Discipline begins at home

Unruly children wreaking havoc at school are worrying parents and teachers. GEOFF CUMMING goes into the classroom to find out what is happening and who should be providing the answers.

Year 5 children at Freemans Bay School are on the mat, enthusiastically answering questions about rodents and their use in landmine clearance. Every time teacher Billie Sturgiss asks, half a dozen hands shoot up; not always the same hands. These 9 and 10-year-olds are not afraid to speak clearly and confidently.

Their artwork's expressive, too - examples are plastered neatly all over the classroom walls or strung from the ceiling. A noisy budgie and tropical fish tank complete the menagerie.

It's just after morning break in "Billie's class" and the 24 children are doing what's called PMI - finding Plus, Minus and Interesting things to say about the topic taken from a newspaper article. It depends on your point of view, of course, but most think it's a plus if the odd rodent gets blown up.

There's not much sign of an explosion in this typically multicultural Auckland classroom.

Primary school classrooms, we are told, are a seething battlefield of violence and abuse.

The Principals' Federation set the ball rolling a month ago, complaining that unruly children are jeopardising the education of their better-behaved classmates. Anti-social behaviour was increasing, particularly among younger children, and teachers were too busy playing social worker to teach. Behavioural problems were a concern for every primary principal in Auckland, said their branch president, Anne Malcolm.

This week came the parents' rejoinder - a Maxim Institute survey saying a lack of classroom discipline was parents' biggest worry. The small group of parents surveyed were less worried about literacy and numeracy than their children's chances of leaving school with moral and ethical values.

"When more than 75 per cent of a cross-section of parents say they are concerned about discipline in schools then principals, teachers and the Ministry of Education need to listen," said institute director Paul Henderson.

To which shellshocked teachers and principals respond: what about parents?

We're producing a group of "life-course persistent anti-social children who go on to become delinquent youth and then adult offenders," says a review of research on behavioural problems by Dr John Church, of Canterbury University's school of education. Anti-social children are more prone to criminal offending, unemployment, mental health problems, alcoholism, early pregnancy and domestic violence.

The older the child grows, the less likely that intervention will help. Pre-school intervention works best - after a child turns 8, the chances of reversing bad behaviour dip below 50 per cent.

But who should be responsible for children's behaviour: parents, schools or taxpayers in general?

Discipline should start in the home, not the classroom, says Noelene Lemon, a teacher at Kawakawa School in Northland.

"Kids know you can't do anything with them in the classroom. Try to [discipline them] and they'll say 'You can't touch me.'

"I think it's getting worse rather than better. Talk to older teachers and in years gone past if they asked a child to do something they would do it without question. Ask them now and they say 'but you can't make me' because they are not expected to do it at home."

Parents are failing to instil morals and ethics in their offspring, says Lemon. "Kids come to school with no idea how to behave. Nobody at home cares so they can't understand why teachers get upset. 'Why do I have to sit here and be quiet?'

"Their parents aren't giving them the discipline they need at home."

Lemon says diet, insufficient sleep and busier lifestyles all play a part. "Nobody has time to do anything. It's hard to live on one wage but if you choose to have children then you have them for the next 18 years."

Kawakawa is a decile 1 school but low socio-economic status is not to blame for poor discipline, she says. Wealthier parents hand out PlayStations and pxt mobiles to cover for their lack of involvement. "Everything they want they get, except discipline and standards at home."

There's no excuse for parents not spending time with their children, says Warwick Pudney, senior lecturer in psychotherapy at the Auckland University of Technology. Pudney has just published a paper about increased anger and violence among children at pre-school centres and kindergartens. He says anger and self-centred behaviour among the under-5s is associated with "insecure attachment" - children are not getting enough attention from parents.

Such children are more likely to be abusive to others because of feelings of powerlessness and a lack of communication skills.

"The child may well be able to tell the teacher they are angry because someone disrespected their painting but will be unable to tell the teacher that they feel angry because 'my parents don't stay close and love and value me enough'."

Left unchecked, their behaviour extends into adulthood. "The lack of sufficient parental attention and care of children by parents is negligent and therefore abusive," says Pudney.

Back in Billie's class, the children are continuing to find positives in the use of rodents to sniff out landmines.

Then Gilbert starts sobbing.

Sturgiss asks what's the matter.

A classmate has had a dig after the teacher took something off him. At Freemans Bay, put-downs are a no no. The children have ruled them out.

The incident with Gilbert is rare but earlier in the year he was a bit of a disruptive influence. So the children called a meeting, discussed his behaviour with him and came up with ways to support him in class. Gilbert's transformation has been dramatic.

"We live in a democracy in my class," says Sturgiss. "The children make up classroom treaties [albeit with firm boundaries] so they own them. If they break them they break their own rules. Children need to own their school."

In another classroom, a class of 7 and 8-year-olds is not quite so focused. There's chatter during comprehension and the odd put-down between classmates whose teacher is away. One boy playfully whacks another with the plastic letter card he's been given to copy; another slams his book on the desk and looks for a reaction.

Reliever Emma Castle is unfazed. A bit of clapping in-time and the old 'hands-on-heads' soon calms them down. Castle has taught in Christchurch, Bangladesh and London and says Auckland children tend to move schools more often. Some schools cope better than others with behaviour issues, she says. "It all starts from the top. When you come into schools as a reliever you can tell from the atmosphere straight away."

What about at Greenmeadows Intermediate in Manurewa, whose 30 per cent stand-down rate and 5 per cent suspension rate make for a dubious achievement record?

"We offer counselling, have teacher aides and a range of other opportunities for those misbehaving but sometimes a short sharp shock message to parents is more effective," principal Warwick May told the Herald this week. Research suggests that most children with behavioural difficulties are boys and that schools in lower socio-economic areas will have at least three times as many violent, disruptive children as high decile schools. But better-off schools have behavioural problems, too, and the root cause of the child's anger is broadly the same: poor relationships at home. Children raised in environments in which polite and friendly responses pay off more often than coercive and anti-social responses learn to interact with others in polite and friendly ways, experts say.

Principals Federation president Kelvin Squire says children rich and poor are not getting enough parental input. They "interface" with television, Gameboys and PCs but fail to gain emotional intelligence - which, he says, includes self-assurance, empathy, knowing the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, and being able to wait and follow instructions. "If you don't invest quality time in your child in the early years it's going to come back and bite you on the backside later on."

To expect schools to be the cure-all for these social ills is asking too much, says Squire.

But with the right ingredients - involving principal, staff, board of trustees, parents and pupils - schools can make a difference. When Freemans Bay principal Malcolm Milner arrived four years ago, some children at the decile 7 school were defiant and bullying.

"I came from a decile 1 school where kids didn't do that and I didn't want to work in a school where people didn't respect each other," he says.

He introduced some firm boundaries, teachers joined in and the school culture improved. His strategies included making children caught swearing ring their parents and swear over the phone and dropping troublemakers at their parents' workplaces.

"A few parents left because they were not happy that I was ringing up and saying, 'Your child is not behaving'. But most parents support us."

Freemans Bay and other schools have extended safety programmes beyond stranger-danger to include being safe from put-downs and bullying in class. Papatoetoe Intermediate's anti-violence programmes won plaudits last year from the Ministry of Education. Principal Alan Jermaine says resources include a counsellor, learning and behaviour resource teacher, pastoral team, tracking systems, help from outside agencies and "loads of meetings".

"In the past decade, schools have spent an awful lot of their own money on this because we have to. We are doing it for a small but significant percentage."

Jermaine says most children with problems are deeply unhappy and it takes time, skills and patience to change that behaviour. Teachers often need specialised training. "I've never found a kid who is violent who hasn't himself had a pretty awful sort of life. He's usually become conditioned to violence by the people bringing him up or the people he's associating with."

Which makes teachers wary about raising behavioural problems with parents - suggesting Johnny's father lay off the drugs can mean a bashing for the child or threats being made against the teacher, he says. "There are parents who take their child's side whether they are right or wrong and try to convince everybody that the school is at fault.

"I've had a parent wave a finger at one of my staff members and say, 'You have to be a role model'. But that doesn't mean that I have to be.

"It just blows you away."

Jermaine says while behavioural problems are spreading, it's not as universal as lobbyists imply. In the main, he says, teachers are still able to do their jobs.

"But one disruptive child can dislocate a lesson or a series of lessons. Depending on the nature of the child and the issues and the expertise of the teacher many of these behaviours can be effectively managed.

"The kids I'm talking about are not necessarily going to become murderers. But they do have an influence out of all proportion to what's acceptable."

Gaps in the system are contributing to the surge in out of control children, he says.

"You get to the stage where you have done everything you can in school and the community agencies have used every trick in their book."

Auckland's two residential schools for problem children, Waimokoia and Westbridge, are heavily oversubscribed.

The closure a decade ago of assessment units, which provided temporary outplacement for difficult children, have left stand-downs or suspension as schools' only options when intervention fails. Something similar should be reintroduced.

"We need an alternative to kids being chucked out of school and wandering the streets."