WHO would have thought us baby boomers could rejoice in the fact that the expectation of failure was fed to us as often as chips fried in artery-clogging Cookeen?

Who could imagine a delight in having been ritually abused by sadistic PE teachers? (“Last one into the gym will be beaten on the backside with their own plimsoll”.)

This week, the Church of Scotland Moderator Reverend Susan Brown has warned young people are increasingly self-harming and feeling suicidal as a result of an education that doesn’t prepare them for failure.

That warning, however, could never have applied to those who grew up in the second half of the 20th century. Indeed, the prospect of failure was the sturdy black plimsoll that allowed us to run life’s obstacle course.

We were lucky, in fact, to have endured the Provident Cheque experience, an early instruction that life will expect you to pay back more than you’ve been given, to always be indebted.

We were fortunate in that school life was perfect for fostering expectations of failure, to have careers teachers, for example, with stunted careers themselves, all too happy to push us in the direction of the most limited of job opportunities. And, thankfully, we were regularly belted to the point of tears, (but to reveal more than a moist eye would have been shameful), often our sin not being worse than failing a morning mental arithmetic test; a fantastic warning of the unfairness of life ahead.

Outside of school, we dressed for failure (while accepting the concept of uniformity) thanks to Woolworth’s Winfield label, and marvelled at not only how cheap a T-shirt could be but also the fact it survived more than three washings over the glass board scrubber.

And while we were being beaten in school, thanks to an endemic gang culture we were beaten outside of school, too, which helped us grow up fleet of foot and develop an acute sense of local geography.

We were conditioned for failure in so many other ways. Yes, our national football team achieved success, but only in today’s terms; back then we felt continually thwarted by the failure to progress beyond the first stage of major competition.

We were continually bombarded with reasons to leave Scotland; emigrate to Australia or Canada for a tenner. What the government ads were really saying was, “Stay – and you’re a loser.”

Life overall was harsh and sometimes deliciously cruel. We had to grow up watching Jimmy Tarbuck, and Mike and Bernie Winters and being told they were funny, a notion which assaulted the young senses – yet this all meant when really funny material arrived, such as Steptoe and Bilko, we could wallow in it.

Thankfully, the Rt Rev Brown’s snowflake concerns are being echoed elsewhere. The head of Manchester High School for Girls, for example, has recently introduced a range of new initiatives to help pupils cope with defeat, including “hug the monster” week. She says it is important that teachers educate youngsters on how to accept “life’s knocks and setbacks with grace.”

She’s right on the money. If not, school pupils will grow up to become professional complainers. American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Coddling of the American Mind, argues that pandering to young people creates a society of the fragile and the very easily offended.

He cites cases of students calling for warnings to be attached to English lessons featuring F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, for example, because it “portrays misogyny and physical abuse.” He cites law students calling for the removal of the word “rape” and “violate” in lectures, lest it cause students distress. (This is why the likes of comedian Chris Rock have since stopped performing on college campuses.)

Haidt’s book also highlights the snowflakes’ complaint of “microaggression”, whereby it’s no longer acceptable to ask a young person something like, “Where were you born?” in case it questions national identity. Put this in a Scottish context, Young America! If every young person in the west of Scotland were disturbed by being asked “What school did you go to?” the nation’s therapists would be working all hours god could send.

Now, no one is advocating harshness and peril. This is not a case for sending kids up chimneys or into Dickensian factories where unprotected machinery rips their arms off. And, yes, youngsters today can see little glimpses of how tough life is; they’ve had to wait weeks for the new Pokemon game, they’ve had come to terms with the fact Jed Mercurio has had Keeley Hawes killed off.

But let’s get a little Nietzsche, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” into their lives. Or at the very least some Chumbawamba doctrine I Get Knocked Down, I Get Up Again.

Let’s tell them life is tougher than Love Island suggests. You see, failure is good. It will make you a better person.

Although it would be nice to see Scotland beat Albania and Israel.