School is back in session. Good news for parents who want a break from their children. Bad news for teachers who now have to deal with them for eight hours a day!
If you’ve been browsing social media lately, chances are you’ve stumbled across posts or videos by teachers (and even former teachers) lamenting how students these days are out of control and falling behind.
Teresa Kaye Newman, a music teacher, released a 6-minute TikTok video where she aired her own grievances (and those of other teachers) about the current generation of students— known as “Generation Alpha” (or “Gen Alpha”).
She said of her own students: “They don’t respect authority. You ask them can you stand in your designated spot. They’re telling you ‘no’ and ‘shut up.’ They’re throwing things at each other. They’re throwing things at other people, other classmates.”
One woman in the video claimed that dealing with her students was, “the most traumatic experience of [her] life.” Another person lamented: “By far, we are doomed. Like these kids do not care. Like I have kids all they wanna do, all day long, is get high.”
So why are kids these days so misbehaved to the point where teachers are breaking down into tears on social media? One problem could be the way students these days are disciplined (or rather, not disciplined). And it’s a problem that a 70-year-old children’s story foretold.
In her video “The Gen Alpha Situation Doesn’t Surprise Me as a Former Teacher”, SirSugarMeat explained how she had worked as an educator for six years in public, private, and charter schools, and how her experience in each setting was equally (and extremely) stressful.
She described how her former job was a “drain on her mental and physical health.” The overwhelming stress from it often gave her anxiety attacks, drove her to the point of uncontrollable sobbing during her breaks, and even caused her to gain 20 to 30 pounds from stress eating.
Why are students so grossly misbehaved? SirSugarMeat discusses many reasons, from lack of support from the school system to parents being unwilling to raise their children properly. But one particular problem she highlights is a radically-different approach toward discipline: restorative justice in education.
Traditionally, when students misbehaved, they would be disciplined through punishment. However, under “restorative justice”, teacher and counselors are instead encouraged to “talk out” their problems with their students (along with their parents), understand why the student misbehaved, and take actions to ensure the student would not misbehave again.
As SirSugarMeat explained, while this radical approach toward discipline has good intentions, like all good intentions, they pave the road to Hell:
“We can recognize the horrible treatment that children of the past faced in school institutions and try to make it a more welcoming and comfortable place for students of the present. However, I think along the way of that conversation, a lot of adults interpreted that notion of treat students equitably and respectably as: spoil the kids rotten and don’t ever tell them ‘no.'”
On paper, restorative justice in education sounds like a good idea and a better alternative, as it attempts to address why a student misbehaved rather than simply punishing or chiding them for misbehaving.
In practice, however, restorative justice rarely works that way–at least in the schools SirSugarMeat worked in, and according to the experiences of other teachers who worked in similar schools.
As she explained, this approach to ‘discipline’ often resulted in students merely being sent to the principal’s office to “receive a snack or a treat and be sent on their merry way.”
Listening to SirSugarMeat’s experience with how schools were failing to address students’ misbehavior through “restorative justice” reminded me of The Silver Chair, the fourth book in the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis.
The book follows Jill Pole and her adventure with Eustace Scrubb (from the previous book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) into the magical world of Narnia. However, her story actually begins with her crying behind the gym at her school.
Why was she crying? Because she was being bullied by the other students. And why were these students bullying her? As the first chapter details, it was because the “mixed school” (co-educational) she was attending “was not nearly so mixed as the minds of the people who ran it.”
These people had the idea that boys and girls should be allowed to do what they liked. And unfortunately what ten or fifteen of the biggest boys and girls liked best was bullying the others.
All sorts of things, horrid things, went on which at an ordinary school would have been found out and stopped in half a term; but at this school they weren’t. Or even if they were, the people who did them were not expelled or punished.
The Head said they were interesting psychological cases and sent for them and talked to them for hours. And if you knew the right sort of things to say to the Head, the main result was that you became rather a favorite than otherwise.
Funny how, despite being written more than 70+ years ago, The Silver Chair eerily reflects the problems with the current generation of children. As the old saying goes; “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”
Seems like not much has changed, as most schools still seem to deal with “trouble students” by sending them to the principal’s office where they get a snack or treat, a friendly chat with the principal, and a pat on the head before being sent on their merry way to continue misbehaving.
Granted, as SirSugarMeat explains, restorative justice in education has some good ideas. Students should be taught why what they did was wrong rather than simply be punished for doing something wrong. And teachers should try to listen to students and understand their needs as to better realize why students misbehave.
However, as much as students need love and understanding, failing to hold them accountable for their actions for the sake of “love and understanding” will simply permit them to continue misbehaving. That love needs to be tempered with proper discipline.
C.S. Lewis once warned about the dangers of placing love over justice. As he wrote in Mere Christianity:
“You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials “for the sake of humanity,” and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.”
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J.C. Alexandre 