Growing pains of "Generation Alpha"

Generation Alpha

I wrote a piece about Generation Z a while ago. it concluded that whilst the latest generation to enter the workforce might be seen as fragile, demanding or entitled by previous generations, over time.... the handover to youth would inevitably work out.

Generation Alpha is not yet to be seen over the horizon from an employment perspective, but the signs are more concerning. Generation Alpha is the generation that comes after Generation Z: It refers to those born between 2010 and 2024. They are still in their formative years.

My comments are not, per se, about the education system - where our hardworking systems are doing all they can to ready pupils for adult life.  But they do ask questions about the societal values that we will imbue Generation Alpha with.

The news on one single day in October provided a congruence of warning and concern. In summary the news of that day contained the following stories ....

A primary pupil has been allowed to identify as an animal in a Scottish school, A council has admitted that “one or more primary school pupils had been officially recognised as having “species dysphoria”, despite psychologists warning that the supposed condition has no scientific basis. It follows the case of a secondary pupil elsewhere allowed to identify as a wolf. Species dysphoria is a non-clinical condition in which an individual insists they do not identify as fully human.

A schoolgirl accused of attempting to murder two teachers and a pupil told a court she was “upset” and “grumpy” after starting her period. The girl, aged 14, admitted carrying a knife to her school in Wales almost every day and said she had done so “since she was in Year 3”.

Literacy rates are in decline, with growing reports of students being less able to read than previous generations. Often blamed on smartphones and social media causing an “attrition of attention”. An Oxford University professor of English has claimed state school students struggle to read long novels. He told the BBC: “I’ve been lecturing for 40 years and, when I began in Cambridge, you could say to students ‘this week, it’s Dickens, so please read the following three novels - and they would. He added: “Of course, it really does all begin in schools, doesn’t it? You only have to look at the thinning of the GCSE and A-level syllabuses and the tendency to prescribe works because they’re shorter.”

The title of another article proclaimed "It’s time psychotherapists stopped enabling our fragile, work-shy students". Explaining why her teenage son had stopped attending school a mother gravely explained how initially the local council and then health professionals became involved after first few months of her son refusing to go to school. “Anyway, we finally got a diagnosis.” ....“It turns out he’s suffering from Educational Avoidance.”

A joke right? Google is po-faced as it explains the “curious rise” of this very real mental health condition – official name Emotionally Based School Avoidance – in both children and young people, and how symptoms of EBSA include “anxiety”, “low self-esteem”, “sleep disturbances” and… not wanting to go either to school, university, or indeed any space where there might be the threat of education.

Elsewhere, in a Sunday Times essay written by an anonymous UK-based academic -

“The Secret Lecturer” is desperately trying to teach – only to be thwarted at every turn by his students’ own mental health diagnoses. By their generalised but all-consuming “Educational Avoidance”. Only a month into the new university year, he writes, but already a third of undergraduates are absent from class, with “some too overwhelmed to take a bus to campus”, many so “socially anxious around other people” that they “avoid seminars”, and others refusing to “come in because of panic attacks”. “They’re suffering from ‘depression’, ‘extreme anxiety’ or ‘ADHD burnout’,” they assure him. Yet these statements are never backed up by medical fact, he writes, and how have we reached a point where people feel so comfortable casually self-diagnosing?

Ludicrous-sounding umbrella diagnoses aren’t going to help those in genuine need.

As for those who “trying it on”, we need to stop enabling them by fuelling cop-out culture.

As “The Secret Lecturer” says in his essay, “promoting fragility is to their detriment” and will only leave them “unprepared for adult life”.

Now each article (summarised above) gives cause for a valid exclamation of "WTF?" from a reasonable reader with value sets that adhere to the broad (and widening) church of opinion generally referred to as "the norm". Together on one single day they might give a deeper cause for concern. These examples give rise to serious questions on how we will assimilate Generation Alpha into work and adult life - and in what shape will they present themselves?

Are we to ready our businesses for the next intake with thoughts of accommodating species" dysphoria" or an inability to concentrate beyond the standard tweet length? Will this generation really be less prepared for adult life than any previous generation?

Or are these just the growing pains of Generation Alpha?