Living Wittily

Attempted murder in a classroom – time to pray for our schools

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15333105 Today I am making time to pray for Jack Waterhouse a fourteen year old pupil. And for Peter Harvey the teacher now charged with his attempted murder. And for their respective families. Whatever explanation emerges from police enquiries about what happened in that classroom, the reality of a boy seriously head injured and a teacher remanded in cusody for attempted murder, gives cause for very serious thought.

Fourteen year old pupils are legally children; teachers have a duty of care; inside a school classroom is in theory, and ought to be in practice one of the safest social environments for children and young adults. Violence by a teacher against a pupil should be unthinkable, an option so guarded round by management processes, professional ethics and prudence, human and institutional support resources, internalised and restraining social values, and high ideals of educational vocation, that long before violence erupts there are enough fail-safe and prevention systems in place. But obviously not.

Whatever the provocation (and we are yet to hear what that might have been), but whatever the provocation, such a violent assault on a pupil and at least two others is unacceptable, and absolutely requires the intervention of the law. What charges Peter Harvey eventually faces, any sentence he receives if found guilty, and how far his act of violence will affect Jack Waterhouse, his family and the class that witnessed what happended – who knows? But it is such questions that must now inform our prayers, for healing of people indelibly wounded by this tragic happening, for justice to be seen as more than due process of law but to include the making right of whatever it was that went so badly wrong, for pupils and parents, teacher and school staff, and local community to learn from what happened, and then to allow those lessons to be the basis of real changes more widely and deeply in school culture and political goals.

Parents say the teacher snapped. Previous pupils turned up at court with letters of support and character endorsements. Earlier reports suggested the teacher had previous underlying health issues. Maybe so. Such fragments need context in a more thoroughly investigated and more carefully told story. What happened was shocking, because it shouldn't have happened – ever. But such acts have a context, each person caught up in it lives in a community, that living community has its peculiar history, values, relationships and tensions – and so the task of interpreting what happened will require more than forensic expertise.

Vocation  Like fragments of text, the evidence gathered requires a disciplined hermeneutic of human behaiviour, intellectual integrity and moral imagination, and a willingness to ask the kind of questions that interrogate not only victim, perpetrator and witnesses. There are questions for the school, for the education authority, for Government – about support for staff, about resources and budgets, about teacher's experience of fear and intimidation, about pressures on schools, staff and pupils to perform to externally imposed standards, about a culture of failure and success too closely tied to statistics, performance indicators and funding issues.

Because what happened in that pressure-cooker classroom is not likely to be a one-off meteorite in the back garden,but a particularly tragic example of human beings placed under intolerable strain. Eventually the courts will decide who is "to blame". Perhaps only a more public enquiry can answer the deeper question, "Why did this happen?"

And in the meantime, two people's lives are broken, others are traumatised, a community is angry, bewildered and demanding answers. So today would be a good day for Churches to pray for our schools, their pupils and teachers, and for that great human achievement that modern educational approaches don't use much in their documentation – wisdom.

Comments

4 responses to “Attempted murder in a classroom – time to pray for our schools”

  1. chris avatar
    chris

    Shocking as is this story of violence against a pupil, I realise that I am not shocked. I set this event against one I recall very clearly, when I was outside the room of a colleague at the very moment when he was felled by a blow from a 15 year old boy’s fist. He went home that day and never returned to classroom teaching. The sound of the blow, and the subsequent sound of this man’s body landing on the (carpeted concrete) floor shocked me more than I would have anticipated.
    Schools always have some teachers for whom the job is a nightmare. They are trapped into a situation of constant humiliation and threat. They know they are teaching nothing, for each period is a hell of noise and ineffectual remonstrance. They are humiliated not only by the pupils, but by any colleague who enters – for it is often the case that a mere look at a class by another teacher will produce a silence that the struggling one will never achieve. His reputation spreads, so that no class comes to him expecting other than a riot, and if he lives in a small town – as I do – he will have catcalls and abuse hurled at him in the street. He is highly educated in his subject, but never gets to share what he knows. And the worst thing is that he knows these pupils are not evil or even particularly boisterous elsewhere – it is all because of him.
    I have worked beside this hypothetical teacher for 30 years. I was the one who could bring order merely by entering the room. I even tried to help in other ways, by example and by advice. But there was nothing I could do that had any effect. What surprised me in all these years was that there was not violence as a result of the strain on these people. And it was always a relief when the odd one managed to escape, by early retirement or on grounds of ill-health.
    This doesn’t justify violence – I am a parent as well as a teacher, and would have reacted very strongly to any violence against my children or any others – but it might go some way to make it less mysterious. Your prayers, the prayers of us all, are very necessary.

    Reply
  2. chris avatar
    chris

    Shocking as is this story of violence against a pupil, I realise that I am not shocked. I set this event against one I recall very clearly, when I was outside the room of a colleague at the very moment when he was felled by a blow from a 15 year old boy’s fist. He went home that day and never returned to classroom teaching. The sound of the blow, and the subsequent sound of this man’s body landing on the (carpeted concrete) floor shocked me more than I would have anticipated.
    Schools always have some teachers for whom the job is a nightmare. They are trapped into a situation of constant humiliation and threat. They know they are teaching nothing, for each period is a hell of noise and ineffectual remonstrance. They are humiliated not only by the pupils, but by any colleague who enters – for it is often the case that a mere look at a class by another teacher will produce a silence that the struggling one will never achieve. His reputation spreads, so that no class comes to him expecting other than a riot, and if he lives in a small town – as I do – he will have catcalls and abuse hurled at him in the street. He is highly educated in his subject, but never gets to share what he knows. And the worst thing is that he knows these pupils are not evil or even particularly boisterous elsewhere – it is all because of him.
    I have worked beside this hypothetical teacher for 30 years. I was the one who could bring order merely by entering the room. I even tried to help in other ways, by example and by advice. But there was nothing I could do that had any effect. What surprised me in all these years was that there was not violence as a result of the strain on these people. And it was always a relief when the odd one managed to escape, by early retirement or on grounds of ill-health.
    This doesn’t justify violence – I am a parent as well as a teacher, and would have reacted very strongly to any violence against my children or any others – but it might go some way to make it less mysterious. Your prayers, the prayers of us all, are very necessary.

    Reply
  3. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    Thanks for this Chris. I’ve no doubt your expereince, and reflections based on a long professional career, will be shared by many teachers. All your points are well made and well taken. The despair and intimidation suffered by many teachers remains a scandal – in the biblical sense of stumbling block and in ourcontemporary sense of outrageous injustice. Over years of school chaplaincy many conversations took place with staff, some of whom struggled with great courage, clinging to their integrity, but feeling unsupported. And the feeling was often justified. That’s why I made no judgements in the post in terms of blame. The human tragedy at the centre of the incident shouldn’t have happened – and if blame is to be attributed perhaps it can be placed in the places where policies and politics overlook the human cost of teaching in the divisive social environment those same policies and politicians help create.

    Reply
  4. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    Thanks for this Chris. I’ve no doubt your expereince, and reflections based on a long professional career, will be shared by many teachers. All your points are well made and well taken. The despair and intimidation suffered by many teachers remains a scandal – in the biblical sense of stumbling block and in ourcontemporary sense of outrageous injustice. Over years of school chaplaincy many conversations took place with staff, some of whom struggled with great courage, clinging to their integrity, but feeling unsupported. And the feeling was often justified. That’s why I made no judgements in the post in terms of blame. The human tragedy at the centre of the incident shouldn’t have happened – and if blame is to be attributed perhaps it can be placed in the places where policies and politics overlook the human cost of teaching in the divisive social environment those same policies and politicians help create.

    Reply

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