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| "pain" (CC BY-ND 2.0) by nanny snowflake |
Life is hard in our schools. I am speaking as someone who has spent the past twenty years helping young people who have struggled. I have seen the blame placed directly on the child and seen fingers pointed at parents. These factors clearly play a role but the pain all this causes is not simply explained away as a “personal” pathology. It is a social one. Our systems and environments must take responsibility for their part in this.
What follows is the impact the way we “educate” can have on our children.
- It plays its part in an increase in mental health Issues
The pressures within our education systems are immense and it often goes way beyond anything we would put up with as adults. If our jobs were that hard we would look to move on or would be visiting our doctor for respite. However, because we insist they do as they are told, they have to get on with it.
The problem is that many struggle to cope and some can’t cope at all. Many quietly withdraw and can take years to resurface. Around the world there are millions of young people trapped in their own homes. In 2014 the Prince's Trust reported some startling statistics from the UK on the amount of young people struggling to leave their homes and the emotional impact.
For those who manage to stay, many struggle with high levels of anxiety. Some develop eating disorders, emotional problems and depression. Self harm is not uncommon.
There are lots of poorly children both in schools and in their homes right now asking us why they have to do things this way.
- It can develop a real distrust of formalised learning. Many speak of feeling profoundly let down by the education system that they poured their hearts and souls into. They say that formalised learning and the acquisition of knowledge did not play to their strengths so they don’t trust its capacity to transform minds.
They talk about broken promises and not the sense that there should be access to education for all, but instead, that education should leave them able to operate at the peak of their powers. Why trust a system that clearly has no capacity to unlock their strengths and doesn't appear to care?
- It can further entrench a fear of failure. Do you ever wonder if “fixed mindsets” actually existed before we started formalising education? Was a fear of failing so imprinted on the psyche as it is today?
We are guilty of testing our children to distraction where pass and fail are the only options. This fear of failure can stay with them and is difficult to shift. It also means people are less likely to take on new challenges for fear they might be rejected. We know in real life that mistakes are an important part of how we learn and it doesn’t seem healthy to avoid them at all costs.
In educational terms, failure is a distinct possibility and the consequences cause young people to break under the pressure.
- It can erode both creativity and individuality. We know children are born with an innate curiosity but as they enter the system this is in constant danger of being eroded.
What we get instead are automatons. You may think this is strong but what do you think would happen to you if I massively reduced your capacity to speak up or disenfranchised your ability to think outside of the box? It’s what we do in school after all. Not every educational setting does this but the majority do. They follow the crowd and deliver education the way it is prescribed. They have lost their own capacity to think outside the box.
- It can dilute parent power. As parents we need to be alert. My concerns are that if we have been negatively affected by the system ourselves then we might feel subservient to it or that we owe it our loyalty. Even when our children are suffering we might feel powerless to act. Some parents are able to fight the system and confront it with various degrees of success but we are still treated like children and expected to conform.
Many young people look back on their school days with fondness but many don’t. They move off in a daze with little appreciation of their true abilities because we spent time trying to measure something else.
There was a time when we would talk about someone’s grandma who had been smoking forty a day for seventy years and she was as fit as a fiddle. Thankfully we now own up to the reality of smoking. They are clearly not the same but sometimes the comparison is justified.
There are shining examples all over the world of successful interventions but these are beacons shining in the darkness soon snuffed out if we don't take heed. How many children need to suffer before we need to agree on a better way? This many? More?
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