Bad boys need help, not bans (attend, POV, catholic, Articles)

[tcprowling]

Bad boys need help, not bans

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Bridie Smith
August 29, 2007


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SUSPENSION is not the answer when it comes to disciplining boys with behavioural problems, a behaviourist says.
Julia Tilling said that rather than sending troublesome students away to external suspension programs, schools could achieve better results if they set up programs allowing students to remain in a supportive environment with mentors.
This would enable schools to work with students to resolve conflict.
"Often when students return to the school (after suspension), the school hasn't changed, the curriculum hasn't been adapted and so they're basically being thrown back into the same environment that they were struggling with originally," said Dr Tilling, a consultant for the Brisbane Catholic Education Office.
Dr Tilling spent a year studying 90 boys aged 13 to 15 from low socioeconomic backgrounds who attended Brisbane state schools and had been suspended.
She found it was more effective to include boys than to exclude them by suspending them from school, and she said the same would apply to female students with behavioural problems.
"The problem is teachers often are burnt-out or want a break from these kids, so they suspend them, but this means they are not resolving the problem," she said.
She said the tag of being a troublesome student was hard to shake.
"Even if students do make progress in these programs, when they return to the school environment it only takes one knock and they are back to where they were at the beginning.
"It doesn't take much to push them back to that really low self-worth, which can become a self-fulfilling prophesy."
Dr Tilling was critical of some external suspension programs such as boot camps or outdoor education programs, which involved highly charged activities in which students with behavioural problems were encouraged to express aggression.
She said most of the boys who took part in the study were from dysfunctional backgrounds and had witnessed a lot of violence and gang behaviour, which made it even more important to have positive role models.

[tcprowling]

I agree with her to a point! I have always believed that a lot of the behaviourial problems with teenage boys is Hormonal based and i feel that this belief is backed up in Tribal communities by their " Right of passage" ceremonies.
Ok, Females go through hormonal upheaval as well, but a female also exhabits very visible physical signs of her " right of passage to womanhood i.e developement of breasts and her monthly cycle. Male do not have such visible signs, I think that a lot of thier behaviour is their attempt to Show they have reach " Manhood".
The tribal communities recognised this, and Boys as young as 12 or younger were put through a rigious training program leading up to their " initiation" ceremony, where the whole tribe witnessed the males " Right of passage". In Modern cultures this does not happen on such a visible scale.
What further strengthens my POV is that I saw "wild" guys get conscripted into the army at around 18, after just 12 months the change was dramatic to say the least.
So Yeah! boys do need an outlet for their hormonal energy but they also need a form of recognition.
There you go " pick the bones " out of those comments