When violence is the storm of the day

Violence in schools seems to blow hot and cold with the media. KHYIAH ANGEL reports.

Violence is a part of some teachers' working lives. While Federation abhors the lack of appropriate response from the government in adequately addressing the issue, tabloid media deals with the issue of violence against teachers according to how many papers it can sell at any given point in time.

Federation conducted a violence audit in August 2003 in order to gain a more realistic perspective than the Department of Education and Training (DET) was prepared to give on the incidence of violence against teachers in our schools. The audit was conducted with a view to ensuring the Department was made accountable for honouring its occupational health and safety responsibilities and addressing the issue by increasing the amount of classes for emotionally disturbed and behaviour disordered students; providing more teachers' aides; reducing class sizes; and strengthening suspension and expulsion procedures.

The information collected during the audit was faxed to both the DET and Federation. The same information was also tabled in the Industrial Relations Commission as part of Federation's salaries case. Specific information relating to the experiences of teachers working in special schools was even offered to the media in an attempt to heighten awareness of the issue. However, at that time no-one seemed interested.

So how did information collected a year and a half ago suddenly turn into a media circus? On February 20, the Daily Telegraph ran a full page feature under such headlines as: "Teachers face daily lessons in violence" and "Class Wars" with the editorial entitled "Teachers must be protected".

Daily newspapers are printed by 11pm the night before they are available to the public. Coincidently (or not), on the 6am news, talkback host Alan Jones on radio station 2GB ran the story from the angle of WorkCover statistics, stating that there were 1000 teacher work related mental disorder claims with WorkCover. For the 7am news, this story had been picked up by several of the mainstream morning radio programs and the regional stations syndicated to these. By 8am, the 1000 'mental disorder' claims had turned into 5500 psychological injury claims before the DET, relating to teacher stress.

By 9am nearly every radio station had connected the Daily Telegraph's story with the WorkCover story and was running stories saying "thousands of attacks on teachers". Alan Jones blamed a lack of discipline in the classroom for the violence.

Stan Zemanek, on 2UE, went as far as to say that: "WorkCover has paid out more than $135 million to teachers, many of whom have suffered stress and injuries because of students -- can you believe this? $135 million we've paid out because these blokes have suffered stress which doesn't exist so it's a fabricated thing and these blokes should be arrested for bloody fraud."

He also said: "Now you all know what I think about stress -- it simply doesn't exist -- but I'm sure that teachers do suffer at the hands of their pupils because there is no discipline in our schools, and whose fault is that? Well, it's the bloody teachers for allowing it to happen in the first place. They went along with this namby-pamby idea of not disciplining people when they're in school."

Mr Zemanek finished with: "You know what you should do, the education department? Maybe what they should do is go around to all these discos and bars and get some of those big bouncers that are on the door and make them the bloody teachers. You know, they can bang a few heads with all these disruptive students."

Shadow Education Minister Jillian Skinner fed the debate by saying that "things are getting worse" and Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt, removing herself from it, claimed that the violence was "exaggerated".

By 5am next morning the focus of the story had changed from attacks on teachers, to an attack on Federation. Both print and broadcast media ran a conspiracy theory line about thousands of attacks on teachers being kept secret by Teachers Federation. The Telegraph printed stories entitled, "Secret horror: teacher assaults" and "Files on teacher violence". Throughout the day, talkback radio hosts accused Federation of keeping secret files on violence to protect the reputation of public schools at the expense of teachers.

That night, the attention of the media began to turn as footballers' behaviour became the flavour of the day. Not quite ready to let it go, the Telegraph ran an editorial the next morning with a particularly vitriolic attack on Federation.

The issue of violence against teachers had been turned into an attack on the very organisation that has continually attempted to raise it so that it may be addressed. And still, what response? Well may the Government be sitting back, smirking, cursing the problems those damn teachers create!

Khyiah Angel is the relieving Administration Officer (Media and Communications).

Dealing with violence and OH&S in special schools

Resources, not headlines, needed to address violence

For further information

March 2005 contents