Comment Archive:
Tuesday 1st November 2005
The Happiest Days Of Your Life
Why is it always adults - those who have left school long ago - who tell you that your school days are the happiest of your life and never actually the kids (those who are at school right now) who are eager to deify their time there? As questions go it’s hardly one of life’s great imponderables but following the recent attack of British school girl, Shanni Naylor, with a pencil sharpener blade wielded by a fellow class mate it’s been on my mind rather a lot of late. Are your school days the happiest of your life? Is that even possible?
Of course the prosaic answer is that most adults view their own school days through rose tinted spectacles, focusing on the good aspects and totally overlooking (and in some cases erasing) the bad, i.e. the brutally sadistic PE teachers, the daily rigmarole of having your head shoved nose-first down the toilet bowl, the constant aspersions cast on your sexuality and in some cases your gender, the racism, the bigotry and the ever pervading suspicion that you were just inferior and somehow not normal when compared to everybody else. Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers it bloody wasn’t. "School days? Yeah best days of me effing life, mate - but only cos I’ve been institutionalized since then..."
Ok, so my spectacles are black tinted rather than rose tinted and I’m aware that some of my fellow class mates genuinely had an absolutely terrific time at school. Most people of course just have very boring humdrum times at school - neither good nor bad just mundane. In fact I’d go so far as to admit that the people who have really horrible times at school - those who suffer abuse and bullying - are probably in a very small minority. Maybe four or five kids in every year which I think equates to about four or five out of every hundred. As statistics go it’s hardly startling. I can’t see Bono getting on the hotline to Amnesty International anytime soon. So maybe it is possible to generalise – hell, the majority agree so why not? Your school days are the best days of your life.
Except that this totally overlooks anotherside of the statistic. A totally unforgivable side. Approximately twenty kids - maybe more, maybe less but really the exact amount doesn’t matter - in EVERY school in the country are being bullied, brutalized and abused EVERY day. And this is happening in an environment that aside from supposedly educating them and preparing them for adult life is also most fundamentally supposed to be keeping them SAFE. Twenty kids bullied countrywide is a failure. Twenty kids bullied in every school is a monumental travesty. I would hope that any parent watching the news reports of Shanni Naylor’s attack was numbed with shock and revulsion. Because if you weren’t then you’re part of the problem.
We could go round in endless circles discussing the issue of people these days being more desensitized to violence or even the opposite debate that the world has always been this violent and callous and kids merely reflect their atmosphere. Both get us nowhere fast and ignore a basic point. The world is violent. Period. And in terms of navigating your way through life in today’s world violence is a currency that sooner or later you are going to have to encounter and deal with. It’s a fact we’d all rather not face and get to grips with but it’s a fact nonetheless. Just stepping out of or even into your own front door is a risky business these days. Maybe it’s always been that way, maybe it’s only a modern development, who knows. It doesn’t matter. It’s how things are and we need to deal with it. More. We need to be educating our kids to deal with it and - revolutionary idea here - change it.
Now you’d think school would be the perfect venue at which to inaugurate this grand re-education programme... and certainly schools do have a huge responsibility and a big role to play in educating our children and nurturing their finer sensibilities... but plainly school seems to be part of the very system that allows violence to flourish and prosper. Hence I can understand Shanni Naylor’s parent wishing to instigate legal procedures to sue the school involved - according to recent newspaper reports that is. But again this is overlooking a very basic fact and overlooking the real seat of responsibility. The parents.
By the time children start school they are already emulating the behaviour that they have learnt from their parents. Kids merely reflect their atmosphere remember? And the first and most influential atmosphere they encounter is that of their parents. By the time they’re four or five they are already programmed with certain modes of behaviour and coping strategies mostly learned from their mummies and daddies (I don’t intend to get lost in the nature / nurture debate right now so let’s leave that well alone shall we?). They are in effect like clockwork toys. The parents have wound them up, programmed them and then let them loose in the school yard. Who knows where they’ll end up? Of course this doesn’t mean they are not open to reprogramming and that bad behaviour can’t be unlearnt. But what it does mean is that kids with overly violent tendencies or the inability to empathize with their peer group have been programmed badly - or let’s be cautious and say ineptly - by their parents. This is where the rot starts and where it needs to be dealt with for the most successful results. School is only ever a secondary back-up mechanism. The real work should always be commenced at home.
Hence my statement that if you weren’t appalled by the attack on Shanni Naylor you were part of the problem. If as a parent you are desensitized to violence or worse condone its use for whatever reason then how the hell can you expect to teach your kid that it is wrong to be violent to his or her class mates – another person’s child? Aren’t you in a way saying that it’s ok to be violent towards children? Aren’t you in a way condoning child abuse? And if that notion offends you, all to the good. Think about it some more.
Amongst all the justified outrage and horror that was thrown up by Shanni’s attack, I couldn’t help but wonder about her attacker. Where were her parents in all of this? How did they fit into the attack? Because whether they like it or not they are involved. They are as responsible for their daughter as Shanni’s parents are for her. What moral understanding has this girl been given - if any - by her parents? What support will both girls be given now? Who will take responsibility to ensure they are both counselled and better educated from now on so that they can assume a healthy and beneficial role in the world?
Just the school? I don’t think so. Mum, dad, where are you?
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