I have decided to do a new feature, every Friday (well, really, every Friday that I can) I am going to discuss any news story or stories that have come up this week that have a slow angle…
And as luck would have it, this story appeared in the newspaper just today:
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
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Matt