struggle to manage children with complex needs, Caroline Alphonso, Globe and Mail, Sept 7, 2019

Across Canada and the United States violence within the walls of our classrooms is rising dramatically. In over 40 years of working within the public school system, we have never witnessed the level of disruption and appeasement now occurring due to a far left agenda. It is time we citizens find out what is happening to our education system and why.

Educators in the Toronto District School Board logged 3831 reports of workplace violence in the 2018-19 schoolyear. This was up 102% over three years. In Edmonton Public Schools similar violence in classrooms doubled between 2015 and 2017. Such increases in violence are being reported by education authorities across the continent. 

The same article reports that in Nova Scotia, Paul Wozney of the Nova Scotia Teachers' Union related that one provincial classroom was evacuated 12 times in a single month because of a disruptive child. 

How is it that such a situation has been permitted to develop? A single generation ago Canadian schools were known for being orderly with generally well-mannered students going to school to be educated in academic subjects, physical fitness, and learning skills in industrial arts and home economics. Schools were still places of learning. Administrators maintained a civil and respectful environment and teachers provided learning that would enable the youth to take their place in supporting the economic and cultural furtherance of the nation. There were some instances of misbehavior, but these were quickly dealt with and students and teachers did not fear for their safety. Children in those schools reflected the spectrum of social order. There were rich and poor, local born and immigrant. They learned and played together.

Today however schools are no longer as I have just described. They have become laboratories for social experiments, where students are, in some cases, nothing more than lab rats for unproven educational theories like child-centered education and discovery learning or constructionism. 

It is interesting that not a single one of these initiatives has been positively correlated to improved student learning through quantified measures. In fact, virtually all of the manifestations of "progressive" education have shown negative impacts when measured on standardized assessments. 

Another change has been occurring simultaneously, pushed, again not by teachers, but by far left activists. It is a key contributor to the crisis now stalking our schools. For many decades educators realized the need to serve children who, for one reason or another, were not able to manage the mainstream program of study.  A half century ago it was common to have some children in a classroom on a type of modified or differentiated curriculum. As long as the range of needs in a class was not too great, and the behavioral atmosphere was positive, learning occurred successfully. 

More severe needs were accommodated by special programs set up within school communities to deal with students who required much more intensive support and supervision. Those with very pronounced learning challenges were dealt with in special needs environments, but still associated with other students in the social activities of the school. 

Today however the radical left, which seems to have usurped control of many education systems, is corrupting the term "inclusion", interpreting it far beyond its intended dimension. 

No teacher, regardless of training, can successfully educate a classroom of students if the range of needs is too great, or if there is present a student who is violent or overly disruptive. The Nova Scotian example of evacuating a classroom 12 times in a month shows that jurisdictional or provincial leaders, in the name of inclusion, have chosen to deny the majority of students their right to the be educated, all to accommodate one disruptive student. This is unconscionable, but is occurring all too often and is one of the key reasons why our schools are failing our nation. 

Parents have every right to expect the best education possible for their children, and to be in a safe environment where students comply with rules and standards of behavior. All students may deserve an education, but all students also deserve not to have their education disrupted or endangered by deviant students, regardless of the cause of that deviance. In many cases the teacher is given a set of students, the makeup of which is such that they cannot reasonably carry out their responsibility. 

The rapidly rising violence in our schools, as reported by the Globe and Mail, is a wakeup call. Society has allowed radicals to make accommodation demands of school systems that are fully irrational, wasteful of money and instructional talent, and worst of all denying our children the opportunity to maximize their potential. To allow this is unreasonable and unprofessional of senior administration.

It’s time to return to the social and educational values that laid the foundation for the wealth and achievements of our western nations.