Did you ever hear that term 'window dressing'? Whilst on the outside there may be a tantalising new window display drawing us in, on the inside things are just exactly the same as they were before. It's dressing up the old to appear to be new, and it's inspired in a way, an illusion, but actually it’s deception.
Dressing a Window is a tactic of shops and department stores, and it's OK in that context, clever even; it hooks you to come in, at which point you are more likely to stay and buy something. But it's not OK when it's about issues that affect our lives, such as education, mental health and encouraging a work life balance. It means that whilst you might think things are changing, they really aren't. They are staying just pretty much exactly the same way as they were before.
If the curriculum changes in 2014, the campaign to destigmatize mental heath and inclusion and diversity were more than just window dressing, the numbers of mental health and learning 'disorders' would be going down not up, and there would be more part time jobs.
Instead, the newspapers continue to report the rise in ‘mental health disorders’, job losses and still there are hardly any part-time jobs. Of course that was even before Covid-19, goodness only knows what will happen now.
In all seriousness, society is right on course to implode somewhere down the line. So we need to go beyond rhetoric to real life change, and we can only do that if we think differently.