I have been fairly critical of the Daily Telegraph in recent months, but their new campaign (launched today) to halt the death of childhood is a very good initiative. It's called HOLD ON TO CHILDHOOD. It's not seeking to do anything other than seek to ensure that children enjoy their childhoods properly, free from some of the malign influences which nowadays encourage them to think and act like adults well before they are ready to or equipped to do so.
I reckon all things considered I had pretty much a perfect childhood. I grew up in a rural village, with two loving parents free from the terrible pressures most of today's kids are under. I really would hate to be a child in today's world - the pressure to succeed is so monumental, peer group pressure is far greater than ever and children are now exposed to the harsh realities of life at a far earlier age than when I was a child.
This probably makes me sound a bit like an old git hankering after a golden age that never was, but so be it. Of course I also recognise that the life opportunities offered to today's kids are much greater, but if you're not in a position to take them, for whatever reason, I think life for a kid nowadays can be pretty grim. And on that happy note...
13 comments:
on the upside though, the drugs are better now ;-)
it is ironic that a media organisation such as the Telegraph can start this campaign.
Nearly all the points you refer too are inspired by the media desperate to make money out of those with a discretionary income.
Finally, what kind of maladjusted kid is gonna be reading the Telegraph or listening to their achingly dull parent wittering on about it?!?
When I was a child at school back in the sixties and early seventies, you didn't get all this doomsday scenario stuff shoved down your throat at school (by this I mean: saving the world from impending enviromental destruction, vegitarian propoganda, anti- vivisectionists with gruesome photographs etc). I know we all have to face up to all this sooner or later in the adult world, but at least I was allowed to live in blissful ignorance of many of the world's ills until I was a teenager and could mentally deal with and make up my own mind about these things. Kids aren't allowed to be innocent and carefree any more - they have to shoulder too many grim burdens way too early. Also I think parents are over-protective of their children nowadays too - as a child (up to about 13 or 14 at least) I was outside playing or riding my bike with my siblings until it got dark, and no harm ever came to us, nor to any of the kids we knew at school. We hadn't a care in the world, we got fresh air and exercise, & lived in our unpolluted imaginations. My parents banned me from watching unsuitable grown-up programmes on TV or reading adult newspapers, 'til I was about(which I thank them for, now). It's true there's more traffic about on the roads now, which makes them more dangerous to play or ride bikes on, but I don't believe there are any more perverts, paedophiles or other wierdos about now than there were back then. But that's wandering off topic somewhat, I suppose!
I was at school until fairly recently (2000) and I never faced any of the pressures mentioned by the Telegraph except for exam pressure and this was hardly excessive. Nor come to think of it did anyone else I know. Is this a really really recent occurrence?
Dear Iain
Your own experience is fortunate and to be regarded with a sense of being blessed.
For me, my childhood was chaotic; a violent alcoholic father and a mother who lived in a kind of self-imposed stupor.
I blundered through my early life with no map to chart the way and nobody to rely on.
As for the era I grew up in - the 60's and 70's - we had bicycles and airfix kits and expeditions to the local pond to get tadpoles.
These days young people are terrified of not having the correct trainers or the right phone. I have seen the fear on their faces and it is far worse than anything I ever experienced.
They don't need that map that I never had because today's young run along tram lines of fear and a desperate need to conform.
As a parent, I assure my children of their right to be different whenever I can. They are given permission to think their own thoughts and write their own script.
When I was their age I read books, listened to classical music and took an interest in people who were not like me as well as watching TOTP and having the odd joint.
My perception is that today the social aspirations of the young amount to little more than a highly defined type of consumerism.
We might like to ask ourselves, and especially any putative PPC's, how we have arrived at this, and more to the point, how can we change it for the better?
Why the Telegraph cannot stick to news reporting instead of these dumb campaigns I cannot imagine. There were always pressures on children to do well in exams, to achieve this, that and the other. As you get to teens, the pressures increase because of needing to have friends and not knowing how to cope with life. It's called adolescence, it is part of human life and that is that. I had a reasonably good childhood as chidlhoods go but I couldn't wait to grow up and the same was true for everyone I knew and every child I have come across since then. Of course, once you grow up you realize that being adult sucks. This is not a matter for media campaigns.
Well, if you are a misty-eyed old git for saying all this, then so am I. I would love to be able to give my son as good a childhood as I enjoyed, but I know that in today's world I am going to have a hard task.
Someone said on the news the other night, a propos of 9/11, that the "war on terror" would last at least as long as the Cold War. By that reckoning, my son will be entering middle-age before we can again live in a world free from the threat of indiscriminate mass terrorism. And I haven't even mentioned global warming....
No longer anonymous makes a good point.
IMO parents think that the kidds are under more presure because they know how much life has got harder and more complecated for themselves. Its the adults that seriously worry about the future of the kidds. Young people have a built in biological disregard for a future they can not imagine. NOW DAYS just as at anyother time THIS IS JUST AS WELL.
When I was growing up we had the constant threat of globle nuclear exchange, hanging over our heads every day. Strikes violent protest marches Viet-Nam a Labour government high inflation and real poverty and unemployment among many other big problems, when I was a kidd. However my biggest problem then, was getting into Janet Hardusty's nickers.
Yes but `Hold onto childhood ` is yet another Cameroonian style endorsement of good and opposition to evil . As Norman Tebbit would say , `Where is the party that disagrees?`
This sort of banale non statement is the reason that so many cease to take any interest in politics at all and it isn’t even presented in an entertaining way . The Telegraph is interesting at the moment there is a strange dissonance between the desire to move into the `Woman’s issue` market and old Heffer type Toryism . Isee today Simon Heffer is attempting to be touchy feely . It reminds me of the elephants and their ballet in Fantasia.
Gary Powell
Janet Hardusty did for me. Did you give her threepence and a sherbert dab?
IAIN .. "the golden age that never was". It was a golden age in its own way. No, it wasn't perfect but kids kept their innocence and could just be kids far longer (the lucky ones anyway) and, I believe, received a better education as well.
As a boy I would spend hours roaming through the woods,getting up to mischief. making bows and arrows to shoot my brother, pushing my sister into the pond.
making go carts from old pram wheels, making rope swings and playing postmans knock.
Today non of this would be possible becausse of health and safety.
The arrows would have to made of rubber,all victims to be wearing adequate eye protection, my sister would need a life vest, the go-cart would require a MOT and insurance.
But I think therope swing could be used to hang the H&S person so not all bad.
I'm honestly not looking for any kind of sympathy, o rtea and crumpets, or indeed anything, and I'm neither proud or ashamed of my childhood...but if you think the kids today have it tough, they should have had mine, and many like mine.
Kids today, even in sink-hole estates, have life relatively easy and affluent.
Nopt taking any exception to this piece, and I begrudge you or anyone nothing Iain, but in this one you are wrong and patronising to some of us of an age with you.
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