The Threat of “Claude” in School Discipline

‘Claude’ was an inanimate object that did nothing all day but lie in a drawer doing absolutely nothing; yet he maintained discipline in the classroom just by being there.

Mr. McLaughlin, the maths teacher, was “Claude’s” owner. At the beginning of term he would always introduce him to the class. He was a tatty and battered old gym pump with a well worn sole, although Mr. McLaughlin never quite explained how “Claude” s sole became so well worn. Mind you, the inference was clear. misbehave and your bottom would find out.

This was the sixties though, long before “children’s rights,” “human rights,” and “political correctness” moved into schools and booted discipline and learning out of the door. And how does the teacher maintain discipline today when some of his/her pupils are “street wise” and know the law? These pupils deliberately disrupt classes and provoke the teacher hoping that the teacher will do something inappropriate and so be sacked. Have the pupils learnt anything? Of course not but they have scored a victory against the school by getting the teacher dismissed. And that is more important to the unruly pupil than allowing his/her classmates to learn anything.

In one Lancashire primary school that I know well, an entire class rebelled against their teacher. The worst behaved boy in the class refused to enter the classroom and just stood there deliberately infuriating the teacher whilst his classmates stood around and watched. The annoyed teacher tried to push the boy into the room so that the lesson could begin’; the children smiled to themselves, this was what they had been waiting for. The teacher had touched the boy in front of witnesses, she was sacked on the spot whilst the children celebrated their victory.

Secondary education is worse where pupils, quite often as tall as the teachers, are “in the teachers face” trying desperately to provoke a reaction which would lead to the teachers dismissal. How does this situation benefit the children’s education?

I am only talking about the few unruly and disruptive pupils that are leading other impressionable youngsters down the same path because these other youngsters can clearly see that the unruly pupils run the schools and not the teachers.

Would Mr. McLaughlin and “Claude” have tolerated this situation? of course not. With the authority to use “Claude” if necessary, a fact the pupils were all to well aware of, Mr. McLaughlin would introduce “Claude” to the class and then return him to his drawer never to be seen again for the remainder of the term. You see, it was the threat of “Claude” that maintained discipline in his maths class, not his use. In five years of being taught maths by Mr. McLaughlin I never saw him use “Claude” once, and yet his class was very well behaved.