Oh, it happened. But you weren't allowed to protest or you would get beaten up. You just went to school every day and pretended everything was fine at 14.
How many old people come out nowadays with their abuse stories at school and say "it sucked, but that's how it was back then"? We didn't suddenly become snowflakes who can't take hardships, we always knew what it was, but we just weren't allowed to call it out.
If I was running this group the very first thing I would be looking to do is establish whether this is a crisis or whether they're just part of a crowd that has always existed but hasn't been organised into any form of group that could seek political/social resolutions to the problem. It's kind of essential information.
Before you can address the problem you need to know where it really comes from, and people really aren't good judges of that. You really need to dig around.
I don't have data easily available to share about this, but quite frankly, you have the harder job if you're going to claim that things are just about the same as they always were regardless of whatever else was going on at the same time. Proving a negative tends to be that way.
I know multiple people whose kids are too anxious to go to school and they have to call or text their kid to coax them to school every morning. I didn't know a single family/kid like that even 15 years ago (rural area though).
In my experience it is getting worse. This behaviour has always been common in the cohort we once called "smoke pit kids", ie kids who were typically from poorer households with less support from guardians, but it's now expanding into kids from more "regular" backgrounds. (As far as I can see the rich kids are still thriving.)
Obviously letting social media companies malformed children's brains for profit + climate change is affecting mental health and we all know that. There is another factor I don't think people might have considered that's a little more subtle:
When it became normalized/encouraged for students to stay home if they feel sick, even if the symptoms were not observable to parents, there are certain students who really struggled /still struggle to use this power responsibly and have started to use it to avoid any anticipated negative interaction at school. Spotty attendance records are way up, and would you be surprised there is an overrepresentation of these types of absences on test days, or even local "feeling sick" for the blocks where there might be an assignment due?
I'm not trying to argue that this culture of staying home when sick is bad or that we shouldn't trust kids who say they're sick, but I think it sometimes goes overlooked that kids aren't smaller adults, they have brains that are still developing and some kids really struggle to use this power responsibly, instead use it as a tool for avoidance and end up digging themselves a hole.
When it became normalized/encouraged for students to stay home if they feel sick, even if the symptoms were not observable to parents, there are certain students who really struggled /still struggle to use this power responsibly and have started to use it to avoid any anticipated negative interaction at school. Spotty attendance records are way up, and would you be surprised there is an overrepresentation of these types of absences on test days, or even local “feeling sick” for the blocks where there might be an assignment due?
Can you expand on this? It's not something I'm familiar with and over here we pretty much still pack the kids off to school if they're not showing an abnormal temperature on thermometer.
Well for several years when schools were in session during the pandemic, students were (correctly) encouraged to stay home if they had any symptoms that could be consistent with having covid. However, many of these symptoms are not detectable by any exterior evaluation, like fatigue, body aches, headache, or nausea.
As a result there has been a subset of students who have taken advantage of that ambiguity and used it to stay home when they are otherwise well for many different reasons.
Ahh I see. I'm not aware of that having been a trend here but could be outside the circles involved. The majority of focus I hear on schools at the moment is teacher's strikes, particularly because they're probably the strongest union and most damaging strikes to do in the UK. Schools act as childcare allowing people to work, without schools people also stop working so a teachers strike effectively causes a knock-on general strike of sorts. Could be that this organising is overshadowing these kinds of trends being talked about.
School avoidance is not a concrete diagnosis and looks different in every child. Some students consistently miss a couple of days a week, while others may leave during the day
anecdotal, but my circle of friends did this in year 10 and 11
it was mostly to go do drugs and the odd burglary, but :vivian-shrug:
Lmao there was a whole year where students bunked off half a day to rob a nearby industrial estate. We must have stolen thousands of dvds from that place.
Is this really a new phenomenon or something that has always existed that they're sticking a name to?
Like, did this exist when schools were shittier places where teachers would punch students that misbehaved?
Is it created by social media? Or is something else in society uniquely creating it now?
Serious question.
Afaik truancy has always been a problem that, surprise surprise, correlates strongly with race and poverty in the usa.
:surprised-pika:
Oh, it happened. But you weren't allowed to protest or you would get beaten up. You just went to school every day and pretended everything was fine at 14.
How many old people come out nowadays with their abuse stories at school and say "it sucked, but that's how it was back then"? We didn't suddenly become snowflakes who can't take hardships, we always knew what it was, but we just weren't allowed to call it out.
Some things have always happened, but rates and intensity in which they happen varies according to many intersectional factors.
So like, what are the rates?
If I was running this group the very first thing I would be looking to do is establish whether this is a crisis or whether they're just part of a crowd that has always existed but hasn't been organised into any form of group that could seek political/social resolutions to the problem. It's kind of essential information.
Before you can address the problem you need to know where it really comes from, and people really aren't good judges of that. You really need to dig around.
I don't have data easily available to share about this, but quite frankly, you have the harder job if you're going to claim that things are just about the same as they always were regardless of whatever else was going on at the same time. Proving a negative tends to be that way.
I know multiple people whose kids are too anxious to go to school and they have to call or text their kid to coax them to school every morning. I didn't know a single family/kid like that even 15 years ago (rural area though).
In my experience it is getting worse. This behaviour has always been common in the cohort we once called "smoke pit kids", ie kids who were typically from poorer households with less support from guardians, but it's now expanding into kids from more "regular" backgrounds. (As far as I can see the rich kids are still thriving.)
Obviously letting social media companies malformed children's brains for profit + climate change is affecting mental health and we all know that. There is another factor I don't think people might have considered that's a little more subtle:
When it became normalized/encouraged for students to stay home if they feel sick, even if the symptoms were not observable to parents, there are certain students who really struggled /still struggle to use this power responsibly and have started to use it to avoid any anticipated negative interaction at school. Spotty attendance records are way up, and would you be surprised there is an overrepresentation of these types of absences on test days, or even local "feeling sick" for the blocks where there might be an assignment due?
I'm not trying to argue that this culture of staying home when sick is bad or that we shouldn't trust kids who say they're sick, but I think it sometimes goes overlooked that kids aren't smaller adults, they have brains that are still developing and some kids really struggle to use this power responsibly, instead use it as a tool for avoidance and end up digging themselves a hole.
Can you expand on this? It's not something I'm familiar with and over here we pretty much still pack the kids off to school if they're not showing an abnormal temperature on thermometer.
Well for several years when schools were in session during the pandemic, students were (correctly) encouraged to stay home if they had any symptoms that could be consistent with having covid. However, many of these symptoms are not detectable by any exterior evaluation, like fatigue, body aches, headache, or nausea.
As a result there has been a subset of students who have taken advantage of that ambiguity and used it to stay home when they are otherwise well for many different reasons.
Ahh I see. I'm not aware of that having been a trend here but could be outside the circles involved. The majority of focus I hear on schools at the moment is teacher's strikes, particularly because they're probably the strongest union and most damaging strikes to do in the UK. Schools act as childcare allowing people to work, without schools people also stop working so a teachers strike effectively causes a knock-on general strike of sorts. Could be that this organising is overshadowing these kinds of trends being talked about.
Yeah honestly I don't think most people are aware of this pattern, which is why I mentioned it.
anecdotal, but my circle of friends did this in year 10 and 11
it was mostly to go do drugs and the odd burglary, but :vivian-shrug:
Lmao there was a whole year where students bunked off half a day to rob a nearby industrial estate. We must have stolen thousands of dvds from that place.
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