This is a quote that resonates with almost all of our students. The behaviour some of the most challenging students display is a clear communication of sadness and despair. We can all agree the world today is sometimes cruel and unpredictable for all of us. It is more than confusing for our young people.
Case Study : Jamie has grown up being passed from relative to relative and feels very aware that nobody really wants him. His parents are unable to look after him as they have chaotic lives themselves and have unstable homes and relationships. They swing from expecting too much to being “sick of him”. Jamie feels like he can’t win, he’s tried everything he can think of.
Jamie is not in care, he is cared for by relatives, this means that he doesn’t always get access to the support he really needs and has no way of communicating the loss he feels and the gaps in his care. Hes’ fourteen, of course he doesn’t have the words. Jamie is bright though and could be brilliant. He functions day to day in a perpetual state of flight or fight, he is hyper-vigilant and is on high alert to spot threats wherever he looks. This is behaviour learnt the hard way from being thrown down the stairs at 8 years old and being left cold, dirty and hungry for weeks aged 5. At these moments school was the safe place, teachers noticed and interventions were put in place, police were called and GPs involved.
Now Jamie is 14 he has to navigate the world alone as teenage boys don’t need to be looked after. It’s up to him. When he is humiliated by a teacher for being sleepy or lacking focus, he swears and throws chairs. If someone “looks at him wrong”, calls him “dadless” or bullies one of his friends, he becomes the vigilante he needs himself. He fights, anyone, whenever it’s needed. He has a reputation with teachers and with other students and increasingly with other lads outside school.
In another family he’d be different. He’s bright and caring with a strong sense of right and wrong. His school wants to help, he’s a favourite among many of the teachers for his resilience, sharp mind and cheeky demeanor. But life in secondary school isn’t designed to give the “Jamies” what they need, it’s designed for the masses, the sausages in the sausage maching,the middle stream of kids who come to school to take their GCSEs.
When Jamie told me that there should be a GCSE in Kindness, it blew me away. Unfortunately for Jamie, he is a grapefruit who will break the sausage machine or it will break him.
It’s time to bring back teaching. It’s time for our education system to be fit for the purpose of being the much needed safety net for those who don’t have one at home and the place where young people learn to be kind, considerate adults with a sense of community. This is our chance, they are our chance of having a country we can be proud of. We need the government to see it too. We need to break this cycle and education is the only way to do it.
