October 2, 2006

Children of the UK

“Children ‘deserve a childhood'” from BBC.co.uk

Shadow education secretary David Willetts told the party’s conference that “more and more, we treat children as though they are adults”.

He told the conference: “Teachers tell me that they now have children coming to their class who have never held a crayon, who have never seen a book, who have never had an adult read them a story.

Wait a sec… NEVER seen a book? Is that even possible? Do these particular children never go to libraries or on the bus or public spaces or what?

I find the article somewhat conflicted, because later it talks about kids needing to be taught “real subjects.” It brings it into an adult perspective again, because I would have expected the subjects to be more along the lines of music, painting, poetry, crafts, and the animal world.


“They shouldn’t just do general science – every child has a right to do real, individual sciences – biology, physics, chemistry. That’s something else we’ll be pressing for in the education bill.”

Are they talking about elementary school or high school? Because in high school over here, we do have specific sciences. In high school you’re not a child anymore.

He said many youngsters wore so-called hoodies to hide and save themselves from being attacked by other more violent teenagers.

Their inconsistent wording is confusing.

The disappointing part is this:

“The average area within which a child in Britain roams freely now has shrunk in one generation to a ninth of what it used to be.

“We have just one acre of playground for our children for every 80 acres of golf courses.”