Remember, pretty does not mean it doesn’t have a savage bite.

I lived for 8 years under President Ronald Reagan, a shallow, stupid, evil man who wrecked the economy and laughed as gay men, and others, died of AIDS, who made deals with our enemies to get elected, and I said, “at least it can’t get worse than this.”

I lived for 8 years under President George W. Bush, a bumbling incompetent, a spoiled scion of Texan wealth, a man who got us into a wasteful, pointless war with the wrong country and killed over half a million people, and I said, “at least it can’t get worse than this.”

Then I lived for 4 years under President Donald Trump, a narcissistic grifter, a rapist, a racist, a convicted felon, a misogynist, a man who promised to deport 20 million people, a demagogue who threatened vengeance on Americans who opposed him, a senile monster, and we re-elected him.

I am now wise enough to finally say, “It will get much, much worse.” We have the president the American people deserve.

My deepest apologies to the millions who will suffer and die in the near future.

I am not going to hover over the news tonight.

As a distraction, I’m going to talk about evolution on the internet. You’re welcome to join in.

I went to the polls as soon as they opened. Here in small town America, voting is painless — no lines, no problems, just instant service and quick gratification.

However, it did feel a bit grim and unsatisfying. I felt like I’d been sent out to stop a raging, drug-addled hippopotamus with a hatpin, and my vote was just the tiniest little pinprick. I’ll feel better about it if everyone gets out there with their individually ineffectual hatpin and stabs the beast to the heart. We can do it!

The latest Stephanie Stirling video dropped a tantalizing mention. There exists something called a “woke content detector“, which is basically a small group of self-appointed censors who are busily telling everyone which video games are bad. Not particularly interesting, except that the criteria they use to decide which games are too woke are hilarious. They have a spreadsheet listing their reasoning.

Here are some examples of things that make a game unrecommended or too woke. These are things the censors consider bad.

• “The Myplayer clothes shop features apparel with BLM slogans.”
• “has Non-binary gender option”
• “Features a diverse cast and LGBTQ+ characters”
• “Pronoun selection including an option for they/them”
• “POC soldiers on both sides”
• “LGBTQ+ decorations/furniture, diverse students, students can enter same sex relationships”
• “LGBTQ+ and diverse characters including a plus size POC queen”
• “Pride flags displayed in the police station and fire station”
• “Optional homosexual romance”
• “Pronoun selection including an option for they/them. Homosexual and non-binary romance options”
• “Contains overtly pro-climate action messaging. ‘an environmental card strategy game with climate change as your opponent.'”
• “Demonizes golfers and golf-courses by highlighting potentially negative environmental impacts of the sport”
• “The player character is a woman with depression. Features a story about living with depression”
• “Features a story about living with a disability”
• “Features a story about a world where ‘climate change has made life hard'”
• “Contains overtly anti-capitalism and anti-western society messaging”
• “The player character is a WOC who can fix any antique. She immediately finds plenty of work in a town she has never been to before”
• “Features a diverse cast of 1st gen immigrants to the USA. Features a female CEO of a green tech startup”

I’m impressed with the pettiness, and how they can be offended by just the existence of LGBTQ+, women, disabled people, pronouns, and decorative features that don’t affect the game. I’m amazed that anyone would want to play such culturally impoverished video games. Checkers is probably a safe game for them.

You will be relieved to know that “Alex Jones: NWO Wars” is recommended and has no woke content, so there are some games you can play.

This thread has been created for thoughtful, rational discussion on subjects for which there are not currently any dedicated threads. Please note that our Comment Policy applies as usual. There is a link to this at the foot of the page. DISCLAIMER: All comments posted throughout this website are the personal views of users and …

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. Hello! While Election Day proper is not until next week, millions of Americans have already voted. Elections are always important, but this year feels particularly significant. The choice this year is not just about individual candidates or policy agendas; as Public Religion Research Institute President Robert Jones said …

Eavesdropping is an art and I am keeping it alive. I do not listen at doors. I do it in public places, for I am not a mere snoop. Dismissing eavesdropping as being nosy is as insulting as calling the cast of Swan Lake a conga line. And like any form of art, you can have talent, but you are nothing if you do not practice.

I had some very clunky episodes when I was a novice. On the bus home from school, I once tuned in to the conversation of some older girls sitting behind me. Once they realised, they had fun with me. Their chat went from normal gossip to “then these aliens came down and abducted us all”. Rumbled, I bowed my head in shame as the girls got off the bus giggling. I vowed to work hard and come back stronger.

These days of phones and noise-cancelling headphones present different challenges. You have to be very committed to strike gold. I’ve found that older teenagers are always the best value. They don’t do small talk and are happy to loudly discuss personal matters within earshot of fellow passengers who have been on the same page of their book for 27 minutes. On a train recently, I had the good fortune of sitting next to two who had just finished their GCSEs and were on their way to Milo’s party in Bath.

Milo, I discovered, was having the party at his family’s country home, hence the journey from London. The girls were relieved there was to be a pizza van stationed on the grounds all night. At the same age, I would have judged these two girls as clueless poshos who didn’t even care about the Corn Laws of 1815. But 50-year-old me was charmed by them (and has forgotten what the Corn Laws were).

I discreetly watched as they pulled out of their small holdalls enough paraphernalia to set up a dressing room on their seat table, including a mirror with lights and endless pots of creams and powders and sprays – each girl as magically equipped as an Instagram-savvy Mary Poppins. They were beautiful. What 16-year-old isn’t? One of them was a cool blonde and the other was a brunette who was “legit fucked’’ from a party the night before. Her face was covered with inflamed, painful-looking acne which she stared at calmly in the mirror.

The blonde girl was discussing her mother, who had been very curt with her all week: “And I’m like, I’m not going to see you for two weeks, so like, can’t we make the most of our time together, you’re being a bitch.” Her friend – who had in 40 seconds magically turned her skin completely flawless – said, “That’s cos you’re going away with your dad. She’s in pain”.

“Yah,” was the reply from the blonde one as she attached false eyelashes with surgical precision. “They legit hate each other and I’m like, I love my mum, but I can’t carry this for her. It’s her stuff.” The two discussed how it feels to have warring parents with admirable compassion. Terms like “self-support” and “mindful processing” flew between them along with “Oh fuck, my hair’s legit shit. Frizz. Fucking rain. Do you think Milo will have hair straighteners?”

I wanted these girls to have a wonderful night. I didn’t want them to stress about their hair – and let’s face it, even if there were hair straighteners at Milo’s house, it would take an age for the butler to locate them. I pulled my own straighteners out of my bag. “I couldn’t help overhearing, would you like to borrow mine?”

The girls looked at me in surprise, as though the actual train seat had started talking to them. Then, realising I was a person, they screamed with joy, grabbing the straighteners as though they were a lifebuoy on the Titanic. “Oh my god you’re the train angel,” the brunette said as she transformed her rained-on hair into a sleek, smooth mane.

Some people might have moved seats, irritated by the endless spraying. Others might have blocked them out with music or a podcast. But they would have missed getting an insight into a world of emotionally intelligent teens – and the opportunity to be an accidental celestial being.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

I am a huge fan of 1930s paranormal researcher Harry Price. Price carried out lots of amazing investigations, including studying an alleged talking mongoose and trying to use an ancient spell to turn a goat into a Prince. However, he also investigated Borley Rectory in Essex, and crowned it the most haunted house in England. The Rectory was associated with lots of strange phenomena (including ghostly nuns, mysterious voices, and chilling apparitions), but burned down in 1939.

Working from original photographs, eyewitness descriptions and detailed floor plans, we have have recreated one of the most haunted rooms in the building using virtual reality.  Now, people can step back in time, re-visit the Rectory, and see if they still have weird experiences in this creepy space.

The team consisted of University of Hertfordshire technician Alex Eckford, paranormal expert Paul Adams, and myself. The room (known as The Blue Room) happens to be almost identical in size to one of the labs in the Psychology Department, and so participants can fully immerse themselves in the space by  touching the walls, sitting in chairs, etc.. We can also add virtual ghosts and other strange happenings! It will be fascinating to see how people respond to this space all these years later.

I am excited about the project and love the idea of bringing this special space back from the ashes. If you have any memories or information about Borley Rectory, or would like to get involved in the project, please get in contact.

Fluke: Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters (John Murray) by Brian Klaas

That you are reading this is stupendously unlikely. This is no reflection on New Humanist’s circulation (expanding, I’m told), but merely an attempt to render vaguely sensible the unfathomable odds against any of us existing at all. Each human being alive now is the product of an unbroken sequence of thousands of meetings stretching back millions of years, many if not most of them entirely random. Any one of them might have been thwarted by, for example, just one party to our eventual creation missing a train (or a stagecoach, or an ox cart) because they were distracted by a squirrel.

The social scientist, journalist and broadcaster Brian Klaas has starker reasons than most of us for being preoccupied by such contemplations. As he explains in the opening pages of Fluke, he is only in a position to write the book, or indeed do anything else that one might do with their time on this Earth, because of a hideous tragedy that occurred in 1905 in Jamestown, Wisconsin. A woman named Clara Jansen killed all four of her children, and then herself. Her husband, Paul Klaas, subsequently remarried, and somehow summoned the optimism to start another family; he was the author’s great-grandfather. “My life,” writes Klaas, “was only made possible by a gruesome mass murder.”

Klaas further illuminates his thesis in the opening chapters of Fluke with examples of how caprices of fate govern not just our own lives, but the course of nations. One is a lesson from history. Nagasaki, obliterated by an American atomic bomb on 9 August 1945, was the third choice of city to be the second target of the United States’ terrible new weapon.

The first, Kyoto, had been vetoed because Henry Stimson, US Secretary of War, had visited with his wife in the 1920s and remembered it fondly. The second, Kokura, was spared on the day because the crew aboard the B-29 carrying the bomb couldn’t see their target for clouds. They diverted to Nagasaki, where the visibility was better.

Another is a finding from Klaas’s own reporting. Researching an earlier book, he looks into why an attempted coup d’état in Zambia failed. He arrives in Zambia wondering whether it was testament to the strength of the country’s institutions, or perhaps neglect on the part of the plotters in arraying public opinion behind them. He discovers instead that the day was saved by the poor stitching of one general’s trousers, which fortuitously unravelled as he clambered over a fence, enabling him to evade the grasp of the usurpers. “Democracy survived,” writes Klaas, who has an admirable knack for the droll payoff, “quite literally by a thread.”

For these and other reasons, Klaas describes himself as “a disillusioned social scientist”. Having been trained to look for elegant patterns, to neatly attach effects to causes, he begins to wonder if the world he has been examining is just one vast and impenetrable knot of loose ends.

A lesser thinker and writer might lapse at this point into nihilistic ennui, or at least find themselves resignedly agreeing with P. J. O’Rourke’s immortal definition of the social sciences: “Folks do lots of things, we don’t know why, test on Friday.” But Klaas manages to find in this chaos an invigorating elixir of liberation, reassurance and, above all, gratitude.

“If someone else,” he writes, “had been born instead of you – the unborn ghost whom you outcompeted in the existence sweepstakes – countless other people’s lives would be profoundly different, so our world would be different. The ripples of every life spread out, in unexpected ways, for eternity.”

We cannot, of course, always control the ultimate outcomes of our actions. If everything we do matters, chances are that some of the things we do, however benign our intentions, are going to have regrettable consequences: a New Humanist reader, absorbed by this review at a bus stop, does not notice the grand piano falling from a cargo aircraft flying overhead, etc. The great strength of Fluke is that Klaas does not offer a simple answer to existential conundrums of this sort: indeed, part of the concluding chapter is a richly entertaining dismantling of the kind of books that do.

Those who cling doggedly to any belief – whether utopian or dystopian – that it is possible to impose much order upon existence, or infer any order from it, may find their preconceptions affably upended by Fluke. Those who share Klaas’s interest in (and enjoyment of) the chaos we navigate will find a smart, funny and correctly humble manifesto for appreciating our world.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

It’s late summer and the afternoon sun is beating off Shoreditch’s sheer glass facades and gum-littered pavements. My colleagues and I are en route to a “secret location” for our end-of-summer party, anticipating a space to socialise and soak up the last of the year’s warmth. We arrive, and a set of metal doors off the high street quickly dash these hopes. Natural light and the white noise of London’s traffic give way to pulsating music and darkness punctuated by bright colours. Dazed, we wander into the venue and are greeted by a stern-looking bouncer with a thick neck, his arms crossed. He’s guarding the entrance to a ball pit populated by a group of clamorous 20-somethings.

This cocktail bar is one of several similar locations that have opened across the UK in recent years. Technicolor ball pits and retro arcade games are interspersed among bars offering “nostalgic” mixed drinks and over-priced beer. In this particular establishment, a wall flanking one of the pits is adorned with at least a dozen pairs of clumsily crafted papier-mâché breasts. This collision of a seedy adult venue and nostalgic childhood playpens is unsettling. So, what’s the allure of such spaces?

“Kidulting” is a cultural trend that sees adults engage in pastimes traditionally considered more appropriate for children. This can include playing with toys, collecting figurines or cards, dressing up and cosplaying – anything that feels like a reversion to feel-good childhood behaviours. And while this new term hit mainstream popular culture during the 2020s, it’s by no means a new phenomenon. The portmanteau “rejuvenile” was used by American writer Christopher Noxon in his 2006 book of the same name, while Dan Kiley coined the pop-psychology term “Peter Pan syndrome”. Both were describing adults who seemingly struggle to grow up.

Millennials – currently people aged 28 to 43 – have long been tarred with this brush, along with accusations of laziness and narcissism. Now, their Gen Z counterparts are getting the same treatment, with words like “entitled” and “infantile” being hurled at today’s teens and 20-somethings. Comment pieces write them off as over-indulged offspring who are uniquely averse to a hard day’s work.

Proliferating catastrophes during the 21st century have indeed stifled the aspirations and ambitions of many young adults in the UK. The financial crisis of 2007–8 hit many millennials as they moved into the job market and pandemic restrictions kept Gen Zers at home during their formative teenage years. Meanwhile, a housing shortage has inflated property and rental prices to record highs, just as soaring living costs have driven down real wages.

The collective experience of these crises has had a stark impact on conventional life milestones. For example, the number of adult children in the UK living with their parents has risen 14.7 per cent since 2011 to around 4.9 million people. Many are also delaying starting a family or calling it off altogether. As these conventional markers of “adulthood” accelerate out of reach, many seem to have been left in a suspended state of adolescence.

Within this context, the kidulting trend has been frowned upon as further evidence that younger generations are immature and turning their backs on the realities of life. Take the hot-pink cultural phenomenon that was the Barbie movie. With far-reaching implications beyond cinema screens, its use of the doll’s iconic IP was a masterclass in nostalgic marketing, incorporating classic elements of the 60-year-old brand to transport fans back to their childhoods. The playful production was such a hit that Barbie-maker Mattel has since announced a Barney the Dinosaur film “for adults”.

Then there’s the rise of the “Disney Adults” with their devotion to The Walt Disney Company enacted through cosplay, merchandise purchases and multiple theme park visits. They’re often mocked and derided as the most-hated group on the internet and even as a signal of the “end of Western civilisation,” as Jodi Eichler-Levine, a professor of religious studies at Lehigh University, observed in Rolling Stone.

The adoption of childhood aesthetics has likewise emerged in fashion via so-called “kidcore” pieces. Garments adorned with garish childlike patterns and sparkling noughties-style hair clips have cropped up on high-fashion runways and are creeping into popular consciousness via social media. McDonald’s has even heralded the return of its “Adult Happy Meals”, featuring retro collectable toys reminiscent of the 80s. Similarly, the events platform Eventbrite has seen a 53 per cent increase in attendance of “nostalgia” activities in the UK post-pandemic– such as retro gaming, laser tag and discos.

It may seem more natural for younger generations to spend time thinking about the future – excited to make family plans or advance their careers. However, according to 2023 research from Global Web Index, 15 per cent of Gen Zers and 14 per cent of millennials globally prefer to think about the past rather than the future. Around half also say they feel nostalgic for certain types of media – with movies, music and TV shows from the 90s and 00s providing the most potent triggers.

But does the kidulting trend necessarily indicate the growth of the dreaded “Peter Pan syndrome” and a refusal to grow up? Or is it a more complex behavioural reaction to the stress and pressures faced by today’s youth?

As a psychologist and leading expert on nostalgia, Dr Clay Routledge recognises nostalgic thoughts and behaviour as effective coping mechanisms. “When people experience stress, anxiety, sadness, loneliness or other unpleasant mental states, nostalgic reflection helps them see a bigger picture,” he says. His work as vice president of research at the Archbridge Institute’s Human Flourishing Lab in Washington, DC has uncovered the profound impact of looking to the past on people’s mental states.

“In a survey my colleagues and I recently conducted, we found that most American adults in every age cohort view their nostalgic memories as a source of comfort, inspiration and guidance. Many of the behaviours that appear to be superficial consumer purchases may actually reflect an effort to cultivate a nostalgic environment that helps people connect with their past in constructive ways. Yes, some of it is just entertainment. But I also think it is something deeper.”

There’s also some evidence that nostalgic activities can better connect people to themselves and those around them – contributing to resilience, optimism and creativity and helping to cultivate personal progress. Speaking to me from a room crowded with musical instruments, LEGO sets and 80s toys, Dr Richard Courtney is animated and reflective about his childhood and the cultural artefacts scattered around his home.

“You can see there’s Optimus Prime. Upstairs in the loft, I’ve got all the original Transformers,” he says as he pans his phone camera around the cluttered room. “We’ve also got a lot of lightsabers in this house. And if you look down there, there are some brand-new Star Wars figures, but packaged like they came out in 1981 – it just takes you back to that place.”

The 47-year-old is head of business entrepreneurship and finance at the University of East London. He acknowledges that financial stress during his formative years meant a conventional path to adulthood was out of reach, leading him to become a self-confessed kidult. “As we grew up through the 80s and 90s, the economic times changed. It put some people like myself in a constant state of being a child where we never really grew up,” he says.

But fast-forward two decades and Courtney had his own child. Now, the passion for the figurines and playthings he has carried into adult life also brings him closer to his son. “I’ve got a nine-year-old boy who we would describe as neuro-diverse,” he says. “He’s very methodical about things and very creative – so it’s always been a really good thing to bring him up in a way that also connects with my own childhood.” Courtney says the toys he has held onto and his desire to mine the past for youthful comforts have helped him become a better father. “They’ve become a really good way to be a parent on a horizontal level. Rather than talking down to [my son], we can sit together and be on the same level.”

Courtney’s bonding with his son is just one of many examples that demonstrate how relishing in nostalgic memories can bring personal benefits and bolster relationships with those around us. More broadly, this can be achieved by participating in play as an adult through anything from board games to collectable figurines or even rewatching a childhood classic movie with a friend. In revisiting these fond memories and engaging with a part of ourselves that is so often suppressed in our adult years, such behaviours can provide a sense of rejuvenation on returning to the travails of modern life.

“It is easy to be critical of the idea of kidulting, to view it as reflecting immaturity or a form of unhealthy escapism,” says Routledge. “But I am increasingly seeing positive aspects of it. And I don’t think it is as new as people think. Humans have probably always looked for ways to seek comfort and re-energise a youthful spirit. We just create new ways of doing it. People don’t realise how creative and innovative nostalgia is as a cultural force.”

Back in Shoreditch, my colleagues and I are led to a corner of the darkened venue, our glass tables filled with drinks that have taken on a luminescent quality thanks to the day-glo fittings. Knocking back the dregs of my “Caprisunha” cocktail, I stride with purpose alongside a colleague towards the youthful revelry on display in the ball pit. The bouncer gives us a knowing nod, and we scramble up the ramp into the arena, channelling our inner children. As we lower ourselves into the sea of glowing orbs to join our fellow kidults, the stress of the workday dissipates, and everything starts to feel okay.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think (Princeton University Press) by Helen De Cruz

What is wonder? To try to answer the question requires you to perform the mental act that you are supposedly investigating. Wondering about wondering turns your mind back on itself, seeking the source of its own ability to seek a source. It makes you realise that the capacity of humans to wonder is something of a wonder in itself. Although it is often thought of as a childlike or naïve quality, philosopher Helen De Cruz argues that wonder is actually core to philosophical inquiry and to learning and thought itself. Her new book, Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think, is a gently meta undertaking, which encourages readers to turn their curiosity back on curiosity. In doing so, De Cruz suggests, we can find the root of what makes us human – and also take part in a pleasurable inquiry.

That inquiry, for De Cruz, touches on a wildly eclectic range of subjects, from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novels to the environmental writing of Rachel Carson, to magic tricks and Plato. The breadth is indicative of the book’s welcoming attitude. Curiosity and exploration, De Cruz insists, can and should be for everyone. Wonder and the related concept of awe are “emotions that we harness by means of cultural practices … that we nurture deliberately, and that are part of a positive feedback loop.” Wonder isn’t something reserved for the innocent; nor is it a special talent that only scholars can access. Instead, it’s a universal human experience or impulse which needs to be cultivated or exercised to be fully developed.

That cultivation is done through what De Cruz calls “cognitive technologies”– strategies or systems for affecting our own emotions and cognition. Cognitive technologies can be as simple as listening to music to put yourself in a particular mood. Or they can be as complex as religious systems and rituals which, De Cruz says, encourage attention to wonder and awe in everyday life.

De Cruz’s most intriguing discussion of the cognitive technology of wonder involves magic. She defines magic as “the collective term for human practices that harness a perceived, intended, or feigned ability to produce wonders”. That definition is a broad one; for De Cruz it can include genre fantasy stories (like Le Guin’s “Earthsea” series), as well as occult practices and magic shows, all of which encourage participants, readers or viewers to embrace wonder.

De Cruz notes that it’s difficult to make distinctions between “real” and “pretend” magic – a séance is a kind of dare to believe, as is a fantasy story; both are real in the sense that they create a context in which you’re encouraged to question what’s real and what’s pretend. De Cruz points out in particular that stage magic is a “wonder-technology”, which relies on setting up expectations and then defying them.

Magicians don’t really trick the audience, De Cruz says. Instead, they “achieve an effect of impossibility” by exploiting audience members’ sense of object permanence, or the human inability to effectively randomise choice. Magicians essentially use the limitations of human cognition to “trick” people into seeing that their cognition is limited. Magic shows push you to wonder and to want to understand.

Similarly, De Cruz argues, rituals – even simple ones, like removing your shoes when you come in a house or temple – create a sense of estrangement which allows us to question ourselves. “By engaging in ritual, we create an ‘as if’ world ... where things are different from how they are in our everyday environment.” That allows you to look at things in a new way, with a shoeless wonder.

Looking at things in a new way can mean a transformation of self. In that sense, cultivating wonder can be seen as a kind of self-help work. De Cruz also argues, though, that seeing the world with wonder is an important prerequisite for activism and change.

She points to the writing of Rachel Carson, in which the wonder of the natural world is a spur to conservation and virtue. For Carson, De Cruz argues, wonder “is an antidote to our destructive concern with gaining control over nature for our own ends.”

In wondering about wonder, De Cruz is demonstrating the virtue and emotion she discusses; her writing is a kind of cognitive technology, designed to encourage and elicit the very phenomenon she’s talking about. Her work is didactic in the best sense, in that she wants to share what she has learned, and to encourage readers to explore and learn for themselves.

Wonderstruck isn’t just a philosophical analysis. It’s a guide to wondering more and better in our reading, our thinking and our everyday lives.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

Michaela Community School prides itself on its approach to discipline. At this free school in Wembley, north-west London, children walk the corridors in silence and retrieve books from their bags within an allocated 10 seconds. Teachers hand out demerits to pupils for looking out of the window. When it opened a decade ago, with former home secretary Suella Braverman as its chair of governors, Michaela was an outlier. Now the ultra-disciplined approach – often referred to as championing “high behavioural standards,” “strong leadership” and a “no excuses” mantra – is spreading throughout schools in England. Yet many pupils, parents and teachers feel it comes with heavy costs to children’s mental health, wellbeing and educational outcomes. And they are speaking out.

The ultra-disciplined approach to schooling attempts to answer a real problem. Physical assault, threatening behaviour and verbal abuse towards teachers in England have all increased since the pandemic, according to a 2023 Ofsted survey. Students turn up to school but don’t attend classes, and even primary students are becoming noticeably more defiant. Teachers at Oasis Academy on the Isle of Sheppey went on strike in December last year, demanding action over pupils’ threatening behaviour. “Tens of thousands of teachers [have been] pushed prematurely out of their careers,” due to “soaring apathy and aggression among students,” according to Public First’s Commission on Teacher Retention. The government’s national behaviour survey found that only 39 per cent of children in England feel safe in their classroom every day.

Firm discipline, schools like Michaela argue, helps to tackle bad behaviour and provide the optimum learning environment. Michaela has a Progress 8 score (which measures the academic progress of a child) of 2.37. That’s the best in the country. Other free schools, as well as multi-academy trusts (MATs), have attempted to replicate this academic success with a similar approach. Like free schools, academies are state schools run by charitable trusts rather than by the local council – so they have more flexibility in deciding how they operate. MATs are chains of academies, which are free and taxpayer funded. A number of these groups made headlines recently due to policies described as authoritarian, including South Bank MAT in York, Outwood Grange Academy Trust in the East Midlands and north of England, and Athena Learning Trust, which runs eight schools across Devon and Cornwall.

“They say the aim is [to ensure] disruption-free learning,” says Lucy Jenkins*, whose two teenage sons attend a school within the Athena Learning Trust. “[They say] that most children just ‘get it’ – they only need to be sent to ‘reflection’ a few times and then they know what’s expected,” she says. “Reflection” involves two and a half hours sat in a silent former sports hall where desks have been separated by screens and windows covered up. It’s a popular form of “sanction” (i.e. punishment) across ultra-disciplined schools, albeit under varying labels such as “reset”, “consequence booths” and, paradoxically, “inclusion units”.

But while Jenkins says her sons are both well behaved, sanctions have become “so ridiculous ... they don’t stand a chance in hell of getting it right,” with the youngest recently being sent to reflection for wiping glue from his hand onto a table. Not maintaining eye contact with a teacher could also result in sanction, as could fidgeting. That’s one reason why these methods have been said to discriminate against children with special educational needs – children who, regardless of how well-behaved or dedicated they are, says Jenkins, “cannot just sit still, can’t keep quiet from one lesson to the next. Some of them get sent to reflection twice in a day and are left thinking, ‘Why did I bother coming in?’”

Mental health challenges

Thomas Mann, a teacher for 35 years and vice chair of the Campaign for State Education, agrees that this approach to discipline, in which a school will repeatedly sanction a child before “pulling parents in, demonising their child and eventually externally excluding them”, belies a wider issue: that many schools simply do not want to engage with children with behavioural issues and/or special educational needs, “because they generally pull your data down, they’re more intensive as a group and they’re more expensive to educate.”

So, while Michaela Community School is rated outstanding by Ofsted, Mann cautions against only looking at schools’ results on paper, having witnessed first-hand the “trail of kids who failed, to allow success for the others”. For example, parents can be pressured to remove a child from school, in order to avoid the worse fate of a permanent exclusion on their record. “My last job was at a school in Brent and we ended up with an autistic boy with poor behaviours,” Mann says. The boy was previously at Michaela and was told “that it wasn’t his autism but his behaviour [that was the problem]”. This was despite the fact that the boy had an education, health and care plan in place. “If you dealt with the autistic part of his behaviours, you could engage him,” Mann says. “But they didn’t seem prepared to do that.” (When asked about the case, Michaela declined to comment.)

Mann says that during his three and a half decades of teaching, behaviour has changed, rather than declined. After the pandemic, for instance, certain behaviours have had to be relearned – such as lining up properly, or how to interact with classmates. Meanwhile, societal factors such as poverty and knife crime have “impacted how students experience school and authority”. He says the real problem is a decline in school resources to deal with these issues. “It’s easier to have a disciplinarian shouting and screaming and excluding pupils than it is to spend money on people going in and actually remediating poor behaviour to a level where children can re-engage,” says Mann. This approach has long-term consequences. “If you don’t have relationships with the students, particularly the vulnerable ones, you’re never going to crack behaviour.”

But relationships have been stripped back, along with school funding. Record numbers of teachers are leaving the profession (40,000 during 2021–22), meaning classrooms are often run by cover staff. Pupils spend an increasing amount of time studying and less socialising with their peers (break times in English schools have on average reduced by up to an hour over the past 20 years) while human interaction has been deprioritised, if not banned entirely. “Some children at my sons’ school [were] late to [a] lesson because they’d helped a Year 7 child who was crying because they were lost,” says Jenkins. “And they were sent to reflection for it. Obviously those children aren’t going to help next time.”

Robert Matthews*, also an Athena Learning Trust parent, noticed that “tutor time” (one-on-one time with a teacher) was one of the first things to go when the trust took over his daughters’ school in 2022, to be replaced with “morning inspection” where the student body stands in the hall while their pencil cases are checked. As with Jenkins’ sons, Matthews’ daughters weren’t the ones regularly receiving sanctions. “But something schools don’t understand is that it has a massive effect on the ones who like to follow rules because they don’t want to be in trouble.”

At first, both children would come home from school exhausted. The older daughter, then in Year 10, “had a breakdown one night, saying she was finding it hard to cope,” says Matthews, but his younger daugher Ella*, who was then in Year 8, “was more quiet around it.” Shortly afterwards, she was found self-harming at school. “We spoke to doctors and CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) who said they didn’t have any immediate concerns, then one day she came home from school and was violently sick.” Ella had taken a serious overdose, and while it had happened on school grounds, says Matthews, teachers “were completely unaware. I can’t imagine that she wasn’t acting strange, but they hadn’t noticed.”

Ella was “pretty close to needing a liver transplant,” says Matthews, but she recovered, and now goes to a new school where the discipline approach is rooted in common sense. “They do have an ‘isolation room’ but it’s rarely used,” he says, “and they use detentions for people that are actually misbehaving. You can’t argue with that.” Ella now has to travel 13 miles each way to school (there was only one other school in their town, but it is also part of the Athena Learning Trust) but “she’s thriving, she’s back to herself, and happy when she comes home.” Her older sister remains at the Athena Learning school in order not to disrupt her GCSEs. “The school said they were going to speak to her, to make sure she was OK [following Ella’s suicide attempt],” says Matthews, “[but she says] they never did.”

A freedom of information request made by Matthews revealed that between the period September 2022–October 2023, there were 118 instances of self-harm and five suicide attempts on the school grounds. A spokesperson for the Trust said, “We take our responsibility for any students experiencing poor mental health for any reason extremely seriously. We use a range of internal and external services to support our families and schools. We ensure these services are properly vetted [and] that they put the well-being of all our school community at the heart of their strategy ... Across our schools, there is positive recognition from Ofsted that student wellbeing is prioritised and supported.”

Controlling behaviour

It can be hard to point to any one factor when it comes to the reasons for suicide. Across the UK, the suicide rate of young people has increased in the years since the pandemic. In 2020-21, women and girls under 24 saw the steepest rise since records began. Yet some would say that this general trend provides an even stronger case for prioritising pupils’ mental health. After two pupils attending schools within the Westcountry Trust – another MAT that has adopted an extreme approach to discipline – took their own lives within a week of one other, Penny Logsdail, director of Summerhouse Services, a humanist organisation that promotes mental wellbeing in young people, was moved to speak out in the regional press, suggesting that “toxic, controlling, harsh, frightening and dystopic environments” may have played a part.

While teachers aren’t mental health professionals and “can’t pick up the slack in the government’s lack of funding across society,” as Mann puts it, the school environment should be conducive to encouraging emotional stability in children, while respecting their basic rights. “People have the right to exercise control over their own bodily functions,” says Logsdail, who has worked in the field of mental health for 25 years as a counsellor, therapist and further education trainer. When school rules dictate that you must sit in a certain position and look in a certain direction, while banning toilet breaks during class, that basic right has been removed, she says.

Jenkins agrees that the need for control is one of the most disturbing aspects of the “high behavioural standards” approach. “We had a letter home saying if children want to take off their jumper they have to ask permission,” she says. On complaining to the school, she was told that they are always allowed, as long as they ask. “But I said, ‘That’s not the issue. The issue is you do not trust a child to decide for themselves whether they are too hot or not.’” Similarly, children in Year 11 were told it was compulsory to attend “sixth period” (an extra hour after school) in order to prepare for their GCSEs. When parents highlighted that this was illegal, the stance changed; it was not compulsory, but if they didn’t attend, they would not be permitted to go to their leavers’ ball.

The school, Jenkins argues, is creating an environment where children “learn that their voice doesn’t matter,” and where ultimately “they hate learning.” Her eldest son, for instance, had an interest in pursuing A-levels up until last year, when he decided to pursue an agricultural course instead. “He’s curious and was always interested in lots of things, but now he’s literally counting the days until the end of school and says, ‘I never ever want to set foot in a classroom again.’ And that’s dangerous.”

It’s also ironic, given that the main argument from supporters of this approach is that it better enables children to achieve academic success. “The evidence is clear,” argues Robert Colvile, editor of the conservative online newspaper CapX, “stricter schools get better results” and have “demonstrable success in helping the disadvantaged”. It’s true that Michaela and a handful of MATs that employ this approach do accept children from disadvantaged backgrounds and do have impressive GSCE results and Progress 8 scores. But does the end justify the means?

What really matters

“I’ve always argued that you’re better off measuring your school on what the kids do a few years after they leave, than you are measuring their GCSE results,” says Mann. “Because the next move [university] is incredibly difficult and there’s a high dropout rate of working-class kids in our country.” In Canada, it was recognised a decade ago that “students need competencies beyond literacy and numeracy”. The “measuring what matters” initiative worked to ensure that health, creativity, citizenship and social-emotional learning were considered as important as grades, in order to “provide students with the skills they need to live happy, healthy, economically secure, civically engaged lives.”

Matthews agrees that while he wants his daughters to do well academically – “and they will as they’re bright kids” – he couldn’t care less about his school’s Progress 8 result. “I care about my daughters’ wellbeing. I want them to be good kids, and free thinkers.”

The scale of the challenges facing the education system in England is vast and centres on a lack of funding. When it comes to academies, the first step must be to introduce democratic control. As these schools operate independently of local authorities, while parents’ complaints may be escalated to CEO level, from there, there is often nowhere else to go. Parents may simply be told to find another school, as there are usually plenty of others on the waiting list. In December, Labour MP Rachael Maskell raised concerns in parliament about the running of South Bank MAT, asking for an urgent debate around holding MAT leaders to account. These are state schools, run with public funding, and while there is a dominant narrative – peddled by supporters such as Colvile – that only those on “the left” are raising concerns, this isn’t true. Maskell’s involvement in South Bank MAT, for instance, was instigated by parent protests and governor resignations, while teachers at St Ivo Academy, part of Astrea MAT, went on strike in November 2023 over “draconian” policies.

The problem of extreme behavioural issues in England is real and should not be downplayed. But this newly popular, ultra-disciplinary approach to education undervalues substance, integrity and care, in favour of speed, performance and status. These schools are not the answer. Our children deserve more.

*Names have been changed to protect children’s identities.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

This thread has been created for thoughtful, rational discussion on subjects for which there are not currently any dedicated threads. Please note that our Comment Policy applies as usual. There is a link to this at the foot of the page. DISCLAIMER: All comments posted throughout this website are the personal views of users and …

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. Hello! America is becoming less religious, particularly younger segments of the population. But that doesn’t mean fundamentalists have given up. A recent court case out of Indiana demonstrates that the teaching of evolution is still under assault by those who reject science in favor of the biblical account …

This thread has been created for thoughtful, rational discussion on subjects for which there are not currently any dedicated threads. Please note that our Comment Policy applies as usual. There is a link to this at the foot of the page. If you would like to refer back to previous open discussion threads, the most …

Two quick bits of news from me.

First, my new book on how learning magic promotes wellbeing is out very soon. It’s called Magic Your Mind Happy, and I am very excited because it provides a new perspective on magic. I will be doing lots of events to promote the book and it’s available to pre-order here.

Second, I have invented a new optical illusion! Well, to be more accurate, a new variant on a known illusion. The Beuchet Chair is one of my favourite illusions and involves a person appearing to be much smaller than they are. Invented by Jean Beuchet in the 1960s, it relies upon forced perspective created by chair legs that are close to the observer, and a large chair seat further away.

I have come up with a variant. This one centres around a plinth rather than a chair. The legs of the original chair are replaced by two pieces of hinged cardboard (these can easily be cut from foamboard and hinged with tape), and the large seat and back of the chair are replaced with a piece of cloth.

The hinged screen forms the base of the plinth and is positioned in front of the photographer, and the cloth appears to form the top of the plinth and is placed on the floor behind the screen. To help to create a sense of continuity between the large cloth and the plinth, two small pieces of matching cloth are draped along the top of the screens. The front and side panels of the screen help to conceal the front and left edge of the cloth, and make lining up the photograph much easier than in the original illusion.

This entire set up can be constructed in a short space of time, is quick to set up, and folds flat after use. Because of this, it’s ideal for those wanting to create a convincing version of this classic illusion that is easy and cost effective to build, assemble, move, and store. I hope that you like it.

UPDATE: So, it turns out that illusion creator Olivier Redon had exactly the same idea  a few years ago. You can see his great version here and watch his other illusion videos here.

Hi there,

I am delighted to say that I am back performing at the Edinburgh Magic Festival this year.

First, on the 28th December I will be exploring the strange world of illusion, mystery and magic in a show called MIND MAGIC. This will involve showing some of the best optical illusions in the world, revealing whether paranormal phenomena really exist, showing how we can all achieve the impossible, explaining how to transform a tea towel into a chicken, and much more. All the info is here.

Then, on the 28th and 29th December, I am presenting a new and experimental show about the invention of magic. This will be an intimate affair for a small number of people. It will examine how magicians create magic, and explore the mind and work of a magical genius who created the world’s greatest card trick. Info here.

So, if you are around, please come along, and fun will be had!

Some exciting news from me! I have just written my first book for children.

It uses magic to teach youngsters a range of essential life skills, including social skills, confidence, creativity, lateral thinking and much much more. Readers will learn how to perform lots of seemingly impossible feats, including how to defy gravity, read minds, pluck coins from thin air, and predict the future. Most important of all, these tricks have been carefully chosen to help boost mental wellbeing and resilience. It’s fun, it’s easy, it’s magic!

I am delighted to say that Magic Your Mind Happy will be published by Wren and Rook in May 2024, and is available to preorder now here.

check, 1, 2…is this thing on? hi everyone! it’s been a while.

Two quick bits of news.

First, The Royal Society have kindly given me the prestigious David Attenborough Award. This is a lifetime achievement award for my work promoting psychology and critical thinking, and focuses on my research combatting pseudo-science and examining the psychology of magic. Previous recipients include Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam and Professor Alice Roberts, and I will give an award lecture about my work in August 2024.

Second, I have a new academic magic book out! It is part of the well-known Arts For Health series and reviews work examining how watching and learning magic is good for your wellbeing, including how it boosts confidence, social skills, dexterity, curiosity and much more. It was lots of fun to write and also includes interviews key practitioners, including Richard McDougall (Breathe Magic), Julie Eng (Magicana), Mario the Maker Magician (USA), David Brookhouse (UK), David Gore and Marian Williamson (College of Magic), and Tom Verner (Magicians Without Borders).  More details here.

Someone contacted me hoping to find young atheists who might be interested in being part of a new series. I’m not particularly interested in having my mug on TV, but I would love to have some great personalities represent atheism on the show, so I offered to repost his email on my blog: My name […]

All throughout my youth, I dreamed of becoming a writer. I wrote all the time, about everything. I watched TV shows and ranted along with the curmudgeons on Television Without Pity about what each show did wrong, convincing myself that I could do a better job. I flew to America with a dream in my […]

A friend linked me to this. I was a sobbing mess within the first minute. I sometimes wonder why I feel such a strong kinship to the LGBT community, and I think it’s because I’ve been through the same thing that many of them have. So I watched this video and I cried, because, as […]

UPDATE #1: I got my domain back! Many thanks to Kurtis for the pleasant surprise: So I stumbled upon your blog, really liked what I saw, read that you had drama with the domain name owner, bought it, and forwarded it here. It should work again in a matter of seconds. I am an atheist […]