Myrie on TikTok is a smart cookie. I have never seen her before but I was rummaging around the internet looking for a follow up on the current story of young female students self-identifying as cats. I want to know what’s behind it. Is this a genuine mental health problem or kids having some fun or something in-between the two?
Thus far I have not found an answer to that question. My personal view is that shaky mental health underpins the desire to pretend to be a cat rather than a human. It is as if the girls are dissatisfied with being human; with being themselves. It seems to be linked to the increase in self-harming by young students and the increase in suicidal thoughts of young students. The published stats are shocking.
In the US, the Jed Foundation, for instance, reports: “26.9% of teens aged 12-17 have one or more mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral problems (NSCH, 2019)”. There are many other equally shocking stats. What are the adults doing about it? Not much.
There is a crisis in the classroom, in the minds of kids. They don’t like what they see; the world created by the grown-ups.
In line with a general waning of self-discipline and a slackening of society’s rules, it seems to me that the woke movement has encouraged the idea of young students self-identifying as cats and other animals.
And Myrie makes the point very ably (link to her TikTok page). She says that in her day (and I would agree) the rules regarding distracting behavior at school were a lot stricter.
She refers to the Australian version of kids self-identifying as cats which happened last year. There, in the school concerned, they allowed it to happen provided it was not ‘distracting’ to other students. How can it not be distracting? That’s the point. The rules were too slack.
You are sitting next to a girl wearing cat ears who only responds to questions from the teacher with a meow! Common sense tells us that girls pretending to be cats in the classroom cannot be allowed. But at the same time the phenomenon needs to be dealt with sensitively and the cause isolated. We need to get into the heads of the kids. Are they simply challenging the teacher’s authority in a cynical way knowing that the woke, snowflake world will allow it?
Back in the old days when I was a student, we all sat at desks facing the teacher and kept quiet. It would have been impossible at that time to self-identify as a cat. It just would not have happened. Over the past 150 years there has been a dumbing down in schools and a weakening of rules.
Myrie mentions that she was not allowed to wear shorts that were a certain distance above the knee and her hair could not be too brightly coloured; much stricter rules regarding distracting behavior which can undermine learning.
She thinks the current situation is incomprehensible. I tend to agree but there is a serious problem here which the grown-ups are not addressing. And we mustn’t forget the role parents play in this behavior. Too many endorsing it or allowing it to develop. The parents’ behavior places an added burden on teachers who have to take on the role of parents in the classroom which is untenable.
