What's wrong with parents?

IF YOU judged our children's behaviour only by what you see on television, you would conclude that the younger generation was rapidly going to hell in a hand cart.

From Supernanny to Little Angels to the new series of Bad Behaviour, which started on Channel 4 last night, our screens seem to be full of strops, tantrums, screaming matches and out-and-out violence perpetrated by the young.

Classroom Chaos, the Channel Five documentary screened last week in which a supply teacher went undercover into school classrooms with a TV camera to record the behaviour of pupils, only reinforced the impression of a generation of young people with no discipline and no respect for authority.

According to David Hart, the outgoing leader of the National Association of Head Teachers, parents are at least partly to blame.

Questioning Labour plans to give parents more say over the running of their children's schools, he said it was like putting "an alcoholic in charge of a bar".

Behaviour in schools was getting worse, Mr Hart said, because too many parents were failing to teach their children even basic social standards. Many were sending their five-year-olds to school unable to hold a knife and fork and without being toilet trained, he said.

But is it true that children today are more badly behaved than before? And if they are, who or what is to blame? Parents? Schools? Or a changing and fragmenting society?

We asked a few people involved with children.

The child psychologist

Mary Thompson, a consultant clinical psychologist who works with deprived families in Yorkshire, does not believe children's behaviour is getting worse. TV programs that highlight bad behaviour may make it seem so, she says, but occasional bad behaviour is nothing new. "And there are many children working very hard, and getting record GCSEs."

That said, she does accept society is changing. Rates of divorce are higher than they were, she says - and adapting to new family arrangements can be stressful for children, making it difficult for them to know what the rules are.

There is also more pressure on children at school because of exams and targets, and so less freedom for them to play and enjoy themselves. Parents, whether single or in a stable relationship, tend to be more pressured and busy, she says, which leaves less opportunity for families to spend quality time together.

"I said recently to somebody I deal with, 'what have you done together with your children?' They said, 'We did go to the supermarket'. But they are not talking about just going to the park. Another said, 'He's got his DVD, his computer, all these things in his bedroom, but he still behaves badly!' It is quality time that is missed out of the equation."

We also need to think more about our expectations of children, Mary says. "People expect them to conform rather too quickly. We have got to accept that they are just learning."

The school standards campaigner

Nick Seaton, the York-based founder of the Campaign For Real Education, has no doubt that children's behaviour is getting worse. He blames the progressive establishment. The 'I know my rights' generation of schoolchildren inevitably has little respect for authority, he believes.

"This idea that children have the same rights as responsible adults: that's nonsense," he says. "I'm not suggesting that children don't have any rights. But young people have got to respect the authority of adults, whether that is teachers, parents, police or NHS staff. They don't have the knowledge or experience to make the sorts of judgements they are being encouraged to think they have."

Some younger parents are the product of this progressive education, and so don't have a fully developed notion of responsibility, he says - so it is little wonder they are unable to pass it on to their children.

But they are in the minority. Most parents are responsible adults and they should be taking more responsibility for the behaviour of their offspring.

He would like to see more discipline in the classroom, with the cane as a punishment of last resort; and parents setting clearer boundaries for their children as to what is or is not proper behaviour.

His own two children were brought up fairly strictly, and were very occasionally smacked - his daughter just the once, he thinks, by her mother.

"She never forgot it!"

Both of his children, he says, have turned into 'fairly responsible citizens'.

The primary school head

Mark Barnett, head of Westfield Junior School in Acomb, agrees with David Hart that there has been an increase in the number of young children starting school who lack basic social skills. Some have not been properly toilet-trained, he says, while others have poor speaking and listening skills. This can disadvantage them throughout school.

Many parents do a splendid job of educating their children in how to behave, he says, but an increasing minority do not.

That matters because education is a joint effort involving parents, teachers and the child. Only 15 per cent of a child's time is spent in school. "So there is this parental responsibility for the other 85 per cent of the time."

He understands that many parents are increasingly busy. "They are working hard to keep their families in the manner to which they have become accustomed, and maybe they don't have enough time for the children at home."

He believes it is vital they try to make that time, however, reading to their children from a young age, listening to them, playing with them. And, as the children get older, simply knowing what they are up to.

For parents who do have difficulty managing their children's behaviour, Mark's school has a School Home Support Worker who can visit parents at home and offer them help and advice.

Mark does not believe, however, that bad behaviour by children is becoming commonplace. Last week's Channel Five documentary Classroom Chaos, in which supply teacher Sylvia Thomas secretly took a camera into the classroom to record pupils' behaviour, was not representative of schools generally - and certainly not of schools in York, he says.

The secondary school head

Kevin Deadman, head of Canon Lee School in York, agrees that good behaviour is essential if pupils are to be able to learn properly at school.

He does not accept, however, that the behaviour of children is getting worse - despite the claims of some of the older generation who look back on their schooldays through rose-tinted spectacles.

Like Mark Barnett, he certainly does not believe that Classroom Chaos was in any way representative of what goes on in York schools.

"I think we have a situation there where there was a supply teacher who did not know the children or the school, and who appeared to have been thrown in a bit at the deep end," he says. "Then, inevitably, there will be problems. But the vast majority of young people are here to learn, and make a very good job of it."

Occasionally, pupils do behave badly, and when they do, it is important that the boundaries are clearly set out and they know what the consequences of crossing them will be. Today, that ranges from extra work or detention to exclusion in the most extreme cases.

But Kevin has been a teacher for more than 25 years. "And I think that young people now have probably got more drive and more energy and more determination to succeed than ever before," he says.

He believes the same is generally true of parents. Yes, some marriages do break up, and some parents are too busy to spend time with their children.

"But equally, there are arguably more parents now who are interested and appreciate the importance of a good education. They themselves have gone through the system and realise that in order to get a good job you need a good education."

Updated: 09:35 Wednesday, May 04, 2005