Lesley Ward, the new head of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, claims that her members are seeing evidence of deprivation that would be familiar to Dickens. "I am talking about perfectly healthy children who enter school not yet toilet-trained. Children who cannot dress themselves, children who only know how to eat with a spoon and fingers, and have never sat around a table to enjoy a home-cooked family meal. Children who think that the word 'no' means if you throw a wobbly it will miraculously turn into yes.
Children who get themselves, and sometimes their younger siblings, up in the morning. Children who bring themselves to school at very young ages. Children who sometimes don't know who will be at home when they get home – if anyone. Children who don’t know exactly who the father figure is in the home from month to month.
I know of a pupil who actually saw, from the classroom window during a lesson, his house door being kicked in and his dad being led out of the door in handcuffs – this was during Sats week. He did not achieve the level he should have.
Are we surprised?
Teachers all over the country are working in areas like this. Areas where often more than half the children receive free school meals, where one in ten of the school population is on the at risk register, where 10 per cent, or more, of the children in each class have some form of special need.
These children come from some of our poorest communities, starting school with the huge weight of deprivation on their shoulders, and it can be next to impossible to counteract the effects of such deprivation. I would like to stress I am not talking about the whole of our school population, but a small, significant and growing minority."
She is right to highlight these issues.
However, whilst "poverty" may exacerbate certain issues, she is wrong to blame "poverty" specifically for them:
1 Even animals (our 5 month old cat for example) manage to work out how to use the toilet. The lack of toilet training has nothing to do with poverty, but incredibly abysmal parenting.
2 Poverty does not equate to lousy behaviour. Certain members of the Bullingdon Club have on occasions behaved like yobs in public places, yet the poor of Dickensian Britain tried their best to behave with as much dignity as was possible under the circumstances.
3 Poverty does not compel you to have children.
4 Poverty does not compel you to not read to your children.
5 Poverty does not compel you behave like sub humans.
6 Poverty does not prevent you from using the toilet.
7 Poverty does not prevent you from being able to use a knife and fork.
8 The collapse of "human behaviour" and "social skills" has been mirrored by an opposite increase in the activities and encroachment of the state into private lives. The state is taking away people's self responsibility for the their lives and removing the need for them to worry about the consequences of their own actions.
The state is causing the expansion of the so called "under class".
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Ken;
ReplyDeleteI agree with your thoughts.
Regarding toilet training; lazyness is the problem. Before disposable nappies, mothers had to wash the things out and kids felt uncomfortable in them if they've soiled them thus, in my day, most kids were clean by their first birthday or just after.
Of course the Nanny brainwashing starts earlier these days, I started school just after my 5th birthday, now Nanny takes them at just turned three and keeps them there until they're eighteen......The feminised teaching profession(sic) then turns them into good socialist PC drones, just as Nanny likes 'em to be.
Yesterday I was appalled to see a video of Mr Balls teaching children to sneeze into the crook of their elbow and then, wash their hands....Idiot. Aren't kids encouraged to carry hankies these days or a few tissues and why wash hands if you've put a green slug trail on to your blazer or jumper? What will Educations Ballsup suggest next?....Wipe your feet after a number two?
No wonder our nation is going down hill rapidly with Nanny in charge. Problem with people today as the state expands, is that they want nanny to wipe their arse rather than taking responsibility for it themselves!!
All together now;
Green sleeves was all my joy.....
You stated, Ken, 'The collapse of "human behaviour" and "social skills" has been mirrored by an opposite increase in the activities and encroachment of the state into private lives. The state is taking away people's self responsibility for the their lives and removing the need for them to worry about the consequences of their own actions.
ReplyDeleteThe state is causing the expansion of the so called "under class".'
I agree with you, Ken, that there are too many parents who don't give a s**t about their kids or what they are getting up to, and this has got worse since the 1960s with the continuing decline of the traditional family, and standards of behaviour. The interference of the state has, of course, made a bad problem considerably worse, by amongst other actions, banning the cane and other forms of corporal punishment. Indeed, many decent parents dare not discipline their children, because giving children a smack, in a loving way, is thanks to "child-centred" policies, likely to result in social workers poking their unwanted noses in, not to mention certain children's "charities" and probably a court appearance for assault. Yet, children who actually are in need, such as "Baby P" are allowed to slip through the net by these same busybodies!
You are correct, too, Tonk, in your thoughts about these issues. I just don't know the answer. Actually, I do, but there is a snowflake in Hell's chance of being able to do implement it -- the liberal apologists and the human rights lobby would ensure that never happened!
It is called socialism in action. The nanny state has destroyed this country and I now doubt if a turnaround is possible.
ReplyDeleteIt must be difficult for the under class to want to, or know how to, improve their forms of 'human behaviour' and 'social skills' when our ruling class are so impoverished of the same, and set such a bloody awful example.
ReplyDeleteLuckily there are still a few of us in between the top and the bottom who know better and accordingly behave better.
That is we few who want to be left alone, and are responsible enough to be left alone, by the Nanny State, who still properly care about others, who want to live in peace, who value family life, who have compassion in their heads and hearts. Sadly there are too many people who are not like us few.
On a similar note, there was a photo on the BBC website yesterday of a young boy stood by the passing coffin of a soldier. The boy was saluting and a tear streamed down his cheek. Stephen Farrell could well do with sticking a copy of that photo on his wall, and another in his wallet, so that he could have a look at it from time to time, and have a bit of a think.
I am always appalled to see pictures of Mr Balls. I am appalled by the very idea of Mr Balls.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant site. I am 20 years old and despise the completely stupid and off the wall laws that are coming into force, eroding our free will.
ReplyDeleteIs there any way we can all protest against this (which is larger than a blog?)
I am afraid you are wrong about the poor. During WW2 when children were evacuated and put in strangers houses - their behaviur often shocked the recipients. Children who thought it was ok to pee in the corner of the room but not in the middle. Children who stole reflexively etc.
ReplyDeleteAs for procreation - why were there always more poor - random procreation played a part.
Eh, lad it's well know fact that t'poor like to shag like rabbits.
ReplyDeleteIn my day a lad had to have at least ten knee tremblers afore going down t'pit for tuppence happeny a week...
I agree with you, lack of toilet traning isn't about poverty its more about lazyness. As a group we keep making it more comfortable to let consumer goods make your life easier and now we are paying for it.
ReplyDeleteA few people I know had to put their kids in cloth diapers to get them to train because the commercial disposables were making their kids just too complacent that Mum and Dad will clean up after them.
I have read a fair bit of Dickens, yet cannot recall mass incontenence in children being prevalent.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I misread them, and that this teacher knows best.
Reading the comments it seems like none of you have considered why so many kids are not toilet-trained, are rude and violent, can't hold cutlery let alone polite conversations.
ReplyDelete>>> State and economic insistence on both parents working + execrable dumping grounds (aka 'nurseries') = immature, disturbed and disturbing kids who lead chaotic lives amidst strangers predominantly.
The damning academic research was conclusive ten years and more ago. Yet the gov has simply let this mass abuse of our little children continue unabated.
Anecdotally, I have a daughter-in-law who, on her path to becoming a child psychologist (for which profession there is an explosion in demand), has spent the last 6months at one of these 'nurseries'.
The reports are grim. She goes home every night in tears (this isn't hyperbole for effect).
Staff are very poorly paid and undereducated. Staff are bullied and bullied - particularly about the latest set of 'targets' and their fulfilment, and about inspections (the last of which had the manager screaming round the day before getting all staff to sign that they'd done a whole course in Elf'n'Safety, when of course, they hadn't. The inspector saw the anomalies but nonetheless gave the nursery a good mark).
Children are left there from 8am to 6pm and longer. They have a couple of rushed hours with their parents who feel so guilty that at weekends they indulge and spoil their little cherubs rotten.
Half the four yos can't use a toilet properly. Several don't know how to sit down and eat a meal normally. Boys particularly are violent and abusive. Girls fight viciously. Every week almost my d-i-l has to make a formal report of injury that is serious enough to be entered in the elf'n'safety book - that is, an injury deliberately done to HER by one of these children.
You'd think this was some sink estate, wouldn't you? It's not. These are the children of both the new middle-classes and of 'traditional' professionals. These parents are not lazy - they're pushed beyond what is good for their children and what is good for themselves by this care-less, tax, tax, tax socialist culture. They don't have time for their kids, let alone for washing nappies, ensuring decent table manners, and teaching respect and courtesy. They have no time for loving their children...
God help us. Really. These kids are the ones who will be responsible for our welfare as we age. This is a country on the road to sheer hell.