To feel children today have a much more positive experience of school

[callherwillow]

I started school in 1986 and sarcasm and shouting was rife. Punishment involved humiliation - I remember boys in particular being stood in the corner and instructed to 'turn around and face the wall, we do not want to see your ugly face.'

However, more importantly really, I don't think I learned anything worth speaking of throughout primary and most of secondary school. It was all just work from textbooks, barely any English, an endless project on the Aztecs in Y5 and trips to the same local museum every year!

Do others have similar memories or was my school just really bad? :)

I started primary in 92. All I remember is being bored all the time. Clock watching all the time.

We also had a pedophile teacher there who abused the boys until one of them told on him.

The head was also a vicar and wouldn't let the girls wear trousers.

I remember in art being taught to paint like you were stroking a cat and a few history projects.

My dc in contrast know so much more then me and it's not Because they are more intelligent then me it's that they've just been taught the basics so well. Their grammar is outstanding and has outstripped what I know. Their maths at only years 4 and 5 is more then I can do now unfortunately so I can't help with homework on that.

My secondary was shit as well. Another pedophile teacher got sacked, and all we did was mess around. We were allowed to smoke in a certain science room as the teacher smoked as well so if you were on the back row of stools he'd come and sit down and give you a fag.

There was a few really good teachers that tried their best with us but by yr 9 the majority of the years mindset was how bad can we be, can we get excluded and what new way can we manage to get out so we can go shoplifting at lunchtime.

Almond

Surely it would be massively unprofessional for school leadership to claim that teachers can either identify a mental health problem or cure one

In a sense that is what is happening with the current insistence that there is a sharp rise in mental health problems in schools directly linked to testing.

The headlines would have you believe that we have thousands of previously happy and well adjusted children who suddenly and abruptly have become mentally ill due to the rigour of tests, which there isn't any solid evidence for. There are arguments against the tests themselves but I don't believe a decline in the mental health of students is one of them.

I don't believe teachers are that stupid

It isn't about stupidity, it's lack of expertise in a particular area leading to a direct belief that those presenting themselves as 'experts' indeed are. Look here - that's one of a few similar organisations trying to move in on the current 'crisis.' I don't think JK Rowling is stupid: David Cameron (for all his faults and failings) certainly isn't, yet they were just two of the people who were convinced by Camila Batmanghelidjh.

It doesn't tend to be teachers who can 'cure' or 'support', but 'professionals' (with no mental health qualifications at all, but this doesn't matter in this bizarre turn of events!) who are invited into schools with their various agendas - for a fee, of course.

Please note that I am not stating that mental health problems do not exist in the under 18s. I am pleased that in the last decade we appear to have overturned this myth and the 'old' rather dismissive idea that as a child had nothing to be depressed about simply through being a child, as if depression is purely the reserve of adults, is a positive step forwards. However, I dislike the current way that mental health is being used to score political points and to line the pockets of certain unscrupulous organisations with their own agenda.