Making news · Thu Jul 20, 23:10 by Eleri Straker
At the end of the summer term, my school has a couple of days at the end of term when we stop teaching and we have something called ‘enrichment’, when we do something else. There are lots of sports, games, dancing, and singing and, in the English department, this year, looking at how news works. This isn’t as boring as it sounds, as it involves giving the students experience of seeing how a newsroom works. The year 8 students were divided into three groups, one to prepare their own newspaper with the help of the IT department, another to make a radio broadcast and the other, the one I was working with, preparing to make their own TV news. It was actually a lot of fun and the students seemed to enjoy it.
It was during this morning’s session that today’s curious event happened.
My son, a seventeen year old sixth former, has just gone on a World Challenge expedition to Africa and one of my colleagues who was working on the newspaper asked if I would mind if he used this fact as a basis for a ‘breaking news’ story. The idea was that the story break that my son had gone ‘missing’ and that ‘journalists’ would be sent to interview me. I thought it was a good idea so I agreed.
Around about mid morning the ‘journalists’ arrived. The first two groups asked the obvious, sensible questions which I was happy to answer. Then the third group arrived. Two small year 8 boys, both of whom were twelve years old. Their first question took my breath away. “Is your son gay?” When I said that this was a wholly unacceptable and highly inappropriate question, the questioner said, “Write down that he’s gay.” He then went on to ask if my son had AIDS, when his first sexual encounter was and if he’d been raped. I’m not a prude, neither am I easily shocked, but I was gobsmacked. Not just by the inappropriateness and intrusiveness of the questions but also by the fact that the questioner was twelve years old. When did twelve year olds know about such things, let alone feel they have the right to talk to a teacher in such a manner?
I sent the boys away with a flea in their ears then rang through to the head of the English department to tell her of their behaviour and to ask her to check up on what they wrote. Unfortunately she wasn’t at the end of the line, but a colleague was. Whose only concern was whether or not the boys had come away with a ‘story’. I told her that my concern was the complete inappropriateness of the questions and how offensive I found them. To which she repeated, “So they didn’t get a story then?”
If I was gobsmacked before, I was speechless now. The complete lack of understanding of the situation or for the well-being of a colleague was astonishing. These boys were not real journalists, they were young lads who were obsessed with sex and violence and didn’t care who knew or who was offended by their crass behaviour. As teachers we have a duty to curb bad behaviour, not encourage it. By not condemning these boys’ behaviour, my colleague was, in effect condoning it. And that to me, is more disturbing than any crude behaviour by stupid little boys.
