The writer’s name has been withheld.
Consider me, a primary school teacher, your canary in the coalmine: kids have officially become bonkers. I teach in a fairly middle-of-the-road primary with a cross section of cultures, but since returning to teaching in 2018, and especially in the past few years, it seems our tamariki are direct casualties of our increasingly mad world.
Our playground teems with kids constantly screaming. They scream whenever the bell goes. When they’re chasing each other. At the merest hint of rain. When sitting side-by-side scoffing sandwiches.
They’re screaming and running pell-mell, full-tilt, willy-nilly; tearing up the mobility ramps, howling along narrow pathways, bowling around corners with nary a care, toppling Year Zeros like skittles in their wake. Roving adults are merely mobile cones around which to weave, never mind if they’re cradling a hot cuppa.
In recent months, our school has scrambled to employ new teacher aides to cope. We now have several staff whose job is to permanently shadow their charges around the playground during playtimes, should they happen to wreak havoc on their fellow students and/or property. Gates are now locked during the day to stop the increasing number of escapees. Sand has been stuffed into socks and hurled at vehicles in the staff car park near the sandpit.
At a recent assembly, a child became so enraged at having not received a certificate that, when they had all been presented, she tore her way down the line of beaming 5- and 6-year-old certificate recipients, whose faces filled with confusion and dismay as she flailed her arms menacingly at them like a demented combine harvester, hellbent on destroying their moment of joy.
These kids aren’t necessarily neuro-spicy. This is the new norm. And even if you’re not a parent, you should care, because these kids are our future: the ones who will be anaesthetising us, flying our aeroplanes, running our country. In coalmine canary mode, I often relay my fears when meeting new people at social gatherings. A bewildered building company owner grasps my crystal-ball gazing: “So you’re saying in about 10 years’ time, all of my potential employees are going to be loose cannons?”
A colleague captures the sensation of being in our playground at playtime: “It’s like daggers in my ears.” I borrow this vivid phrasing to use in class, in the hopes of garnering compassion and perhaps creating change, but it falls on deaf ears.
In classrooms, concentration is conspicuous in its absence. Heads hang down when it becomes apparent that there is no immediate, recurrent dopamine hit forthcoming. That they have to focus on an ordinary human face and actually listen to words being spoken by someone else. No longer is it mainly the sibling-free kids who act as though the classroom consists only of you and them. Teaching manners, turn-taking and spatial awareness is now arguably as pertinent and urgent as teaching numeracy and literacy. The constant behaviour management battle in class has me cross-eyed well before the 3pm bell.
I don’t recall kids crying every morning when I was at school in the 80s, porbably because we walked or biked to school ourselves. That’s the thing, we already know how to grow great kids. Playing in nature with minimal adult supervision. Talking to kids and reading to them as much as possible, especially in their first five years. Giving them the time and space for creativity and imagination to blossom. Allowing them to experience risk, fear, disappointment and boredom and to know that all of the emotions flow through us on a daily basis, and that’s okay. Plenty of sleep, movement and good food.
I want to scream it out loud: Let’s give all of our tamariki the upbringing they deserve.
