Instilling Civility

"I've had lots of conversations with people across the country, and one thing that people are thinking is that the kids aren't having as much time to be outside, and having free play, because they are spending much more time on screens."
"When you are playing outside with others, you have to develop patience, you have to learn how to take turns, and learn how to pretend, and all of those are things that help you develop the ability to stop, plan and think."
"I've seen kids have absolute meltdowns at 18 months to two years of age. You are out to dinner and the parents have brought along an iPad for the kid to play with so they don't have any second of boredom. They take the iPad away when the food comes, and [the child] has a massive melt-down."
"It's something we need to as a society really examine: are screens replacing face-to-face time?"
"If [teachers] are only focused on what reading level do they have, how many words do they have, then they miss this whole other part that interferes with everything about learning, and not just their own learning but the learning of all the kids in the class."
"I remember talking to a little boy, and the classroom had been cleared, and he said, 'I was so frightened being in that classroom all by myself. I didn't know what as going to be happening next. There was nobody there to help me'. That's how he experienced it."
"For a four-year-old, that's pretty frightening. ... What a four-year-old needs is an adult to come in and help co-regulate them, go in and stay with them. 'Buddy, come here, can I give you a hug?; Physical contact, help soothe them."
"One of the things that we know is that for younger kids -- I'm talking about kids under six -- physical touch, asking for permission to give a hug, soothing a child by allowing them to snuggle in, is very, very important developmentally. The boards that have no-touch policies really have to examine that for the early years."
Jean Clinton, child psychiatrist, clinical professor, McMaster University

"I was terrified my first year because we were told, 'You do not touch the children'."
"But they're little. Some of them are only three. They'll say, 'Can I have a hug?' Or I'm sitting on the floor and they'll put a head on my shoulder."
"They are little, that is what they need, that is what they want."
Early childhood educator, kindergarten class

Dr. Clinton feels that schools with "hands-off" policies, instructing their employees that they are not, under any circumstances to physically touch the youngest children in their administrative care should re-think this policy. Physical contact with permission to give hugs, and to empathize with a confused or frightened child through a gentle, caring touch, she feels could solve some of the alienating aspects of a very young child who might be feeling isolated or abandoned in the first few years of school and who responds by 'acting out'.

Nor is she a fan of the "evacuation" method used in some schools that when a child in the classroom acts out and is out of control, unwilling or unable or defiant to a teacher's instructions, they are left in the classroom on their own as a lesson through isolation, of the consequences of throwing books and furniture around, much less attacking other pupils or the teacher. All other children in the classroom are quietly escorted out of the room, and the obstreperous child is left on his/her own, presumably to think out why it is that he/she is left alone.

School boards are concerned that the old traditional method of teachers yanking unruly children about to impress upon them that their behaviour is unacceptable, is no longer representative of today's methods of dealing with problem children. Children whose parents, upon hearing that their child may have been man-handled will contact the news media to broadcast the 'assault', and even call police or launch a lawsuit against the teacher, the school, the school board.

It simply is not done. That old order to older children to 'go to the principal's office' where hand smacks are administered represents the dark ages of a bygone era.

In this era of public schooling, exposing children to the education system, it is strictly hands-off for teachers. And whether and how much that has contributed to young people from an early age on into their more mature years, knowing that whatever they do the punishment can only be as bad as a suspension, and even expulsion from school, see few restraints now on their compulsion to be violent, either toward other students or the teachers themselves. They know it is unlawful for them to be 'touched' by any adult.

Reports of "violent incidents" that school administrations and their boards must deal with now has doubled in the past two years. Incidents of violence that encompass children from all grades. Early childhood educators working in kindergarten, elementary teachers and educational assistants report having been bitten, punched, kicked, scratched, spat upon and sworn at by children, ranging from kindergarten age up to Grade 3.

Social skills, respect for others, ability to interact civilly, appear to have been lost in lock-step with the availability of and fascination with technological toys. Digital devices consume increasingly more of children's time, leaving them little interest in anything else. Even potty seats and bouncy chairs come with built-in pockets handy for storing an iPad. Instant gratification that digital devices can deliver is, notes, Dr. Clinton, "very, very enticing".

Parents seem to be failing their own grade in instilling in children civil values and behaviours. Either they lack those values themselves, or they are too inept and disinterested in ensuring their children are imbued with them. They neglect their parental obligations to their children and their society, send their children off to school, and expect those in the teaching profession to correct and ameliorate what they have themselves neglected. By which time it can be too late.

And in the attempt to imbue the children with needed discipline, too time-consuming for a teacher whose responsibility to an entire class cannot be consumed by one acting-out child. Mothers have traditionally been the parent expected for the most part, to teach manners to their children. With both parents now mostly in the paid workforce, little actual time is left for children to be taught directly; they emulate their parents, disengaged, focused on technology.



Teachers feel pressure from parents to prepare their kindergarten-age children for the next grade up when they will be learning the fundamentals of academic knowledge, leaving their play-time in kindergarten behind. Kindergarten is the time when children learn relationship skills, develop "social and emotional intelligence", reasonably enough. Or they don't. And that inability to interact civilly with others will follow them throughout their school years and into the future, if not developed adequately.

The situation has become so dire that some teachers leave the profession, unable to continue coping, while others take more time off because of depression and burn-out. Suffering physical assaults by children while trying to maintain professional composure and focusing on teaching children their academic lessons can be exhausting physically and mentally draining.

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