Another brick in the wall

The Malta Union of Teachers is rightly concerned about the problem of unruly students who disrupt classes, more so as there has been a particular case of a student who physically attacked one of his teachers.

As MUT president John Bencini wrote in In-Nazzjon last Thursday, this phenomenon is not restricted to Malta. According to him, results of a recent survey in the 25 EU member states indicate that the behaviour of schoolchildren in schools is deteriorating to the extent that today we have a European average of five unruly students disturbing lessons in each class, with the problem being so severe that lessons are completely disrupted in one out of every five classes.

However, the way the MUT has chosen to tackle this problem in Malta is completely alien to the impression its president gave in his article, wherein he referred to these statistics: it seems to me that the MUT is acting in a rather short-sighted and futile manner.

First of all, we have had the MUT itself giving publicity to incidents that have taken place in particular schools. Has it not occurred to the MUT that such publicity, aimed at garnering public sympathy to its members' cause, can in fact tempt pupils in other schools to emulate their peers? Is it possible that the MUT, a trade union representing professional teachers, does not realise that the possibility of such a reaction is not far-fetched, considering the psychological weaknesses of young teenagers?

Then we have had the misguided decision to order teachers to report for work one hour late last Thursday as a show of solidarity with a teacher involved in a particularly serious incident - in effect this was an order for industrial action as if the teachers have some 'industrial dispute' with their employers. In practical terms, MUT members were told to express their solidarity with teachers whose classes are disrupted by unruly behaviour of some schoolchildren, by ensuring the disruption of all classes last Thursday!

The Ministry of Education was left with no alternative but to consider last Thursday a normal school day. Otherwise students would not have availed themselves of their normal school transport and would have had to find their way to school somehow or other. This would not have made sense, as instead of a one-hour disruption, the whole school day would have been disrupted. Did not this occur to the MUT?

In turn the MUT chose to interpret the ministry's decision as a threat to the freedom of its members who have the right to participate - or refrain from participating - in the one-hour stoppage. Mr Bencini was even reported as saying: "God forbid anything happens to any student because of the chaos the government has created".

This reasoning incredibly ignores the fact that in ordering teachers to go to school one hour late, MUT was consciously risking chaos! Moreover, this way of thinking leads to the conclusion that the only way the Education Ministry could have avoided 'chaos' was to decide to ask schoolchildren to stay at home all day long! Which brings one to ask, even if only rhetorically: did the MUT declare a disruption of schooling for one hour but realistically sought to attain a disruption of one whole school day?

The problem of unruly behaviour in schools is very complex and there are no easy solutions to it. On one hand, the majority of pupils are well-behaved and have a right for their education without puerile disturbances. On the other hand there is a minority of misbehaved unruly students, whose behaviour may be the result of different causes that need serious professional investigation.

Moreover teachers cannot be considered as one homogeneous group, as the MUT does. There are those - the majority - who consider themselves professionals with a duty towards their students. But there is also a small minority of teachers who unable to hold their own in class and there others who do not care a hoot and act as if the education system were invented to simply provide them with a salary.

Now that the MUT has very childishly decided to 'sever ties' with the Education Ministry, will teachers be anywhere nearer to mitigating the problem of unruly and delinquent behaviour in class?

Disruptive schoolchildren in Church and independent private schools can be easily expelled from school, but the state has an obligation to provide education to all children, more so when everyone is clamouring for an inclusive society. Removing disruptive students from mainstream education and relegating them to some backwater institution may do them more harm than good - even if they are supported by more teachers and counsellors than normal.

Every child is an individual and the teacher-pupil relationship is a very important one. It is not uncommon to hear about people who detested particular subjects at school and could not make headway in them because their relation with the teacher of that particular subject was flawed. To make an obvious understatement, this predicament is not always the pupil's fault.

Treating each pupil as just a number, "another brick in the wall", as the famous Pink Floyd song goes, is the grossest disservice that one can give to schoolchildren. This is what the MUT should always keep in mind.

This was yet another circumstance where the MUT acted like a trade union defending its members rather than like a professional body safeguarding the ethics that its members should observe.

Last Thursday a number of MUT members - heads and assistant heads - had to undergo the distress of a divided loyalty: an internal struggle between their loyalty to their union and their loyalty to their professional ethics that could not condone their abandoning the pupils for an hour of 'chaos'.

The MUT should have known better.

micfal@maltanet.net