Fighting, cheating, swearing . . . the boys are just like footballers
When I was a lad, back in the blackand- white era when a package holiday in Yugoslavia was the height of posh, errant schoolboys knew what to expect from teachers: a ruler across the knuckles or a wooden board- duster flung like a brick to the forehead.
Apart from the tinnitus and a scar above the hair line, it never did me any harm.
But corporal punishment didn’t make us well-behaved; it just made us good at ducking board-dusters. What kept discipline in British classrooms was respect for the rules and the people who set them.
That respect is absent among the pupils at Mr Drew’s School For Boys (C4). These children, not yet teenagers, may be among the worst behaved in the country — they collect expulsions like footballers in Ferraris collect speeding fines.
The boys have various excuses: this one’s the child of divorced parents, those two have ADhD. But there’s one common factor — they all view their teachers, parents and each other with contempt.
And, at the same time, they demand not merely respect but reverence for their every whim.
The extraordinary thing is that the world scrambles to do their bidding. Small wonder these nine-year-olds think they can treat everyone like dirt, if they can kick and swear at their teachers and get no worse punishment than a reprimand for ‘inappropriate behaviour’.
One father looked on with amusement as his son called him names that would make a navvie’s toes curl. A mother took her boy’s side when he threw a tantrum at a school sports day: he was on the losing side and refused to shake his teacher’s hand. ‘That’s his choice, surely,’ she sniffed.
Another mother took a perverse pride in her child’s violence. ‘he does not usually start a fight but he will finish it,’ she boasted.
The calm ingenuity of Mr Drew and his staff was admirable. They had no effective deterrents, and they admitted some challenges were beyond them: they’d never stop these boys swearing when foul language was the norm at home.
But one tactic galvanised them all. A game of footie is an incentive to excite any hyperactive child, and this lot responded with glee — once they’d got over the i nevitable play- acting, foul- mouthing and rolling around they’d learned from watching the Premier League.
As with other ‘problem school’ documentaries such as educating Yorkshire, there’s an uneasy suspicion the cameras are exacerbating the problem. The temptation to act up for airtime must have been strong.
If you want to see lads being bad to get their faces on the telly, the Dave channel is the place to go. This Freeview station, with its Top Gear marathons and endless panel game re-runs, is rarely the source of new shows.
But, likely over some boozy lunch, Dave producers have come up with an entertaining format: take two comedians, give them a suitcase stuffed with banknotes, and send them off to the back of beyond to spend it. David Baddiel and Richard herring took the challenge in 24 Hours To Go Broke, flying into the Armenian capital Yerevan, on the northern border of Iran, with more than five million drams . . . about £8,000.
You’d think a wannabe rock star like Baddiel could blow eight grand before he’d left the airport, but the scale of their task became apparent when they sauntered into a tourist trap and ordered coffees, at 200 drams each. In Armenia, even when you’re being royally ripped off, a coffee is 30p.
They weren’t allowed to invest or give away the money: it had to be splurged. That’s an amusing fantasy, and there were laughout-loud moments, especially when the duo ditched the scripted ideas (traditional dances with sabre swords, casino visits) and just staggered through Yerevan’s seedier bars, making friends.
One bearded and pie- eyed tramp revealed a surprising knowledge of english. ‘hello my dear,’ he slurred at Baddiel, ‘are you well?’
It comes to something when the vagrants in ex-Soviet republics have better manners t han english schoolchildren.