10 When adults lose sight of what childhood means

This stage of adolescents being ‘at complete odds with what is expected of them’ describes the moment in time sought: the moment when ‘our current failure to convert our experience of childhood into useable knowledge to better manage childhood’ occurs. 

It is the end of the ‘childhood’ state - during which co-operative selflessness occupied most decision making - and the beginning of the ‘adult’, predominantly competitive and selfish decision making state. In order to reach this stage, denial of the behaviour, resultant criticism and internal conflict that led to it must also take place. 

In the adolescent this denial is just beginning and will take five or six years to mature. Perhaps unsurprisingly within this same five or six year period is also the social and legal acknowledgement of adulthood: defining the beginning of a ‘new life’ - of self-management (independence) and responsibility, e.g. leaving home, getting a job, etc. 

Thus, it can be seen that only by creating a severely impaired view of childhood/adolescent behaviour and the outcomes of behaviour management on childhood/adolescent behaviour can the foundations of adulthood - as it is currently defined - be formed. This might also be described as the beginning of the end of ‘the race between self discovery and self destruction’ (Griffith, para. 903)

As the denial phase matures the competitive selfish stage begins, which the teacher - on the other side of our moment in time - has already reached. It is important to recognise that - by its very definition - denial did not stop the conflict experienced during childhood which is now able to cause/merge with new conflicts - created by responsibility and independence. It is therefore during adulthood where internal conflict - and the search for relief from it - increases:

‘… unable to refute the negative view of themselves with understanding, the resigned person [entering adulthood] could only counter the negatives by focusing on, emphasising and developing whatever positive view of both the world and themselves they could find. In particular, they became preoccupied finding ways to feel good about themselves by competing for power, fame, fortune and glory.’ (Griffith, J., 2016, para. 742)

Denial is now serving two purposes; attempting to protect the new life from childhood conflicts re-emerging and, by stopping them from re-emerging, ensuring that they will never be resolved. 

All of these stages of confrontation and conflict from childhood to adulthood are very effectively described in a passage from The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters [22] along with an elegant analogy of the problem - inconsistency - it causes:

‘How many times have you talked to yourself, reassured yourself or had battles within your own head? Often you have thoughts and feelings that you do not want and even carry out behaviours that you know at the time are not really what you want to do. So why are you doing this? How can it be that you do not have control over what thoughts or emotions you have and what behaviours you carry out? How can you be two very different people at different times?’ (Author underlined) (p.9 Kindle version)

It is now possible to see how schools themselves contribute to the widespread inconsistency in teaching staff and school leaders. Preparing students for the world of work - through the gaining of qualifications - directly introduces the competitive search for ‘power, fame, fortune and glory’, thus challenging greatly the likelihood of successfully, simultaneously preparing students for ‘life’ through co-operation and selflessness: the ‘two very different people different at different times’.

Whether as students, teachers and school leaders or collectively as organisations the battles in our heads involve the simultaneous managing of two opposing states of mind; one a co-operative selfless state, the other a competitive selfish state; and with denial of the criticism each provokes in the other the only currently available resolution, it is sustained and often compounded in an endlessly repeating cycle.

This is the root of inconsistency which exists at all levels of a school’s structure, causing low level disruption in children and its mismanagement by adults. 

The reversal of inconsistency in low level disruption management and the delaying or eradication of its effects on children - i.e. outcomes that currently hinder social/academic development - are described in the next two sections.

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References:

22 Peters, P. S. (2012). The chimp paradox. Vermilion.