Beating the Back-to-School scaries
For parents, inflation is hitting back-to-school spending hard, with more than half of those in the US looking to cut back on classroom-related spending this year and as many as four million British families sourcing second-hand items to cope with the rising costs. At the same time, back-to-school anxiety is a very real phenomenon for kids, having been exacerbated for many as a result of the pandemic – more than 100,000 children in the UK were avoiding going to school at the start of 2022, and in 2021, a survey in the US revealed that 66% of children were anxious about going back to school after COVID-19. To combat this, we’re seeing younger generations delve into the past to escape their everyday worries, falling head-first into simpler times – something that will be evident on school campuses around the world. Whether that’s wearing jeans from brands that haven’t been around since the 90s, packing their pencil cases with nostalgic artefacts from classrooms gone by, or stuffing bookbags full of romance novels usually found on the shelves of 35- to 54-year-old women. With younger generations’ trust in higher education rapidly declining, many are looking for ways to carve their own paths, passionately calling out the gaps in education systems that they feel aren’t serving them well. They want to feel like school is teaching them valuable lessons and preparing them for the future – a lack of which may be contributing to feelings of detachment and anxiety when returning to education.
