Pressure from the top
robert whelan, 18 September 2006
After a fortnight of concern about the ‘state’ of childhood, the Archbishop of Canterbury has stepped in: to warn us about the huge pressures that children are under. A key strain Rowan Williams highlighted in an interview this morning with BBC Breakfast, was the ‘relentless’ testing children are now subject to, which starts from a very young age. The saddest part of this particular contributor to the nation’s increasingly unhealthy and unhappy children is that it is so needless. Far worse, in fact, it is actually setting back holistic primary school learning, with inevitable effects on pupils’ later school careers. Last week, fresh evidence came to light of the widespread cramming which is now happening in primary schools. Research found that children who had gained the required level in the tests at the end of Year 2, were found to be significantly below that level when tested informally the subsequent year. Tragically, the purpose of this so-called ‘teaching to the test’ was to reach government targets. Pupils under pressure not for their own benefit, in other words, but for party politics’.
I hear a lot of people commenting about this “pressure” in the school system, but as the father of two primary school children I see little evidence that they are aware of it. Maybe my kids are just good at handling that pressure, but I do see them being aware of and worried by other things. They are bombarded relentlessly – both in school and at home through the TV – with a never ending barrage of “issues” which are presented in a way to burn into their subconscious that they must worry and be guilty about these things. The biggest and most obvious of these is “climate change” or “global warming”. At school or at home they are endlessly told that we are destroying the earth, that in a few years time we will be flooded beneath many metres (never feet) of water or that vast swathes of England will be arid desert. How we’re running out of water, but we will be struck every summer by monsoon rains followed by mild winters of increasing wetness – or dryness. All of this – despite being self-contradicting – is presented as fact, even though there is still no real evidence that global warming exists or is caused by man. Climate change does exist of course – and has done since long before man ever set foot on the earth, but this is ignored by the doom-mongers, as is evidence that other factors – such as Milankovitch Cycles or Sunspot Cycles are much more likely to play a role in climate change than what we do. When they aren’t being told to worry about “climate change” it is third world poverty, African debt, AIDS, globalisation and the multitude of guilt trips they are asked to take on behalf of Britain’s heinous colonial past. They are subjected to ever more laws that effect them directly – if under 4′ 5″ they must be strapped into a rock hard and terribly uncomfortable booster seat for their own safety – otherwise they will die. Quite what difference it makes if they are 4′ 4″ and not 4′ 5″ isn’t clear. Nor do they understand how it is that we adults were able to travel around in cars completely unrestrained, managed to survive but now we determine that our children must not be allowed to do that. We see adverts on TV that show giggling teenagers being run over as they are filmed on mobile phones, motorcyclists ramming themselves into lampposts or grief stricken fathers in the remains of a burned out house. And we wonder why they are so unhappy – and why it is that children who don’t have access to TV are apparently happier. Perhaps if we stopped teaching them to be fearful, guilt ridden worriers with no control over their future and instead concentrated on being proud of their heritage and positive about the future they may be a little more happy.