Could there have been a more wearisome headline published on Friday? It exudes all the when-I-was-your-age’s and in-my-day’s of an unwanted history lesson from an elder. But believe it or not this regards our succeeding generation. A Cambridge University report, headed by Professor Robin Alexander, has found that primary school children are anxious, stressed and depressed.
After questioning hundreds of parents, pupils and teachers the report found that kids are worrying daily about terrorism, global warming, traffic, strangers, exams, friendships – shall I go on? Graffiti, rubbish, guns – ok, that’s quite enough – but according to the report it is business like this being rammed down our children’s throats that throw them to the lions of disquiet. Is it any wonder that the information revealed is so condemning of our already miserable country? England, the grumbling old granddad of the world, is known more so than anything for a) queuing, b) moaning to ourselves and c) ignorant bliss. So long as we’re fine we couldn’t care less what is happening around us. Now, who else could that possibly resemble? Hmm, ah yes, those primary school children. I find it hard to believe that pupils are in turmoil on a daily basis about the growing crisis of climate change or eating healthily.
The study reported that interviewees were unanimous over the “bleak world inhabited by pupils attending today’s primary schools.” England perhaps isn’t a paradise, but has the world turned into a dystopian Orwell novel, or perhaps a Huxley classic without my noticing? Have we travelled back to days of the war when parents had to ship off their darling treasures to the country, to live with utter strangers in order to stay alive? No, I didn’t think so. In fact, now days children have more freedom and entertainment than ever before. With mobile phones, the internet and multiplayer games they’ve never been at such an advantage in ways of interaction. But apparently teaching assistants are concerned about the “loss of childhood” regarding pressure from parents and schools, gadgets and TV forcing youngsters into antisocial behaviour and an increase in marital breakdown.
I have no shame in admitting that my parents divorced when I was young and I fail to see any affects it may have had other than perhaps being a little more appreciative of the both of them. And how about our parent’s parents, who died in the war? They still got through school and came out healthy, smart and capable on the other side of childhood. Only last month Tory and Lib Dem spokespersons said that syllabuses had been “dumbed-down” and weren’t hard enough, but according to the report they are too demanding. Exams were described as “scary and stressful.” Now, I may not be that old, but when I was at school, albeit another country, we were caned for every wrong answer given in a test. Getting up at five in the morning to start school at seven a.m. and getting home to find that all was possible was a bit of homework and going to sleep is what I would call “scary and stressful”.
As clichéd as it is, younger generations simply don’t know how good they’ve got it. And asking a small group of the population about the shortcomings of our children isn’t enough to surface a desirable amount of evidence on the matter. If you ask a child a question they’re going to try everything in their might to answer it just to save face. If you asked them to come up with a more energy efficient way of putting a man on the moon I’m sure they could list enough useless answers, but words none the less, that would fill the silent gap deemed as stupidity.
1 Comment
October 24, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Interesting article reasonbly well written although some grammatical abuse present. I did form get the impression that this was written with a degree of anger which was reflected in the style, rather like one of those emails that you should have read before hitting send. However I doubt this was an angry rant and still enjoyed reading it.