THE EDITOR, Madam:

For a decade in a public middle-school setting here in the US I was not only a maths teacher, but a disciplinarian managing an established school-wide programme.

In the process, as you might imagine, I conducted interviews with middle-school aged students where we often discussed personal motivations and how to improve their efforts, or lack of them. For the past four years, there has been a good deal of chatter in the news about “the grown-ups”, meaning the Republicans, versus the “kids”, meaning the Democrats. Regardless of age, there may be more truth to these metaphors than we know.

Like many, I have tried hard to understand the motivations of those who have obviously made so many ineffective, irrational, self-centred policy decisions and in so doing put the rest of us in such a sorry state as the one our new president now has to deal with. How could they do such “immature and stupid things?” We can’t seem to understand why. My letter offers a simple answer to this question from someone who might just understand some things about misbehaving children.

The reason we’ve had four years of such stupid governance is that we’re finally starting to deal more effectively with our kids, whom we’ve spoiled rotten. They took the car out without permission, had an accident, and have been grounded. Trump and his new team will keep the keys for a while, until the kids grow up a little more, and get their act together.

ED MCCOY

Bokeelia, Florida