Stop men being lads, make teachers sweet and raise the standard for treatment over battering is the sort of revolutionary capitalism Paul Blum advocates for British schools.
"Macho culture has an impact on staff and pupils. There are some teachers who can control kids just with their personality, by bullying students like drill sergeants, and it is them who become heads," Mr Blum said.
At its heart, Mr Blum is a teacher with vast experience in some of our worst schools, who has written a 140-page thesis. It is a clear and useful set of proposals for how schools could try rewarding students, rather than punishing them, and try to avoid conflict rather than scaring students out of bad behaviour.
At the back of this book there is a real gem: an anger management course designed out of a highly successful programme in south London that helped abusive husbands break out of their behaviour. It was that programme that made Mr Blum want to write this book, to share what he has learned.
The book is a series of seminars that could help violent children at least recognise their own behaviour and start to talk about how they feel.
It can be just as simple as teaching other students they just need to say: "When you keep stealing my bag, it makes me angry."
And that's where Mr Blum knows what he is talking about - how to help kids, how to talk to them without increasing a confrontation, how to walk away from an argument and turn it into a discussion. The little strategies are worth every dime.
They are not revelations, but they are facts every parent, every teacher could do with remembering. Say what you mean, mean what you say. Stay rational. Keep talking. Don't use aggressive and confrontational body language. But the main message is how to recognise an argument is developing and diffuse it.
The problem with the book is his theories on how culture works, which takes up far too much of the first half. I carried out an entirely unscientific survey of four teachers in London, Bedford and Edinburgh. They were bemused by the idea they were being pressured into being bullies. Yes, they have to enforce their position now and again, but that is part of the way schools are run.
Mr Blum told me he finds that kind of response typical, but that does not make it right.
People think in terms of "enforcing" rather than "rewarding". Similarly, schools have schemes to punish children but not offer them structured reasons to be good. He advocates coming in armed with a smiley faced rather than a red pen or authoritative shout.
Mr Blum has worked in schools for decades, so he knows what he is talking about. The real problem in schools is a macho culture; boys - and increasingly girls getting into a 'warrior culture' - who cannot say what they feel and lash out in anger.
But is the cause of the problem really as he writes: "From the moment that children get up in the morning and switch on the television they are bombarded with advertising that incessantly sets the boundaries of sexual stereotyping"?
In other words, children's behaviour is caused by football matches and Hollywood. Does he actually know that 'macho culture' really dominates "all social classes and most cultural and ethnic backgrounds"?
If you know how to help make schools better, fine, tell us all about it, and he has done. But there are few things more annoying than lightweight repetitions of social clich*s without any depth.
When I suggested that to Mr Blum he didn't seem pleased. But the anger management techniques kicked in like clockwork. The book advocates - and here I paraphrase - saying, I hear you, I understand you, here's what you might want to think about. In other words, why you are wrong.
A Teacher's Guide to Anger Management, Paul Blum. 2001. Routledge/Falmer. London and New York. £12.99
