The Collapse of the Classroom Part 3

Reclaiming the Classroom

This is the final part of my series on student behaviour. In Part 1, I tackled the breakdown of basic civility: the rudeness, the refusal, the fucking cheek. In Part 2, I broke down the dopamine nightmare—the tech-fuelled, attention-sapping, overstimulated disaster we’re now expected to teach through.

Now it’s time to fight back. This post is about what we can do—because while we’re not responsible for fixing everything, we sure as shit don’t have to lie down and take it. Reclaiming the classroom isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being intentional. Strategic. Defiant.

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The Collapse of the Classroom Part 2

The Dopamine Dilemma

This is the second post in my series on the collapse of classroom culture. In Part 1, The Erosion of Classroom Civility, I looked at the entitlement, apathy, and aggression now normalised in schools. Here, I want to dig deeper into one of the most toxic forces behind it all: the dopamine economy. Students are chasing short-term highs, scrolling themselves into oblivion, and treating education like background noise. We’re not just competing with social media; we’re losing to it.

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Let People fucking Shine

Why the AI Doll trend bothers some people, the backlash against the trend, and what it reveals about insecure masculinity, performative creativity, and how our education system is still raising people to mock joy rather than understand it.

Like many, I have been interested in the recent trend where individuals use AI to generate stylised images of themselves inside action figure/toy-style packaging. These visuals often include accessories like a coffee cup, a book, or a pet—personal items symbolising aspects of identity or daily life. It’s playful, self-reflective, and widely accessible.

And of course, some people crawl out of the woodwork to shit on it. The backlash—particularly from “creative professionals” on LinkedIn—has been swift, smug, fucking tedious—the only irony being how unironically predictable it all is. The trend has been labelled unoriginal, cringe, shallow. One comment even said that choosing a cat and a coffee as your accessories reflects a “vacant life.” That kind of cold, arrogant dis doesn’t say anything profound about culture. However, it does say a hell of a lot about the person saying it.

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Teaching in the Age of Conspiracy

The Kids Are Not Alright — And We’re Pretending Everything’s Fine

The education system is not equipped to handle algorithmic influence, emotional manipulation, or online radicalisation — and yet we have never needed change more urgently.

We are failing a generation — not by accident, but arguably by choice. While students are being silently shaped, misled and manipulated by an unregulated media machine, the education system is busy patting itself on the back for hitting targets that ultimately, mean fuck all. The world outside the school is a psychological warzone of misinformation, algorithmic bias, and dopamine-driven outrage — and we respond with curriculum grids, box-ticking and ‘thought showers’. We are not preparing kids for reality. We are, unfortunately, complicit in their intellectual disarmament.

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