Recently, I have been working as a TA in various schools in Gloucestershire. The working day often ends at 3pm. As I don’t have a car at the moment I have been coming home by bus. The buses at this time are even advertised on the timetable as “sch” buses; a kind of warning. I knew it would be bad, but I am still quite shocked by the behaviour of the children on these buses. It is much worse than I expected and I had very low expectations.
Just a few examples. On one bus travelling from Gloucester to a small town outside Gloucester, there was a group of three boys aged 13-17. They were joking with each other. One boy seemed to grab the bus ticket of another and threw it out of the window of the bus. They were pushing each other about a bit; but that wasn’t a problem. They stayed in their seats. But one boy, the youngest, was shouting and screaming really loudly. It must have been distressing for other passengers on the bus. The next day, I was on the same bus. As expected the same trio and the same shouting and screaming. I waited until I’d really had enough and called out, from my seat, “shut up”. I then walked down the aisle and spoke to the boys. I told them that they were causing distress to other passengers. To his credit the boy who had been screaming looked a bit abashed. His friend said, “it wasn’t me, I was trying to stop him”. But, to his credit, when I got off the bus, he stopped me and apologised. At no point did any other adult on the bus, (including the driver), show any sign of intervening even though this was extreme behaviour.
Today, I travelled on another bus, from another small town, to Gloucester. This was a double-decker bus and was full of school-children. I found a place on the top deck. At one point, the bus driver stopped the bus and came upstairs and told two boys off. I hadn’t seen what they had, (presumably), done, but, possibly they had been blocking the mirror that allows the driver to see what is going on upstairs. The driver told the boys to “pack it in”. After he’d gone downstairs the boy said, “bugger off” as if to the driver. At least he hadn’t said directly to the driver. Just behind me were two 11 year old girls. They were talking the whole 40 minute journey, having the kind of “private” conversation which is designed to be consumed by an audience. There was some showing off about boyfriends and so on. One used the word “gay” as an insult, which is taboo in UK schools, (because it links negativity to homosexuality). Just before they got off, one slipped the word “bitch” into her speech. It was done sotto voce and quickly. I didn’t challenge them, partly because it was so quick I could have been mistaken. But, I don’t think so. The point, I guess, was to leave an impression behind them. “We are not two immature 11 year olds talking about Tik-Tok. We are grown-ups using swear words. And, by the way, fuck you”. I had a look at one of these girls as she got off the bus. About 11 years old with bland face. I searched in it for some signs of character and saw nothing at all. I saw a baby-faced child with the emotional development of a two-year old. I could give other examples.
What I am talking about here is a norm of behaviour. This is not a case of a few isolated incidents. This kind of behaviour is endemic. The other striking point is how the other adults on the buses do not do anything. One wonders at what point would they intervene? If a child took off their clothes? If one started really slapping another? I am not sure anyone would intervene. This compares starkly with Russia. I have lived in Russia for 4 years and this kind of behaviour is very rare. On one train two boys were jumping about on the seats without any consideration for other passengers, but a middle-aged woman intervened and said, “if you don’t stop I will call the police”, (using the old-fashioned word for the police, from the USSR). On one other bus two adolescents were riding without having bought tickets. When the conductor challenged them one threatened to “stab her up”. But this boy was obviously from the very rough side of town and looked like he might have had some learning difficulties. This is a different matter; in every country there are going to be hooligans. I am not talking about the hooligans. What I am talking about in this post is how bad, that is inconsiderate and uncontrolled, behaviour is endemic amongst the normal population of children in England. The children who behave like this seem to have no sense of any limits. They seem to have no idea of restraint, in particular no idea of showing some restraint in public. They seem to have no idea at all that they should restrain their behaviour in the presence of adults. They believe, correctly it seems, that adults will not say anything. Fundamentally, the line of adult authority over children, and restraint by children in the presence of adults has largely broken down. But, based on my admittedly rather small sample, while a real phenomenon this phenomenon is also partly illusory. When I ticked off the boys causing problems on the first bus they reacted pretty well. They didn’t abuse me. Why didn’t anyone else say anything to them? Do adults have an exaggerated idea of how aggressive children might be if ticked off? Is this a case of desperate children attention-seeking? If there is a line which should connect children to adults via restraint and respect for authority, is the real problem not that children are not restraining themselves but that adults are not exercising their authority? If so; why?
While discussing these questions with an English language student of mine who lives in Germany he mentioned the work of a Dutch social psychologist, Geert Hofstede. Hofstede developed a model of looking at the cultural conditions of society. His model encompassed 6 lines on which a society could be evaluated; power-distance (respect for authority), individualism, task orientation, tolerance of uncertainty, long-term orientation and indulgence. * For example; China scores lowly on tolerance of unpredictability and lowly on individualism but highly on power-distance. The US scores highly on indulgence. We can say that in modern England the cultural measure of power-distance is low. The indulgence and individualism ratings I would say, have gone off the scale. I would be interested to know if Hofstede’s work looked at how measures on his 6 scales correlated with each other. Does low respect for authority typically correlate with high indulgence, for example? Did Hofstede look not just at how different countries compare on his scales, but at how one country can change over time? What would such a work show for how England has changed over the last 50 years? Over the last 5?
The core idea of this post is that respect for authority (power-distance in Hofstede’s model) has, if we are talking about children and adults, almost collapsed in this country. Children can behave in shocking ways in public, acting in the valid belief that adults are unlikely to intervene. I am talking specifically about the line of authority between children and adults in general in society, not between children and people in uniform, operating in specific roles. (I am talking about the space between children and everyday adults whom they might encounter outside of formal policed encounters). I have lived in countries where this line is not broken. I think England has always had a hooligan streak, but I think the situation is worse than even 5 years ago. What is behind this? These are some sketched ideas for further work:
- The pandemic – children were, crazily given that Sars-Cov-2 was no worse than flu for them, kept off school for weeks or months during the pandemic and lost socialisation time
- Children sense that adults don’t consider them to be part of one cohesive social group with the adults and are acting up in the space which is thus created. They sense the retreat of adults from society and act up to fill the void. But, it isn’t natural for them and it doesn’t bring them satisfaction. Adults have retreated because they are busy with indulgence (off-the-scale high scores on indulgence and individualism) but also because:
- The state has moved into the field of child – adult power distance, with a whole series of invasive moves of power, the increasing disciplinisation of civil relations, ‘Safeguarding’, anti-social behaviour judicial punishment systems, criminalisation of school ‘truancy’, and so on, causing authority to crumble. People either assume that someone with a high-viz jacket will come along and sort out the problem, or, are afraid of intervening in case they become embroiled themselves in some legal situation. (Wised-up children certainly know that they can accuse an adult who has told them off of touching them inappropriately and that will really cause problems for the adult).
How then can such a disaster be remedied? Josie Appleton is a lone voice crying out to rebuild civil society and her work is well worth reading. On an individual level one can simply rebuild society one interaction at a time. The space which has grown between adults and children is not as big as it might seem. The problem is partly perception. Nonetheless, it is hard, given that “the terrible has already happened” – that there is a breach in this line at all, is an unnatural state of affairs.
* My brief recap here is based on a screenshot from Wikipedia and the discussion with my friend who did his Masters based partly on the work of Hofstede. I haven’t taken it any further than that.
[Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Back_to_school_bus_illustration.jpg]