Headmaster's Blog

Published, The Scotsman, 15 October 2011 (as an abbreviated interview) and The Edinburgh Evening News, Saturday 3rd December 2011

Is it just me or are there others out there who believe that social networking sites are the most divisive, most abhorrent, least useful innovation of all time? I find myself worrying that I’m just becoming an old fogey who isn’t in touch with today’s ‘yoof’ and that ‘networking’ through various forms of social media is actually a vital cog in society’s wheel. Then I pinch myself and realise that I’m worrying needlessly.

When you find two youngsters texting each other whilst sitting on the same school bus, you begin to see that the world is changing and not for the better. Too many youngsters inhabit their bedrooms for long periods of time ‘communicating’ with others by text, instant messaging or via something called ‘a wall’. It terrifies the living daylights out of me that we have allowed ourselves to come to this.

When I was wee, I used to communicate with my friends by actually meeting up with them and talking to them. If we were going to insult one another we did it face to face, fall out with each other, perhaps indulge in a skirmish, make up and then get on with being friends again. Now, youngsters engage in ‘cyber bullying’ where they can ensure maximum exposure of their taunting to everyone that’s logged on.

We have social network web pages where individuals display all of their talents to a faceless and nameless audience – photographs of nights out, where it is clear that the purpose of the night has been simply about taking photographs that can be uploaded, so that others can marvel at the excitement of the publisher’s life.

Youngsters have become so engulfed in the age of celebrity that they truly believe that they are celebrities themselves, inhabiting a virtual world where one’s personal remarks, ‘likes’ and photographs actually ‘matter’, when the truth is that they don’t and not a soul is interested in your night out a week ago on Friday.

They seem to compete with each other gleefully with regard to the number of ‘friends’ they each have. I know youngsters who are proud to relate that they have “347 friends”. I always reply, instantaneously, “No, you don’t, you have three.”

How sad, too, that adults, often parents themselves, indulge in mocking each other; publishing material that could, quite reasonably, be deemed offensive or inappropriate.

We seem to have lost our sense of balance, our innate humility giving way to a dark desire to be noticed and celebrated. Too many of us clutch at any medium that gives us airspace. I know I’m out of sync with the majority but I really wish social networking sites had never become a reality. I am aware, of course, that now that they are here, they are here forever. My only hope is that they eventually become the domain of the few and that the majority see them for the waste of time they actually are.

People constantly tell me that it is a great way to regain lost friendships but I can’t understand why such friendships should become lost in the first place. The people I want in my life are in my life and those that are not are not for a reason (if you get my drift). The thought of opening the door to any past acquaintance fills me with utter dread and horror. Maybe I’m just a selective hermit or maybe I’m secretly worried I’d end up with no ‘friends’ – whatever the reason, I just can’t see such sites as a force for good when, nearly every day as a Headmaster, I deal with the consequences of their misuse by students not yet mature enough to see the damage their words and pictures can wreak.

Of course, such sites are a massive blessing to the police, University and College Admissions officers, prospective employers and of course, last but not least, to predators of questionable morality. It’s time we all woke up to the reality that such sites promote the very worst of human characteristics.

As I tell my students, don’t publish anything on a website that you wouldn’t let your granny see, because once published it is potentially there forever.

Interview Published, The Scotsman, 6th July, 2009

I was born in 1964, so my childhood covered the 60s and 70s. When I think back I am struck by the differences between my era and the world in which children grow up today.

When I was young there were no Play Stations, no X-boxes, no internet, no mobile phones, no hand-held computers, no digital or satellite television, no credit or debit cards; we didn’t even have a remote control for the T.V. or the C.D. player (oh, and of course we didn’t have CDs or DVDs or videos even). In fact, television channels stopped broadcasting at around 11p.m., with BBC1 playing the national anthem.

Indeed, there were only three television stations and children’s programmes were limited to an hour at lunchtime and two hours in the afternoon. Do you remember the shows we waited for in eager anticipation? The list is endless: Trumpton, Camberwick Green, The Flowerpot Men, The Herbs, Hector’s House, Jackanory, Crackerjack, Mr. Benn, Bagpuss, The Double Deckers and my personal favourite, The Banana Splits. And then, as we got a bit older, we watched the delights of The Six Million Dollar Man, Charlie’s Angels, The A-Team, Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk. Saturday night was all about Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game, New Faces, The Price is Right, the Saturday Night Movie followed by news and then Sportscene with Archie MacPherson. We really lived, didn’t we?

And yet, we really DID live because what we lost in not having modern technology and thousands of television channels and endless hours of mind-numbing American kids’ shows, we made up for in our personal freedoms. At only eight or nine years of age I remember a world in which I left my house on Saturdays just as Dickie Davies, with his shock of white hair, was introducing World of Sport. My mum would tell me to be careful when crossing the road and off I’d go. I lived in Prestwick, so my friends and I would gather and run down to the golf course and the beach, exploring local burns, church graveyards, climbing trees, wandering through derelict buildings, shouting at golfers as they addressed the ball on the first tee, and returning home either when it got dark or we got hungry.

Our parents had no way of contacting us, no way of knowing where we might be, and yet trusting our ability to avoid risk and danger. And you know, by and large, we did avoid putting ourselves at risk. Instinctively we knew what to look out for, what to be wary of – we were street-wise and we knew how to keep ourselves safe.

Today, we live in a world that is fearful. Parents have become hugely risk averse, so that their children are exposed to a back garden (under supervision, of course) at best. What really worries me, though, is that children themselves are becoming more and more risk averse. They are surrounded by Play Stations, TVs, computers, the Internet, DVDs, CDs, videos, Music Systems and i-Pods and they communicate with their friends by Instant Messenger and Text Messaging. When faced with the outdoors they often don’t know what to do with it. In my experience, you tell children to go and play in the woods and they are back in ten minutes saying, “We’re bored!”. Indeed, I have myself heard, “What if there’s a bad man in the woods?” How sad that our children have become so fearful. They are now so protected, so surrounded in cotton wool that they are in danger of being unable to assess risk at all. When that happens, and I believe that process has already begun, then our children are in real danger. We risk producing young adults that will be unable to cope with an adult world, either in the workplace or on the street.

So my plea is that each of us is, in some way, responsible for modifying these deep-rooted fears that we all share. We should not place children at unnecessary risk but we must expose them to some risk. Otherwise, we risk their future health and safety and that is something none of us wants.

Being called a name in the playground, being kicked in the shin, being excluded from a group, being made fun of – all of these experiences have happened to us all but in many ways these experiences, in isolation, help us to be prepared for a world where not everyone is kind to us, to a world that does exclude and to a world that will not allow each of us to get our own way. That is not to excuse these events when they occur and we should not tolerate that kind of behaviour, particularly if it becomes systematic and ongoing. However, there are times that we should allow children to fight their own battles before adults jump in, take over and mediate. If we always fight their battles for them children never learn to overcome problems with others and they become reliant on the adults around them. That is really dangerous – for we risk a nation of individuals who are fragile beings, incapable of tolerance, compassion or empathy.

Risk aversion also leads schools to remove trees from playgrounds and diving boards from swimming pools.

Parents can track teenagers with GPS enhanced mobile phones and monitor their email and phones. Young children have only carefully arranged “play dates” rather than risking emotional or physical bruises that may be incurred in the social labyrinth of one’s neighbourhood.

Do we really have to be so afraid? Is the world more dangerous? Despite the sensational stories in the tabloid media, the answer is probably “no.” Reliable statistics are hard to come by, but the risk of abduction seems to have risen at about the rate of population growth for decades and family members commit the vast majority. Physical harm from various activities seems similarly unchanged, although you might be surprised by some ‘dangerous’ activities. In a ‘Google search’ I found a scholarly article analyzing data related to escalator injuries in the population of under-5 boys. Read it and you will start using the stairs.

Childhood has never been risk free, but if we succumb to our fears our children may end up ill equipped to live successfully in adulthood. Protecting children from the risks of trees, diving boards, escalators, uncomfortable social situations and incomplete homework assignments is almost certain to produce adults with deficits.

When assessing the risks to your child’s long-term well-being perhaps the first place to look is in the mirror.

In conclusion, whilst you may not agree with everything I have written, we adults need to take great care, because in protecting our children we DO risk exposing them to a world less forgiving than our own.

Let’s get back to 1964, where my life began; to a time of freedom, for though there were many things wrong with that era, it was a period of history from which we can also learn.