A Modern Dissolution of the Monasteries

These book-burning priests need to go.

The UK government has announced its social media ban for under-16s. (Yes, obviously this will mean adults needing online ID to prove they're over-16 - so digital dog leads via the backdoor. Not especially surprising. It's been baked into the cake since 'zero seats' handed Labour supreme power.)

I want to focus on another aspect though. Namely how this is yet another issue that proves the education system is a net negative.

You'll see headlines like this:

(Teachers very much supporting the ban)

The teachers want phones and social media out of their classrooms. Feeling it causes trouble. I would argue that the problem is school itself though.

There's lots of talk about how difficult it is for parents to keep their children offline. The problem isn't really at home though. The problems begin when the parent sends their child to school. Where there's peer pressure from other children to be online and to have a phone in the first place. Where other children use their own phones to film classmates and cause other mischief. It's like sending your child into a little urban jungle, where they're caught between the influence of unruly (sometimes even criminal) children and the influence of exasperated teachers - teachers that aren't capable of managing the situation and that, quite frankly, don't care about your child as much as you do.

Of course, children aren't just there for a few hours a week either. They're there five days a week. For pretty much the entire day when you include the bus ride.

Why anyone thinks this will benefit a child is beyond me.

It's not conducive to actual learning. How can you learn in a rabble?

I'm currently typing this blog in a quiet room, on my own. It'd be a lot harder in a room full of twenty or thirty people. Even if they were all perfectly behaved.

More importantly, just think of that negative social influence - and I'm talking real-world social influence here, not something on a screen that you can turn off if you don't like it.

Never mind the prison-like monotony of such a long, cooped up day at school, but consider that endless influence from the other kids. The rough kids; the unruly ones ..that you can't escape, as you're forced to spend your time with these people. You don't have a choice. The constant noise and chitchat. Every day and every lesson you have to sit and listen to the teachers argue with these other children. If you laugh the teacher shouts at you too. If you don't laugh you alienate yourself from the other kids.

Just as you alienate yourself if you're the only one who doesn't have a mobile phone.

This isn't a problem when you're at home. Or with your actual friends. But it is a problem when you're in the jungle, and you're stuck there, and you have to fit in and navigate the social dynamics.

The Internet Isn't Bad

The Internet is wonderful. It's the modern printing press. You can home-school your child in perfect peace with a decent Wi-Fi connection.

So why are we sending children into the rabble every day?

To places so incapable of managing, let alone teaching the children under their care that they have to beg for a government ban to give them a fighting chance.

The teachers can't cope. They say they can't cope. Yet still we persist with this system. That at best provides very poor education, and at worst has the effect of making children worse. Just as prison and the influence of other prisoners hardens criminals.

I'm in the realms of hyperbole here, but it's not untrue.

We need to get beyond this. We need a modern Dissolution of the Monasteries.

[I've covered this topic before:

What School Should Look Like

State Education: A Modern Cargo Cult

Education Austerity, 2024

Glorified Day Care ]