Bring Back Childhood
This one seemed to have snuck past without my noticing. And now I’ve noticed, I’m hopping mad about it.
Within the next four years, all schools will have to open from 8am to 6pm. Apparently, Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister (Hah!) told The Times yesterday that this idea is so popular that 2,500 schools have already signed up to the idea.
The Times says, “The longer school day is designed to help working parents and to give children access to activities that they might not otherwise have.”
I think that’s the nub of it. It’s to help working parents (who might possibly be delighted and might subsequently vote Labour). I bet nobody asked the children if they’d like to spend longer hours at school, no matter what activities may be lined up for them.
A day seems much longer as a child than it does to an adult. If we were to suggest to adults that, as an exciting new initiative, after spending all day in the office they might like to stay in the office all evening with their workmates, I think I know what the answer would be.
Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, disagrees with the idea.
“In many ways it is an abuse of children to stick them for that many hours of the day in school. Children need to get out and see the world,” he said.
Here’s Beverley Hughes again, on the other hand:
“Independent schools have always done this. They have given children opportunities to excel by offering them a wide range of activities.”
I note that “opportunities to excel”. If she’d said “opportunities to have fun” I might be more prepared to think that she has the children’s best interests at heart.
In practice, I can see these schemes being underfunded holding-pens for children whose parents are at work. What will the “activities” be? Rock-climbing? White-water rafting? I doubt it. Battered board games in the corner of a classroom? Probably. Unless there’s a lot of money spent on staff and equipment – and there won’t be, I tell you now – it’ll be the battered board games. For some children, it’ll be an opportunity to spend yet more time with children who’ve been bullying them all day.
For children who don’t excel at school – and there are many – these after-school activities will be just finding more ways of proving to all their peers how hopeless they are.
The best playtimes of my childhood were the non-adult-directed playtimes. Cycling aimlessly about for hours, practising figures of eight on my bike. Playing in the garden with my friend Jo, creating endless imaginary adventures. Cleaning out the pond (and hey, we didn’t drown!) Playing skipping games for hours. Marbles. Whip and top. Reading and reading on a rug on the lawn. Telling my mother “We’re playing out” and going off with my friends and coming back when it was teatime. Building dens. Drawing endless stories of islands with treasure. Getting the paddling pool out and splashing about all afternoon. Hopscotch. Climbing trees. Getting boats out on the park lake (we still didn’t drown).
It all sounds very idyllic and guess what? It was. And it’s all a necessary preparation for adulthood. Play is children’s work – it is vital for their development (thank you David who put it more or less in those words).
Childhood for so many children has become all computer games and being ferried by car between adult-directed activities. Keeping children in schools for endless hours is no preparation for an adult life of many choices and decisions. Bring back childhood!
Within the next four years, all schools will have to open from 8am to 6pm. Apparently, Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister (Hah!) told The Times yesterday that this idea is so popular that 2,500 schools have already signed up to the idea.
The Times says, “The longer school day is designed to help working parents and to give children access to activities that they might not otherwise have.”
I think that’s the nub of it. It’s to help working parents (who might possibly be delighted and might subsequently vote Labour). I bet nobody asked the children if they’d like to spend longer hours at school, no matter what activities may be lined up for them.
A day seems much longer as a child than it does to an adult. If we were to suggest to adults that, as an exciting new initiative, after spending all day in the office they might like to stay in the office all evening with their workmates, I think I know what the answer would be.
Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, disagrees with the idea.
“In many ways it is an abuse of children to stick them for that many hours of the day in school. Children need to get out and see the world,” he said.
Here’s Beverley Hughes again, on the other hand:
“Independent schools have always done this. They have given children opportunities to excel by offering them a wide range of activities.”
I note that “opportunities to excel”. If she’d said “opportunities to have fun” I might be more prepared to think that she has the children’s best interests at heart.
In practice, I can see these schemes being underfunded holding-pens for children whose parents are at work. What will the “activities” be? Rock-climbing? White-water rafting? I doubt it. Battered board games in the corner of a classroom? Probably. Unless there’s a lot of money spent on staff and equipment – and there won’t be, I tell you now – it’ll be the battered board games. For some children, it’ll be an opportunity to spend yet more time with children who’ve been bullying them all day.
For children who don’t excel at school – and there are many – these after-school activities will be just finding more ways of proving to all their peers how hopeless they are.
The best playtimes of my childhood were the non-adult-directed playtimes. Cycling aimlessly about for hours, practising figures of eight on my bike. Playing in the garden with my friend Jo, creating endless imaginary adventures. Cleaning out the pond (and hey, we didn’t drown!) Playing skipping games for hours. Marbles. Whip and top. Reading and reading on a rug on the lawn. Telling my mother “We’re playing out” and going off with my friends and coming back when it was teatime. Building dens. Drawing endless stories of islands with treasure. Getting the paddling pool out and splashing about all afternoon. Hopscotch. Climbing trees. Getting boats out on the park lake (we still didn’t drown).
It all sounds very idyllic and guess what? It was. And it’s all a necessary preparation for adulthood. Play is children’s work – it is vital for their development (thank you David who put it more or less in those words).
Childhood for so many children has become all computer games and being ferried by car between adult-directed activities. Keeping children in schools for endless hours is no preparation for an adult life of many choices and decisions. Bring back childhood!
posted by Daphne at 11:30 pm
6 Comments:
It has been proved, well at least demonstrated using a teenager which I suppose doesn't really count, that if school starts at 10:30 then everybody [said teenager again we pressume] does much better at everything.
This is because the teenager in question was doing growing [ a startling feature of teenagers you have to admit] before 10:00, usually spark out in bed I imagine.
The best time for school would be 11:00 - 17:00 then again from 21:30 to 01:30, thus doing away with that teenage anathama: bedtime. Ha ha ha
It's called "independent play" and it's a biggie. Children need it and aren't getting it. Parents can buy books telling them how to encourage it.
Linnea just bloody does it, will I or nil I.
As to the childcare problem, I wish the funding was going into decent statutory m/paternity pay so that families weren't in such a godawful bind and considered spreading the burden of childrearing evenly across more than one sex. Dammit.
*Applauds*
Children can look after themselves a lot of the time, if parents take the time to invite friends to the house etc, buy books and don't say "well it's a schoolnight so you can't actually play at all, you have to spend at least 7 hours doing your homework".
Also children need the parents around, they need to be able to have contact with them, it seems to me that the more that this is available, the less they need it.
As you say, kids won't get asked if they want to stay at school for the other 4 hours. They will of course say no, but the statistics will show that it is a great system because so many people will use it.
If the time will be spent "giving the children access to activites they might otherwise not have had" this gives another oppertunity to show that some people are better at things than others. I would find it disheartening to know that not only is Bob liked by the teachers, and he got 10/10 in both maths and science, but he can also beat me at football too. It provides more of an opportunity for kids to be shown who is better than them.
You can't be a better "imaginator" than your best friend, you do it together, it doesn't matter how good at cycling you are if your aim is just to discover something new.
To have a child ignored by both parents from 8 - 6 every weekday, to me comes under the catagory of child abuse.
Dr G.C.Pedrick (Phd Child Psychology)
I'd have more sympathy if the parents involved were poverty-stricken single mothers who have to work those hours, but I really doubt they will be.
If this plan is to be put into effect in primary schools, I think it's disgusting that it's considered OK to dump a 6-year-old in school for that long.
If it's applied in secondary schools, secondary school children ought to be able to look after themselves if their parents are working. If your 13-year-old is too damned stupid to play with its friends alone without burning the house down, then perhaps that's a sign that their childhood should have consisted more of independent play than Govt.-approved "educational" activities.
Let's encourage a chavvy mentality, shall we... Pop out as many babies as you want, as parents you'll never have to lift a finger in their care. You'll never even have to see them! /rant.
Incidentally, I "excel" in the unbelievably narrow Hughes-speak definition of it (i.e. get As) precisely because my parents didn't hothouse me and I could play independently constantly.
The trouble is that the existence of such a facility will force many parents to use it. That is, given that such a facility exists, employers will be EVEN MORE reluctant to allow flexible working, extended maternity leave, parental leave, et cetera et cetera et yul brynner.
So we'll be back where we were 30 years ago; women (it will be women, trust me on dis) can choose full-time parenting or full-time employment, and that's that. After all, they don't NEED to go home at 3 o'clock every day, do they?
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