'A frozen food firm has set up an interactive lesson to teach children that chips come from potatoes.'
(from)
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
What are we doing to our kids?
A group of experts offers a deeply pessimistic answer:-
"Since children's brains are still developing, they cannot adjust. . . to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change," they write.
"They still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed "junk"), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.
"They also need time. In a fast-moving, hyper-competitive culture, today's children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum.
"They are pushed by market forces to act and dress like mini-adults and exposed via the electronic media to material which would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past."
(read it all)
Sometimes the thought of becoming a parent scares me s***less. Which in itself makes me part of the problem...
Mr Morpurgo said: "We have so much anxiety about children, their protection, their care, their education, that this has developed into fear. There is a fear around children, both from schools and politicians, which has led to this target-driven education system.
"That has put children into an academic straitjacket from a very early age which restricts creativity and the enrichment of childhood."
"Since children's brains are still developing, they cannot adjust. . . to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change," they write.
"They still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed "junk"), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.
"They also need time. In a fast-moving, hyper-competitive culture, today's children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum.
"They are pushed by market forces to act and dress like mini-adults and exposed via the electronic media to material which would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past."
(read it all)
Sometimes the thought of becoming a parent scares me s***less. Which in itself makes me part of the problem...
Mr Morpurgo said: "We have so much anxiety about children, their protection, their care, their education, that this has developed into fear. There is a fear around children, both from schools and politicians, which has led to this target-driven education system.
"That has put children into an academic straitjacket from a very early age which restricts creativity and the enrichment of childhood."
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Watch with Mother
Is there any issue inherently less likely to get balanced media coverage than 'stay-at-home mums'? Here's a contribution on the subject from Carole Sarler in the Times, typical in its tone of touchiness verging on belligerence:-
'Only now, this now of domestic labour-saving devices and Tesco home deliveries and SUVs for school-runs, only now might the woman who eschews the labour market call herself — in the absence of anything else she has to do — a full-time mother. And bully for her, if it is what she chooses, if she has found someone else to pay for it, if she is immune to accusations of indulgence and idleness or if she believes, as many sincerely do, that her permanent presence is in the better interests of her children.
'But if she then justifies her choice, in the process provoking unease in parents who have chosen otherwise, by suggesting that it is she who adheres to a proven, time-honoured pattern for child-rearing, then it is she — not they — who is wrong.'
We're not left in much doubt that for Ms Sarler this is personal. As for the substance, the 'we used to live in a cardboard box' stuff earlier in the article is surely overdone. In the nineteenth century middle-class households had servants. When servants became hard to come by the domestic appliance industry took off. My grandmothers' pre-war generation may well have fallen into a hiatus where they got the worst of both worlds, but it was not of long duration. Reading Ms Sarler you'd think Hoovers and washing machines were invented the day before yesterday.
Be that as it may: if she objects to full-time motherhood being presented as a proven, time-honoured pattern, that's fine by me. Call it a bold radical innovation instead. The thing is, that's actually more or less totally irrelevant to the question whether it is good for kids. And that seems to me to be a question worth asking, however uncomfortable it makes Ms Sarler. Because if it does turn out that they are best served by an option which most parents cannot realistically take, it might be a nice idea to frame policies that give more parents a real choice.
I'm not familiar with the research, but I feel I'd like a guide who's just a little less partisan than Ms Sarler. When she says that disruptive behaviour in nursery-raised kids 'is only marginally increased' I'd like to know what she counts as marginal.
By way of compensation she tells us 'it has also been shown that the nursery alumni go on to do better both at school and later in life' (this is evidently a conclusive and non-marginal finding). So raising disaffected and obnoxious toddlers is not only OK, it's positively the recipe for ensuring they get ahead. What a comforting thought.
'Only now, this now of domestic labour-saving devices and Tesco home deliveries and SUVs for school-runs, only now might the woman who eschews the labour market call herself — in the absence of anything else she has to do — a full-time mother. And bully for her, if it is what she chooses, if she has found someone else to pay for it, if she is immune to accusations of indulgence and idleness or if she believes, as many sincerely do, that her permanent presence is in the better interests of her children.
'But if she then justifies her choice, in the process provoking unease in parents who have chosen otherwise, by suggesting that it is she who adheres to a proven, time-honoured pattern for child-rearing, then it is she — not they — who is wrong.'
We're not left in much doubt that for Ms Sarler this is personal. As for the substance, the 'we used to live in a cardboard box' stuff earlier in the article is surely overdone. In the nineteenth century middle-class households had servants. When servants became hard to come by the domestic appliance industry took off. My grandmothers' pre-war generation may well have fallen into a hiatus where they got the worst of both worlds, but it was not of long duration. Reading Ms Sarler you'd think Hoovers and washing machines were invented the day before yesterday.
Be that as it may: if she objects to full-time motherhood being presented as a proven, time-honoured pattern, that's fine by me. Call it a bold radical innovation instead. The thing is, that's actually more or less totally irrelevant to the question whether it is good for kids. And that seems to me to be a question worth asking, however uncomfortable it makes Ms Sarler. Because if it does turn out that they are best served by an option which most parents cannot realistically take, it might be a nice idea to frame policies that give more parents a real choice.
I'm not familiar with the research, but I feel I'd like a guide who's just a little less partisan than Ms Sarler. When she says that disruptive behaviour in nursery-raised kids 'is only marginally increased' I'd like to know what she counts as marginal.
By way of compensation she tells us 'it has also been shown that the nursery alumni go on to do better both at school and later in life' (this is evidently a conclusive and non-marginal finding). So raising disaffected and obnoxious toddlers is not only OK, it's positively the recipe for ensuring they get ahead. What a comforting thought.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Saving children's lives
Just to draw the attention of anyone who happens by to a very important article that appeared in the Guardian recently. It's only accessible in Google's cache (not in the Guardian's archives - legal problems?) so catch it quickly.
Dr David Southall is a man who has dedicated his life to stopping sick people from torturing and killing their kids, and he has been vilified for his pains. Why?
One reason, it seems clear, is that the parents in question are often clever, manipulative and vindictive. Another is that the child protection “industry” is largely founded on the ideological premise that child abuse is an expression of patriarchy. Murderous mothers just don’t fit into this world-view (of which, ironically, Beatrix Campbell herself has been a prominent promoter – she has been quoted as saying “Sexual abuse of children now presents society with the ultimate crisis of patriarchy”).
Most fundamentally, I suspect, we clearly have a deep psychological resistance to seeing mothers as threatening. Stepmothers yes, real ones no. Of course that isn’t a problem in itself, and for most of us, happily, it fits with the facts. But if we allow this instinct to blind us to the evidence in these cases, we are abandoning the children of whom Dr Southall says “if your number one person doesn't want you around, doesn't love you, hates you, harms you, then you've had it. There's no hope. The worst the world can do to you isn't as bad as this”.
Dr David Southall is a man who has dedicated his life to stopping sick people from torturing and killing their kids, and he has been vilified for his pains. Why?
One reason, it seems clear, is that the parents in question are often clever, manipulative and vindictive. Another is that the child protection “industry” is largely founded on the ideological premise that child abuse is an expression of patriarchy. Murderous mothers just don’t fit into this world-view (of which, ironically, Beatrix Campbell herself has been a prominent promoter – she has been quoted as saying “Sexual abuse of children now presents society with the ultimate crisis of patriarchy”).
Most fundamentally, I suspect, we clearly have a deep psychological resistance to seeing mothers as threatening. Stepmothers yes, real ones no. Of course that isn’t a problem in itself, and for most of us, happily, it fits with the facts. But if we allow this instinct to blind us to the evidence in these cases, we are abandoning the children of whom Dr Southall says “if your number one person doesn't want you around, doesn't love you, hates you, harms you, then you've had it. There's no hope. The worst the world can do to you isn't as bad as this”.
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