Jamie's school dinners

[Frosty Jack]

It might well encourage some teachers yes. In fact, I've got no shortage of not dissimilar stories from my own schooldays & later from when I worked in schools - As well as being remaindered as one myself, difficult/troubled kids became my stock-in-trade for several years.

One of the prime reasons I quit, on very bad terms with my last employers was because of their unwillingness to face-up to & complete inability to deal adequately with this sort of "teacher." Even in situations where serious professional misconduct was proven. So yes, until authorities sort-out their problems with staff discipline & professional-standards/competence monitoring to ensure this can never happen again, I can barely recognise that they have any role in modern education.

I must be missing your point here. We can't switch to healthy eating, because some teachers, who shouldn't be teachers in the first place, might use it as an excuse to mistreat the children?

Maybe changing to decimal was a mistake then, because there must have been a few children unfairly caned for not understanding that one...

I'm well aware of the problem of troubled kids and troubled teachers, but I don't see how we can wait until we've sorted all that out (never) before we can improve any aspect of the curriculum.

[pogofish]

Except that the health issue goes a whole lot deeper than anything that can reasonably be done in schools. IMO, focusing on schools is just going for the softest target.

There were! Except they got the belt in Scotland

We may well be stuck with the problem of dealing with troubled kids but there is a whole lot more that can be done to see that educators don't compound those problems further - it is not like thay lack the brains/choices to find another way . No child deserves to be on the end of that sort of misconduct. Also, IME health/dietary/dinner-hall issues are amongst the main flashpoints for unprofessional behaviour, which may suggest that schools are already being tasked with a duty they are quite unprepared for/unsupported in?

I don't see how they can continue to justify any educational role unless authorities deal fully with outstanding issues around the abuse of/overstepping responsabilities. Until then, they can't be trusted one bit.