We must unmask our children now
Abehaviour crackdown. A discipline regime. Tanks on the playing fields. Boots on the school grounds. I made up some of these threatening phrases – but not the first two, which happen to be the scariest. Behaviour crackdowns and discipline regimes would be useful when discussing, say, a military coup in the Myanmar embassy; and downright terrifying in the context of Year Six kids playing up in the classroom.
Yet this is the unfathomable rhetoric of our Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson. Weary, wary parents like me are used to the fact he’s done so many U-turns, he’s been running in demented circles since last March. But his unfortunate turns of phrase, in a piece for this newspaper this week, represent a new low.
“He has all the gravitas of the school snitch,” a headteacher of my acquaintance told me, sotto voce, “the weaselly one even the staff dislike.”
More pressing, however is Williamson’s emotional illiteracy. Talk about not being able to read the room; he appears incapable of reading the entire flaming country.
As a parent, might I respectfully (and we all know what that means – well, everyone apart from you, Williamson) suggest our children need a soupçon of empathy, rather than the imposition of marshal law?
Boundaries? Absolutely. A crackdown? Absolutely not. Rules? Bring ’em on! A regime? You’re having a laugh, Gav. Been overdoing Call of Duty: Black Ops again?
Save the bully boy language for violent protesters, screaming mobs and criminals; these are Britain’s children, our children, you are talking about.
I don’t condone cheek, insolence or rule-breaking. I have enormous sympathy for teachers seeking to impose order where there has been none. I’m not sure I would know how to begin what looks like a Sisyphean task of reigniting a love for Spanish or organic chemistry in kids who have languished in their bedrooms during lonely lockdowns. Online learning. Online entertainment. Online friendship. No wonder their ability to concentrate has smithereened and their interpersonal skills have atrophied.
Any grown-up would struggle to reconnect with life and the people in it after a year in solitary confinement. How much worse for tweens and teens genetically programmed, socially primed to run in packs, scrutinise their peers, carve out their place in relation to others?
Writing in these pages in January, Jonathan Townsend, CEO of the Prince’s Trust, and David Laws, executive chairman of the Education Policy Institute, expressed their deep dismay at the mental health crisis. “Over the last 20 years, the prevalence of mental health problems had already risen to one in nine of our children – and we know that mental illness often continues into adult life,” they wrote.
“Since the pandemic, the lockdown of schools and dislocation which comes with this has further damaged the wellbeing of the young – with some estimates showing as many as one in six children may now have a mental health condition.”
Among both genders aged five to 10, 7 per cent suffer from mental health problems, doubling to 14 per cent by the age of 14-16. By age 17-19 that figure falls slightly for boys, but almost a quarter of girls have a diagnosable mental health condition – well over double the proportion for boys.
Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, has warned that mental health services in England do not have the capacity to cope with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on children. And in February of this year, charities said they had seen a 70 per cent rise in demand from young people over the past three months, compared with the previous year.
If the number of youngsters experiencing eating disorders, selfharm and even psychosis is causing serious concern among health professionals, it baffles me that our Health Secretary prefers to focus on clampdowns and special measures.
Our children are disconnected, disillusioned and in desperate need for that to be recognised. But our politicians are so busy slapping each other on the back over the vaccine rollout and heralding a return to business as usual, they haven’t noticed.
I’m reminded of that poignant scene in My Fair Lady, after Eliza’s high society debut, where a peacocking Professor Higgins and sidekick Colonel Pickering launch into a self congratulatory chorus: “Tonight, old man, you did it. You did it. You did it/ You said that you’d do it/ And indeed you did.” Eliza, meanwhile, goes unseen and unheard, although she has endured the most gruelling challenge of all.
Nobody knows just how deep the fault lines run in our young people. What I can say with copper-bottomed certainty is that victim-blaming is never a good look. A generation is lagging behind academically – it’s not their fault, but you’d struggle to guess that from the chivvying Government nagging them about extra lessons and catching up. Support is to be welcomed but delivered, I would like to think, in a less hectoring tone.
Similarly, there has been a loss of discipline and Woods Towers is no exception. Despite the adage “If you want something done, ask a busy woman”, even we have our limits.
Who knew that once we’d juggled Zoom calls and cooking, cleaning, childcare, cheerleading and kitchen table school, we wouldn’t have the energy to make the little blighters polish their shoes and execute perfect hospital corners on their beds?
Cut to the chase. Children need to have structure and rules so that every pupil can learn without distraction. Could the masks come off now, too, please? I know it would help.
There must be sanctions against refuseniks and flagrant bad behaviour – but excluding youngsters struggling with their mental health and not offering them support and treatment is not just unacceptable but inhumane.
‘Please can the masks now come off in the classroom? Young people are struggling’