How many jobs could you do the following and still be allowed to turn up the next day?
· Call your boss every name under the sun.
· Regularly turn up late.
· Walk out if you’ve been asked to do something difficult.
· Smoke in a non-smoking area.
· Not turn up with the tools required to do your job.
· Wear the incorrect uniform regarded as part of the job.
· Forget to do the work you were asked to do.
I could go on, but you get the idea. At school you can do all these things with the worst sanction being spend 5 days at home. Ok, so if you repeatedly do these things you may find yourself searching for a new educational establishment, but that assumes that reports have been filed with meticulously crossed t’s and dotted i’s.
Is it any wonder that a huge percentage of school leavers fail to hold down a job? They are used to being able to do pretty much what they want, when they want, with a detention being the punishment for overstepping the mark, a detention that they may well fail to turn to, so it escalates to… another detention.
As far as I’m aware, in most jobs it’s the “three strikes and you’re out” system:
1. Verbal warning
2. 1st written warning
3. 2nd written warning
4. Sack
In fact, if you are on your probationary period, you don’t even get that. It’s understood and therefore adhered to by those who want to hold down a regular job.
You may argue that children are not mature enough and therefore make mistakes, from which they learn, but unless some sanctions are put in place that are going to make a difference (detentions don’t cut the mustard really), then behaviour in schools will continue to deteriorate.
The problem is that the children are pretty legally savvy nowadays, although they are under the false impression that they have rights (they don’t really, their teachers are legal guardians whilst they are at school). An even bigger problem is that parents believe what their children say, and children will say some pretty serious things without realising what the repercussions could be. Children are far cleverer than most adults give them credit for and will know what buttons to push in order to dig themselves out of a hole.
I’ll give you an example:
3 boys played truant and missed an assessment. Their teacher wasn’t pleased and told them off in no uncertain terms. The boys faced quite severe sanction s for truancy so claimed that the teacher had intimidated them. He hadn’t, I saw the incident. All the focus went onto the teacher who was dragged over the coals, and the students got off scot-free.
What children don’t realise is that in the workplace they won’t be listened to, they will be expected to listen to and follow instructions, something that they may not have done for a relatively long time.
Being on time is habitual, so all those students who have said to me in the past “I won’t be late to work” are liars unfortunately, not that they know it at the time. Plus the fact that they all think that they are going to walk into a well paid job straight out of school, or become famous and therefore rich. I do like asking students who want to be famous exactly what they are going to be famous for. Most just look confused.
I had one 16 year old tell me that he could earn “£80 per week” if he wanted to. I pointed out that he may have to keep on his parents’ good side if he wanted to live anywhere other than under a bridge in a cardboard box on those wages, then did the sums on the board. He came around to my point of view, that £80 probably wasn’t going to get the baby bathed.
The education system is failing children as a result. The lack of consequences for actions is the biggest problem society has at the moment, in my view, and the more people who have little to do with the actual doing of the job (I’m thinking government and the media here) get involved, the worse it will get. These people who make the rules/laws, think that they are doing the right thing, and in some cases they are, but in the majority of cases, they are hindering the children’s discovery of the real world.
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