Monday, 10th February 2025
‘It’s really rude. Repeated, as well!’
‘I don’t think we’ve been harsh enough with our effort grades.’
These statements may seem fairly reasonable on the surface, but if you’re in the public education system right now, you’ll be familiar with the gut-twisting heartwrench that can ensue from stern comments like these.
Punishing kids or telling them that something they’re doing is wrong is kind of like a balancing act. On the one hand, you want to correct their perceived wrong, but on the other, you don’t want to hurt them… do you?
It’s a common sentiment that students these days in secondary education and college / sixth form have it lucky these days.
Dating back to the 1950s presents us with the sentiments that children were often meant to be ‘seen, but not heard’. Benjamin Spock’s ‘Baby and Child Care’, which was first published in 1946, greatly influenced how people felt children should be raised.
Jumping a bit later on, in the 1970s, the likes of the slipper and the cane remained prominent in the disciplining and ‘control’ of children.
These days, we look back with disdain; this is unacceptable. Controlling with hurt was so very clearly not okay.
But what if I told you we still do this?
My argument would be that a thin guise of innocence can often mask underlying sentiments with more a similarity than one may initially guess, at least before further investigation.
I suppose it’s hard to really assess these situations having not really been there; in modern schooling, no, the likes of canes are not employed, but instead, the verbal ridicule and shaming of students in front of the entire class remains incredibly commonplace.
Who decided, somewhere, at some point, that the emotional agony inflicted on children is really that much better than the physical punishments of yore?
It’s no secret that my generation of students are not the most mentally healthy individuals, coming from one myself.
I’ve waded through states of a complete lack of motivation to do anything. They had me stop cleaning. They took away my passions. Cleansed me of my interests. Purged the inquisitive curiosities that had defined me as a child. I had felt so sincerely a shadow of my former self, someone ‘alive, but not living’ who just happened to be in the same body as who came before me.
However, I possessed the stomach-knotting feeling that I must continue, regardless of how much of myself I eroded, in order to prove myself worthy of my own life.