Toxic Childhood
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Childs Play A painting by Neil Mawdsley |
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Some time ago, I read an article in a teaching publication and a newspaper, about the influence of modern lifestyle on children's development in the U.K. I felt it was such an important article that I have included it in this website. The letter is signed by all the most venerable experts on childhood in the UK and abroad. It is an important wake-up call to all of us involved in our techno- babble audit culture.
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12 September 2006 the British Daily Telegraph newspaper published an open
letter titled ‘Modern life leads to more depression among children’, signed
by over 100 prominent public and professional figures from the fields of
education, child care, psychology and children’s literature, and including
over 20 university professors. The letter expresses grave concerns about the
loss of childhood in contemporary life – and the urgent need for an informed
public debate about what we might do about it. An accompanying front-page
Telegraph lead was headlined ‘Junk culture “is poisoning our children”’. The
story met with an extraordinary response, and within just a few hours, TV
and radio studios across the land were swamped with emails and phone-calls
about the story - and then, for days afterwards, the story reverberated
around the world’s media channels. The letter reproduced below, has been signed by over 100 respected academics, professionals and writers from a range of backgrounds. |
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Text of press letter:
As professionals and academics from a range of backgrounds, we are deeply concerned at the escalating incidence of childhood depression and children's behavioural and developmental conditions. We believe this is largely due to a lack of understanding, on the part of both politicians and the general public, of the realities and subtleties of child development.
Since children's brains are still developing, they cannot adjust - as full-grown adults can - to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change. 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.
Our society rightly takes great pains to protect children from physical harm, but seems to have lost sight of their emotional and social needs. However, it's now clear that the mental health of an unacceptable number of children is being unnecessarily compromised, and that this is almost certainly a key factor in the rise of substance abuse, violence and self-harm amongst our young people.
This is a complex socio-cultural problem to which there is no simple solution, but a sensible 'first step' would be to encourage parents and policy-makers to start talking about ways of improving children's well-being. We therefore propose as a matter of urgency that
* public debate be initiated on child-rearing in the 21st century * this issue should be central to public policy-making in coming decades. I have not included the full list. below |
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A few of the people who signed this letter: Baroness Susan Greenfield, Director of the Royal
Institution |
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Check out www.letsengage.co.uk Look for Sue Palmers book on Toxic Childhood.. |