The Chief Inspector of Schools, David Bell, has spoken this week of a growing crisis in our schools. Disciplinary standards have fallen. Eight years ago behaviour was good in three quarters of schools; now the figure is only two-thirds. And places where discipline is poor have almost doubled in a single year. That’s serious, because without discipline, children don’t learn. Nor are they prepared for the challenges they’ll face in later life.

It isn’t easy to maintain discipline. There’s a story of an American teacher who spent a year trying to teach an unruly class the book of Joshua. He decided to make the end of year exam easy so he asked: who destroyed the walls of Jericho? From the back of the class one child replied: please sir, it wasn’t me. Outraged, the teacher wrote to the parents. ‘For a year I’ve tried to teach your son the book of Joshua, and when I asked, who destroyed the walls of Jericho, he replied: Please sir it wasn’t me.’ Next day he received an angry letter in reply. ‘If our son says it wasn’t him, then it wasn’t him.’ In despair the teacher went to the chairman of the governors and told him the story. Sighing, the governor got out his cheque-book, wrote a cheque, and said: ‘Here’s $1000. Stop complaining and get the walls repaired.’

Which just goes to show that if discipline is a problem in our schools it isn’t only because of the schools. Teachers are just one of the many influences to which our children are exposed. There are parents, neighbours, culture and society and if discipline isn’t a value there, then schools can’t create it alone.

There’s a moment in the Bible that’s long fascinated me. When Moses addressed the Israelites as they were about to leave Egypt after two centuries of exile and slavery, he didn’t speak about freedom, or about the land flowing with milk and honey. Instead he spoke about the duty of parents to educate their children. Why? Because to defend a country you need an army; but to defend a civilisation, you need education. So Jews became the people whose passion is education, whose heroes are teachers, and whose citadels are schools.

Schools aren’t just where we acquire knowledge and skills. They’re where we collectively hand on our values to the next generation, and if those values don’t include discipline, then schools will fail. Teachers are the unsung heroes of society, but they need our help: as parents, neighbours, role models and friends. In the battle against misbehaviour, don’t let’s leave schools to fight it alone.

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