Punching kids with knives

I was reading of Manuel’s terrible terrible fate here: http://welldonefillet.blogspot.com/2008/11/stop-fingering-my-forks.html on his sterling blog. His experience with the younglings (ala Star Wars) reminded me of my second teaching post. A post in which I started looking for a new job three hours after arriving.

There were many many reasons why this school was abhorrent. The area was one; I must post about Thamesmead at some point and its subterranean methane factories. The children were another; subhuman wretches. The staff another still; nauseating city-boys who couldn’t cut it in the finance sector and fled here to abuse Inspiration instead. But what finally drove me out of the place was my schoolyard experience.

I strode across the yard, swerving to avoid any contact with the young morlocks, expertly rolling a smoke in my coat pocket (one-handed I might add), when I saw one girl from my class race toward another.

I arrived too late to stop the first punch being landed and the first girl being thrown to the ground in retaliation. The girl on the ground quickly reached into her shirt and produced a short knife and tried to get to her feet; swiping at her opponent as she did so… I really didn’t know what else to do… so I tackled this 14 year old and pinned her shoulders with my legs.

I desperately hoped that would be the end of it but was immediately robbed of that illusion as I saw several quick booted kicks landed on her head. The other girl taking advantage of my pinning her adversary..

For a few short minutes, until more staff arrived to my rescue, I found myself in the thin moral ice of sitting on one 14 year old; applying all the pressure I could to her knife-brandishing arm, while punching another girl repeatedly in the chest with my one free arm to try and halt her assault.

All around us dozens of their peers gathered; shouting obscenities, screaming incoherently and, in some cases, tearing open their shirts and bras (I shit you not). “Ah”, I thought, “The future is in good hands”.

… What was truly dismaying about the whole incident was the lack of reaction. No suspension. No talk of the knife. The girls were back in my class the next day pulling their wily highjinks (some of these I, again, should relate at another time).

So, for youths’ future, I present the City Academy programme!