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Kids Today

maximus otter said:
Get a couple of drinks inside a large sample of teachers, and l’d bet a fiver that most of them would be confident of their ability to predict the probable course of many pupils’ futures simply by studying a list of their christian names.

maximus otter
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Sadly though, this is often true. When I worked in a science department, we had to have the class lists tacked up on the back of the prep room door (in case anyone needed a specific child, we could tell them which science group they were in and which teacher they had). It was rather noticeable that the children with 'Younique' names (not ethnically different names, this is a school with a VERY undiverse population) were in the lower group sets. Children with names like Storm and River and Willow could be anywhere, but the Tanzii-Mae s and the Diesels were almost always lower set.
 
catseye said:
Sadly though, this is often true. When I worked in a science department, we had to have the class lists tacked up on the back of the prep room door (in case anyone needed a specific child, we could tell them which science group they were in and which teacher they had). It was rather noticeable that the children with 'Younique' names (not ethnically different names, this is a school with a VERY undiverse population) were in the lower group sets. Children with names like Storm and River and Willow could be anywhere, but the Tanzii-Mae s and the Diesels were almost always lower set.
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My nephews girlfriend is a teacher, and she's already crossing names off her list, despite neither of them wanting kids of their own yet.
 
Tigerhawk said:
My nephews girlfriend is a teacher, and she's already crossing names off her list, despite neither of them wanting kids of their own yet.
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Some of the names sound lovely, there's nothing wrong with the sound of 'Tanzii-Mae' it actually sounds like quite a sweet name, Tanzy-May. It's when you see it written down that you wonder about the parents. I have a particular dislike of gaelic or celtic names that are spelled phonetically (I realise that this might just be a 'me' thing), but it makes me wonder whether the parents heard the name but have never seen it written down. Yes, it's a lot easier to have a Neeve than a Niamh or a Shanade rather than a Sinead, but really??
 
When I was pregnant with my first child and teaching I liked the name Gavin for a boy.
A new boy came to the class who smelled like a sewer, which made me feel rather ill.
The vice principal mentioned it to the parents who said that we were there to teach him, not smell him.
When the children lined up there would be a large space around him as the other children didn't like the smell.
Of course his name was Gavin and I lost interest in the name after that and had a girl anyway.
 
It isn't my area—I'm not a school teacher—but poor personal hygiene for younger students (up to about nine or ten) is commonly thought to be a clue that the child is not being properly cared for at home—particularly if observed in conjunction with other issues: punctuality, discipline, poor academic performance, peer-group problems etc.

Students with chaotic family lives who succeed in their studies certainly do exist, but they're the rare exceptions to the rule.

I teach a relatively affluent cohort, but I'm frequently trying to impart such recondite wisdom as 'put the child to bed earlier', 'check he has done his homework', 'have a schedule for meals and study' or 'have him read instead of play on a phone everyday.'

There's a (variable) limit to how much you can nudge (I have methods of spinning the hints), but all these things (and many more) have a direct influence on a student's learning.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
Amen to that! Human luggage is being carted around Manchester at all hours.

True, I hate babies but I like to think I am protecting their best interests in wishing them off the streets and into their cots! :cooll:
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Of course, some children just don't sleep. My mother in law used to tell me off for not putting my eldest daughter in her cot to sleep.

But she never slept. From newborn she'd have about 20 minutes napping during the day, and that was it. She could stay awake half the night too, and if you put her down in her cot she'd scream blue murder and wake her older brother. So I got used to doing everything with a small baby.

She was diagnosed with ADHD later. We should have seen it coming, to be honest.
 
I don't think parents are lugging their spawn around, because they are sleepless babes. It's their own interests they put first. Hedonism and child-rearing are wholly incompatible, I fear.

The kids who do not seem to be out at night are the ones next door, though they stay up until midnight anyway. :willy:

Time I was out . . .
 
Another take on this:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marg...l-health-interventions-counterproductive.html

The researchers point to unexpected results in trials of school-based mental health interventions in the United Kingdom and Australia: Students who underwent training in the basics of mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy did not emerge healthier than peers who did not participate, and some were worse off, at least for a while.

In a paper published last year, two research psychologists at the University of Oxford, Lucy Foulkes and Jack Andrews, coined the term “prevalence inflation” — driven by the reporting of mild or transient symptoms as mental health disorders — and suggested that awareness campaigns were contributing to it.

“It’s creating this message that teenagers are vulnerable, they’re likely to have problems, and the solution is to outsource them to a professional,” said Dr. Foulkes, a Prudence Trust Research Fellow in Oxford’s department of experimental psychology, who has written two books on mental health and adolescence.
 
Yithian said:
Picking up from my thoughts here:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...childhood-curiosity.71183/page-3#post-2341862

This chap is hardly the only writer saying these things, but he does make explicit the links between anxiety, depression and loneliness in teenagers and young adults and the changing nature of childhood, and he also makes concrete (if rather optimistic) proposals for how to tackle it.


It's interesting—if you stick with it—that there are figures comparing the effect of these forces on people from religious and non-religious families.

Note: the ongoing protests at universities in the U.S. are mentioned as an example of his thesis. Please do not pick up and run with this particular ball as it rolls past.

Edit: received an email from Miss Yith's school yesterday, reminding parents that phones, smartwatches and internet-enabled devices are banned from the premises. They spun it as a privacy/child-protection measure (something I have reservations about), but I'll take the downstream advantages for 'normal play' all the same.
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My brothers and I were the epitome of neglect. We were never taught how to bathe properly, keep our teeth brushed and there were times when we had nothing to eat for days. I remember being hungry for most of my childhood. My brother. who is barely a year older was one of the ones who thrived and found school so easy. So much so that his teacher wanted to advance him 2 years ahead because he was getting bored. My mom said no and he ended up leaving school for good in grade 9. My younger brother did the same and when my sister came along 10 years after me, she left school in the middle of grade 10. Even though I hated school, I finished highschool, bearly passing with a 67% average and went on to complete college. Ya know, now that I think about it, I never did use that degree in lawenforcement. Even though I passed with a 97% average.
 
Later on when I was being used as an aide another boy came to us who had been in 6 different schools.
He also smelled really bad and grunted instead of speaking and of course had no interest in learning. This went on for 6 months.
One day I was sent up to the main school across the oval and he was banging on doors and windows and I said that he certainly had the devil in him that day.
To my surprise he actually spoke and said that he liked to do what the devil said.
I said that maybe he would get on better if he did what God said and if he had a bath sometimes that the other children might play with him.
He looked surprised and asked if that would happen. He also said that his problems started when he was burnt in a fire which the school had no record of happening.
Anyway his sister who was in an older class was enlisted to see that he was cleaned and he started to learn although he was still a long way behind the others his age.
It was arranged that he could go to a special school as he had improved so much and a bus to pick him up.
In an interview with the parents the father refused to believe there was anything wrong with him and one day they just disappeared.
I sometimes wonder what happened to him and where he ended up.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I don't think parents are lugging their spawn around, because they are sleepless babes. It's their own interests they put first. Hedonism and child-rearing are wholly incompatible, I fear.

The kids who do not seem to be out at night are the ones next door, though they stay up until midnight anyway. :willy:

Time I was out . . .
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This can often be seen in 'family friendly' pubs in the evening. Hence the outrage caused when pubs declare themselves 'child-free'; it's a sense of entitlement in the parents.
Still, when a grandfather moans about 'kids these days', I quietly say "I blame the parents". When they inevitably agree, I follow it up with "I wonder who taught the parents that such behaviour was fine?" It takes them a while before they snap "WELL, I taught my kids better!"
 
I was very surprised a couple of years ago when round at my friends. His son, call him Jack, about 35, nice guy had a variety of jobs and is fairly left of centre was in the house and there was a TV news programme on. This woman moaned: "Well who's going to feed my kids?"

Jack, uncharacteristically yelled at the TV. "Well that would be your ****ing job and if you spent less on tattoos, junk jewellry and the ****ing vape you're sucking on you could bake the kid a spud."

Turned out Jack had volunteered at a food bank the previous week and had been astounded at the number of parents dragging kids in with them while they picked up various items and moaning about starving children and oh! look someone's given some sweets, what a treat for them. He was then outraged when he discovered some of them loading said items into the boot of newish expensive cars two streets away!

These kids do have their uses.
 
Thing is, you need an official referral to a Food Bank. Appearances can be deceptive.
Had they borrowed the car for the trip? Did they buy the car when in employment? Okay, so they could downgrade to an older, less expensive a car but is this one more fuel efficient?
 
Stormkhan said:
Thing is, you need an official referral to a Food Bank. Appearances can be deceptive.
Had they borrowed the car for the trip? Did they buy the car when in employment? Okay, so they could downgrade to an older, less expensive a car but is this one more fuel efficient?
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True, and he only worked there for a week or two between other jobs as he does sessional work. The impression he got was that there were certain people, as always who worked the system, e.g. bull****ed the CAB etc. to get referrals but that it was difficult to prove. As he said it was a small minority but annoying as they are taking from those who really need it.
 
Tunn11 said:
True, and he only worked there for a week or two between other jobs as he does sessional work. The impression he got was that there were certain people, as always who worked the system, e.g. bull****ed the CAB etc. to get referrals but that it was difficult to prove. As he said it was a small minority but annoying as they are taking from those who really need it.
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There are different kinds of food bank too, there are the community kitchen type, which we give some of our food to that is past its 'display until' date but not past its 'best before' (so things like tins and teabags, not meat). A lot of those you can just turn up to, like the places where you can pay a random sum like £10 and get £50 worth of random food.

The food bank food we have is a bin for donated foodstuffs at the end of the supermarket, which is filled by customers who buy a little extra and then donate. It's a slightly different enterprise and for that you need a doctor's referral or some other kind of official body to prevent misuse. But then, it's better that a few people misuse the system if it prevents others from starving.
 
I think this teenager is briliant.

She accidentally wanders into East Germany with a camera and is held in a cellar and interrogated by secret police who feed her propaganda, so she bluffs them with some diplomatic flannel, plays table-tennis with her captors and after release says she'd like to go back some day.

https://x.com/BBCArchive/status/1788463919113339230
 
michael59 said:
My brothers and I were the epitome of neglect. We were never taught how to bathe properly, keep our teeth brushed and there were times when we had nothing to eat for days. I remember being hungry for most of my childhood. My brother. who is barely a year older was one of the ones who thrived and found school so easy. So much so that his teacher wanted to advance him 2 years ahead because he was getting bored. My mom said no and he ended up leaving school for good in grade 9. My younger brother did the same and when my sister came along 10 years after me, she left school in the middle of grade 10. Even though I hated school, I finished highschool, bearly passing with a 67% average and went on to complete college. Ya know, now that I think about it, I never did use that degree in lawenforcement. Even though I passed with a 97% average.
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Too bad I didn't learn how to proof read.
michael59 said:
My brothers and I were the epitome of neglect. We were never taught how to bathe properly, keep our teeth brushed and there were times when we had nothing to eat for days. I remember being hungry for most of my childhood. My brother. who is barely a year older was one of the ones who thrived and found school so easy. So much so that his teacher wanted to advance him 2 years ahead because he was getting bored. My mom said no and he ended up leaving school for good in grade 9. My younger brother did the same and when my sister came along 10 years after me, she left school in the middle of grade 10. Even though I hated school, I finished highschool, bearly passing with a 67% average and went on to complete college. Ya know, now that I think about it, I never did use that degree in lawenforcement. Even though I passed with a 97% average.
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Sounds like I never learned how to spellcheck either. :roll:
 
Iris said:
Later on when I was being used as an aide another boy came to us who had been in 6 different schools.
He also smelled really bad and grunted instead of speaking and of course had no interest in learning. This went on for 6 months.
One day I was sent up to the main school across the oval and he was banging on doors and windows and I said that he certainly had the devil in him that day.
To my surprise he actually spoke and said that he liked to do what the devil said.
I said that maybe he would get on better if he did what God said and if he had a bath sometimes that the other children might play with him.
He looked surprised and asked if that would happen. He also said that his problems started when he was burnt in a fire which the school had no record of happening.
Anyway his sister who was in an older class was enlisted to see that he was cleaned and he started to learn although he was still a long way behind the others his age.
It was arranged that he could go to a special school as he had improved so much and a bus to pick him up.
In an interview with the parents the father refused to believe there was anything wrong with him and one day they just disappeared.
I sometimes wonder what happened to him and where he ended up.
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Good for you for helping him that way, it's sad that no one else along the line had bothered. I feel for him, I hope he turned out ok
 
6 yr old grandson usually doesn't talk much, being busy with his game on a phone.
Yesterday his mother told him to show me his drawings which he had done in a notebook.
They were surprisingly good . One was of a gnome which prompted me to tell about the dream I had when I was about 3 or 4 where some gnomes were teaching me to read.
He was really interested and I wondered if it would encourage him with his reading as he's a bit slow there.
He's great with maths and technology though.
 
Kondoru said:
Its really easy to get a food bank voucher.

Any sob story to your GP will do.
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They can't make it too difficult - it would put off some of the people who really need it. I'd rather that a few people who are just trying it on get some free food than people who actually struggle can't get access.

And a lot of the donated food is fairly basic, it's not the most luxurious of products, so they are hardly taking home a trawl of fancy biscuits and expensive chocolates.
 
catseye said:
They can't make it too difficult - it would put off some of the people who really need it. I'd rather that a few people who are just trying it on get some free food than people who actually struggle can't get access.

And a lot of the donated food is fairly basic, it's not the most luxurious of products, so they are hardly taking home a trawl of fancy biscuits and expensive chocolates.
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True, but it does grate though, when you see the local oik helping themselves to stuff that should be going to someone who really needs/deserves it.
 
catseye said:
They can't make it too difficult - it would put off some of the people who really need it. I'd rather that a few people who are just trying it on get some free food than people who actually struggle can't get access.
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Other than those who really have no conscience, most people are in need. I have read many first person accounts of people who have come to the realization that they need to use a food bank. They describe having to really struggle to get over the stigma of need. They often say they are in tears when they first visit.

We are very much a survival of the fittest culture and to admit you need help of any kind is seen as a weakness.
 
Floyd said:
True, but it does grate though, when you see the local oik helping themselves to stuff that should be going to someone who really needs/deserves it.
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They might be taking the food home to their family who really need it.
Plus, if they're enough of an oik to shoplift instead of buying food they'll stay home instead.
 
escargot said:
They might be taking the food home to their family who really need it.
Plus, if they're enough of an oik to shoplift instead of buying food they'll stay home instead.
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Well, obviously I'm not just making statements about random people.

I know the character(s) that I mention.

(I only used the term oik, because I thought skank might cause offence).
 
Polish girl of 13 gives birth during school trip, police investigate

(I fear this has a sad backstory. I hope the poor girl will come out of this well.)

A 13-year-old Polish girl gave birth during a school trip this week, Polish police have announced. As sex with a person under 15 is punishable in Poland, police have launched an investigation.

The young mother is currently in a hospital in the Polish city of Oswiecim. Her condition is stable. Her baby has health complications, according to police, and has been transferred to a hospital in Kraków.

The girl, from the Masovia region, which includes Warsaw, was staying with her class in a group home about 50 kilometres west of Kraków. The child felt bad in the evening and then gave birth in the bathroom. The girl's teachers called the emergency services.

In Poland, people aged 17 or older can be sentenced to prison for sex with someone under 15. It carries penalties of two to 12 years. If the offender is younger than 17, the juvenile court decides on a possible punishment.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2520862-pool...ns-schoolreis-bevallen-politie-doet-onderzoek
 
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