The best posts on this whole thread are from convert.
Anyway back to the issue of resilience.
In our small cul de sac there are a few families. The children of 3 families who aren't spoilt, don't have the latest phones, don't have gadget filled bedrooms, who play out with others in the road, do chores and generally are well mannered and respectful of others are definitely the types to have resilience. IMO Parenting and grandparenting (or good guardians) are the key to this.
So imagine it WAS a test match, if you wish - shouting "sort it out" still doesn't help.
As mentioned above, I'm leaving my previous argument as not to let the thread descend into any (more) pettyness.
However, just to anecdotally add to the encouragement (or distinct lack of) conversation. I remember to this day my last day at primary school, so around 12 years old and some 42 years ago.
I shone at primary school (not so much at secondary school) - had to compete against the year above at PE or sports days, as it was deemed unfair on my year classmates - I think it was simply that I had long legs, so could run faster. Anyway, maths was my other strong point - I finished the SMP boxes 2 years early, didn't misbehave, my house team won the most stars every week, etc, etc. The words of my headmistress on my last day goodbyes to go to secondary school still ring in my ears - "if you don't buck your ideas up boy, you'll never achieve anything in life". I remember thinking WTF! Whether that encouraged me or not, I don't know, but it's stuck with me and I've always thought f*** you, you old cow, when I've achieved something
I could give you all the challenges I faced as a child in the 70s/80s, and all the challenges faced by my kids now (with diagnosed neurodivergence), but in the end they amount to a sample size of one, which therefore has a high probability of not being representative of the experiences of many.
For a better look at the challenges faced by millenials, and how measures such as mental health are changing across the generations, a good place to look is the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at UCL. Here at least the measures of physical and mental well being are taken on a large population and take into account the potential for artefactual explainations for trends and data bias and so on. The research is publicly funded and ultimately published with peer review. The interim report on the Millenial Cohort Study (19,000 people born in 2000-2002) is quite stark. One in five of the sample have: high psychological distress; a longstanding mental health condition; high depressive symptoms; and report self-harming in the past year.
The best posts on this whole thread are from convert
Which is probably because convert has worked for many years with kids in the 14-18 age range so has a better idea of the range of problems they face.
Boomers / Gen X are quick to wax lyrical about how great it was in the 1960s/70s/80s(*) and then in the next breath bitch about the future generation because they've got it too easy.
Rolls eyes…
The words of my headmistress on my last day goodbyes to go to secondary school still ring in my ears - "if you don't buck your ideas up boy, you'll never achieve anything in life". I remember thinking WTF! Whether that encouraged me or not, I don't know,
I shone at primary school (not so much at secondary school)
🤷♂️ QED?
the generation before mine and I just wonder how on earth today's kids would begin to cope if god forbid anything like that were to ever happen again .
They’d fly drones
the children of the blitz were closer to living in Victorian Britain than today’s children are to living through the blitz.
there seems to be a whole load of manufactured intergenerational friction on social media. It’s part of the culture war that probably being waged on us by hostile nation states.
and, the players are under 13 and Playing for fun. It’s great that you were engaged (you) oldfart (wink), but they are children either there under duress or to have some fun. Let them be. Times have changed.
and, I suspect that coaching from the sidelines is discouraged not to save the children’s feelings but because adults started getting into fistfights at school sports events.
the children of the blitz were closer to living in Victorian Britain than today’s children are to living through the blitz.
There's a website for this sort of thing.
https://profmusgrave.github.io/anotherday/
The words of my headmistress on my last day goodbyes to go to secondary school still ring in my ears - "if you don't buck your ideas up boy, you'll never achieve anything in life".
I remember my headmaster telling me that I seemed to know everything already so he didn't think there was much they could do for me. I've tried to live my life in accordance with his inspiring words.
I remember my headmaster telling me that I seemed to know everything already so he didn't think there was much they could do for me. I've tried to live my life in accordance with his inspiring words.
I remember most of my high school teachers saying I wouldn’t amount to anything, a few years after leaving school there was a careers day. I made sure I went along to promote the ambulance service and make a point to visit each one who said that and thank the one who was supportive. This was before I gained a degree let along qualify as a paramedic.
Well all my teachers - primary and high school - said i'd be a great success. So I set out to prove them wrong. Look who's laughing now.
My school, Northicote High, early 1980's, the career advisers were more general, and oddly honest if somewhat sexist.
"Dad works in a factory or on the market? You will be fine as he will get you a job on the production line or on a stall. Dad works in an office? Uni for you lad, or the typing pool lass. No dad? Dole for you."
I was (and still am) in the no dad camp. Took me 5 years and a 100 mile move from home to land my first full time job, working on an assembly line in Wales making washing machines. Only got that as my middle name is Welsh FFS, and I removed my first name on the application form.
Such is life.
Watching grandsons Under 13s cricket match last night . A couple of the lads got themselves in a pickle and nearly got one of them run out . Seeing it coming I called out quick hurry up sort yourselves out .
The " officials" keeping score didn't take kindly , our daughter saw that and told me to keep quiet they weren't happy.
There then followed an explanation, apparently you aren't allowed to say anything negative any time it has to all be positive 🤔One of grandsons teammates said to him " Don't swing at the ball you idiot" that had to be reported back ????
Parents/spectators (even teammates) shouting unsolicited advice and/or negative comments is just them being a dick. Children thrive on encouragement, they learn by making their own mistakes and having positive support to develop at their own pace. A kid with a passion for Cricket at 13 might be technically terrible but nurturing that enthusiasm can easily turn them in to very competent, even excellent player within only a couple of years. However, affirming their insecurities with your negativity can completely kill their desire to play. TLDR - shut up and clap politely.
Same in school apparently it's all you've all done very well even if you haven't .No checks and balances for bad behaviour.Im so out of touch it would seem, forum name checks out . But if kids are shielded from reality right through their schooldays is it any wonder when they leave the world outside comes as a shock , some minor " bump in the road" they clearly aren't expecting and boom anxiety triggered .
'Apparently?' Nonsense, of course schools have procedures for dealing with bad behavior. What they can't control are the parents/extended family undermining their work outside of school.
I'm reminded of the recent programme " Children of the Blitz " the generation before mine and I just wonder how on earth today's kids would begin to cope if god forbid anything like that were to ever happen again .
This is just utterly crass.
My school, Northicote High, early 1980's, the career advisers were more general, and oddly honest if somewhat sexist.
The entirety of my careers advice in the mid-80s went like this:
"What do you want to do?"
I don't know... something to do with computers?
"Um..." checks notes "... uh, do that then. Next!"
Nonsense, of course schools have procedures for dealing with bad behavior
You say that, but what those procedures are varies hugely and what 'dealing with bad behaviour' looks like is correspondingly variable. In fact it's variable to such a degree that the way it's 'dealt with' in some places looks an awful lot like it's not being dealt with. See the recent news articles about the massive rise in violent and aggressive incidents in Scottish school over the last few years as evidence of bad behaviour not being dealt with.
I'm going to get up on my soap box for a bit on this idea of how behaviour is dealt with in schools because I think we've gone down the wrong route in some ways and I think we'll look back on this period at some point and shake our heads in disbelief.
For those that don't know, I'm a secondary teacher in Scotland. I'd also like to be clear that I'm not advocating a return to 70s style discipline.
One of the key phrases in the ideology underpinning behaviour management in Scottish schools is that 'all behaviour is communication'. This is basically meant to be understood as any disruptive behaviour is the result of an unmet need or trauma. I think it's good that we consider the possibility that this might be the cause of some poor behaviour but I have sat through presentations where we are told that all disruptive behaviour should be viewed in this way. What this does is to pathologise an awful lot of normal behaviour (kids being kids, pushing boundaries etc) and such behaviour then needs to be dealt with differently from how it might be tackled if you hadn't pathologised it.
The upshot of this is a real split between how many teachers (and not just the older ones) think most disruptive behaviour should be tackled and the agenda being pushed by the Scottish Government and many school leaders.
"agenda" is a multifaceted word, now. Tell us more?
The agenda that all behaviour is communication.
If you take that stance then it changes how you deal with behaviour. If you think a kid's behaviour is the result of an unmet need or trauma then things we have used in the past to manage behaviour like rules and boundaries and consequences and even sanctions like detention or exclusion become less appropriate. In lots of schools they've essentially been ditched completely.
As I've said, sometimes the behaviour is communication and that needs to be dealt with differently from the day to day disruption but this agenda has removed many of the tools we formerly used to manage the day to day, kids being kids behaviour and that's made everyone's lives more difficult.
What they've tried to replace these with is a 'relational' approach where the focus is on building positive relationships with pupils. There's not a teacher in the land who would deny that relationships are important but there still need to be systems in place to deal with situations where that doesn't work. Those systems have been dismantled in many schools and we have not been given adequate resources or training for the systems suggested to replace them.
Mrs Pondo was a secondary teacher in England, worked at the same school for 14 years and didn't have much of an issue with behaviour, even as it deteriorated across the school and consequences for bad behaviour became less and less over that time. She left there a few years ago as she got fed up with management nonsense and the shockingly bad academy management, just wanted to be a teacher in a different school. She lasted 6 days before having a breakdown - goodness, I've never acknowledged that before, we just joke about her "going mad", but that's what it was. She's now at a 6th form college in the city centre, kids are mostly good but again there's zero consequence for bad behaviour so the muppets just keep on muppeting, but there's few enough of them that she's ok with it. She'll never go back to secondary again.
Mrs Pondo was a secondary teacher in England, worked at the same school for 14 years and didn't have much of an issue with behaviour, even as it deteriorated across the school and consequences for bad behaviour became less and less over that time.
This illustrates the failure of the relationships approach to behaviour rather well. Where you have the relationships and suitable systems, i.e. in your classroom it's not too challenging to maintain good discipline. Step outside that environment or move to a new school and that's where you need the frameworks of whole school procedures which have been so eroded in so many schools.
As I've said, sometimes the behaviour is communication and that needs to be dealt with differently from the day to day disruption but this agenda has removed many of the tools we formerly used to manage the day to day, kids being kids behaviour and that's made everyone's lives more difficult.
It's probably me being dim but I'm still not understanding what you mean here by "agenda." What you're describing sounds more like "policy." Does it have a specific meaning in education that I'm unaware of?
Mrs Pondo was a secondary teacher in England, worked at the same school for 14 years and didn't have much of an issue with behaviour, even as it deteriorated across the school and consequences for bad behaviour became less and less over that time.
This illustrates the failure of the relationships approach to behaviour rather well. Where you have the relationships and suitable systems, i.e. in your classroom it's not too challenging to maintain good discipline. Step outside that environment or move to a new school and that's where you need the frameworks of whole school procedures which have been so eroded in so many schools.
Exactly that, I think. As an established teacher with a reputation, she didn't have much of an issue with discipline at the old place, with a few outliers as the exception. As an experienced teacher at a new place... Well, she's never spoken about it except to very vaguely hint once or twice that discipline was an issue. Anyone who's got into teaching in the last ten years or so has my utmost, heartfelt admiration.
It's probably me being dim but I'm still not understanding what you mean here by "agenda." What you're describing sounds more like "policy." Does it have a specific meaning in education that I'm unaware of?
Agenda as in an underlying motive. The changes the Scottish Govt have been pushing are against what many teachers want and part of the strategy has been to make the sort of 'systems and consequences' type behaviour management that most teachers (and indeed most people) understand seem outmoded and undesirable. Lots of teachers also don't agree with the ideology driving these changes which is another reason why I'm referring to it as an agenda.
I'd say anyone who was in their 20s anytime between 1990 and 2008 has no right to talk about resilience.
If you could reasonably be considered a young person between the fall of the Berlin wall and the global financial crisis you had a leg up in a way that, to most young people today, must seem like science fiction.
Hello 🖐️
It's a fair point, Us Late Gen-X/Early Millenials did get to live quite Charmed Childhoods, we had the best toys, best Telly, They'd started telling teachers not to hit us and then we got the interwebs!
University education was relatively cheap for us, but there was also accessible work for most of us from the age of ~16 and IIRC the first setting of a minimum wage happened in the late 90s(?)
Of course as you point out 2008 was when things started to go to shit with the Credit crunch, only some of us had gotten on the property ladder by that point.
I think we built some resilience, we just lacked the rose-tinted misery of people born in the 60s, As a generation we were hitting adulthood as late stage capitalism started to show the earlier signs of it's current failures.
And let's not even talk about the boomers...
Best not they are a bit thin-skinned having been blamed for most of our modern problems since Brexit.
In fairness I do think we're approaching the tipping point where it's boomer's Kids (my generation) that need to accept our share of the blame now, We're in our 40s We've failed as a generation to really improve the world and enough of us have now become entrenched enough that the same patterns are repeating all over again.
Lots of teachers also don't agree with the ideology driving these changes
What ideology would that be? What's the underlying motive?
In fairness I do think we're approaching the tipping point where it's boomer's Kids (my generation) that need to accept our share of the blame now, We're in our 40s We've failed as a generation to really improve the world and enough of us have now become entrenched enough that the same patterns are repeating all over again.
Yeah, but at the same time, boomers were the largest voting block in the UK from the beginning of the 80s right through until the last general election.
Sure, Gen-X and Millenials (and most recently Gen-z) should have come out and voted for the least worst option, but having a single large voting block at a similar stage in life for more than 40 years means that catering to them is going to become the norm. It's difficult to get enthused when every political party sees your needs as an after-thought.
It's only now that millenials are going to overtake boomers and they aren't going to be anything like as dominant as boomers have been (and that's a good thing).
And again, I don't think there is anything inherently greedy about boomers. I just think people are always going to vote for parties who are addressing their concerns and politicians have been addressing boomers' concerns since the beginning of the Thatcher era. It's just demographics and the nature of democracy.
Next couple of elections will tell, I reckon. If FPTP doesn't completely torpedo everything...
You still haven't got it through your thick head there is NO such thing as boomers
You’ve heard of the post Second World War “baby boom” yes? You know that happened? The generation born then are known by that name. It’s just a short hand for that generation. Saves a lot of typing.
You still haven't got it through your thick head there is NO such thing as boomers
Ok… Boomer 😁
You still haven't got it through your thick head there is NO such thing as boomers
Another scintillating contribution.
You're a credit to your generation.
Yeah, but at the same time, boomers were the largest voting block in the UK from the beginning of the 80s right through until the last general election.
Granted, but they’re thinning out, and if we’re playing the game of apportioning generational guilt, us Gen-Xers need to do better and ‘own’ our part in things.
And again, I don't think there is anything inherently greedy about boomers...
As you noted Boomers were the generation that enabled the Greed an avarice of 4 decades of Neo-liberal capitalism, believing in the promise that the markets would solve all problems while benefiting from the post-war investment in state institutions that their own parents had voted for.
Gen-X benefited from that in-between period too, no denying that.
But now I look at my own kids who have actually had to build a bit of resilience while the adults around them collectively shat the bed over some mega-flu a couple of years ago and are now aware enough to know that their prospects and available opportunities, relative to their own parents are being eroded for them.
All the while being put down by “old farts” who seem to believe they themselves somehow built tremendous resilience by voting for Maggie, flogging off social housing, privatising our utilities and fattening up their own pensions while sitting on nice big pots of equity (Gross Generalisation I am aware).
So I would say I do see the Boomer generation as a greedy one now (Generally, obviously there are always exceptions) and I also see a lot of defensiveness around that point from them as well.
At the same time, that damage is done and Boomers are now collectively kicking the bucket. Thus Gen-X need to stop blaming our parents by default and start working/voting more in the interests of wider society, particularly younger generations, and maybe try to avoid becoming the same miserable old shits that love to punch down and blaming younger generations for their perceived failures, which somehow acquired in the paradise their Parents/Grandparents helped to create…
a single large voting block at a similar stage in life for more than 40 years
Where do you get the idea that those born between 1946 and 1964 are a "single large voting block"?
Admit it - you're ashamed of yourself, your lack of success, the fact that you haven't achieved whatever goals you set yourself so, of course, it has to be somebody else's fault.
^Yup.
Even Cougar has fallen for this media bullsheet .What is wrong with you people?
Yeh,all those mining boomers fighting Maggie were such greed heads!All those people including myself who went to court over the Poll Tax all we could think of was our own greed.Shame on you Brucewee.
Even Cougar has fallen for this media bullsheet .What is wrong with you people?
I can actually remember where I first heard the term "Boomer." I was confused by what it meant.
Though apparently it was already a 20-year old term by then.
Not wanting to drag the thread down any further but the term baby boomer comes from a demographic observation. But the implications of that boom aren't anybody's "fault."
The Pinchis a pretty good (albeit ~15 year old) read about how those demographics created an imbalance for the following generations.
In 2010 the author argued "... if our political, economic, and cultural leaders do not begin to discharge their obligations to the future, the young people of today will be taxed more, work longer hours for less money, have lower social mobility, and live in a degraded environment in order to pay for their parents' quality of life."
My Dad (an early boomer himself) was so intrigued by it he bought it for me when it came out - possibly the last time he brought me a present, too. He always talked about how easy it was to get work in the '60s and that it would be much harder for me.
Where do you get the idea that those born between 1946 and 1964 are a "single large voting block"?
Admit it - you're ashamed of yourself, your lack of success, the fact that you haven't achieved whatever goals you set yourself so, of course, it has to be somebody else's fault.
Actually, as I said earlier, I timed things pretty much perfectly (well, not me but, you know). Not only was I established in my career before 2008, I hadn't actually bought a house prior to the crash, so my first flat I got for a steal (didn't feel like it at the time).
Career-wise, I've jumped around a lot, but again, by the time I started out the idea of a job for life was laughable so there was no expectation of stability. If you know everything in your career is built on shifting sands then it's a lot easier to stay agile and jump when you need to. I took advantage of that knowledge pretty well.
I do give boomers a hard time, but it's more for their lack of awareness of their good fortune. Believe it or not, many boomers are grateful they were born when they were. The only ones who seem to get offended are the ones who refuse to accept they were lucky (again, as a generation, not as an individual).
My good fortune I happily acknowledge. And instead of criticising those younger than me for not being as awesome as I am, I can see just how much more difficult it is for them compared to me.
On the voter block thing, are you really saying there is no correlation between a generation and its voting pattern?
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/49978-how-britain-voted-in-the-2024-general-election
Yeh,all those mining boomers fighting Maggie were such greed heads!All those people including myself who went to court over the Poll Tax all we could think of was our own greed.Shame on you Brucewee.
I don't think you should be getting so wound up about my opinions.
Have you considered trying to be more resilient?
My mother gets really pissed at that too.On the voter block thing, are you really saying there is no correlation between a generation and its voting pattern?
She was a paid up Labour party member and counts a good number of them good and the great as personal friends. Spent 3 decades running a couple of different regions for one of the bigger unions.
But even she accepts that her generation is statistically one of the least flexible and most dogmatic as far as voting preferences go. This comes with a significant bias to the right, even while those they vote for are actively trying to ruin their lives, and the lives of their kids and grandkids.
Admit it - you're ashamed of yourself, your lack of success, the fact that you haven't achieved whatever goals you set yourself so, of course, it has to be somebody else's fault.
Can we save this quote for the next English Bashing Scottish Politics thread?
Where do you get the idea that those born between 1946 and 1964 are a "single large voting block"?
Whilst it was somewhat lazy wording its a forum post and not a research paper. The statistics do show that age group does have a majority voting block.
Your outrage about it shows a certain lack of resilience. Did your school ban spectators shouting?
Is "lack of resilience" the new "snowflake"?
TBH my thoughts on this guff and being an old fart in general are:
1) People don’t like criticism.
Opinions are literally like assholes,everyone’s got one and we don’t need to see/hear and will probably ask if we want to.
2)People are actually pretty resilient.
You trundle thru life navigating all sorts of shite that gets thrown at you because you have no option but to.
3)The relentless march of time,the world rolls on because that’s what it does.
The world we live in now is not the world we lived in growing up so we shouldn’t be quick to judge future generations as it’s a different game as ours was to our parents.
I've heard that old folk nowadays have no resilience as they couldn't scrape a living by making flint tools and tackling sabertooth tigers before lunch. I bet most couldn't start a fire at the entrance to their cave either ....
