School boards in Toronto and Ontario have recently seen a clear and sustained uptick in “behavioural problems,” a sweeping (if euphemistic) term for a large swathe of anti-social conduct in the classroom ranging from harassment to threats to outright physical violence. It would seem that the kids are not, in fact, alright.
What is at the root of this growing phenomenon which, though reflecting a steady and longstanding trend, has recently grabbed headlines in both The Catholic Register and The Globe and Mail? Both outlets corral the usual suspects: “issues” at home, under-resourced schools (their counseling programs, in particular), and, above all, too much screen time with the well-known deleterious effects on mental health that such exposure produces. These are all plausible inputs for the alarming rise of anti-social behaviour.
To their credit, COVID and its consequences are also acknowledged as having harmed the developing psyches of an entire generation of children. Multiple cohorts of primary and high school students are still feeling the effects of having been home-bound and subjected to enervating hours of “instruction” via screens, after which their return to “in-person” learning had them masked for almost all of their school day. Years of being exposed to such conditions made them unhappy and unhealthy. These contexts were singularly un-conducive to learning, too; little wonder, then, that so many students are failing and flailing, and that social norms are hard to maintain.
It seems quite unlikely that—to cite the main solution that the teacher’s unions have offered—surging mental health services would fix the growing problem that these outlets have reported. After all, what would even tripling the number of counsellors in schools really achieve? Confining the very students the system has failed to therapy sessions is a perverse and destructive sign that the real problems and their root causes remain undiagnosed. Indeed, the very narrowness of the debate is a symptom of the same disease of which violence and behavioural problems are also a sign. After all, “mental health” is the only language that remains available to map regions of the human experience that were once the recognized domains of the moral and the spiritual.
While it is, of course, a tragedy that our schools have become places where aggressive and even violent conduct is frequent, it is also true that those same schools indoctrinate their students into a skewed and demoralizing worldview. The modern Canadian curriculum sees only a country which has committed horrific injustices in the past and is exacerbating the one-and-only urgent crisis in the present: climate change. Is it so strange that the representatives of a guilty culture and the inheritors of compromised institutions should be the objects of denigration? If the history of the country is not worthy of respect, why should its teachers be? To ask such questions is not to “blame the victims”—it is, on the contrary, to point out that the problems besetting our teachers may not be the product of students failing to learn the right lessons, but their having already learned, from them, the wrong ones.
COVID provides a perfect example. It is quite easy to apologize and to wallow in self-lacerating shame for historical iniquities—but what teacher has looked in the face of a student, kept behind a mask or screen for far too long and sincerely said, “I am sorry?” If grown-ups do not take responsibility for their own actions—ones which directly affected the very children who are now acting out—why wouldn’t those same children learn the vital lesson that the buck can always be passed? And that some other, ethereal culprit can always be blamed?
We have reared children to disdain our heritage and we are shocked that they now make disdain for authority the basis for their actions. Relatedly, no apologies have been rendered to the students who have been most harmed by teachers who are still at the heads of classrooms and by policy-makers who are still in office. What kind of example does that set?
The real problem that besets our schools is, therefore, a lack of moral clarity. And one would, of course, expect Catholic schools to be an exception which proves the rule, because here, at least, moral language is not only possible but welcome. But Catholic schools have debased the very term that would, at this juncture, be essential to invoke: bullying. Do the school administrators who cynically used their much-vaunted “anti-bullying programs” to promote the LGBT+ agenda really believe that it escaped the notice of students that their aggressive promotion—using implicit threats, coercive pressure, and campaigns of intimidation—were, well, examples of bullying? And that bullying actually works pretty well as a strategy for getting what you want?
Thus, have students in Canadian schools learned the following things: that our country’s institutions have been compromised, since their founding, by bias, iniquity, injustice, and exclusion; that taking personal responsibility for harms that have been inflicted is not necessary; and that, so long as you don’t call it “bullying,” bullying works. Our teachers and administrators are now alarmed by a rising trend in threats, verbal abuse, and violence. That trend will only increase so long we do not recognize the connection between what our students have been taught, what they have suffered, and the lessons on offer in our schools, by way of example, even now.
The first step in addressing a problem is naming it clearly; with the rampant rise of bullying, that name is not available because it has already been co-opted to describe only those who might have the temerity to acknowledge immemorial truths about the human person and human sexuality. Nor is any example of compunction and personal responsibility visible on the part of adults towards the children who, as everyone now acknowledges, were grievously harmed during the pandemic. The well-known adage from the Book of Hosea—“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (8:7)—describes precisely the consequences of this kind of disconnect between the generations. To remedy this situation, the same program of sincere repentance that Hosea prescribes will still work. But, too often, our teachers—like our leaders—only know how to repent of the sins of other people long since passed.
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