THE TELEGRAPH: It was Charles Dickens who gave us the eternal image of the child-hating beadle who screws up his face with revulsion at the sight of a child in need, but that facial expression is greatly in evidence nowadays. Britain's disadvantaged children are, according to a major report on Sunday, a year behind in education by the age of three.
Only a few weeks ago, we heard of schools that proposed to ban break-time, and now news arrives of a massive survey conducted by researchers from the Institute of Child Health at University College London, which suggests that a quarter of Britain's children are obese before school age. Might I be permitted to put up my hand and ask a question: what are we doing to our children?
Some we exploit, some we pollute. Some we spoil and others we ignore. Some we nurture and some we fear and some we mess up and others we enthral. But mainly what we do is subject children to an excessive number of examinations.
Too often we forget that childhood should be a magical place, a zone of enchantment, discovery and - most of all - a kind of freedom many people will never see again. Yet, increasingly, we subject these children to tests and exams and score charts and point averages, as if we can't wait to throw them into the rat race of adult competition. I thought we’d abolished the workhouse (more) By Andrew O’Hagan
Mark Alexander
