Do all pupils really want to get back to school now? In my day you would give anything for a reason not to go
AMIDST the cacophony of anguish, protests and Green/orange political debate about how soon children in Northern Ireland can be got back into the classroom, it strikes me there is one significant voice missing.
That of the pupil who doesn’t want to return. Ever.
Maybe it’s indicative of how schools have changed since I was a teenager, but it’s astonishing that every pupil vox-popped on the subject seems to be grief-stricken at not being back in 5B.
They all express a fervent desire to knuckle down to work. The Covid-19 hiatus has been a severe blow to their already firmly held career goals. The thought of not being able to walk into an exam hall in a few weeks’ time seems to genuinely upset them.
What on earth is going on with our kids?
Culturally, it seems such a far cry from when I was their age. Back then, I can assure you the arrival of a global event which shut down school across the planet for a full year would have been evidence, if such were needed, that a benign supernatural power existed devoted to answering the fevered prayers of anxious teenagers from Patagonia to Tokyo to the North-west Passage and the Khyber Pass, with Donegall Pass in between.
In the Eighties, you’d have been more likely to find me and my friends on our knees praying for something — anything — that would have gifted us a lengthy break from the chalk-face. Just a flurry of snow had us looking to the skies pleading for enough to fall for the bus service to be cancelled, the school heating to fail.
I genuinely think that if my generation were teenagers now at this time of a global pandemic, many of us would be more stressed at the idea of an imminent return to the classroom rather than fretting about not getting back at all.
Every day would be a nerve -wracking round of Google searches, scanning papers and listening to news bulletins. The vaccine breakthrough would have been a hammer blow. The anticipation that life would be going back to normal pretty soon would have been the stuff of nightmares. Talk of dangerous mutations would have seen us poring over our biology books, desperate for a setback to secure another few weeks living between bedroom and kitchen.
School often provided a kind of sanctuary from the Troubles but that wasn’t really how we saw it at the time. Instead it felt like we were being punished for something we didn’t even know we’d done. Pink Floyd spoke straight to our hearts — “Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!”
It wasn’t just the early starts, the slow trek on a draughty bus and the odd bolshy teacher, it was also the piles of homework and the pressure to get good marks. There was no course work, it all rested on a couple of papers on a sticky June afternoon.
Can anyone at school in the Eighties honestly say they never experienced the telephoned hoax call to the school office during exam time, a vain effort to get Physics or Algebra cancelled for at least a day? Even if it was just one or two brave souls who would simply skip off classes, surely we can’t have bred them out of society in a generation or two?
The time-honoured waster and layabout for the ages, Dennis the Menace, joined by the anxious child facing failure every single day, and the bullied and put-upon dreading break-time and sports, can’t have so easily been erased from the collective DNA.
The articulacy of some of today’s kids on the airwaves is astonishing and terrific to hear; they already sound like the lawyers, doctors, accountants they want to be. No doubt some are reaping the considerable benefits of following in their parents’ footsteps, but they will also have enjoyed considerable careers’ support at school.
Back in the Eighties there was the same expectation that you’d get on in life, but scant practical help about how to do so. Careers’ information usually involved one brief chat with a teacher before being handed the key to the careers’ library. There, you’d pull out a file marked “Journalist” to find a yellowing pamphlet saying “always have a spare quill” or something like that.
Perhaps that’s a tad unfair — most teachers were doing their best within the limitations of what schools were then.
But still, how different it all seems now. School today is less of a prison and more of a place where young people get pastoral support. That function is vitally important too, for those children whose voices we don’t hear in the media at the moment.
Clearly, pupils from challenging backgrounds are going to find the classroom a haven from the issues unfolding at home. Some rely on getting a decent meal there. Teachers are on the alert for any worrying signs. No wonder these kids crave getting back to some sort of normality.
Also, the classroom provides some form of equality in what is still a very unfair world. Right now the child who can’t access a laptop at home is horribly disadvantaged even further. Some parents are going to be much more thorough when it comes to home schooling. Others couldn’t care less.
For most pupils today school seems to be their social hub and the place where they live their life. People my age seemed to live their life when they got out of school. School then was a more daunting environment. No doubt rules and regulations still abound today, but the atmosphere seems more relaxed and convivial.
There’s a sense that pupils now are encouraged to be individuals in their own right, to let their personalities shine through. Young people can be themselves. Doing well in exams is still crucial, but those sitting them are regarded as more than results fodder.
Let’s hope that’s all true. Let’s hope there’s a much more mature approach to learning and the risks to competitive young lives than was the case in my day.
There is far too much anxiety around as it is among the young and we can forget, in our own ambition for their future, just how young they are.
So, for all the undoubted value of education and for all the virtues of application and study and love of learning and bookish habits, and the enhanced career prospects of those who advance up the education ladder, let’s hope there are still those growing souls out there who are desperately hoping to make it to the summer holidays without having to return in the early morning to the little desks of 5B.
After all, they’ll only be keeping up an honourable old tradition.