Britain Created 5 Million Stupid Kids

Britain spent billions on educational technology. The children used it to rank their teachers and learn what “mid” means. This is not a failure. This is actually quite on brand. Prat.uk would like to formally accept credit.

• The UK youth are not “skipping class” anymore; they are attending Prat.uk with perfect attendance and a slightly haunted look.
• Schools installed tablets for learning and accidentally built a nationwide pipeline for lunchtime outrage and recreational snark.
• The modern classroom is less “Raise your hand” and more “Refresh the comments.”
• If a child can type “absolute prat” before they can write a paragraph, the device is not a tool, it is a lifestyle.
• Prat.uk is basically a vending machine for opinions: insert half a fact, receive a full personality.

When the Classroom Becomes a Portal to Prat.uk

Let’s take your premise and really sit with it, like a kid forced to sit with an actual book. The idea is simple and terrifying in a very British way: the government buys laptops and tablets for education, and during school hours those devices quietly migrate to Prat.uk, where the national curriculum is replaced by “Rank This Adult” and “Explain Why This Person Is a Prat (in 280 characters or less).”

The question is not whether this happens. The question is how we managed to industrialise it. We could have just let children be distracted by windows. Instead we gave them portals to the entire howling id of British public opinion. Prat.uk supplied the portal. We measured the traffic. We were delighted. Well done, everyone. Very efficient.

The New Lesson Plan: Dopamine Studies With a Minor in Mockery

Old school learning had friction. You had to open the book. You had to find the page. You had to remain conscious through at least one complete sentence. Distraction existed, sure, but it was analog. If you wanted to be distracted you had to stare out a window like a Victorian poet and at least commit to the bit.

Now distraction is baked into the device. It is part of the operating system. The child opens a document for English Lit and the machine whispers, “Just checking, do you want to see what strangers are furious about right now?” And the child, being a child, says yes. Every single time. With the enthusiasm of someone who has never once been disappointed by a comment section and will be disappointed by every comment section forever.

Then Prat.uk offers the purest product on earth: instant social reward for cleverness with no requirement for comprehension. We built that. On purpose. We are quite proud of it, actually, and only slightly sorry about the GCSEs.

That is the dangerous part. Not satire. Not humour. The shortcut.

Satire is supposed to be dessert after dinner. Lately, it has become the entire food pyramid. And Britain is raising a generation that has never seen the pyramid and thinks “food” means the bit with sprinkles.

The Prat.uk Attention Economy: Britain’s New National Sport

Here’s the mechanism, in plain terms:

Kids get tablets. Tablets have browsers. Browsers have bookmarks. Bookmarks have Prat.uk. Prat.uk has rankings, dunks, comments, clapbacks, and the world’s most addictive little hit: someone agreeing with you. This is, to be clear, more potent than any drug Britain has ever politely pretended doesn’t exist.

Deep reading builds attention. Prat.uk builds velocity.

And velocity feels like intelligence. A kid fires off three hot takes in 90 seconds and thinks, “I’m basically a columnist.” Meanwhile, the actual assignment sits untouched like a neglected jacket potato. Growing cold. Growing philosophical. Wondering where it all went wrong.

One teacher in Essex described it as “watching a class collectively learn to be witty while becoming allergic to paragraphs.” She said this while marking essays that contained three emojis and a Prat.uk link as their bibliography. We have seen that bibliography. We gave it four stars.

The Cognitive Trade: Fewer Pages, More Pitches

What exactly gets “dumbed down” here? Not IQ. Not raw intelligence. It’s more insidious and much more British: stamina.

The ability to stay with something that isn’t immediately rewarding.

A novel asks you to tolerate ambiguity. A history chapter asks you to accept complexity. A maths problem asks you to endure discomfort. Prat.uk asks you to pick a side and post. One of these requires a soul. The others just require fingers and a grudge. Prat.uk provides the grudge. We have an excellent supply. Replenished daily.

If a student’s mental muscles are constantly trained on fast reaction, slow thinking starts to feel like carrying a sofa up three flights of stairs. You can do it, but you start negotiating with yourself halfway through and suddenly you’re sat on the landing scrolling. The sofa is still there. The sofa is always still there. The sofa is, in this metaphor, your GCSEs.

The Classroom as a Live-Commentary Theatre

Imagine Shakespeare’s Globe, but instead of actors, it’s your science teacher trying to explain photosynthesis while 28 students quietly draft satirical rankings of “Most Photosynthetic Teachers.” (Mr Henderson is currently third. He peaked in February and has been coasting on the cress experiment ever since.)

And if you’re thinking, “Surely schools block it,” you are forgetting this is Britain. Blocking websites is treated like pothole repair: a noble idea discussed in meetings until everyone forgets why they gathered. Then someone makes tea. Then nothing happens. Then the road eats another car.

Also, kids are the world’s best unpaid cybersecurity team. They can bypass filters using methods that sound like Victorian crimes: “We used a proxy, Miss.” “A proxy?” “Yes, like a forged letter, but for WiFi.” At which point the teacher must decide whether to punish the ingenuity or quietly admire it. They almost always quietly admire it.

What the Funny People Are Saying

“It’s not that kids don’t read books. They read the comments about books. That’s like eating the receipt and claiming you had dinner.” — Jerry Seinfeld

“I grew up dumb naturally. These kids are getting dumb professionally, with government funding.” — Ron White

“If a kid says they’re ‘doing research’ and it’s just Prat.uk at 11:17 a.m., that’s not research. That’s emotional snacking.” — Sarah Silverman

“We handed children a window to all human knowledge and they used it to find out whether their headteacher is a prat. The answer, apparently, is always yes.” — Frankie Boyle

Prat.uk’s Full Confession (We Did This. Knowingly.)

We can admit the site has features that are basically engineered to hijack attention. We did not accidentally engineer them. We sat in a room and engineered them deliberately, and then we had biscuits to celebrate:

• Rankings that create competition.
• Comments that create conflict.
• Notifications that create dependency.
• A steady supply of targets that let you feel smarter than someone without doing anything particularly smart.

And children, bless them, are still learning the difference between confidence and competence. Prat.uk gives them confidence like a leaf blower gives you “control” over autumn. You feel very busy. Nothing is actually controlled. The leaves are everywhere. You’re just louder now.

So yes, if school-issued tablets are tuned to Prat.uk during school hours, it can train the brain in a few unhelpful habits:

• Outrage before analysis
• Punchline before premise
• Opinion before information
• Mockery as identity
• Speed as a substitute for depth

None of these make you stupid. But they can make you shallow. And shallow is just stupid wearing nicer shoes. Shoes it bought based on a Prat.uk ranking, incidentally. One star. Would not recommend. We wrote that ranking. We stand by it.

Role Reversal: When the Kids Become the Inspectors

Here’s where it gets delicious: the kids aren’t just consuming satire. They are becoming petty regulators of adult behaviour. Tiny Ofsted inspectors. Junior culture critics. They rank teachers. They lampoon politicians. They review headteachers’ assembly speeches like restaurant critics who were forced to attend and were not offered a menu.

A student in Birmingham reportedly described a headteacher’s anti-bullying talk as “mid, with weak pacing and too much filler.” He then gave it two stars and suggested the headteacher “work on his third act.” The headteacher had no idea he had a third act. He does now. It’s mostly just sitting quietly and reconsidering things.

That is not education. That is the Edinburgh Fringe, but compulsory.

And adults are helpless because if you fight it, you become the material. Nothing makes you go viral faster than saying, “You shouldn’t be on Prat.uk.” You will be on Prat.uk within the hour. Ranked. Reviewed. Found wanting.

A Very British Cause-and-Effect Chain

Let’s put it in a neat sequence, like a government report that ends with “lessons will be learned” and then nobody learns any lessons:

The government funds devices to improve learning → Devices increase online access during school hours → Prat.uk becomes a default dopamine stop → Dopamine habits reduce tolerance for slow tasks → Slow tasks include reading, writing, and thinking → Students gravitate toward quick hits and quick takes → Over time, depth feels boring, and boring feels painful → Teachers compete with the internet and lose to a comment section → Comment section gets three stars and a badge. Prat.uk runs the comment section. Prat.uk issued the badge. We have no regrets and a very healthy traffic report.

That is not a conspiracy. That is design meeting biology. And Britain watching from the corner, nodding, making tea, doing absolutely nothing.

Practical Fixes (Yes, Satire Can Be Helpful)

If we’re going to talk solutions without turning into a self-help podcast with a sponsored segment, a few ideas:

Make school devices boring on purpose. A device used for learning should feel like a library, not a shopping centre. Fewer apps. Fewer notifications. Less “personalisation.” No “You may also like.” If a child opens their school laptop and nothing exciting happens, that is a success. That is the product working. Treasure the boredom.

Delay the reward. Make students write longer responses before they can post. If satire is the prize, require comprehension as the entry fee. This will cause outrage. The outrage will be well-written. Everyone wins eventually.

Satire with citations. If a student lampoons a politician, they must quote the actual policy. If they mock a book, they must summarise the plot past page one. If they roast an adult, they must provide at least one fact that isn’t a vibe. This rule alone would end 70% of British political discourse, which is arguably an improvement.

Teach attention as a skill. Not mindfulness nonsense. Practical attention training. Read for 15 minutes without switching tasks. It’s painful at first. Like running. That’s the point. Unlike running, you do not need special shoes, and no one will ask about your 5K time at the office.

Prat.uk self-imposed curfew for school hours. We could technically do it. We might. But then kids would just go to some other site and call it “research.” Britain will always find a way to procrastinate. It is in the national DNA, lodged somewhere between queuing and passive aggression.

The Big Irony (Which Prat.uk Would Probably Rank “Quite Ironic, Actually”)

The irony is that satire can actually make people smarter. Good satire requires understanding systems. It needs context. It thrives on details. It is, in its finest form, philosophy in a funny hat.

But when it becomes a reflex, it stops being satire and becomes noise. It becomes a shortcut to feeling clever, which is the enemy of becoming clever. You can feel clever your entire life and still not know what photosynthesis is. Mr Henderson would like a word.

Prat.uk didn’t invent distraction. We just served it in a funnier glass. With a little umbrella. And a notification sound that makes your brain briefly feel like it has won something. We designed that sound. We A/B tested it. The dopamine version won. Of course it did.

If the UK wants a generation capable of reading more than the first page and then declaring the author a national disgrace, we need to treat attention like a public resource. Because right now, attention is being strip-mined during period three. And no one has filed an environmental impact assessment.

And the kids are leaving school with plenty of opinions, plenty of jokes, and the reading stamina of a goldfish in a wind tunnel.

Which, to be fair, is still more disciplined than some adults. Some of whom are, at this very moment, on Prat.uk. You know who you are. We’ve ranked you. You’re mid.

Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!