Why do children get so mad?

Why do children get so mad?

So mad that they lash out and hit their teachers? NZ Educational Institute (NZEI) vice president and primary school principal Frances Nelson discusses the issue.

A recent survey by NZEI found that one in seven teachers and a similar number of school support staff reported being physically assaulted last year by primary school students.

The survey Physical and Verbal Aggression Towards Primary and Intermediate Staff: Report of National Survey of NZEI Members found that verbal assaults are even more frequent with nearly 60 per cent of teachers and more than a quarter of school support staff reporting aggressive verbal confrontations with children in the past year.

Assaults were reported in nearly one-third of the random sample of 270 principals, teachers and school support staff. Nine out of 10 of the physical assaults were by boys, and a large number were from year one to three children – children just five to seven-years-old.

These results reinforce teachers’ perceptions that there has been a significant rise in disruptive behaviour at schools – and it was the increasing concern from members that led to NZEI carrying out the survey.

Those of us working in schools, who may be subject to this aggression, are not concerned simply for ourselves or the child involved – who obviously needs to learn new methods of dealing with anger and frustration – but we are also concerned about the disruption violent children cause to the learning of all the children in the class: aggressive behaviour undermines teachers trying to teach and children trying to learn.

In my view, as a principal of 20 years experience, the aggression we see in school is linked to violence across society generally. It appears that violence generally is on the rise within society.

Inevitably, as schools are, in a sense, a reflection of the wider community, violence exists in schools. As people working in education we can’t magically eliminate that violence from our students’ lives and behaviour.

However, there is a growing pool of information, research and resourcing to address the issues surrounding disruptive student behaviour and there are ways of working with children that have proved successful.

Firstly, children absorb the influences around them. Without having an understanding of their family, social, economic and cultural context, identifying when they are likely to reach “boiling point” and diverting them into more positive behaviour is impossible. So knowing our students and, where possible, creating close links between home and school is essential.

Secondly, a priority must be to ensure all children have access to quality early childhood education (ECE), be it kindergarten, playcentre, kohanga reo or other services.

All local and international research shows that children who have had quality ECE do better at school. Part of this is because early childhood services give children experience of socialisat1nܩ