The door is kicked open and the student half falls, half walks through, still shouting at some unseen person in the corridor. The previously silent pupils in the class are now a captivated audience, their work forgotten. Twenty-nine pairs of eyes are flicking between the student and the teacher to see what is going to happen next.
The door slams closed and the student slumps into his chair. The teacher moves to the side of the desk crouches down and lower his voice. “The lesson started 16 minutes ago,” begins the teacher. “The first thing you should –” “I’m sorry,” the student interrupts, unpacking his bag, eyes fixed on an invisible spot on the desk.
Silence. The teacher is torn; unsatisfied by the student’s response but unwilling to allow this distraction to continue any longer, he eventually stands and gives an ostentatious cough, then continues the lesson.
No matter how old the pupil, “sorry” is often seen as the moral endpoint in so many behaviour incidents in schools. Two four-year-olds fighting over playing with a toy truck? An eight-year-old trying out a slightly out-of-context “fuck off” at a friend? A 13-year-old persistently disrupting lessons with crude jokes? A 15-year-old who has once again failed to hand in homework?
Say “sorry”, we demand: show us some remorse – only then can we move on.
If only it were that simple.
All apologies
Why has the act of an apology become so central to what happens in schools? Because conflict is an inevitable and frequent part of school life, and an apology is an integral part of conflict resolution.
Luke Roberts, a conflict resolution expert and PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, believes you will find conflict wherever you find groups of people.
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