And as luck would have it, this story appeared in the newspaper just today:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/primaryeducation/5019030/School-cuts-lunch-hour-and-replaces-playtime.html

This utterly ridiculous and a symptom of the continued pressure place on on children and parent  (by whom?) to perform better.

Can’t children just left to be children for awhile?! The study reported here:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,482840,00.html

Suggested that this increased pressure on children at school has more negative effects than positive one.

Really. Is this pushing children so hard necessary? When I talk about the concept of “Slow Work” I often talk about how children rarely disguish between work and play and are quite happy to do what we would consider hard toil. And the key to a stress free working life is to regain that childlike attitude to work.

But, with these absurd new approaches children will have that (essential?) play taken away.

If you want a more measured and probably saver and productive way to bring up children I highly recommend you read Carl Honares book Under Pressure: Putting the Child Back In Childhood: Putting the Child Back into Childhood and Tom Hodgkinsons book The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids.

Matt