The violent scenes which accompanied protests by second-level students on streets across the State during the recent teachers' strike mirror what teachers have to deal with in the classroom, it was claimed at the ASTI conference in Galway yesterday.
One delegate claimed teachers had been threatened with guns and had fists shoved in their faces.
Mr Sean Higgins, past president of the ASTI and a member of its education committee, said there were "quite serious" discipline problems in schools which ranged from students being verbally abusive to threatening teachers.
"I've known of cases where teachers have had fists shoved in their faces. I've known cases where teachers were threatened with a gun - that there was a gun at home was the threat, and I've known of cases where teachers had their classroom windows broken. Teachers have also been told students know of their address," he said.
"Teachers feel isolated and angry that they are left to carry the can for all of this. When you contact parents they come in and adopt a legalistic tone, if they come in at all, looking for precise dates, precise problems and the number of occasions on which such events happened," he added.
He attributed the growing problem to changing family units and said there were not enough guidance counsellors in schools to cope with these problems.
"I think any government with a vision for education would have provided more guidance counsellors before this," he said.
He added that more children were presenting problems and a lot of them were coming from homes experiencing serious difficulties. "We also have in a number of towns in Ireland a large number of teenage mothers and fathers, and their offspring are very young and will not be properly coached when they come into school and they are presenting serious problems in many schools.
"Our members are finding as well a lot of teenagers today are out there in the workplace and the workplace is where they are encountering discipline because they have to turn up at four o'clock.
"They have to provide the services required of them while they are there or they don't get paid and they are using school as the playground. It's there they act up and that is presenting a problem in schools.
"I have experienced situations where students had to leave school before the end of class because they had to clock in at the local supermarket at four o'clock.
"There is an irresponsibility here on the side of supermarkets in particular."
Ms Caitriona McGrath, of Carrigaline Community School, who chaired a workshop on discipline structures, said every school in the State should have a home-school liaison officer to help tackle the problem.
Mr Tommy Francis, of Falcarragh Community School, Co Donegal, who is a past president of the ASTI, also chaired a discipline workshop. He said the public saw indiscipline on the streets by students during the recent teachers' strike and "that type of thing to a different degree" was happening in classrooms.
"We need to do something for our own security within the classrooms but also for the children who would want to get on with their work but can't because of indiscipline on the part of quite a significant minority of pupils right now. It's caused by some students but affects all."
He said teachers had to meet urgently with the Department to examine the problem "root and branch" and find a solution.
Mr Tony Waldron, of St Mel's College, Longford, who chaired the third workshop said the liaison structures between outside agencies such as health boards, the Garda and the schools must be streamlined and enhanced. They must be funded to enable schools make whatever discipline policy they decide effective, he said.
He said schools needed, and were not getting, an adequate psychological service to assess pupils. The service was almost "non-existent" but was a vital part of school discipline policy. This had to be addressed, he said.
"The minister for education John Boland a long time ago, probably rightly so, declared that corporal punishment was no longer a discipline option for schools but it left a clear vacuum and there has been no effective, definitive, defining policy agreed by all schools in the nation since that was taken away and that vacuum needs to be filled," he said.