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Resilience Or Agenda?
Governments are rolling out a new concept of teaching confidence and resilience in schools as part of the curriculum. It comes as part of a new initiative at assessing the behaviour of children in schools.
According to officials, low-level disruptions such as leaning back on chairs, chewing gum and mobile phones are what disrupts much of the learning time in the classroom. Having an assessment, watching this behaviour is supposedly going to help stop such disruptiveness.
I can't see how, to be honest. The new guide is said to try methods of correction instead of isolation for bad behaviour. I don't agree with isolation as punishment for said behaviours in schools, I think immidiate isolation for a student who is being aggressive is necessary or being sent to the headteacher's office to sort out the problem like it used to be.
Instead, this correction comes in the form of building confidence and resilience. I'm no psychologist but I don't see how building confidence is going to stop a student from chewing gum. The plan also talks about bullying not being accepted at any level. As we all know and maybe have experienced ourselves with our children, government school officials and schools themselves have been saying this for decades and nothing ever changes.
This is my theory of why they are now bringing in this new resilience buzz word to the table. School officials are completely incompetent of stopping bullying in schools, so now they are going to teach children resilience instead. They are going to teach them how to be confident. In other words, they are going to teach them to ignore bullying behaviour and be strong and not get upset when other kids are being mean. In other words, they can't stop bullying so they will teach kids how to put up with it instead.
However, if this resilience teaching isn't connected to bullying at all, then what good can it do? We have gone from having to be politically correct about everything which has led to the snowflake generation and now they want them to toughen up and stop analysing every conversation and comment said to them. All I can say is that the government have brought this on themselves and now they expect schools to pick up the slack.
With school financial cut and teacher leaving the profession for being overworked and underpaid, how do they expect to A: pay for this plan, and B: get academies to agree to it. Academies can choose their curriculum, so why would they want to take on more work?
Coincidentally, this initiative runs parallel to the increasing youth mental health crisis that's currently swarming the nation.
I guess running classes in confidence-building would be helpful but knowing a child needs the sessions of confidence-building can only come from assessed behaviour. So how would parents feel about their child having an assessment in school on a level that concerns their mental health? If the child asks for help or if bullying is reported or witnessed then that's a different story. But is assessing children as a lesson a slippery slope? Will this lead to children being referred to outside organisations, local councils getting involved with parent interventions, GP or mental health hospital recommendations, social services? Who knows where this could lead to? But I wouldn't trust it. We need to know much more about this initiative and I believe parents should have to give consent for the lesson rather than it just being added to the curriculum.
Your children do not belong to the government and we need to stop being so trusting and accepting about what is being taught in schools.
This resilience is being packaged up as for the good of the children, but I'm very wary of it. Who exactly are they sending in to assess our children? Are they even qualified to do the job or will teachers have to learn a script and follow a generalised guideline? How exactly do they decide who needs confidence-building and resilience lessons? Who keeps the records of the assessments? Are the results of the assessments being shared with outside organisations? What kinds of things will they be discussing? Will parents get copies of the records?
I can't express enough how dystopian this concept is. I hope all parents take heed of my concerns and start asking more questions. Even if I'm completely wrong, it's always good to question authority and not just accept that because it's on the curriculum it is to be trusted.