Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

Since 1983, when Labor and the teachers’ unions took over the
Department of Education. Fashionable twaddle surrounded the Glasser
discipline model. The time-out room was supposed to free teachers from
inevitable student-teacher confrontation.
A number of schools adopted this consensus discipline model, without
much success.
In September, 1983, the last director-general of education Dr Norman
Curry expressed the department’s new discipline policy, two years before
Minister for Education, Ian Cathie, removed him from office: ‘The main
thrust of this new approach is to encourage each school to develop its own
policy on student discipline within the guidelines provided and thus to
involve parents, teachers and students in a co-operative endeavour which
reflects the views of the school and will thus be more accepted by all. The
present procedures relating to student discipline were recommended to
the minister by a group which consisted of parents, teachers, principals
and specialist departmental staff. In no way are they anti-teacher in tone or
in practice. They recognise that through co-operation between schools and
parents more will be achieved for all students.’
Demoted
A year later, when he disciplined a teacher who had been convicted on a
drug charge, Dr Curry made a remarkably disturbing decision. He merely
‘slapped the teacher’s wrist and admonished him for being ‘a naughty
boy’. The VSTA can confirm this incident.
In contrast, a teacher who ‘thumped’ a class-room thug was demoted and
transferred to the correspondence school.
VSTA-protected teachers in trouble would invariably swell the 6000-odd
pool of teachers out on stress-leave.
In 1988 a remarkable thing happened when then editor of Education Age
Geoff Maslen ran a critical series on classroom discipline. A respondent,
Frank Dando, principal of Ashwood Boys School, summed up the
problem thus:
‘… I have this year been teaching without a break for 40 years and I have a
master’s degree in remedial education so I have some practical and
theoretical understanding of the teacher’s job in the classroom and
considerable sympathy for my colleagues in the state system. It is not
possible to do any meaningful work in the classroom unless you are in
control; whether you are apparently in control is irrelevant - I am quite
capable of convincing my class that I am - running a democracy!
To control a classroom you need as a last resort to produce a short, sharp
and non-negotiable punishment otherwise the class gets out of control and
you go out on stress. I am quite ready to be told that there is no place for
punishment in an ideal classroom but I would prefer to be told by a
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