Dumbing Down Society

I was speaking with a friend who works in the education system yesterday.

It was only a short time before the conversation turned to the behaviour of children at schools and the enormous challenges this can pose for teachers.

What my friend told me made me shake my head in disbelief.

He works in the private (Catholic) education system and mentioned that his school's first-year student intake this year was proving the most challenging ever.

Some of those challenges include children who have never been toilet-trained and, as a consequence, regularly soil themselves during school time.

Others are screen-addicted at just five years of age, while many seem to have few social or intrapersonal skills.

He went on to say that these problems were not confined to any one socio-economic or ethnic group. It's clearly just a huge parenting problem across society.

That doesn't surprise me, even if some of the consequential failings did.