Some reflections on modern trends.

The modern world is a funny place.

For example, I have young friends on Facebook, largely former students or the offspring of real-life friends, who go on frequently and at length about how they are run ragged by their small offspring. Yet they still find the time to go through the internet to find amusing cartoons to demonstrate this run-raggedness.

Looking at one of these, I reflected on the time when my friends and I were young mums.

There was no Facebook and therefore no Mumsnet. There weren’t even mobile phones and so you couldn’t just wham out a text in a great hurry. You had to actually pick up the phone and hope a friend was available to talk. In fact, what we used to do, at least in my support network, was meet once a week at each other’s houses, taking it in turn to host the gathering, and swop notes while the rugrats rolled around on the carpet.

I hope the social-media-posting mummies actually get to meet in the flesh. There is a strange isolation in the social-media world. It is possible to have numerous “friends” but rarely actually get to see them. And we all need that proper social contact. That is why we are now seeing a trend to combine pre-school playgroups with old people’s activity groups. The social contact helps everyone. 

Then, as Christmas approaches, there is the question of presents.

In particular, presents for teachers.


And even more specifically, presents for primary school teachers.

I do not remember buying presents every year for our children’s primary school teachers. We made Christmas cards when the children were small, an activity that degenerated into selecting a card to buy as they grew a bit older. But presents? No!

Our daughter, a primary school teacher, will no doubt receive a pile of stuff. At the end of each term parents seem to feel obliged to buy her gifts, often bottles of wine that she usually passes on to other friends and family members. But her pupils’ parents seem quite restrained. I read about a Scottish parents’ organisation, Connect, calling on PTAs, local parent councils, and school associations to discourage expensive gift-giving. A kind of competitiveness has developed, with parents vying with each other to buy the most impressive gift. (It’s the same kind of thing as happens with small children’s birthday parties.) In some cases parents are being asked, presumably by some kind of class parents’ committee, to contribute £10 each towards a present for Miss or Sir.

Now, if there are 30 children in a class, that means £300! Whatever are they buying?

The mind boggles!

Well, in answer to that question, here are some possibilities:-

 “Regency Hampers sell a “world’s best teacher” hamper, containing champagne, smoked salmon, cheeses and Swiss chocolates, for £214.50.

Marks & Spencer has 85 options in its teachers’ gifts section online, which promises: “From tempting chocolates to their favourite tipple, these top-class gifts for teachers will help little ones say thank you at the end of term.” The range includes boxed shortbread and whisky for £35 and a Miltonia orchid for £38.

Not on the High Street offers over 100 options in its gifts for teachers section, including a Letters of Gratitude Personalised Envelope Book for £31.75, to be filled by the class, as well as cushions, mugs and scented candles.”

Mind you, sometimes the teachers do it in return. Our daughter buys “something appropriate” for her little darlings. One year she purchased thirty pairs of those one-size-fits-all gloves, getting a special rate from a local shop. She has given them little notebooks and pencils, novelty pencil sharpeners and erasers. You know the kind of thing.

As for me, with classes of older students, I just bought a big tin of chocolates and passed them round the class. I did, however, organise splendid end of term Christmas parties for my teaching groups when I worked in sixth form. I always had masses of Christmas cards but presents weren’t expected. It was usually at the end of the second year, the A-level year, that gifts were given, as they realised how much work their A-level teachers put in to ensure they got the grades they needed for university. And it was usually something that sprang spontaneously from the teaching group, not a competitive thing at all.

Some of those appreciative A-level students are now the Facebook-posting young mums. Time marches on!