Now when Trump or Dutton or some idiot on Sky News talks about a Marxist agenda and how schools are brainwashing students, I’d like to add some perspective here: If I could brainwash any of the teenagers I’ve taught over the years the first thing you’d notice is that there’d be no chewing gum under the tables. As for a woke, leftist utopia, well, that’d be well down my list…
If there are any teachers reading this, I suspect that most would be nodding in agreement, while the others would be saying, “Forget the chewing gum, what about those fucking mobile phones that were meant to be banned?”
Ok, the fundamental problem with educating adolescents is that, generally speaking, they’re not ready for it!
This is no surprise to anyone who’s dealt with an adolescent recently. I mean, I’m sure some of you can think of some nice kids or even a time when one of those terrible teenagers surprised you by a demonstration of thought or empathy, but most of you have probably muttered something about the youth of today and how it was so much better in your day…
However, it probably wasn’t. You probably just think it was because you were the one demonstrating the difficulty of putting the wisdom of the ages into a brain that was suffering from the raging hormones that adolescence brings…
Now when I say that they’re not ready for it, I’m not proposing that we pause the education system for a thirteen year old and send them to work in the fields or the mines for a few years… although that idea does have some merit. No, I’m simply suggesting that at any moment of any day, the adolescent would rather be somewhere else, doing something else, and that most kids will acknowledge that Yes, they do need to get this work done because they don’t want to get into trouble/fail the test/disappoint their parents, but they’ll do it later because right now there’s something else that’s more important.
It may be hard for you, as the mature adult, to see what’s more important about finishing the game or finding out what Sue-Ellen said at recess than completing the rest of the trigonometry problems, but that’s not the issue. The thing is that the teenage brain reacts to the future in much same way that the average thirty something adult reacts to a discussion about their superannuation. “Look, I know that it’s important, but only to that person I’ll be at sometime in the future and that person is a stranger to me and I don’t much care about them. I’m sure they’ll be ok…”
The future adult is a stranger. In fact, the future adolescent is also only dimly connected to the one you’re talking to.
And most things aimed at changing behaviour presume that we’re dealing with a rational human who makes rational decisions. Anyone who knows anything about behavioural economics knows that even adults don’t think work like this…
Yeah, sure, it’s nice to think that people will stop smoking if you just give them the facts and that they won’t point out that Uncle Fred smoked three packets every day of his life and he lived to the ripe old age of 47 before the car hit him… but he would have lasted just as long as anyone if it wasn’t for that, and nobody can say that smoking killed him, even though that’s what everyone predicted… Mind you, some people might suggest that he could have got out of the way of the car if it wasn’t for the fact that he had a coughing fit before his wife reversed over him to make sure that her job was done…
Whatever, before we go down the path of worrying about teachers brainwashing kids, we need to spend a lot of time working out if it’s even possible.
And, if it is, maybe we should start with them not putting the chewing gum under the desks…
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Excellent Rossleigh. As a retired teacher of adolescents, l agree.
We used to fantasise about an entire year 9 workplace experience.
Just until they recognise how hard work actually is. Or they get a job offer 🙏🏻
Some private schools send their year 9 kids to camp for a year. 🤷🏼♀️
I had a keen brain as an adolescent and was more interested in learning than many of my peers. My teachers didn’t indoctrinate me, heck, I read The Communist Manifesto for a Year 12 Economics Assignment and Thomas Sowell and decided that Thomas Sowell had a few merits, but he was not a patch on Marx, yet I also decided that one of the negatives of Adam Smith’s economic theories is that no matter how proficient they are, a person who screws five nuts onto a wheel 150 times in an eight-hour shift has very little job satisfaction.
I also formed the opinion that Admiral William D. Leahy, speaking in 1947, was right to a point when he claimed that the use of the atomic bomb against Japan was of no material assistance. Yes, Harry Truman was concerned that the peace feelers were not sincere and yes, Japan considered death greater than dishonour, BUT if Truman had studied history, he would have known that the Russians wanted to enter the war against Japan not just to spread their ideology but to avenge the loss of the Russo-Japanese War of 40 years earlier.
Then again, I acknowledge that I wasn’t a typical adolescent.
Thankyou! As a semi-retired teacher, I hear and agree with you, as do all the teachers that I have ever worked with.
“You’re brainwashing the kids”
Same people force-feed their children religion from the moment they’re born.