Our lost generation of children Part 1: Low school attendance and home schooling
When people speak of a lost generation in the media, the phrase can sound quite exaggerated, as if it has been lifted out of a dystopian film, but it describes a situation that is real and what’s more, we’ve been here before - 100 years ago.
The author, Gertrude Stein, who lived in Paris in the early 20th century first coined the term, ‘lost generation’ to refer to people born between 1883 and 1900. These were the people who were conscripted in 1914 to fight in the Great War, World War 1. Most of them were very young when they died on the battlefields. The war veterans who had served and survived then faced the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919 and later they saw the rise of fascism.
This ‘lost generation’ phrase was also used by Ernest Hemingway in his 1926 novel, ‘The Sun Also Rises’. He described the survivors of World War 1, as those who were disoriented in so many ways, and with their health weakened by the war, were very susceptible to the 1919 pandemic.
After the first lockdown
Let’s fast-forward to our own time. In July 2020, Anne Longfield, who was Children’s Commissioner for England predicted that we would see a ‘lost generation of children’ those children who had fallen through the gaps in school and social care systems. and she said:
“We must not look back in five years at a generation of vulnerable teenagers who fell out of society and ended up in crime and unemployment. They need extra help now as we emerge from lockdown.”
That same year, Cathy Cresswell, Professor of Developmental Clinical Child Psychology at Oxford, noted the rising number of children living in poverty said,
“We have failed to listen and respond to these families,” and continued, “We have a whole generation at risk of being unheard, devalued and forgotten.”
The UK Government’s SAGE Group of advisors also referred to the lost generation. Professor Russell Viner, President of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, said,
“This is a generation under threat. It will be catastrophically, disproportionately hit and harmed by the loss of economic and social opportunities as a direct result of the pandemic.”
Professor Chris Bonell said:
“We not only took away the protective net we throw around our children by closing schools and redeploying the children’s health workforce, but then we mortgaged off their futures.”
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One month later in November 2020, UNICEF published a report, ‘Averting a lost COVID generation,’ with warnings of lifelong impacts of child malnutrition, child poverty, loss of health and social care for children and school closures worldwide.
Five years on
As we are now five years on from Anne Longfield’s report, in which she predicted the 'lost generation', this phrase, ‘lost generation’ has been also used by the United Nations to refer to the children of Gaza, but most recently in this same phrase has be used by journalists and politicians to describe the Special Educational Needs SEN crisis in English Schools.
The three layers of the crisis
Although the SEN crisis may be the glaring face of the ‘lost generation’, there are in my opinion, three overlapping layers that we need to consider:
Low school attendance and the rise in home schooling.
Special Educational Needs and children's mental health,
The crisis in learning engagement.
We have heard in recent days about the failings in children’s services and other agencies in high profile court cases, following the tragic deaths of innocent children. As a volunteer call-taker on a national helpline, it’s obvious to me that these failings are affecting families up and down the country. As a result of the pandemic there are so many parents of teens who are crying out for support. Parents are turning to children’s services, to schools and to CAMHS just to find out that their child is one of so many that also need urgent help and support. In visiting schools, I know that dysregulated behaviour causes immense problems and schools are struggling to recruit and retain teachers.
Many families are enduring fear inside their own homes with their raging teens, who before the pandemic, enjoyed school, loved sports, did their homework and had a nice group of friends. According to their parents, their teens are now disengaged; they are unable to learn; some are unable to get out of bed and are not at school. As a society we don’t appear have the resources to manage this situation well.
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