We Need to Talk about PSHE

What’s the easiest way to stamp out prejudice? Against homosexuals? Against other cultures/heritages? Against transexuals? To introduce children to anything unfamiliar while they are still young.

Nearly all children, due to the nature of a family, grow up experiencing a very narrow vision of what life is. Nobody (no one I know anyway) experiences a close relationship with someone of all races, all sexual orientations, all genders (including transexual for example). Very few children (even in early secondary school) are deeply (if at all) aware of feminism, the basics of the political system or racial oppression. ‘Gay’ is STILL a widely used insult in the playground.

It strikes me that the easiest way to prevent the type of attitude lots of children have towards homosexuality, is to teach them all about it. If children were taught about homosexual sex at the same time they are taught about heterosexual sex, not only would the subject become less of a joke (and frankly more boring) but the children who one day realise they are gay would feel far less alienated and confused. And they would have received the same vital sex education (how it works/STIs/etc) to be on the same knowledge platform as their straight peers. This is essential; many teens have no idea what diseases can even affect the LGBTQ+ community. From experience, online sources are pretty shitty. The same goes, obviously, for learning about the rest of the LGBTQ+ community – perhaps particularly important is educating children about what it means to be transgender.***

Another essential topic is sexism. And here, I don’t really mean historical sexism (not that this isn’t important). It’s crucial that children understand that sexism is a very real and current issue. The perils of cat-calling, the wage gap, page 3 and under-representation of women are just some of the many discussions children should be having in the school environment.

Likewise; racism. As with sexism, if you are a member of the more privileged group, it’s vital to listen to the experiences of those in varying groups who still suffer prejudice in 2015. Racism is far too serious a subject NOT to be introduced to young children. Awareness is the first step towards equality and the younger awareness of a need for equality/care/respect is introduced, the less arbitrary, dangerous prejudice is likely to continue. Discussions about the causes of racism, the history of racism and the current climate could really benefit the next generation.

Mental health problems have been on the rise for the last 10 years in Britain, often among younger people. Today, Jeremy Corbyn has created a shadow Minister for Mental Health position. In May’s general election, the Liberal Democrats pledged a £3.5 billion investment in mental health services. This is discussed, but often not early on enough. And the focus should be on learning how to support peers who become ill, what steps to take if you do become ill. Depression, anxiety and self harm are very prevalent issues in schools across the country – spreading awareness will surely help decrease the stigma that surrounds mental health. (read more here and here)

TBH, I’m shocked that this sort of thing isn’t already on the national curriculum and surprised the Liberal Democrats didn’t try to push for a change during their coalition period in government.

What would also be nice would be more political conversation, especially an introduction to Labour and Conservative policies, as well as the FPTP system (and possible alternatives), the House of Commons (and Lords), and political events of the day. It’s not enough to suddenly pressurise voting at an election or signing up to vote when 16. A basic understanding of where one is on the political scale ought to be enabled earlier on. An easy way to reduce political apathy amongst the young (which the govt claim to care about).

Varying family structures is something else that’s been totally ignored (unless you’ve had a visit from a single mum aggressively warning against being a single mum). It’s important to recognise and respect that everyone makes different choices for different reasons, despite intimidating cereal-box-family advertising everywhere.

---

 

If one has never encountered something, it’s natural to react less than positively. That part is not a choice (though obviously showing hostility is). For the most part, wariness is simply genetic (just think about all that one tribe crap from when we lived in trees – or Two Tribes the TV show tbf). The OBVIOUS solution therefore is education, knowledge being tolerance.

It seems this might be the perfect time to really push for a progressive PSHE curriculum. To me, it’s such a huge chance to ensure Britain’s liberal values keep up with the modern world once more. And although the Conservatives may not always be associated with liberalness or tolerance; researching Nicky Morgan (Minister for Education i.e. the new Gove) has left me relatively hopeful. With her new scheme, with the slightly nauseating title ‘Curriculum for Life’, she claims to believe, “PSHE should be much broader [than simply sex education]. I want more schools to put high-quality PSHE at the heart of their curriculum. It is an essential part of their responsibility to prepare young people for life in modern Britain…”

And if you are reluctant to believe that (Morgan seems to be over-focusing on the internet, in my opinion), whoever is elected Labour leader is going to want to make vote-winning promises. Let’s make sure decent, wide-coverage and ultimately tolerant PSHE is at the top of that list.

---

*** Another relevant question, WHY isn’t there more representation of the LGBT+ community in children’s TV?? So easy to implement and could overhaul societal attitudes

It’s time to get rid of private schools!

Last year, we were greeted with the news that our local independent and preparatory school, Malsis School, was to face closure due to the deteriorating number of students and the subsequent impact on their “cash flow”.

---

Personally, I was overjoyed. Although the loss of a school is something that should not usually be celebrated, I have always detested private schools. The morals that they stand for and the history that they were built upon no longer have a place in a modern and democratic society. It is high time they were removed and that they finally gave something back to the normal, tax paying, state education receiving, working people of Britain.

---

 The fact that in the UK we still have children being given superior education because of their parents’ wealth rather than their own intellect astounds me. It instils in them a sense that they can buy their way through life, rather than the ‘work your way to the top’, meritocratic mantra that everyone else is expected to swallow. The attitude of the parents turns me off too. Often, they attended that school themselves and are keen to keep it in the family. Also, the division ensured by private v state schooling is inherently wrong: it’s the social separation of CHILDREN based on a family’s income. Such attitudes only further the elitism that private schools so fervently encourage, whilst simultaneously weakening the state education system.

The detrimental effects on the state sector are huge. With private schools sucking up the best teachers (because they can be tempted by longer holidays, higher pay and smaller classes), the best resources and often intelligent and hard working pupils, comprehensive schools begin to lose these assets. Not completely, but definitely significantly.

Moreover, private schools are a dirty memory of when our class system was in full flow and they were the training houses of the aristocracy. They represent a period in our history when we were repressive of the poor and indulgent of the rich. Britain should have risen above the class system long ago, yet the millstone around our neck is the private education system, holding us back. And while only 7% of school-aged population attend them, the consequences of the continuation of these outdated institutions have an impact on us all. Why do we stand for it?

Well – arguably because those who go to private schools (i.e. the rich) control lots of the decisions made in our society, and it is simply not in their interest to end this unjust system. One third of all MPs were privately educated. Almost sixty percent of the Cabinet were privately educated. Forty-seven percent of newspaper columnists were privately educated. These statistics are frightening, and prove the myth of meritocracy to be total bullshit – as well as explaining why the system has never been overturned.

And don’t even get me started on the “charitable status” that so many private schools have, for reasons that have never been made entirely clear. Independent schools are renowned for being insular and elitist, and to claim they are charities is laughable at best and abhorrent at worst. Not only do they not provide any of the services of a modern charity, but they dirty the very name. With this status, they are able to claim an 80% tax reduction, whilst state schools are expected to deal with continuing cuts to their funding. It is the classic conundrum of easing the lives of the rich whilst stretching the less affluent to breaking point. If we gave tax cuts to the most disadvantaged schools rather than the most advantaged, surely it would result in better teaching for the poorest schools, whilst the extortionate prices of private schools would be more than enough to keep their heads above the water.

Meanwhile, under the current government (whose Cabinet mainly comprises privately educated men, as you’ll be aware), private schools have been subsidised by up to £700m a year. As critics have suggested, we may as well subsidise five-star hotels. These are businesses, nothing more and nothing less, and therefore such subsidies are unjustifiable and, I believe, immoral. The only vague form of relief we see are Tristram Hunt’s (Labour’s shadow education secretary) plans to remove the subsidies that private schools receive should they fail to form positive, working relationships with local state schools. Sadly, this is not as radical a measure as I’d have liked, and does little to remove the arbitrary injustice of a government that favours those in the private schooling system.

Private schools represent the very worst that capitalism and the class system can create when they come together, the ugliest love-child you can picture. The sooner we remove these bastions of privilege the better, as it will also remove the last remnants of crappy society built on injustice. Nothing (save the rituals of Westminster) is as anachronistic as these institutions. It is time for our generation to start the fight against elitism, and fight for social equality; a value intrinsic to our sense of morality. Private schools, your time is up.

---

written by Tom Blake, 16, Yorkshire

Depression isn’t cool and pretty like ‘Girl Interrupted’ – it fucking sucks.

I believe that the glamorisation of mental illness/eating disorders/drug abuse etc. by the media has had an extremely damaging effect on the majority of young people, including myself.

A main example of this would be ‘skins’, the now discontinued channel 4 television series. Can I just add in now that I love skins more than any other TV show of that genre or time and if it was still running I would be in Bristol or wherever, begging to become part of the cast; but there is no use in denying that while watching it, we wanted to be the slightly more fucked up characters. We didn’t want to be Michelle, Sid or Pandora, we wanted to be Cassie, Effy and Cook.

Over summer, my 14 year old sister came asking me to do her eyeliner, so she could ‘be more like Effy’. And whilst I’d hope she meant it as wanting to be a bit more femme fatale or just the make-up, it worries me that young girls are potentially aspiring to be the tragic girl, the doe-eyed Marilyn. And this is not even just a British problem. In October, I went to Argentina for three weeks and the first thing most of the girls spoke to me about was ‘skins’ and how much they wanted ‘to be Effy or Cassie’. They wanted to be them, not just the parties and the clothes but their tragedy and vulnerability, and I know they wanted this because as a fifteen year old, I wanted it as well. I wanted to be ‘stressed, depressed but well-dressed’. I wanted to wear all black and talk to psychiatrists, hell I’m pretty sure I even wanted to get institutionalised. And why? Because the generation before us, made it look cool.

This isn’t even just restricted to ‘skins’ or girls. When Stephen Chbosky’s ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ came out on film in 2012, it was showing the benefits of not having any friends and being on your own from the title of the book. Boys wanted to be Charlie because he got to kiss Emma Watson and girls wanted to be friends with him because Logan Lerman is attractive, whereas, honestly, in reality, I doubt anyone would even try talking to Charlie, the ‘socially awkward teen’ if he went to their school. Why are we continuing to idolise characters’ mental illnesses whilst still holding such a strong stigma against it?  We are part of a generation that is glamorising wanting to kill yourself and we’re not even addressing it.

As much as I used to love Tumblr, I doubt I’ve ever gone a minute on the site without seeing a post about being a ‘sad girl’ or ‘brxken’ or having an anorexic girl as their thinspo or a poetry written by an artsy teenager about how sad they are. And it becomes cool. If a tumblr famuz or American Apparel model reposts something about killing your lungs or being depressed or not eating and you already venerate them, you’re going to copy them and smoke more or act moody or upset more often or skip more meals.

Then when you feel happy, you feel guilty or uncool, like it’s cooler to be sad so you put yourself into the mind-set of feeling like shit which leads to actually feeling like shit. And sometimes you can get out of your rut easily, but sometimes you can’t.

I know first-hand what it’s like to suffer from something like this, so I don’t think I’m talking out of my arse too much, but yeah I used to think it was quite cool and then when I was diagnosed, it felt quite fucked up as I was thinking that it was my fault because I wanted to be like this and that was just another problem on top of everything else I was feeling at the time. It’s also really difficult to talk to people about how you feel when you’ve got depression anyway, so I always feel like a bit of a dick when I say ‘I’m depressed’ – like even writing that down just then made me feel like a twat – because due to this manipulation of mental illnesses by TV and films and social media, it’s appropriated these illnesses away from the fact that they are actually serious issues that aren’t being dealt with. This makes it harder to acknowledge that you’ve got something ‘wrong’ with you because, for me, I’m still pretty stuck in the idea that it’s not even real and I’m just being pathetic but yh idk.

And talking to psychiatrists and emotionally and mentally breaking down in front of teachers, school nurses and loved ones is not fun. It is not like ‘girl, interrupted’ or ‘the bell jar’. It fucking sucks. However, having said that, if I hadn’t have told anyone about how I was feeling, I am almost certain that I would be dead now. And I’d prefer to be struggling but kind of getting better than dead (so yeah if you feel like total shite, seriously, I sound like a safeguarding staff, but just go to a nurse or a teacher and tell them, it’s probably the hardest thing you will ever have to do but it is worth it in the long run).

And if you’re reading this thinking, which I really hope you’re not, ‘wow this girl’s amazing for being able to go through all that and still go to school and be nice to people, I wish I was like her’, then you obviously haven’t read the last 800 or so words properly. Just because I am relatively capable of conducting myself in a manner that makes it look like I’m coping with this and I’m still managing to turn up to barely half of my lessons, does not mean that I feel empowered or cool or proud or even happy for being able to cope with it. I will tell you again, reader: this is not something that we should be aspiring to be so stop it.

But yeah, in case you hadn’t noticed, because of my many digressions and little opening up sesh, the moral of the story is that: it’s so ok to be happy, it’s cool to be happy, please just start thinking more happy than sad and as feeling crap is crap and feeling great is great woooooooooo

---

Ruby Streek (@burlybosoms) is a 16 year old girl currently in year 12. She’s an absolute lass/mess.

Village Life – glam or isolating?

From the cellar of my house, in a village population of just over 10,000, I am sitting in front of a blank word document and wondering what to write about. For a magazine based in a city 95 miles away, I decided the most interesting contribution I could make would not be on current issues in politics or our generation, but simply an insight into living in the village of Knowle.

Democracy in a village (or not)

Important for people of my age is the looming 18^th Birthday, and whilst many are just excited for the age at which they can drink without a fake license, I am most looking forward to being able to vote. Finally, I will be considered responsible enough to have an opinion on who should run our country, despite already having been able to drive for one year, and having had the option to get married for the past 2 years. The problem for me, however, is that in the recent local elections, Knowle accumulated 2144 Tory Votes, compared to 382 Green, 371 Labour and 218 Lib Dem. The official results table states this as a Conservative Hold, which it has been for a long time. Adding up all non-Tory votes gives a meagre 971; i.e. there were less than half non-Tory votes as there were Tory. As someone who will not be voting Conservative until she is old and cynical and no longer bothered about others*, this does little to inspire confidence. Of course, I will still vote and will always vote, because people died for my right and it frightens me when so many my age say they won’t bother, and I suppose I can feel some pride in fighting for the overwhelming minority. Having said that, just knowing that my vote will not do anything does make me frustrated.

Breaking news!

The latest village scandal involved my school and the flying of a German flag on the anniversary of D-Day. It was later discovered that we would be welcoming German exchange students that Monday and the timing of a flag was unintentional, but nevertheless local residents filed their complaints and our school ended up in the Daily Mail. It worries me that there are people who will immediately associate the German flag with the Nazis, and perhaps indicates an underlying prejudice towards Germany that should have been forgotten years ago. Maybe it was bad timing to fly a German flag on that particular day, and perhaps it is me who is over reacting, but it definitely shows the extent to which the Mail can take half stories and blow them up into shocking events. I would be interested to know other peoples views on this, because most of the reactions were just that it was quite funny but we must not talk about it until the news story had been archived and the exchange students returned. Either way, I suppose this is not the sort of thing that would happen in quite the same way in London – living in a village can be very interesting too!

*author’s own views!

---

@martha_rowe, 17, Knowle