Media Subterfuge

Want to be a respected news outlet? Stop writing horribly misleading headlines.

An article in The Guardian is causing a stir, not because of what the article says, but because of the heading and subheading: 

"Thousands of Covid generation under-fives excluded from schools in England: Nearly half of children in some areas arrive unable to talk and still not potty-trained as lockdown legacy take its toll, data show."

That's not actually what the data shows, however. The subheading is particularly ridiculous since these kids were infants during lockdown. They likely would have been home with mom anyway. 

This type of headline is not in the realm of clickbait or fake news, but it's still bullshitty and annoying, and it's got people on social media arguing about lockdowns now instead of discussing the real issues from the article: cuts to social services. It works to get people to discuss the piece, but few are clicking on it to actually read the thing anyway, so I'm not sure how well it pays off as a tactic. Unless, of course, the tactic is to get them to ignore the content. Can't spur on a socialist movement, now can we!

The article explains that the number of term exclusions in England last year were up 11% higher than pre-pandemic years, at which time they also had a problem with kids not yet school ready:

The article points a finger directly at social services cutbacks:

"Cuts to public services mean many are not seen by a health visitor at two and a half as they should be, and the closure of children's centres has resulted in struggling families falling beneath the radar. . . . a lack of early support for struggling families, combined with undiagnosed special educational needs, has caused an 'outbreak' of very young children who can't cope in a classroom environment."

They're also seeing a lot of "undiagnosed language and learning difficulties. . . . children with very high needs and real difficulties dealing with social situations." THIS could be a direct result of Covid infections causing inflammation of the glial cells in the brain, jamming up communication networks and affecting executive functioning. I've been on about that concern, alerting all I could about the need for more Learning Services teachers since I first read about Covid's effect on the brain! We knew this would be one of many outcomes of flippantly allowing children to contract this virus instead of doing everything humanly possible to protect them. 

We knew this effect of Covid would be a problem, and now it's exacerbated by further cuts to funding in education as well:

"More than half of teachers . . . don't know how to help children with speech and language difficulties, and . . . schools that are struggling to recruit and retain teaching assistants because of low pay often don't have enough staff to give extra support. Of course young children are going to feel frustrated if they can't understand what's going on at school, and if they find it difficult to talk they will really struggle with making friendships. . . . The mother of an autistic boy who was suspended from his south London school at the age of six last year after pressing a fire alarm, told the Observer she was 'furious'. . . . How do you get to a situation where a child is being suspended and punished for something to do with their disability? Surely multiple very young children being suspended should be a huge red flag? We tried to make a joint complaint but some parents were afraid of upsetting the school. . . . Some are frightened to reach out in case it all escalates and their child is excluded permanently. So they just keep their heads down."

This is a very real concern about upsetting schools: there's a very fine line between an irate parent pushing for results and getting them and one stepping a millimeter over that line to be blacklisted, no longer responded to, and the child being labeled a "problem child" because of the parent. It's very tricky to maneuver. I've seen very similar cases go very different ways because one parent knew all the right words to say and the other just expressed their frustration, not part of the system enough to know the buzzwords. 

Well-funded healthcare systems with enough workers to visit with children who aren't hitting milestones, and tons of financial support for programs to help in the early years are vital to the future of our civilization. And well-funded schools with well-trained EAs and CYWs that are paid well enough to keep the best of the best in the building and administrators who are highly trained in child development and have a desire to help every child that walks in the door and have lots of support to do so can catch any that fall through the cracks in pre-school years. Funding social services properly will completely solve this problem within a few years.

That's what the article's about! Not a single mention of lockdowns. So fuck-right off, Guardian editors who are trying to get more readers by baiting them with this bullshit.

And really, we all have to get better at reading the article, not just the headline.