February 2021 – Child Mental Health Week – and we’re still reiterating & re-emphasising posts we’ve written about child mental health and wellbeing.
(Reference, quotes, graphics and links to these will be shown throughout this post).
Our children are still not sufficiently supported should they become affected by mental ill health, and the universal support for all children to prevent them from being mentally unwell (or to assist them in managing poor mental health) is still missing.
February 2016:https://3diassociates.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/childrens-mental-health-week-action-not-polemics/
The state of the wellbeing of our children and young people is a huge issue at the best of times. In the worst of times, it’s beyond critical. The pandemic has exacerbated an already dysfunctional disregard of the enormity of the mental health crisis. Additionally, our government intends to further pressurise the situation by expecting an entire nation of children to return to schools and saunter straight back into a stressful system of “catch-up” and “gap-narrowing” without so much as a sideward glance at the underlying mental health issues that may well prevent children and young people from engaging fruitfully in real learning.
June 2020: https://3diassociates.wordpress.com/2020/06/11/catch-up-or-further-polarisation/
This is a time to be radical, really radical. Educators, governors, government, parents and carers all need to understand that gaps will not be narrowed, aspirations will not be fulfilled, learning intentions will never be realised if we continue to disregard the emotional, social and personal wellbeing of our children and young people.
February 2015: https://3diassociates.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/life-lessons-personal-social-development-and-the-rights-of-the-child/
There are thousands of children who aren’t ready to learn in a formal setting because they’ve probably been de-institutionalised by the pandemic. Collectively, we ought to embrace this recalibration and spend time to reconsider the entire purpose of education.
In order to ensure that we’re managing the wellbeing of our children as well as their ability to learn the core subjects, we immediately need to eradicate the pressure on our children to learn in a specific formulated way from a contrived curriculum (that was already overloaded and often inappropriate when there was 190 days of learning in the academic year) with an inappropriate and unnecessary amounts assessment and tests.
December 2020: https://3diassociates.wordpress.com/2020/12/04/say-no-to-2021-exams-and-beyond/
Cancel tests, all of them. To the unconverted, be assured that good teachers can assess where a child is and know what they need to do to flourish and develop without sitting them down to an NFER (other tests are available) summative assessment every term.
After everything they’ve been through, our children don’t deserve this.
As for the Prime Minister’s insistence on “differential learning” and booster classes for those who’ve fallen behind, just think for one small minute about which children and young people are most likely to fall into that category – the ones who’ve been cooped up in small flats with no gardens, the ones who share their bedroom and living space with siblings, the ones without a library of books in their home, the ones with no real, affordable access to speedy internet or laptops, the ones who haven’t managed to move out of their very immediate area for an entire year, the ones who are possibly starving, the ones who weren’t particularly engaged in the offered learning programme before the pandemic, the ones who could be in households where they’re suffering or witnessing abusive relationships.
And what will these young people see when they return to school? That their better-off peers have the freedom to re-engage in play, in friendship/group learning, in the arts, music, sports – all of which many of these fortunate children may have maintained during the pandemic – whilst they, the less well-off, in one form or another, have to sit in booster classes reciting facts and learning laboriously and dishearteningly whilst simultaneously losing out on the type of learning that might make them re-engage.
It’s a preposterous and unsustainable solution to this crisis.
This year’s theme for Child Mental Health Week is “Express Yourself”.
The irony is not lost on those who know the utter inability for children to “express themselves” within a) the confines of the existing curriculum or b) some schools, where PSHE and an environment of thinking freely is non-existent.
Let’s give our children a break – a mental health break, a breather so that they can begin to redevelop a love of learning. Let them play, let them talk, let them re-engage with painting and drawing, with music and dance, with reading and challenging themselves with mathematical puzzles. Let them write, freely without worrying about fronted adverbials or wow words. Let them experiment with all manner of solids, liquids and gases, building, constructing, analysing their mistakes and their successes. Let them learn outside and let them reconnect with their urban and rural surroundings. Get them out into places they’ve not been able to visit during the pandemic. Let them express themselves without constraining them because it doesn’t fit in with the designated learning outcomes for that specific moment in time.
March 2013: https://3diassociates.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/learning-locally-part-two/
The government would do well to fully consider whether the mantra of self-expression, advocated by the organisers of Children’s Mental Health week, is remotely possible with their curriculum and their plans for learning post pandemic.
We doubt they will. To do that would mean they’d have to realise that their existing systems of education are contributing to poor mental health and that would never do.
Neither will they fund and equip schools with the resources and people to remedy the gross injustice and inequality that’s an outcome of poor mental health, and yet without this intervention, we may still be reiterating, regurgitating, re-emphasising posts we’ve written about child mental health and wellbeing without any discernible changes for the next decades or so too.
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For more on Child Mental Health, see our previous posts on Children’s Mental Health week with a summary of other posts within.
2016
https://3diassociates.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/childrens-mental-health-week-action-not-polemics/
2017
https://3diassociates.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/childrens-mental-health-week-action-not-polemics/
3D Eye 