Teen vaping, literacy and numeracy, phones in schools: Why don’t we ban kids instead — Ryan Bridge

THREE KEY FACTS:

• Vaping and smoking are bigger issues in primary schools than secondary schools in many parts of NZ, government figures have revealed.
• Mount Albert Grammar School headmaster Patrick Drumm has noticed a significant shift in culture since banning cellphones in school.
• The Government’s rush to change the way schools teach reading, writing and maths is scary and ‘insane’, some educators say.

Ryan Bridge hosts Early Edition on Newstalk ZB.

OPINION

Why do we waste so much precious time, energy and resources trying to police young people when they clearly have no respect for our efforts?

The “youth”. Such an ungrateful bunch. Unruly failures. The lot of them. All vape and no vocab. All TikTok, no textbook.

A lost cause if you ask me. And yet here we are trying to ban them from doom-scrolling in school, which has had some success, though notably not in those clearly more sophisticated centres for education that insist bans not be enforced in “green spaces”.

I’m assuming “green spaces” is 2024 speak for rugby fields and not the weed-smoking area of the good old days.

We try banning them from vaping, but they continue puffing away without a care for the rules we place upon them. They’re apparently vaping in the loos at school. They’re flouting the sale and purchase laws by going online to get their fix.

All the kids know it’s the dark web for drugs. The normal web for vapes and destructive social media brainwashing. All at the click of your fingertips.

And we try to ban these things, restrict the sale of things, control the behaviour they encourage.

If we’re all being really honest, wouldn’t it be easier to ban kids?

Not only would we no longer have to worry about their plummeting numeracy and literacy rates and skyrocketing addictions to all manner of modern perils, imagine the money we’d save on education.

Each year we shell out about $22 billion teaching them how to read and write, equating to almost 5% of our GDP and a whopping 16.4% of overall government spending.

It’s about the same amount we spend on the pension. At least superannuants are thankful folk. Surely, we give them a boost and forget the ungratefuls?

What this issue really boils down to is parents and their ability to guide children through their formative years.

Ask a parent and they’ll usually always say the job is much harder nowadays with both parents working, often long hours, to make ends meet.

Does this mean they’re less available to provide that crucial guidance? To impart wisdom, to teach right from wrong? To help with homework and after-school activities?

Are parents “too soft” on discipline and enforcement of boundaries?

Is the internet rewiring their brains in ways even we perhaps don’t understand, with devastating consequences for traditional academic achievement?

Is this why they’re all vaping, scrolling and avoiding maths?

"We try banning teens from vaping, but they continue puffing away without a care for the rules we place upon them." Photo / 123rf

The answer to the problem probably lies somewhere between all of the above. The solution — and it’s difficult to say this without sounding a touch like former MP Charles Chauvel who told a child on a flight to shut up — lies at home.

As we’ve all recently learned, the state can’t even look after kids in its care let alone those that aren’t.

Bans and rules and restrictions aren’t the worst thing in the world, but they will also never replace a decent moral compass.

The reality is a parent’s job in 2024 is no different to what it’s always been.

To teach kids right from wrong. To guide them as best they can on a pathway to success in adulthood.

There’s no doubt it’s harder now when parents are working and the internet’s made everything so available. I suppose every generation of child rearers faces its own, unique set of challenges. Imagine doing the thankless task during a world war, or an ongoing one we’re fortunate enough to live far away from.

And the news is not all bad.

Sure, about 10% of Year 10 students vape daily, according to 2022 data. But that also means 90% don’t.

Only 1.2% of the same year group smoke cigarettes, which means 98.8% don’t. That number’s reduced considerably since 2000, when it was 15%.

That probably means those who would have smoked now vape. Vaping’s much cheaper since we taxed the bejesus out of durries and failed to boost pocket money in line with this astronomical inflation.

We’ve given them little choice, really. Poor things.

But, ultimately, the moral of the story is that kids will try things and push boundaries and be naughty because it’s in their nature to do so.

And the people with the greatest chance of curbing those impulses are the parents, family and caregivers who raise them.

When done with the right amount of care, love, patience and discipline, there is nothing more beautiful in the world than the nurturing bond that exists between parent and child.