David Penberthy: A round of applause for building resilience

IF we are prosperous and peaceful, and teaching young people resilience skills, why are we demonstrably less resilient than we have ever been, asks David Penberthy.

NO NEED FOR APPLAUSE: The University of Manchester student union announced this week that it will ban clapping and cheering at public events.

IT is almost exactly 100 years since the guns finally fell silent in the greatest war the world had seen.

The death toll from World War I remains the highest of any global conflict.

Roughly nine million young soldiers enlisted to defend the British Empire, 900,000 making the ultimate sacrifice.

Tens of thousands returned home tormented by what was then known as shell shock and is now diagnosed as PTSD, and battled through life regardless with no assistance.

Exactly one century on and a new generation is grappling with challenges of a vastly different kind.

In one of the most hilarious examples of the modern capacity for mollycoddling, the University of Manchester student union announced this week that it would ban clapping and cheering at public events for fear that the racket could trigger anxiety among the more fragile members of the alumni.

Reckoning that looking like a complete dill is preferable to feeling uneasy, the union recommended clapping be replaced with “jazz hands”, the deaf sign language signal for applause, where you wave your open palms in the air in the style of Al Jolson.

Writing on Twitter, the BBC journalist Jeremy Vine offered this droll assessment: “I’m glad some young brave souls decided to ignore the difficulties caused by sudden noises 100 years ago.”

Piers Morgan put it more simply: “Britain’s losing its mind.”

It is well worth contrasting the steeliness of generations past with the namby-pamby softness that is increasingly mandated today.

The BBC report on this clapping ban quoted a young student activist by the name of Sara Khan, whose official title is student liberation and access officer, as saying that clapping can “discourage” some people from attending democratic events, whereas “jazz hands” encouraged an “environment of respect”.

This blue-chip nonsense won the – well, not applause, but endorsement – of Britain’s peak student body.

“We should all aspire to improve our public spaces so that all members of society feel comfortable and able to contribute fully,” the statement from the National Union of Students said.

It would be funny it weren’t true.

Earlier this year I read the excellent autobiography of former News International media executive Les Hinton, who started his journalistic career in Australia but grew up in the small Merseyside town of Bootle, which these days is part of greater Liverpool. While the book is dominated by stories from the world of media, I was absorbed by the account in his opening chapter of being born in the midst of World War II, where his family lived through the sustained horror of the Blitz.

You reflect on the intensity of such an experience and it makes you marvel at our modern capacity for creating perceived challenges where none actually exist.

So here is the conundrum. While it is temping to go down the path of harrumphing about the cotton wool generation, all the statistics suggest that young people are actually more troubled now than they ever have been before.

Indeed it is not a beat-up to state that the recent Mission Australia report painted a picture of a young generation in real crisis.

It is a mental health crisis marked by anxiety, depression, self-doubt and insecurity. The report, collated in association with the Black Dog Institute between 2012 and 2016, highlighted that almost one in four teens aged 15 to 19 years were at risk of serious mental illness. And one in the 13 of those aged 12 to 17 had considered suicide in the past 12 months.

These figures are off the charts. Yet they come at a time of great widespread affluence compared to times past, a time of extended peace and national security (despite the horrors of modern terrorism).

Most interestingly and alarmingly, they come at a time when every one of our education departments, every school be it public or private, has incorporated the modern philosophy of resilience into the curriculum.

So the question is, if we are prosperous and peaceful, and teaching young people resilience skills, why are we demonstrably less resilient than we have ever been?

The noted child psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg made some very valid observations upon the release of Mission Australia report, taking aim at the digital age.

“These young people are under siege online from floods of pornography, body image comparisons, cyber-bullying, never mind the social skills lost through constantly being glued to a screen. Social media is not their friend,” Dr Carr-Gregg said.

You would have to reckon he’s got a point. But beyond that, maybe you actually learn resilience not by sitting in a classroom talking about it, but by being put in challenging and even troubling situations where you have to find a way to cope.

To this end the problem might be less with the kids themselves but us parents.

Finance writer Scott Pape wrote a recent article about a study showing a majority of Australian kids now receive pocket money without having to perform a single domestic chore.

A teacher texted our radio show this week saying he was stunned by how many parents now tell the school that their child will not be taking part in everything from public speaking and theatre to camps and sports because they find it too confronting or debilitating.

One of my most treasured possessions is my late grandfather’s complete set of 1950s adventure books, with suggested activities including building bonfires, navigating your way through the woods with a compass or using the sun, making rudimentary rockets with bicarb soda and vinegar.

As a parenting manual these books would probably now be illegal. And the kids are too busy playing Fortnite to have real adventures or read books anyway.

Originally published as David Penberthy: A round of applause for building resilience