Classroom Chaos

Genre

documentary film, documentary television program

Country

United Kingdom

How it feels

A retired teacher returns undercover with hidden cameras to substitute in British secondary schools. She documents students ignoring authority, fighting, swearing, and causing disruption to show the chaos teachers face daily.

rawunsettlingconfrontationalvisceralobservationaltensebleakprovocative

What happens

Classroom Chaos was a controversial British TV documentary programme aired in 2005 on Five in which a retired teacher under the pseudonym "Sylvia Thomas" (real name Angela Mason) returned undercover as a substitute teacher after a 30-year teaching gap. She claimed her objective was to show the "chaos" teachers must deal with in the classroom. The filming used hidden cameras in a button and a briefcase. Thomas filmed pupils smashing chairs, fighting, and swearing; some pupils also falsely accused her of touching them. Children aged 12 to 15 were featured completely ignoring the supply teacher and other staff, shouting, screaming, fighting, swearing, downloading porn, and wandering around the classroom. The programme was filmed at 15 secondary schools in London and the north of England. The supply agencies she contacted chose the schools randomly; recent inspection reports did not consider any of the schools to be failing. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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