Even accounting for nostalgic exaggeration, I can attest that my ‘seen and not heard’ generation endured a school experience tempered by systematic bullying by our teachers and classroom thugs and gangs.

Victims of physical and sexual abuse were cowed into silent suffering. Big boys don’t cry!

Things had to change, with all sorts of revolutions in the 1960s, including human rights and feminist movements, consumer and tenancy advocacy and in schools the end of corporal punishment. Students now had rights!

Unfortunately, somebody forgot to remind them that every right has a complementary responsibility. 

Like most pendula, it is worth considering whether we have gone too far.

Sensationalised reporting aside, frequent reports of teachers and principals being assaulted, schools degenerating into whiteboard jungles and teachers leaving the profession in droves.

As a supply teacher I have lost count of the number of occasions I have been admonished by students who inform me that I cannot punish them for their feral behaviour because they have rights and their parents would sue me if I detained them after school!

At one private school I had the misfortune to work, lists were published every term which included 90 per cent of the student population suffering from some physical or psychological ailment.

Our new principal demanded that we stop using red ink when correcting students’ work and that no student should fail any subject on their report.

Teachers were rarely supported when parents complained because their princess had been disciplined or not been awarded her usual A+ grade. Everyone gets a ribbon on sports day!

We now have a whole generation of refuseniks who either find school boring or who are emotionally fragile after being flamed on social media. Truancy is trendy!

Resilience is a defunct quality and helicopter parents want to shield their children from life’s harsh realities. Johnny simply doesn’t want to go to school and we cannot force him!

Some parents vote with their feet and homeschool their children to protect them from uncaring teachers who do not really understand their child’s perceived special needs and talents.

It doesn’t help when students are assailed with daily tales of impending doom. Another war in the Middle East, a new variant of COVID on the horizon, Artificial Intelligence replacing jobs and people, one or more of our northern neighbours soon invading, a pandemic of fake news and conspiracy theories, generational guilt about treatment of our first nations people and the challenge of deciding what gender or body shape I should be.

Recent Climate Risk Index research by Zurich-Mandala suggests writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation and numeracy could suffer in 84 per cent of Australian schools by 2060 unless every school is airconditioned.

Of course, it would be heavenly if life was a bowl of cherries. Of course, it would be ideal if schools were perfect and every student’s needs were met, even if we need to employ a million more school counsellors!

But we live in an imperfect world and schools need to teach children more than English, Maths and History.

Schools boast of preparing students for life. If that is true, they desperately need to teach resilience and the capacity to endure life’s knockbacks and adversity.  

Maybe a few history lessons on how their great grandparents were never driven to and from school every day and never complained that they didn’t have the latest smartphone.

Maybe it’s time to look at a unit on Buddhism and suffering - and the inevitability that life isn’t meant to, or will never be, easy.