2013 is just over a week old, and yet scaremongers are already bombarding us with warnings about the deleterious health effects of what we eat and drink. Now they’re turning their attention to children – not only in terms of what we feed them, but also in terms of what we allow them to do with their time.
Continue reading “Does watching TV give you cancer? Of course not”Switch off the junk science, not the TV
At a recent Birmingham Salon event, ‘Trust Me: I’m a Scientist’, two University of Birmingham academics – Stuart Derbyshire, reader in psychology, and Joe McCleery, lecturer in developmental neuroscience – made some important points about the use and abuse of science to promote particular policy initiatives. Scientists today are under immense pressure to make discoveries ‘relevant’, and there are ample incentives – not least in terms of career progression – to ‘big up’ results.
Continue reading “Switch off the junk science, not the TV”The National Trust’s imagination deficit
Last week, conservation charity the National Trust launched a nationwide campaign titled 50 Things to do Before You’re 11¾ with the aim of encouraging ‘sofa-bound children’ to take to the outdoors and ‘enjoy classic adventures’. The 50 things children should do before their twelfth birthday included everything from running around in the rain, skimming stones, building dens and bug hunting, to setting up a snail race, damming a stream, flying a kite and making a mud pie.
Continue reading “The National Trust’s imagination deficit”Ignore these pedlars of panic – the kids are all right
‘Unhappy childhoods afflict one in 10 youngsters.’ So said newspaper headlines in the UK last week, following the publication of a ‘landmark survey’ by the Children’s Society of 30,000 eight- to 15-year-olds. Britain’s happiness guru, Lord Layard, co-author of a previous Children’s Society report titled A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age, said: ‘Everybody involved in shaping children’s lives should sit up and take note of this report.’
Continue reading “Ignore these pedlars of panic – the kids are all right”Set children free by trusting adults
Oliver and Gillian Schonrock have inspired a heated debate this week about how much independence children should have. The couple from south London have been allowing their eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son to cycle one mile unsupervised from their home to school.
Continue reading “Set children free by trusting adults”This isn’t racism – it’s just kids being kids
A new book explodes the myth of racist children and reveals how anti-racist initiatives in British schools have split pupils into ethnic camps.
Continue reading “This isn’t racism – it’s just kids being kids”Battle in Print: comments on Sue Palmer’s ‘Out to Play’
The modern world is damaging children. They are cooped up inside – impassive and apathetic, and unable to create their own fun and entertainment. Their imagination is dulled by too many hours watching the TV and playing on sedentary computer games. Their minds are corrupted by commerce and advertising. They are traumatised by testing.
So we are increasingly led to believe.
Continue reading “Battle in Print: comments on Sue Palmer’s ‘Out to Play’”The determinist myth
The idea that the first three years of our lives make us who we are is scientifically unsound.
Continue reading “The determinist myth”A right to play
A few years ago, in my home town of Trondheim, a five-year-old girl called Silje was beaten up by three boys of her own age, knocked unconscious and left to freeze to death in the snow. People were shocked. Teachers and childcare officers were not alone in wanting to know where the adults had been when this happened. The children, it transpired, had been playing outdoors unsupervised.
Continue reading “A right to play”