Kate Emery: WA’s school woes return as familiar figures and long-standing issues take the blame once again

Alright, you all know the drill. When your name is called, step forward. Thankyou for attending today’s police line-up for suspects in the case of whatever the hell is happening in schools right now. You know what I’m talking about: record-high violence against principals, teachers leaving the profession in droves and kindergarten teachers reporting out of control behaviour, from punching and kicking to wiping poo on walls, in children as young as three. In one Sydney primary school a five-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted by other students. In Perth playground an eight-year-old boy was allegedly bashed in a primary school playground, leaving him in hospital with a neck brace. Who’s to blame? Step forward, Parents. “In my day”. It’s a phrase you hear from older generations and the implication is clear: modern day lax parenting is raising a generation of self-entitled brats. But, while modern parenting may have exacerbated some behavioural issues, it would be a serious oversimplification — and problematic — to suggest that every problem with WA’s education system could be solved by a smack on the bum and judicious application of the word “no”. Parents do, however, have a case to answer. The rise of helicopter parenting is real. Parents who don’t let their children take risks are danger of raising anxious kids who will need to hyperventilate into a paper bag just to leave the house. Take the outrage around Mandurah’s new playground, which is the subject of a petition from concerned parents. Those of us who made it to adulthood may reflect on the playgrounds of our youth, where metal slides burned our thighs even as they removed the top layer of skin. The past was no idyll — modern parenting is, on the whole, an improvement — but a playground free from bruises and bumps shouldn’t be the aim. Also, too many parents are giving their kids devices far too young. Screens mess with brain development and sleep. They also deprive kids of time to read books, climb trees or hit a tennis ball against a brick wall for an hour, as was the habit in the 1980s when we had five TV channels, one landline and time to get bored. OK, parents, that’ll do for now. Politicians, you can step forward, because you’re surely to blame for schools’ focus on standardised testing at the expense of play-based learning for young kids and freedom for schools and teachers to tailor the curriculum. This is a drum parenting guru Maggie Dent has been beating for a while. As she wrote on her blog last year: “NAPLAN was introduced in 2008 as a supposed innovation to improve standards. Interestingly, standards have continued to drop over time rather than improve since NAPLAN arrived. The focus on preparing students for this standardised test has stolen valuable time for teachers to build relationships with students and teaching time.” A focus on standardised tests and box-ticking sucks time away from what kids should actually be doing. It can also be a cause of unnecessarily anxiety for some students. Which brings us to… Schools. Plenty of schools are doing right by their students but not all of them. Not the schools whose focus is on training kids to perform well in NAPLAN at the expense of learning. Not the schools who give homework to primary school kids, despite a lack of evidence anything more than daily reading is counterproductive, depriving them of time to play, relax and spend time with their family. Not the schools who punish unruly kids by keeping them in at recess or lunch, making their movement-deprived bodies even less regulated. Male students are disproportionately affected by this terrible practice. Finally, we have screens, the bogeyman of modern life. Hold your number up and step forward please. The relationship between children and screens, while complex, has wrecked its fair share of attention spans, mental health and sleep, breeding kids who struggle to sit still and focus long enough to learn what two plus two equals. And while not all screentime is equal, a kid who is attached to a screen for hours in a time isn’t engaged in pretend play, drawing or doing any of the things that help make kids school-ready. No kid under 14 needs a smartphone. And an iPad isn’t a necessity right up there with food and shelter. Future generations will marvel at the idea we ever allowed kids unfettered access to screens (and not in a good way). There we have it: four equally suspicious-looking suspects, all spotted at the scene of the crime. As for who is to blame? Let the record show that the witness is pointing at all four suspects.