Over the past few months, and longer, there's been regular news items about Academies and Free Schools wanting to get ex members of the armed forces in as teachers, to help instill discipline, it even went as far as the principal of an academy in norwich saying she wanted to draft soldiers in on November 30th to cover striking teachers.
I had a few experiences when I was at school, which I think would lead anybody to say that this was an absolutely shit idea, and shouldn't evwn be given the time of day.
I went to a Selective State Grammar School during the mid 90s, in an area that if it's known for anything, is known for being a farmers paradise (as long as the pumps on the drains keep working) and for being the centre piece of one of the armed forces.
To put it in perspective, from my bedroom window at the time, all I could see when I looked out was field after field for twenty odd miles, with a major RAF base plonked right in the middle, even to this day, with my shit ears, I can still tell a Eurofighter from a Tornado G4, a Hurricane from a Spitfire and A Lancaster Bomber from a Lincoln Bomber just by the sound alone. At School every year, Prizegiving was held at the main hall (Whittle Hall) of the RAF Training College in Cranwell, which was just down the road.
The pupils at my School were a good mix of town and country, Council Estate and Manor House, but on the whole, very Conservative, and very well behaved. In the 7 years I attended, nobody was expelled, and, that i'm aware of, only two people were ever suspended (one of them was me...I won't say what I did, but it amused me incredibly highly at the time).
None of this meant though that we weren't typical teenagers, being annoying little shits, who would do what we could for a laugh, we just weren't violent and overtly disruptive.
In the tenth year, 2 new teachers were hired to teach Biology & Maths, Mr Dixon, who had been an NCO in the army, and Mr Caines, who had been a pilot in the RAF.
These were exactly the sort of people are being discussed at the moment, as teachers who will be able to instill discipline in todays troubled schools.
Did they manage to? Did they Bollocks!
They both taught my form, and i'm sorry to say, we managed to pick hold of every weakness, and twist it, and we were good pupils on the whole. There is a hell of a lot of difference between discipline in the armed forces, and discipline in Schools...Both teachers had left within two terms, after having major nervous breakdowns, purely and simply because we did everything we possibly could to wind them up.
I actually saw Mr Dixon a few years ago, he's now making a living as an IFA, and he told me that he'd gone into teaching, with the belief that it would be like the forces, where you obey your seniors without question, not quite realising that kids are not like that.
Most of the people who are bought into Schools from the Forces (if it ever happens) will be like this. They will not be able to instill discipline, they will have malicious allegations made against them, they will have every weakness twisted, especially if the pupils know that they are ex-forces.
Remember, I didn't go to a "Sink" School, I didn't go to a School with a Bad Reputation, I didn't go to a School with high levels of violence. My School was the exact opposite of this. If we could do this, what on earth are the kids in the inner city schools going to be able to do!
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