Is the Nanny State ignorant of the teenage brain?

A lack of discipline among many young people in secondary schools could be State-sponsored.

Every day teachers face defiant young people who use acts of aggression whether verbally or physically to undermine and intimidate them in school environments all over the UK.?Some teachers can face a barrage of insults, intimidation and violence from pupils who think it’s their right to belittle staff.?In a recent Guardian article "Nearly nine in ten teachers said they had received some sort of verbal or physical abuse from pupils in the past year. Eighty-six per cent said they had been sworn at and 46% said they had been verbally threatened."

Teachers may be the victims of bullying through the guise of persistent disruptive classroom behaviour. This is one way that students seize power in classrooms and use it to distress a teacher. Instigating parents to chastise and bully teachers is another method employed, as well as verbal abuse and threats from friends or cliques, who have their back during an altercation, are some of the ways in which students intimidate teachers. Also reported are physical bullying or attacks. Hidden within these aggressive behaviours is the belief that suffering from ACEs (adverse childhood experiences), being prone to tantrums or spates of anger; special educational needs justifies violent outbursts.?Ultimately, this fosters a tense and unsafe environment for staff and peers and schools are forced to use exclusions as a tool to safeguard both staff and pupils.

Sadly, the “Nanny State” in its infinite and all-knowing wisdom” encourages this behaviour through its one size fits all approach regarding its child protection policies that subtly criminalises adults and creates a hands-off, discipline-shy culture in schools. This creates a new nomenclature that encourages the challenging behaviours exuded by “Generation Entitled,” whose brains, especially the prefrontal cortex, are not fully developed in comparison to the adult brain (age 25 and up). What is also ignored is the state of the teenage mind/consciousness, which is limited in its ability to make decisions based on higher moral reasoning.?The average teen is driven by dopamine and oxytocin which are produced in the hypothalamus. Where dopamine is driven by rewards and gratification, oxytocin plays a role in social bonding and sexual reproduction-- does this sound like your average teen?

Some may argue that giving teenagers the freedom to do as they please is akin to giving a baby a gun to protect itself from a nasty babysitter who wants to change its nappies. Unfortunately, a contributing factor to all this is the current system of education which is still biased and based on the colonial model of 19th Century Imperialist Britain and it has difficulty facilitating and supporting the culture and lifestyle of the postmodern British young person, whose identity is multicultural, bilingual and multi-denominational.

A common diagnosis for children who show aggression toward staff is Oppositional Defiance Disorder as coined by psychologists in their clumsy attempt to explain the growing trend of chronic disobedience being exhibited by many millennials.?We must acknowledge, that this label justifies behaviours that impede learning and totally negates accountability.?It professes that behaviour is predetermined ignoring the contribution of poor parenting and a system of child-rearing that rejects structure and discipline.?It also avoids the issue of biology (teens are programmed to be defiant), hence the need for structure and discipline.

Being a permissive parent may prove easier for most adults, who have now abandoned the more authoritative parenting style of yore as society is punishing them for being too strict and less friendly and accommodating with hormonal teens.

As a teacher, I’ve been verbally and physically threatened by pupils, who just can't cope with the educational system. I’ve been sworn at, mocked and even ridiculed by students who thought it was their right to abuse a member of staff without consequences.?I’ve been spat at, lied on, shoved and the like by students who have little fear or regard for the systems put in place by the government under the auspices of child welfare.?In addition, the aftermath of altercations between teachers and students can have serious implications for teachers, who must be investigated if any allegations are made by the students.?This puts teachers in a precarious position and empowers the students who are aware of this teacher/student dynamic in the classroom.?Teachers are chastised for disciplining students, and scrutinised when they give out “too many detentions.”?You are penalised for using the cliched ladder of referral to correct aggressive students.?

Indeed, most of the children I’ve taught are so keenly aware of their rights that they exploit every loophole they can find to keep parents, teachers, social workers and schools in check and at their mercy.?Children accrue a substantial amount of behaviour referrals before they are permanently excluded from school premises.?However, this also illustrates they aren’t getting better and that the same “punitive” methods are used repeatedly to deal with the same behaviours with the expectation of achieving different results.

Furthermore, parents are forced to practice a peer-parenting style of raising their young thus compromising and negotiating in order to deal with angry teenagers, who demand the latest trainers and gadgets in order to fit in with peers. All this is done to fend off the terrible fangs of the hounds unleashed by the child welfare Nanny State that dictates how they should raise their children.

Ironically, the state comes up drastically short on ideas on how to curb knife crime and gang culture among black boys or to provide the minimum safeguards disaffected children need to make lasting change.?We are witnessing two extremes of English culture which has failed miserably: the heinous social ineptitude and morally deficient practices of the Victorian period in England, that oppressed and abused children; following on from the Victorians, the 80s empowered children to protect themselves from abusive individuals, who preyed on the young and vulnerable.?Countless cases of abuse transpired in care homes of the eighties where media moguls like Jimmy Saville exploited vulnerable children in care.?Millions of young people are also abused by major religious institutions such as the Catholic Church.?

State-sponsored parenting leaves many struggling parents bereft with grief as their children are ripped from their arms by overworked and underpaid social workers and police officers who make bad judgements as they tick boxes, only following orders to put food on their tables.?Compare the abuse of the Catholic Church to a child being spanked appropriately and one finds little similarity as one (the cautious mindful parent) corrects the child lovingly but sternly, whereas the other (Catholic Church) abuses children to satisfy abominable urges.?Yet we do not see Catholic Churches closing down and their licences to work with children revoked.

Parents in many countries around the world would be dumbfounded by the sheer lunacy of some of our child welfare laws, which punish parents and promote the autonomy of minors, who can hardly read and write much less make crucial decisions to safeguard their futures.?In many countries around the globe, spanking is an ordinary part of life and in many of these countries, children know their place in society and respect the authority of parents, schools and community and above all make excellent progress surpassing UK children socially and academically.?These children grow up to lead productive lives and become contributing members of society even with authoritative parenting and strong cultural values which demand children respect elders and adhere to strict codes of conduct at home and in the public sphere.?Islam, Taoism (Japan) and Hinduism are examples of social/ religious systems that provide rigid structures for raising children with superior outcomes when compared to Europe and America.

In the UK and the US (where we have mass shootings in schools) levels of exclusions shoot through the roof as schools struggle to cope with antisocial aggressive pupils. In communities where parents can't spank naughty children, gangs abound and young people slay each other in the streets with impunity. More and more teachers are threatened or verbally abused by students who show no fear of the behaviour policy schools implement to instil discipline and order in the classroom.?Parents have little right when it comes to punishing violent or verbally abusive children, and teachers are put on the defensive when they issue sanctions or scold aggressive pupils who threaten their welfare and the welfare of fellow students. Moreover, Head Teachers struggle to create effective pastoral and behavioural systems that can reform violent or belligerent students who flaunt their rights without any true understanding of the consequences of their actions.

This “molly-cuddling” educational system has disenfranchised and disempowered teachers and enfranchised and empowered students whose brains are still developing. Children, the majority of whom make choices based on pain avoidance and instant gratification or Freud's "pleasure principle," flaunt rights and question authority with impunity and are often encouraged to exercise these rights by various governmental bodies, that do not actually work with teens on a regular basis. Researchers also found low cognitive functioning among some teens due to cannabis and alcohol use. According to the BBC, 24% of .. 11- to 15-year-olds interviewed said they had tried recreational drugs at least once in their lives - a nine percentage point rise on the last survey conducted in 2014." (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-44533537). A Canadian study revealed "Cannabis use was linked to impairments in working memory and inhibitory control, which is required for 'self-control.' Cannabis use was also linked to deficits in memory recall and perceptual reasoning."?So why are we negotiating with children when it comes to societal expectations, ethics and moral values?

We must ask ourselves some tough questions about the way we are running schools and family life today.?Are we unfairly shifting the responsibility for attainment onto teachers and relinquishing students’ sense of responsibility for their own performance??Many schools have abandoned textbooks which students once upon a time would have taken home to do homework or read independently.?Exercise books are locked away at school as children are seen as too irresponsible to look after them at home.?Therefore it may be argued that learning and accountability stop as soon as the majority of students walk outside the school gates. Are we certain we want to leverage power with children, who are not even capable of looking after their exercise books, bringing a ruler or pen to school or even underlining the heading and date to make their classwork presentable?

Are we inadvertently raising imbeciles whilst penalising the authority figures in the child’s life by stripping teachers of their position and status as authority figures by equating them to children thus blurring the lines between parent and child, teacher and student, in a bid to safeguard, placate and assuage the clamouring of the politically correct systems that is blinded by its endeavours to empower children; and in doing so removing the practice of discipline and accountability from the equation of child development.

This raises the question, just how do we educate a child??How do you account for the social, psychological, emotional and spiritual well-being of children without nurturing their id/reptilian brains, creating uncontrollable, self-entitled monsters in the process??This is the question that must be answered if we are to move forward as a whole society where children learn to master and control their emotions, respect adults who engage them positively, and not only learn to appreciate nurturing from adults but also learn to nurture others in a positive and moral fashion (this is a more advance prefrontal lobe process).

Granted we cannot ignore that some young people face adverse circumstances in life that may contribute to their defiance of adults.?The myriad of dilemmas whether physical, psychological or emotional is too numerous to quantify in this article yet we must not ignore their effect on young people’s consciousness.?

Essentially, we are not our feelings as the Dali Lama would peacefully tell us.?Our negative emotions are merely an indication of imbalances in our minds and bodies.?Never let loose the animal in public because you certainly will regret it.?Are our children aware of the “mammalian brain” within them and how it influences their thinking??Do they know of the reticular complex and how it influences their behaviour? What about the impact of cortisol, the harmful chemical that is released into our bodies when we are depressed, tense or in flight or fight mode??Are we teaching them about the deadly effects of anger?

So what has happened in society that has now suddenly made our communities so much more tolerant of disrespectful behaviour from youths??Why are we so willing to accept abuse and violence of all sorts from teenagers and children who feel it’s their right to vent their rage on those around them??As paralysed parents stand idly by their children trade blows and slashes that end lives on a daily basis across this country.?Many of these parents avoid responsibility for their children's actions and are uncannily adept at blaming the system. Ironically, some of these parents are a product of the Nanny State, so their first instinct is to reject any responsibility for their child's actions.

As a teacher in a secondary school, every day I face belligerent pupils who act aggressively in order to achieve their objectives.?Triggers for violent behaviours range from asking them to remove their coats when in the classroom, to confiscating a mobile phone during lessons.?These simple requests are oftentimes a recipe for disaster and can easily derail a well-planned lesson.?In fact, asking a student to be quiet and pay attention during a lesson can result in a violent clash, and emotional breakdown that could leave a teacher shaken and even traumatised; an observation could go pear-shaped because a teacher is seen as losing control of his or her class.

The rise in school violence is staggering. A recent headline in the Guardian states: "One in four teachers experience violence from pupils every week." According to the NSWUT, "many teachers claim poor behaviour is making them want to leave the profession." The study conducted by the Union found that 24% of the nearly 5,000 teachers who responded to the survey have experienced physical violence and have been "shoved" " punched or kicked" by pupils. What sort of society are we building when young people feel they can kill, injure or face off with adults to satisfy their warped sense of self?

The burning question is, are we responsible for the attitude of such volatile pupils??Could more have been done to change the course of the direction of students who commit violent acts? Are schools in England prepared to deal with students who display aggressive behaviour towards teachers and defiance of school rules? Students from BME communities for example may suffer from PTSS brought on by poverty, racism, knife crime, dysfunctional family structures etc...?Every time a young person dies from a knife crime it leaves that entire community traumatised.?Boys especially become hyper-vigilant and perpetuate the cycle by arming themselves as a means of protection.?I think to answer these burning questions we must analyse the culture of child rearing as it is practised in the UK as a whole.

Believe it or not, academic and emotional development are sporadic and unpredictable at best.?By the time they come to us, they have already been corrupted and defiled by the mollycoddling permissive system that tampered with and corrupted the core of their beings with ideas like It’s OK to be angry. You’re free to be whatever you want to be. The child is elevated to an authority figure on an equal par with the adults in their lives; they are taught to express themselves without limits.?This creates a skewed sense of reality; turning logic upon its head as lack of experience supersedes?millennia of wisdom and know-how.?A culture of entitlement is born where there’s reward without hard work; receiving benefits that are not earned whilst egos are stroked and handled with kid gloves to prevent any lasting damage to their “fragile” mental states.?This represents the essence of child-rearing in our society today and teachers are in the line of fire when this entitlement monster needs to be stroked, mollycoddled and appeased.?

From the cradle to the nursery; from the nursery to primary school and beyond, our children are brought up in a system that disarms parents and robs them of their rights to raise their children the way they see fit, with the manners, resilience, discipline and fortitude necessary to make them upstanding members of society equipped to uphold the justice and righteousness necessary to lead their communities out of ignorance.?Children are compelled to take on adult roles early and many don’t comprehend concepts like authority, hierarchy or even ethical concepts like humility.

?Robbed of the right to discipline their children in the way they see fit and to critically evaluate their conduct when they make egregious mistakes, parents are constantly negotiating and pandering to keep the peace at home for fear of reprisal from Children Social Services.?With limited ways to discipline their offspring when they boldly disobey and flaunt rules created to guide and protect them from harm, they are caught in a quandary and many struggles to figure out ways to control children with challenging behaviours.?

Parents discipline with hesitation fearful of reprisal from schools, social workers and police.?A reported scratch on a child’s knee, a bruise on a child’s arm or an unexplained illness could draw parents under the intrusive intensive scrutiny of the big brother microscope and the ever-watchful gaze of the Nanny State that will no doubt investigate the matter with threats and promises of appropriating children and breaking families asunder without any empathy.

Effective strategies such as mindfulness meditation, yoga and qi gong are not included in the curriculum even though multiple studies have shown that these exercises have helped children to cope with PTSD, stress, aggression and a multitude of other issues plaguing this generation.