How to be Callous

“So I booted it dead centre and it fell to pieces.” Andrew accompanied his graphic description of the destruction of a pensioner's flat screen TV with a demonstration kick which made a hole in the plasterboard wall. It would probably be filled in when someone came to fill in all the other holes.

     Andrew was just back from court where he had been answering for his sixty-third burglary and celebrating another suspended sentence.

     The other students listened with encouraging interest as he told how he broke into a house, trashed every room causing, “thirty thousand pounds of criminal damage.” He repeated this phrase several times with obvious pride and to admiring gasps. “The old c*** was in tears,” Andrew continued.

     The old man was, indeed, in tears. His wife had recently died and Andrew had destroyed the home the couple had built up during fifty years of marriage. The worst loss, though, had not been the property that could be replaced, but irreplacable things like the family photographs which had been systematically torn to shreds.

     The old man's tears were nothing to those on the bench when they heard the case for the defence. Poor sad Andrew had been abandoned by an abusive mother, been through a string of foster homes and care homes and was currently in specialist care and attending an EBD school.

     I expressed the view to the students that the events being described were not something to be celebrated. Andrew frowned and became very threatening. “You're not supposed to be judgemental, you fat c***,” he bellowed, then stormed off to smoke in the school's smoking area.

     A little later in the day I was called in front of the school manager for something called supervision. “Andrew has made a complaint that you have been judgemental,” he explained, “what have you to say about it.”

     I explained that I didn't feel that the way the crimes were being described and celebrated was appropriate so I made that point to the students.

     The school manager jumped to his feet and in obvious rage shouted, “don't you know what these young people have been through, you stupid c***?”

     Probably unwisely, I replied, “post hoc ergo propter hoc.”

     What the f*** does that mean? Shouted the school manager, hopping from one foot to the next in a way that made me think he might need the toilet. I kept that thought to myself.

     “I'm simply saying that, while there's obviously a correlation between criminality and a person's upbringing, it does not provide a justification for a particular crime and it certainly doesn't justify a celebration of it.” I replied.

     By now, the school manager was almost hysterical. “How can someone as callous and uncaring as you work in a school like this?” he demanded.

     “I go where the agency sends me,” I explained.

     “I'll be making a complaint to the agency,” said the school manager and ejected me from his office.
     One of the essential requirements of working with EBD students is that they like you.  If they complain about a member of staff and are persistent in that complaint it is extremely likely that the member of staff will be moved to another school or simply asked to leave. A similar policy exists with regards to those who live in homes with support workers. These students often grow up without ever losing their belief that they have no responsibility for their own actions.