The more things change... How my old Senior School has changed, and how it maybe hasn't.

My old Senior School, which was called The Thorpe Bay High School back in the day, was a dive. A crap hole. The only place I would rather NOT go, than back to those days, would probably be right in the middle of the crappiest crapstorm in Syria. There were knives, knifings, beatings, and general abuses of students, by students. It was every day, and unless you caused someone a stunning serious injury, they would do their best to kill you, just for cred with their "friends". I learned more about defending myself there, than I ever did about any of the subjects which were actually scheduled for study.

How I got out of that place without loosing a vital organ along the way, is a matter of a percentage of luck, and a percentage of determination, and, like most of my life in institutionalised education, is a period of my life that I am proud to have left behind, and feel no nostalgia for, what so ever. Things that happened there were often brushed under the carpet, prefects were used in place of the Police, and teachers turned a blind eye to prevent the school being closed down. If most of the crap that happened in that place, on a single day, had been public knowledge at the time, then it is likely that it would have spent more time shut, than open.

The day I left was one of the best in my life. I was, therefore, somewhat overjoyed to hear, in the last ten years, that there had been many changes at the school, not least of which was that the place had changed its name, and taken on a technology college wing as well.

Futures Community College, which is the new name of my old school, has a segment of its grounds given over to the Prospects campus. Prospects are a technology and industry training facility which has been operating in various locations in the local area, for 45 years.

The place has been renovated, and I had heard from parents of current students, that they have not heard of anything even REMOTELY like the things that happened when I was there, happening to, or around their kids. So many times had I heard this, that I began to believe that something had changed for the better, that the entire ethos of the place had been totally gutted, and rebuilt. I still hope that some of those things are the case, but I heard just today, of an incident which occured yesterday.

Here is a link to the Futures Community College:
www.futures.uk.com...

Here is a link to the Prospects website:
www.prospectscollege.com...

And here is a link to our local paper, which details what happened yesterday.
www.echo-news.co.uk...

Now then, I know that the school I knew, is no longer. The management have changed, and so have the staff, the pupils, and the government which dictates the requirements expected of every student. I also know that TECHNICALLY, this incident happened in the Prospects campus, which is in a building which is located near what used to be the rear entrance to the playing fields, rather than being part of the original footprint of the school I loathed so much back in the day. BUT... this story has me worried.

Yes, some deeply harrowing crap happened when I was a kid. Yes, people tried to kill me when I was at school, and not just me, but others too. But I learned how to block and disarm a blade weilding opponent, and I did so very quickly, because I did not want a knife in my gut. I saw packs of ravening bastards fall upon and beat hell out of kids, I was personally attacked with everything from knives to sporting gear, like bats, javelins, and so on. But we never had injuries this serious when I was at the school. Yesterday, however, at the college attached to my old school, some kid got a chisel in the head, and from the scuttle butt I hear from the street, it was over a pencil being thrown at the doer in jest.

The victim was airlifted to hospital, and remains there in a stable condition. Again, according to the word on the street, the victim was stabbed behind the ear, which means that no matter which way you slice it, the blade of the chisel passed within scant inches of the brain stem of the vicitm.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

If I even get a whiff, the slimmest glimmer of the impression, that things are taking a backslide, and that kids will be expected to put up with sharing class time with the sort of psychopath who would put a chisel in someone elses head, as anything other than the EXCEPTION, rather than the rule, then I will personally be cramming my foot so far up some official arses, that assorted viscera will start spewing out of the owners mouths!

I can just about square that horrible things were allowed to happen to me, and thousands of kids like me back in the day. God knows I have worked hard to square it with mysef. But I am damned if I am going to stand for it, if it turns out that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Kids who want to learn, should be protected from kids with serious anger management and impulse control issues. I will not allow yet another generation of kids to go through what I went through.

What are your thoughts on this matter ATS ? Is this one, serious incident, cause to be concerned about a wider problem at the facility?

reply to post by TrueBrit


more data required

such single incidents - do not tell you anything

to make any analysis - you need the full disciplinary records and other relevant stats for altleast the last decade

First off, the incident you bring to light is horrific! Secondly, the fact that you had to survive such violence at your Senior School is stunning. I would probably just be dead.

It would be heroic, and hopefully not Quixotic, to stand up against such violence if it is the current standard. Rallying the parents and the others, like yourself, who say enough is enough. Seriously - your experience should never ever have happened, and if it is the "norm," not the exception now, then the Grown Ups in their official capacities had best start dealing with it. They need to: Protect the kids who want to learn. Find new ways to deal with violence and the culture that creates it. Take responsibility for what happens and make it stop.

It is a worthy cause. I only dealt with psychological bullying and soul freezing isolation as a kid - not a knife in the gut.

peace,

AB

reply to post by ignorant_ape


You are absolutely right there ignorant_ape. My concern is that if things are anything like they used to be, then there will not BE a record, or if there is, it will have been amended to protect the school, its board, its management and employees.

So there are two major bodies of work to be completed therefore, before any analysis worth a damn can be said to have been done. First of all, the records you mention need going through with a fine tooth comb, and such records, understandably, are difficult to obtain, because of student security concerns in this modern age, where concern about child safety from adults is such a spectre in the background of all such matters.

Further to that, those records must be verified, incidents checked over with those who were participants in, and victims of, any questionable activity, to ensure that things were only as bad as stated in any reports which do exist. That would take time, and probably require much more clout than I have in terms of official capacity. What I would say, is that Ofsted have commended Prospects over the years, so unless there is systematic secrecy regarding such things, there have been no incidents which might add perspective to this issue, since the change, and the Prospects Campus being erected on the site.

I think I am going to have to put out feelers, both at street level, and into our local council as well. There is a member of our local council, with whom I have a passing familiarity, and I am sure he would be very concerned if he thought there were any possibility of anything more entrenched happening at the school. I will see what I can do about contacting him as soon as possible.

reply to post by TrueBrit

School has never been a safe place for kids. My daughter is NOT going to medical school at Johns Hopkins for the same reason. She's lucky she has alternate options.

If things got better between the time you went to school and the incident described, the community should consider it a lucky period. What goes on in most schools is simply a truer face value of the community as a whole.

reply to post by AboveBoard


The thing is, that psychological bullying, if allowed to escalate, can become more than that very quickly, and in a very bad way, and is in and of itself a very harmful thing to allow to happen, so there should be protection against the whole raft of it.

Everyone I knew at school got through it somehow. Some people coped better than others, and although I survived by resistance, my education suffered greatly, at a key time in my life, both educationally and developmentally. I had to re-educate myself when I went to college to resit my GCSEs (thats the exams we take aged 16 here in the UK, to determine our prospects for A Levels, which are taken between ages 16 and 18, and after that, university).

Having spent time constantly surrounded by violence and spite, I was taken by surprise by the friendly people I met at college. There was an incident (with a fellow who just last year became my brother in law. Go figure!) with a fellow there, who poked fun at me for being interested in a female member of my English class, and God help me, I almost broke his rib. I was used to the idea that people would seek to exploit percieved weakness, and that the only way to counter that was to make it plain that any perception of weakness, was very firmly in error. He forgave me, after the bruising went away, and I had explained myself and apologised profusely.

Firmest friends now of course, but that was the first time I realised how deeply I had been affected. When you are in it every day, you see it as normal, you see the world in black, white, and sometimes red. I guess you could say that leaving school bought the world into focus, and allowed me the freedom to learn how real society, how a normal society is supposed to operate. The world, finally, was in full colour.

I cannot stand the thought of yet another batch of kids leaving that school, with heads full of nothing but lines of sight, angles of approach, an ear to the footstep matching theirs from behind, and fat lips and cauliflower ears. I am not one of those who would say, that these things never did me any harm. They did, and it has taken a solid effort of more than ten years, to correct the worst of those affects, so it is something I feel very strongly about indeed.

reply to post by TrueBrit


You speak the Truth. In fact, I would wager that both psychological bullying and physical threat/violence cause a great deal of potential to be stifled - I was a classic underachiever and did a reasonable (but well below my potential) job in High School, then in University, I rocked. Many people I knew were highly intelligent and creative, but bullied and underachieving. Still the psychological damage was lasting, I must say, and while I don't want to get too much into my "stuff" I will say it is still with me, though I've gotten past enough of it to be a "normal" person.

A clue - my Lady of the Lake avatar.

Please let us know how this progresses and power to you!!!

- AB

reply to post by TrueBrit

The thing is, that psychological bullying, if allowed to escalate, can become more than that very quickly, and in a very bad way, and is in and of itself a very harmful

My eyes misted hearing your pain. As a part-time worker stay at home Dad I stood up to bullying of my children. The looks I got from the "white trash" mothers. How dare I interfere. Having been bullied at school I would not put up with my children suffering. My wife went to
"Sisters of No Mercy" school. There she learned how to lie, how to use a knife, how to corner (revenge) some one in a toilet away from witness's. It made her a survivor/stronger person
Funny how schoolin? is compulsory. Keep them medicated (Adhd/ritalin) and prepare them as future cannon fodder for faked wars.

Funny that

reply to post by TrueBrit


Most parents in the area don't know this, but in Texas the parent has enormous control. A group of parents can achieve anything that isn't unconstitutional. So my benefit is that when I show up and demand some attention, attention is given quickly.

Other things help my case, too....but the root of it is the power of the parent. Without that, children are shuffled through mindless bureaucracy just to generate some revenue.

Senior high school......mine was a tent, there was a Leather map of a flat world, Fred Flintstone was the quarter back and I lost my virginity to Betty Quartz-Rubble.