The Mental Health Strain

 

Rates of anxiety, depression and ADHD trauma are way up and these are mainly ‘’disregulated’’ or already  showing ‘’oppositional disorder’’ pre arrival at school. It is turning some schools into mental health units. The fact that this is congruant to a huge effort to ‘’mainstream everybody’’ with accommodations and instructions to’’just differentiate and scaffold’’ is causing a massive teacher burnout, with excellent, career  teachers just retiring early, seeking new careers,which is very serious to the point that it is causing recruitment problems. This is a system that is overwhelmed, 

 

Looking at screens and the dopamine hits

 

Cell phones and tablets have become addictive and offer a dopamine hit through constant stimulation that does not jibe with classroom instruction. Many cannot focus on the low dopamine activities of reading, listening, writing, The short video format trains the brain to seek impulsivity, and novelty. 

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Social media is magnifying conflict, identity anxiety, and peer drama. Here is one example to illustrate.  Teenage males at a Toronto high school set up an off campus website to ‘’ rate the girls at the school on physical beauty’’ using the classic 1-10 scale with added comments. You can only imagine the resulting chaos. Many teachers dated ‘’dysregulation’’ in schools less to covid and more to the arrival of personal smart phones and tablets. 

 

The decline of discipline or inconsistent discipline in schools. The lack of consequences. 

 

Restorative justice, as practiced, is a failure. It was a lovely, naive, kumbaya idea that didn’t work. Too often consequences are unclear and inconsistent, Teachers feel totally unsupported and principals seem to live in fear of outspoken parents, central office, or school board members. It is now one more contribution to the teacher shortage. 

 

Family stress is bleeding into the school system.

This classic set of circumstances, in the past, somewhat restricted to the poorest schools, is moving up the class ladder as economists describe the K shaped economy polarized between some people who have never done better and a much larger group that is downwardly mobile. There are the housing issues, food inflation, long hours, two jobs, parental stress, less time for homework assistance, latch key kids, internal family chaos that follows the kids to school. The fraying of the social safety net is rapidly exacerbating the problem. 

 

Inclusion without resources. 

 

Inclusion of students in general education was never intended to include students with severe learning problems, intellectual disabilities, or violent disorder issues. In the past, too many mild LD kids or kids with incomplete English fluency were unnecessarily excluded in elementary schools and in some high schools, too many working class and racialized kids were being ‘’councilled’’into terminal occupational classes. Canadians and Brits call it streaming and Americans call it tracking. 

 

In the past, we probably included too few. We seem to want to correct that by including far too many because the system can’t seem to apply enough judgement or criteria to stop the pendulum in the middle. Today it is obvious that classes are too large, educational assistants are too few and governments show little interest in legislating required changes or negotiating class size and composition as a remedy. We need an attitude shift that ties any mainstreaming to available resources - no resources, must mean no integration. We have the cart before the horse. 

 

The legitimacy of authority.

 

We are in a period where many students and parents simply do not respect institutional authority. Schools are included with the police, the courts, and others. ‘’You can’t make me’’ might well be our epitaph if we don’t find the handle on the issue. Behaviour has become negotiable for dysregulated students. Expert consensus is that this is not a ‘’kids these days’’ issue. Society as a whole, has become more volatile and more demanding, school included. 

 

Why do experts not list ‘’gentle parenting’’ or  downplay it as a cause?

 

Gentle parenting certainly is a suspect. Many teachers report a lack of consequences in the home, or lack of discipline from the beginning. Time outs and pep talks don’t seem to cut it with serious ‘’oppositional disorder’’. Many young people have a real problem with NO. Parents challenge teacher consequences and attempt negotiations. Both can escalate if not satisfied. Even the advocates point out that gentle parenting is not permissive parenting. 

 

Psychologists offer four common  parenting styles. 1) authoritarian, 2) permissive, 3) neglectful or 4) authoritative. They advocate number 4 as the most successful. Try to use a respectful tone, rules clearly explained, avoid shame or physical punishment. 

 

The problem with too much gentle parenting is the avoidance of conflict. The issue is not the gentleness, it's the inconsistent boundaries. When parents challenge the rules, kids watch and follow, challenging grades, expecting unreasonable accommodations, pressure to individualize, threats to escalate ‘’I pay your salary’’. 

 

What can really be done? 

 

According to the experts, predictability and consistency beats tone or gentle understanding. Tighter behaviour expectations, clear expectations work. Students crave both fairness and predictability. Discipline must be immediate but also proportionate. 

 

Phones must be banned or collected. The issue for the significantly dysregulated or those with oppositional disorder. It’s an issue of neuropsychology. Teachers are not mental health professionals. They are experts in curriculum and pedagogy. We must front end load mental health screens for anxiety, trauma and ADHD. Students need to understand self regulation through breathing exercises and other coping mechanisms. If most students can’t self regulate we are is deep trouble, 

 

We need to support teachers, not just students. We need smaller classes and more EAs. We need more prep  time for teachers mainly to communicate with parents. Administration must support teachers in public even if they need to offer suggestions in private. 

 

Some schools may need stronger leadership to enforce a unified discipline policy and don’t waffle under parental pressure. You need consistent policies across schools. This is the way we handle X issue or you get ‘’you’re mean, Ms Smith lets us play music while we solve math problems’’. We must also be consistent with parents and not negotiate consequences..

 

The socioeconomics of behaviour

 

Canada has about 3% public or social housing. Americans have around 7% social housing including rent subsidized private housing. European nations range around 15-20% public housing with some cities like Vienna having 60% public housing. This goes a long way to not only making homelessness insignificant but anybody remotely familiar with public education is aware that behavior in the poorest 20% of schools can be very challenging and the bottom 10% can be very difficult indeed. Public housing radically mitigates housing issues, and with it poverty. 

 

Canada vs USA

 

Canadian teachers are seeing some really bad behaviour but in the US it is significantly worse. Researchers report fewer extreme incidents, less overall violence, fewer incidents involving weapons in Canada. They attribute the difference to the strength of the Canadian social safety net such as it is. The two nations clearly demonstrate that universal healthcare and better income supports are a big part of the answer. US schools are even more polarized by race and class. Canadian schools also report stronger unions. Less parental harassment, more professional authority, Frankly, students need structure, teachers need backing, and schools cannot compensate for all the ills of society. The crisis exists not because schools became cruel, they became overloaded. 

 

What is likely temporary.

 

Since the results of Covid, and the misuse of cellphones and tablets, are identified as the primary culprits, the end of Covid and the banning of devices may bring most of the behaviour under control. We can expect a decline in violent outbursts. 

 

What may be generational.

 

A generational problem may not be broken by a little differentiation and some scaffolding. 

 

The problem is not typically the same as covid and devices hit different cohorts in different ways. K-3 missed how to behave as a student. They can’t sit still, they often have explosive reactions, they have trouble sharing, they have issues with transitions. In middle school there is often chaos, as students have become more emotional, more confrontational, more dramatic, as puberty met cellphones. In high school teachers reported apathy, tardiness, and refusal to participate.

 

What doesn’t work.

 

It doesn’t work to eliminate suspensions and even expulsions without an alternative. It doesn’t work to constantly treat misbehavior as trauma. It over pathologizes the behaviour, removes student agency and teaches helplessness. Admin who undermine teachers are making the problem worse. 

 

Tech integration without guardrails. ‘’Lets meet the kids where they are’’ is fraught with issues. Kids ‘’working at their own speed are too often going nowhere at their own speed. Constant screens are a problem. Everything on the chromebook all day doesn’t work. It generates weak attention and fewer human connections. We are up against the tech industry who only wants sales and are pushing tech like crack dealers. Sweden has banned the tech based classroom and others will soon follow, 

 

Endless churn and new rules every month signals chaos. Change less, implement more. 

 

Class and race

 

Socioeconomic stress is the strongest predictor of behavioural problems. We all knew this before Covid 19 and before devices. Access to food, housing and untreated mental health issues plus parental work stress underpins this stress. 

 

Class drives how much behavioural stress kids experience. Race often shapes how institutions interpret and respond to students acting out. When people mix these, policy goes sideways. Class is the engine. This manifests as impulsivity, defiance, emotional volitivity. It’s not culture, it’s psychology. 

 

When middle class kids were hit with pandemic stress they experienced what poorer kids had long experienced. Race shapes interpretations . Black and indiginous students for example, are not more misbehaved but are perceived as more misbehaved . 

 

It is a mistake to reduce consequences on a large group of poor or racialized kids. Reducing consequences does not reduce stress. Racial issues, which are visible, often obscure what are essentially class issues. Pulling back on consequences only leads to classroom chaos. The real losers in the class are the hard working and achieving poor and racialized kids. Some call this ‘’progressive abandonment’’.

 

What works is universal structure with the same rules for all. Conservatives often believe that discipline can solve poverty. Progressives often believe that removal of discipline fixes injustice. They are both wrong. 

 

The entire education community has a role to play. If we conclude we can break it down in the chart below. 

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