Hurrah – UK’s champion of physical force to deal with unruly school brats should guide us, too

Our Government should take note of what’s happening in Britain, when it comes to unruly brats being treated much too leniently in our schools.

The Education Secretary there, Michael Gove, has declared war on ill discipline in the classroom.

He aims to loosen rules on the use of physical force by teachers and increase penalties for parents who allow their children to play truant. Hurrah.

This sounds like the green light to bringing back the strap and the cane, although Alf would go further and bring back the stocks and the dunce’s cap.

Most fundamentally, Gove is vowing to show disruptive pupils who wreck the schooling of millions of other kids who’s boss.

In a nutshell, teachers will be put firmly back in charge of the classroom.

The Daily Mail says the tough measures are part of a crusade to ‘restore adult authority’ over what Gove described as an ‘educational underclass’.

He said respect for adults had been ‘subverted by a culture of dutiless rights’ which encouraged the young to ignore civilised boundaries.

Yep. Same thing has happened here.

This Gove fellow reckons last month’s riots had highlighted the growing gulf between what he called a ‘hard-working majority’ and a ‘vicious, lawless, immoral minority’.

He insisted it was clear that Britain’s social malaise had its roots in the breakdown of discipline in the home and the classroom.

Measures to hand back powers to teaching staff and improve discipline include:

New rights for teachers to restrain unruly pupils without having to record such incidents,

Increased financial penalties for parents who fail to ensure their children attend school,

More male teachers to provide role models for children with absent fathers,

Anonymity for staff accused of mistreating children to protect against malicious allegations,

The power to search children for any item, such as mobile phones or iPods,

Heads allowed to expel pupils without fear of being overruled,

An end to the requirement for teachers to give parents 24 hours’ notice of a detention.

Wonder if we can ship Gove out here to show us how things should be done.