Douglas Robb, the head teacher of a top boarding school in Norfolk that will set you back pounds 34,000 a year, has announced that millennials are “mollycoddled, entitled and spoilt”. Well, doh! What did he expect, running an educational establishment that costs more than the average Briton earns a year? “Grit”, according to the blog he published earlier last week. I left private school two decades ago, when the term “snowflake” was used purely to describe meteorological phenomenon. And do you know how gritty we were back then? About as gritty as a freshly tarmacked road in the height of summer. Indeed, I suspect that any grit displayed by the privately educated over the years was probably placed there by a horrifically abusive housemaster or a bullying boy in the sixth form. It’s not what I fancy for my child, but each to their own.
Last week, the National Audit Office revealed that 166 failing state schools had still not been turned into academies, despite promises made by the government almost a year ago. I wonder if any of those head teachers stay awake at night worrying that their 35,000 pupils lack grit? Does Robb know that if there is one thing worse than a bleating, mollycoddled millennial, then it is a bleating, mollycoddled baby boomer? But I’m being unkind. It is, after all, a head teacher’s prerogative to act like a modern-day Miss Trunchbull. Where’s the fun in rising to the top if you can’t put the fear of God into your pupils, and a fair few of their parents, too?
I am neither a millennial nor a member of Generation X — too old to have grown up with YouTube, but too young to have gone through adolescence without a mobile phone (even if said mobile phone was the size of a brick). And I can see that one of the few privileges of ageing is getting to whinge bitterly about the youth of today. But really, I do find the complaints about millennials a bit much. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more I start to believe that they might just be the best generation yet.
The biggest complaint about snowflakes is that they are sensitive and lack resilience. This is usually made by successful, middle-aged people who like to boast that they were beaten black and blue as children, but it never did them any harm — in fact, it only served to make them stronger. I am immensely pleased for these people, but I do wish they would stop and think for a moment about those who were harmed growing up in a society where abuse was routinely ignored and victims were more often than not silenced. I wish they’d think about all their contemporaries who didn’t thrive, who faded away and disappeared and just couldn’t keep up.
Militant numpties
The idea that the epidemic of depression and anxiety is a new thing is equally unhelpful. If I had a penny for every time an older reader wrote to tell me that they had suffered for a lifetime from a mental illness they felt too ashamed to tell anyone about, then I would be able to fund the NHS. Another criticism is that snowflakes are intolerant, because the odd one decides to no-platform Katie Hopkins when she is booked to speak at a student union. But, as Hopkins herself proves, every generation has its militant numpties.
In reality, I think tolerance is one of the defining qualities of snowflakes. If they are quick to take offence, it’s probably because someone has said something offensive. Is it intolerant to want to live in a world where anybody who isn’t 100 per cent straight, white or well-to-do is not made to feel like dog poo on a well-heeled shoe? And please do not tell me that the white well-to-do now feel like a minority. That is offensive codswallop, and I say that as someone who is white and reasonably well-to-do (if not 100 per cent straight). If you feel that way, then it might be helpful to step back and realise that this isn’t, for once, about you. It’s about bringing in people who have long been left on the fringes or forgotten about, so that nobody — and that includes you — feels frowned-upon; so that everybody has the same opportunities.
Are millennials pampered and spoilt, with their iPads and smart watches and phones? Well yes, I suppose so. But these things bring with them their own problems, and isn’t every generation a little bit more “spoilt” than the last? It’s called progress. Nobody said that it would always equal perfection.
I am endlessly impressed by the snowflakes that I meet. What is not to love about a generation that values, above all, kindness and empathy? Like most of us, millennials are only trying to do the right thing. If that is the worst thing you can say about a generation, then I think our future is in safe hands.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2018
Bryony Gordon is a British journalist and columnist.
