AIBU to think some school policies are at least partially responsible for the rise in pupil unhappiness?

[Alittlebitofmin]

A friend’s kid described school like a prison. He is likely to be a school success story set to get really good grades, but sees school as something to mainly tolerate. AIBU to think the school system itself is at least a significant partial reason why teenagers report lower levels of happiness at schools in England? Schools seem increasingly punitive and restrictive, pressure seems high, some children are even made to feel guilty if they have a day off sick.

It isn't volunteering if it's compulsory.

So either you have national service, or you encourage volunteering.

The reason we don't have much volunteering is there's no infrastructure to oversee it, it would be intense to set that up, the money would be better spent on all the higher priority things (education, youth services, social work etc.)

The national service debate has been covered extensively so won't repeat.

It gets them used to the fact there ARE rules in the workplace and that they can either follow them or find somewhere else to work.

Isn’t this how school has always been? It gets you ready for that lifetime prison called work.

It's tricky yes I agree some of the rules are awful, for the well behaved kids. Not being allowed to drink when you want or go to the toilet when you want is awful. But schools are damned if they do and dadmned if they don't- if they let kids all go to the toilet out of lessons there is vaping, vandalism, bullying, etc that they don't have the resources to deal with. If kids got their heads shoved down the loo every time they went to the toilet because schools allowed everyone to go then there would be uproar as well.

Having sensible rules definitely does this.

The type of rules and practices in schools that irritate students - and that I mostly didn't enforce when teaching! - don't do that at all.

What company wastes time checking socks?
What company puts people in detention for forgetting a pen to a meeting?
A bankrupt one.

Schools were always like that though. I think children have it a lot easier now than they did years ago, they just don't have the resilience to deal with situations where they are not the centre of the universe and might have to do things they don't enjoy. And that's down to parenting.

Not just that - I think rules were changed? The churchyard (charity) I do volunteer gardening in used to have chaps who were doing community service as part of their court order once a year. They'd come for years, then the churchyard had to start getting insurance for the volunteers, it was too expensive and too much of a headache so that was the end of that.

Your experience sounds very typical. And it’s only a matter of time before a teachers’ WhatsApp group is outed for the vile things that go around them about students and parents. I left all the ones I found myself on and was branded unsociable.

I also would distance myself from anything unkind or unprofessional on any WhatsApp group. I have heard some dreadful things about some of the parent groups, but fortunately dd's one just focuses on which days PE is on and whether they've got homework this week etc.

Forgotten pens are the bane of my life. I spend a small fortune buying pens.

If it were just one kid and one pen on occasion, but it's not. It's serial offenders who have lovely shiny new phones and Pandora bling and North face coats, but wait until it's time to start work before announcing:"i an't got a pen. " Every lesson.

My own ds, from a house fully stocked with an array of pens, often had negative points for lack of equipment. I would have detained the little bugger myself, because in his case it was a combination of disorganisation and the arrogance that the world would provide.

Because they needed something irrelevant but complex to justify teaching English for years longer than actually necessary. Please list all the times an indepth knowledge of any of his works has been useful for you in your adult life.

Well that's a depressing view. Hope you don't share that with your kids. Maybe we should funnel kids then: are you curious and do you want to learn stuff because learning is fun? Do you want people who really know their stuff to share their knowledge with you?Go the academic route.

Do you want have the curiosity of a table and no time for thought and ideas? Go to this route.

You need to watch a program called ‘That’ll Teach Them’ by Channel 4. They made a few but series 1 was in 2003. The show took groups of modern teenagers and sent them to a strict, reconstructed 1950s boarding school to see how they would cope with the discipline, diet, and academic standards of the era. On the whole the children loved it!!! You might be able to get the series on DVD or stream it somewhere, but definitely worth watching. The UK has the unhappiest children in Europe. Children in the Netherlands are consistently ranked the happiest. The Netherlands is a leader in part-time work, allowing both mothers and fathers to spend significant time at home with their families. This is a fundamental difference.

Wow, what a depressing view of the world it must be to think that something has to be useful to be worthwhile.

Does knowledge of a shared culture count as useful? Or a luxury?

A couple of weeks ago I watched, without any teacher telling me to, Much Ado About Nothing with David Tennant and Catherine Tate. It was really good, and I really enjoyed it.

I agree completely.

Some things in life suck, but they are unavoidable. Resilience is one of the most important skills anyone can master.

I am always amazed by parents who wade into every tiny issue that their child has instead of helping them obtain the tools to deal with it themselves.

I'm intrigued whether schools are stricter now as I often hear this on here and from parents IRL. All the rules mentioned on this thread though, were rules when I was at school early 00s. Uniform, correct shoes, taking off coat indoors, couldn't drink or go to toilet during class etc. We even called our school a prison too because they built a huge metal wall around it and would stand guard to catch latecomers. I agree with the pp who said school is easy street compared to adult life. No 6 week holidays for me anymore plus all the corporate BS you have to deal with at work. I'd love to read Shakespeare now instead😆And I wasn't a 'cool' kid with the right clothes so on one level having a uniform was less stressful as I didn't have to think about what to wear.

I don’t know if it’s country wide, but DD’s school sent kids to isolation for just about anything. You get sat in this cubicle (literally, the desk has a cubicle) and stay there all day, it serves no purpose. You’re not given tasks, homework or even a book.

If I’m honest for the longest time I thought DD was exaggerating until I met other people who also vouched for it.

And guess what, no uniform in the Netherlands! My own DD is glad we don't live in England because she hates the idea of a uniform.

A lot of the rules in England around uniforms seem unnecessarily petty. I honestly think there would be a revolt here if students were made to wear blazers in hot weather. And that is not because people are particularly rebellious here but because it's nonsensical.

As for your second point, DH and I both work 4 days, much less stressful than both working 5 days which we have done in the past when we had DD. DH was one of 3 guys in his team last year to have a baby and all 3 work 4 days a week now. It does wonders for parental involvement.

Polling consistently shows that parents in England prefer schools to have uniforms, so it amuses me when people make out that this is all coming from schools.

Schools could definitely make uniforms more practical. Mine in the early 00s was just plain trousers, polo shirt and the school jumper, plain non logo shoes.

They could, but again, parents like schools that pretend to be private schools with blazers and ties.

We had to drink the water from the basins in the toilets out of makeshift cups made from paper towels if we wanted a drink at break.

If you had school dinners you got the chance to drink one dented metal cup of room temp water from a dented metal jug.

I don’t believe schools are anywhere near as strict now.

Somewhere along the line, we have convinced kids that school must be fun instead of something to be tolerated.

Agree giraffe poll done at my school, parents voted to keep the uniform. Same elsewhere.

I also agree with the pp who said everyone wasn't surgically attached to a water bottle 10+ yrs ago so that probably helped with the not needing to pee constantly!

At the other end of the scale, though, I can't think of many companies that would simply put you in a room by yourself for a day after you kicked a colleague and called your boss a f*ing see you next Tuesday.

I can't think of many companies where repeated disruption of meetings/poor attendance/refusal to do any actual work would result in anything other than dismissal.