BIG SOFTIES
Keith Woods reveals just how far schools will go to protect kids from hurt feelings.
So how do you create a snowflake? Not the icy kind that tumbles from the sky in colder climes, but the young Millennial variety that chills the heart with its ready propensity to take offence.
It can hardly be that the current generation are being born without backbones any more than children were in years past.
No, snowflakery is a learned behaviour, as a story shared by a friend recently confirmed in delicious detail.
Our tale begins with a boy with a big imagination, a bigger heart – and a bag of biscuits.
Jake is a rambunctious, joyful youngster. His parents encourage his dreams, his free spirit and his mischievous sense of fun and adventure.
Not for them a childhood coated in bubble wrap.
The result is a brilliant, intelligent, creative kid who outshines his peers in so many ways. I take my hat off to my friends, who are among the best parents I know.
Jake, like many smart 11year-olds, is also learning the value of a healthy sense of humour – something else sure to serve him well in life.
Like other kids his age, he enjoys a harmless prank. He delights in whoopee cushions, fake ice cubes containing even faker flies, plastic dog poo and so on. You get the picture.
Jake, on the occasion of his 11th birthday, wanted to play a prank. He planned to bring a bag of cream biscuits to school to share among his friends, but with a twist: the cream in two of the biscuits would be replaced with toothpaste.
Mum and Dad, seeing potential for trouble in Jake’s plan, but not wanting to completely spoil his fun, suggested some tweaks.
Instead of toothpaste, the dud biscuits would contain flavourless shortening. And Jake was to bring spare, unadulterated biscuits to immediately offer to the unlucky kids who copped the booby prize.
A more harmless prank would be hard to imagine.
But in today’s hypersensitive world, the jolly jape was considered far from a laughing matter.
Jake returned from school that day with a letter from his teacher which read:
“I’m writing to you regarding what happened at school today. Jake handed out biscuits for his birthday, and after he handed them all out, he informed me that he pulled a prank and switched out the icing in two of them. Two boys in our class got the biscuits and felt uncertain as to why this happened to them. They wrote letters to Jake describing how they felt when this happened to them. I would like you to read over these letters with Jake at home and bring them back to school signed. Jake has also written a reflection which also needs to be read and signed. I would also like Jake to personally write an apology letter to each of the two boys affected.
“We’ve discussed at length the repercussions that could have come from this situation, not to mention how mean, disrespectful and inappropriate this prank was.
“I will be speaking to the parents of the affected students and will now have to be dealing with the potential of having to explain to those parents that a mistake was made and that steps are being taken to restore trust.”
All this because two kids got biscuits without a sickly sweet filling.
Jake was naturally befuddled by all this, but won’t be long in bouncing back. Not least because his parents firmly but politely informed the teacher not to expect any signed letters to be returned.
But you have to wonder what message the teacher’s reaction to the situation sent to the two boys who bit the bodgy biscuits – and indeed to the rest of their classmates.
A minor, harmless prank which would have looked very mild indeed to generations past was treated as a major incident.
For Jake, there was the misery of forced introspection. But the boys who picked the wrong biscuits were arguably done more harm by being encouraged to see themselves as victims rather than shrug off what was a very minor matter.
If this is what is going on in schools, is it any wonder that when kids emerge blinking into the daylight of the adult world they are thoroughly unprepared for the rough and tumble of life?
What must the war generation make of all of this? We could never have seen off the Imperial Japanese by retreating to “safe spaces” and conducting “sharing circles” at the first sign of trouble.
Kids need to toughen up – because sometimes life is tough.
We all have our days in life where we pick the wrong biscuit. But that doesn’t mean we’re victims. That’s just how the cookie crumbles.