Ego-stroking dressed up as educational reform

My eldest daughter has recently discovered a passion for computers. We have been duly impressed by her dexterity with the mouse, and her confidence in making the machine do what she wants it to do.

Of course, being aged four, what she wants to make the machine do is to play dress-up Tinkerbell and basic clicky games on the CBeebies website. If she wants to get the most out of computers, and the wonderful world of the web, she will need a bit more knowledge. Learning to read would be a start; learning enough history and science to seek out information, and to sort good information from bad, will hopefully follow on. In the course of this development, she will learn that computers are only as good as the people who use them, and that having access to ideas and resources only makes sense if you know what to do with these things.

I am confident that my daughter will learn these basic truths, as they seem to me fairly obvious. But I am prone to moments of despair; particularly when reading things like the British government’s new proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum.

An interim report by Sir Jim Rose, who was commissioned by the government to lead a review of primary education, has called to give greater prominence to ICT (Information Communication Technology) in education for little kids, and to replace the teaching of traditional subjects, like history and geography, with something called ‘cross-curricular study’ or ‘theme-based learning’. There should also be ‘greater focus on personal development’.

From an educational perspective, there are many aspects of the Rose review that demand some critical questioning. An excellent leader in The Times (London) has pointed out that the likely consequence of the reforms will be a ‘watered-down muddle’, and argues: ‘The function of primary school is to teach children how to learn. That means knowing enough facts to develop a sensible hypothesis about the world. It means progressively mastering a series of tasks that build up to knowledge. It does not mean the kind of passive downloading that universities have become so concerned about.’

But the educational implications of the Rose review are only part of the problem. As a parent, what concerns me even more than the impact such proposals will have on our children’s brains is the impact they will have on children’s sense of themselves, their peers, and the adults in their lives. When policymakers take as their starting point what children already know, rather than what they need to know in the future – and when they focus on ‘personal development’ at the expense of knowledge of the world – the upshot is a recipe for narcissism and ignorance. Adults, in this view, become the applauding audience in the drama of our children’s lives, our authority reduced to mere flattery.

Now, I think my kids are brilliant and all, but I also think they have a hell of a lot to learn. And for their sake, I demand more of myself, and of their teachers, than ego-stroking dressed up as educational reform.

Take the justification for putting computer skills on a par with literacy and numeracy. The press release on the Rose report put out by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) begins with this bald statement: ‘Techno-savvy youngsters are developing their computer skills faster today, providing untapped potential to boost learning in primary schools.’

As The Times points out, in educational terms ‘it makes no sense to argue that children should be learning more computer skills early, because they are already so competent’. If kids become ‘techno-savvy’ of their own volition, surely the time at school would be better used teaching them about things that they don’t pick up with such ease or enthusiasm? But the spirit of this proposal is precisely that educators should not seek to impose upon children the things they don’t know; rather that they should take their lead from these ‘techno-savvy youngsters’ and find ways to ‘boost learning’ (presumably, the learning of the fusty, technophobic adults who are trailing behind). In the glitzy new world of the ICT suite, the child leads and the adult marvels, contributing such insights as ‘what happens if you click on this? Well done!’

The idea that schools should be transformed into an extended episode of Dora the Explorer is pretty disheartening to any adult who suspects that unlocking the secrets of the universe involves rather more than a familiarity with tabbed browsing. But the myth of the techno-savvy youngster, who is naturally a more gifted navigator of our information society than those of us reared on books and test tubes, is a pernicious one. It has become popular because it speaks to a deep-seated anxiety that adults are really not up to raising children – look how they navigate, where we fumble! Look at their intuition, compared to our pedantry! So it is not really surprising that the DCSF, with its heightened awareness of adults’ shortcomings, has jumped upon this particular bandwagon to promote its brand of child-led learning.

Then there is the question of ‘personal development’. Specifically, the DCSF press release puts it like this: ‘Children should acquire a range of personal, social and emotional qualities essential to their health, wellbeing and life as a responsible citizen in the twenty-first century – getting the right skills, knowledge, understanding and attitudes.’

Schools have always sought to do more than teach the three Rs; and the question of how they can best provide a form of moral guidance for their pupils, and what form this moral guidance should take, has been discussed perennially. But the new focus on ‘personal development’ makes clear that, nowadays, schools are expected to get increasingly involved in the basic aspects of children’s personal and emotional development – yet without even trying to engage with the difficult questions of learning right from wrong, or aspiring to be a good person (as opposed, say, to simply being well-behaved). In DCSF-speak, the idea of moral guidance translates into simply: ‘Getting the right attitudes.’

Parents of primary-school-age children will already be all too familiar with what these ‘right attitudes’ are: recycle your rubbish, walk to school, don’t bully other children. The litany is both vacuous and conformist, demanding that children (and their families) accept that there is only one ‘right attitude’ to have. I find myself trying to explain to my daughter that, actually, ‘telling the teacher’ is only one way to deal with a hypothetical bully, and I relish the prospect of introducing her to the Enid Blyton school stories, in which ‘sneaking’ was the worst thing you could do. But when ideas about right and wrong have already been perverted into narrow and simplistic ideas about acceptable or unacceptable behaviour, it’s all a bit of a struggle.

In the absence of a broader moral framework, the emphasis on ‘personal development’ simply means telling children how wonderful they are. Children are encouraged to focus on their own health and wellbeing, and to demand that adults jump to ensuring that they are optimising these. Through initiatives like the government’s Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning programme, which goes by the cuddly acronym SEAL, kids are encouraged into an obsession with their own happiness and unhappiness, and furnished with morally dubious ideas such as that acts of kindness get you prizes.

Parents and teachers have a nagging suspicion that the upshot of all this self-regarding could well be a generation of brats, who are prepared to take neither advice nor guidance from adults, and are incapable of dealing with the blows to their ‘self-esteem’ that come when other people try to remind them that, actually, they could be better. As a parent, I am bothered by the knowledge that home life, instead of being a place of relaxation and indulgence, will be the only forum in which children’s character flaws are pointed out to them along with the errors in their work, while schools get to put ‘excellent’ over everything and reward them for such ‘virtues’ as telling a teacher about a bully.

The only upside is that, despite the drubbing that parents get in government policy, most of them care about their kids enough to know that moral guidance is necessary, and that children need more than a constant diet of smiley faces. The question is whether we can keep our confidence, or whether we will be fighting for front seats at the Brat Awards.

This article was first published on spiked.

Social censorship

A father is told to stop taking pictures of his own sons playing on an inflatable slide in a public park. A couple is told by a park warden that they cannot take pictures of their baby daughter on a swing. Two pensioners are ordered by council officials to stop taking pictures of a deserted children’s paddling pool ... in a public park. These are stories that have hit the national press in the past year, earmarked ‘Political Correctness Gone Mad’.

If only it were as simple as that. Laying the blame for heavy-handed restrictions on child photography with odd over-zealous council official massively underestimates the cultural change that has taken place. To put it bluntly: 10 years ago, it was assumed that photographs of children were a good thing, and that people taking them had good reason to do so. Now taking pictures of children is seen as a dubious activity, and anybody wanting to take such photographs is treated with suspicion.

Those involved in commercial photography will be familiar with the growing web of rules and regulations. Charlotte Evans, director of the child model agency Elisabeth Smith, talks me through a labyrinthine process, which involves obtaining a licence from the child’s local authority and a letter from their school, as well as parental consent. Photographers working in schools also face a very different environment these days.

De facto rule

‘When I first started working for the education press 14 years ago, you’d turn up at the school and the headteacher would say, “Yes, you can photograph all these kids except for that one, who is under a child protection order”,’ says editorial photographer Neil Turner. ‘Now, there is a de facto rule that you can’t shoot a photo without explicit parental consent having been granted. Things have changed colossally.’

And formal regulations on child photography are only part of the story. New rules and protocols co-exist in which generalised concern about people with cameras in public has an even more censorious effect. In 2007, semi-professional photographer Simon Taylor launched an e-petition protesting against ‘proposed restrictions regarding photography in public places’. The petition attracted 69,000 signatories, prompting the Government to intervene before its closing date to ‘reassure’ signatories that it was not considering any proposal along these lines.

The Government continued: ‘There may be cases where individual schools or other bodies believe it is necessary to have some restrictions on photography, for instance to protect children, but that would be a matter for local decisions.’ But it is precisely such ‘local decisions’ that are causing a headache for many parents, amateur and professional photographers today.

Taylor was prompted to submit his e-petition by an email sent to his local camera club by a couple of photographers, describing how they had gone out for a walk and taken some photos of a rugby tournament in a local park. Some of the players were children and the photographers were approached by officials from the club, who then involved a Child Protection Officer and a policewoman - all demanding to know what they were planning to do with the images.

The problem is the level of ‘paranoia’ about child protection today, where ‘every hobby photographer is under suspicion’, says Taylor. There may be no law restricting photography in public places, but where children are concerned, local and institutional restrictions risk regulating such photography out of existence.

Sporting life

These restrictions affect parents taking pictures of their own kids as much as any other photographer. At municipal swimming pools it is now commonplace to see a ‘child protection policy’ on display, banning the use of cameras and mobile phones. In youth sports, lengthy policies are produced detailing who may take photographs of what. UK Athletics, for example, instructs photographers to ‘only use images of players in suitable dress’ and to ‘try to focus on the activity rather than a particular child’.

The body also recommends that parents who wish to take photographs are registered with the event’s organisers, because of the possibility that ‘certain individuals’ may take ‘inappropriate photographs’. All this marks out photographers as dodgy characters, and cameras are viewed as instruments of harm - but the basis for this belief is far from clear.

The increasing regulation of child photography is motivated primarily by the fear that paedophiles will get hold of images of children and use them to identify and track children they can abuse. But as the fondness for the phrase ‘PC gone mad’ indicates, many people - including parents - suspect this scenario has been blown out of all reasonable proportion.

The fact is that parents generally like taking photographs of their kids, and having such images taken by professionals, such as Cardiff-based photographer Hazel Hannant. She says clients never raise issues about taking pictures of children at weddings or informal family settings - but she feels she has to be tread carefully.

‘I am very aware of the situation and if I’m out with my camera taking pictures for fun, in a park or on a beach, for example, I do feel slightly awkward,’ she says.

This generalised sense of unease when carrying a camera in public has been described to me by many photographers. It leads, as Steve Forrest of Insight-Visual suggests, to a kind of self-censorship - photographers don’t want the possibility of a fight, so they don’t take the picture. Consequently, there is a grudging acceptance of the notion that photographing children is a no-go area, so regardless of what rules exist, photographers are culturally conditioned to steer clear.

What is far from clear is who will gain from this stand off between photographers and their most photogenic subjects. But a climate that makes people feel dirty for holding a camera represents a great loss.

This article was first published in the British Journal of Photography, 10 December 2008

‘Baby P’: don’t turn this tragedy into a policy

From the moment the story broke, the media filled up with stories about the heart-rending case of ‘Baby P’. The 17-month-old boy’s mother had already pleaded guilty to causing or allowing his death, but was cleared of murder on a judge’s directions. Yesterday, 11 November, her 32-year-old boyfriend and another man were convicted at the Old Bailey in London on the same charge.

The computer-generated photograph of this poor baby’s battered head that has accompanied some of the news reports is surely unnecessary, when reading about a catalogue of abuse that included eight fractured ribs and a broken back. What makes the story more awful is that the little boy was already on the London council of Haringey’s ‘at risk’ register, yet ‘over eight months of abuse, during which he was seen 60 times by health or social workers, the boy suffered more than 50 injuries’ (1).

Recriminations are already flying, as are comparisons with the landmark Victoria Climbié case in 2000. Eight-year-old Victoria suffered horrific abuse at the hands of her guardians, finally ending up in a hospital intensive care unit where she died with 128 separate injuries to her body. Here, too, it was Haringey council that failed to intervene in time. The Climbié case prompted an inquiry, headed by Lord Laming, into how the council had failed to act upon such a clear case of child abuse; and a chain of policy measures was put into motion to stop a case like this from ever happening again.

Now it has happened again, and guess what? The government’s response has been (again) to announce an independent review of child protection services across the country. But if anybody wanted to learn one lesson from this case, and from Victoria Climbie before it, it should be this: when governments politicise such tragic events, the outcome is worse than no good.

Victoria Climbié and the aftermath

Lord Laming’s report into the circumstances surrounding Victoria Climbié’s death was released in January 2003, and he was uncompromising about the failings of the child protection authorities. He noted that there had been ‘no fewer than 12 key occasions when the relevant services had the opportunity to successfully intervene in the life of Victoria’ – yet none did. ‘The extent of the failure to protect Victoria was lamentable’, he wrote. ‘Tragically, it required nothing more than basic good practice being put into operation. This never happened.’ (2)

The failure of the child protection authorities to follow ‘basic good practice’ goes a long way to explaining how professionals charged with preventing child abuse can miss severe malnourishment, cigarette burns and the other multiple injuries that Victoria sustained. A further explanation was provided by Helene Guldberg on spiked at the time of the Laming report: ‘It was not the absence of a highly visible, vigilant and centralised child protection industry that allowed Victoria to die a lonely drawn-out death. It was the lack of two basic human instincts: compassion and common sense.’ (3) If those many individuals and agencies who had come into contact with the little girl had exercised more human judgement, the outcome could have been very different.

Unfortunately, what the government wanted to learn from the Climbié case was a rather different lesson: which was that her death should be used as a springboard for the national reorganisation, not only of child protection services, but of the principle of child protection. To that end, it set in motion a major policy that essentially reorganises how all adults – parents, teachers, doctors, social workers and members of the community – relate to all children. This was the blanket policy banally called Every Child Matters.

Every Child Matters

How could an inquiry that began with a case of extreme cruelty and murder end up with this:

‘The government’s aim is for every child, whatever their background or their circumstances, to have the support they need to: Be healthy; Stay safe; Enjoy and achieve; Make a positive contribution; Achieve economic wellbeing…’

…as though Victoria Climbie’s suffering came from eating too much chocolate and not being read to at home?

And how could the failure of trained social workers to spot signs of extreme abuse that were right under their noses lead to this:

‘[O]rganisations involved with providing services to children – from hospitals and schools, to police and voluntary groups – will be teaming up in new ways, sharing information and working together, to protect children and young people from harm and help them achieve what they want in life…’

…as though the personnel who came into contact with Victoria simply lacked the right volume of notes?

As a result of the inquiry into Victoria Climbié’s death, all children are to have their details registered on a national database (called ContactPoint), just in case they need some kind of state protection in the future. From childminders and nurseries through to secondary and tertiary education, teachers and other childcare workers are tasked with worrying about all aspects of a child’s wellbeing – healthy eating, staying safe, and so on. In case parents should worry that they are being sidelined, there is also a document called Every Parent Matters, which sternly reminds us of our duties in helping children to read and not smoking during pregnancy. I could go on – but you can read it all in breathtaking, mind-numbing detail for yourself here.

In short, the government politicised Victoria Climbié’s death, using this tragedy as a springboard to reform the relationship between parents and the authorities, and reducing parents to mere ‘partners’ in the child-rearing process. This policy was never going to prevent the rare but dreadful cases of abuse that really are a cause for concern – indeed, it is possible that a policy that teaches all practitioners to look for the most minor signs of potential abuse in every parental oversight, be it a failure to provide carrots for lunchtime or fruit for breakfast, makes the job of child protection workers harder, by distracting them and burying them in bureaucracy. When social workers are trained to consider every parent suspicious, and all sorts of parenting techniques as potentially abusive, they may become distracted from the task of spotting real abuse. What Every Child Matters has done is to institutionalise the idea that all families should be placed under greater scrutiny by an expanded group of professionals, in order to ensure that they care for their children enough, and in the appropriate kind of way.

By shamelessly taking advantage of the outrage caused by rare and terrible cases of abuse, the government’s policy presumes that there is some connection between children being denied their five-fruit-and-veg-a-day and babies having their heads beaten in. In contrast, by setting in motion official investigations into the failings of the state to intervene when families really are failing, the government has presumed that there is no connection between its demand that social workers and others spot child abusers everywhere, and their failure to see and deal with real horrors on their doorstep. So after ‘Baby P’, please, let the government get real. The last thing that will help is a policy called ‘Every Child Really Matters’.

This article was previously published on spiked.

(1) Investigation called after child murder case with echoes of Climbie, The Times November 11, 2008

(2) The Victoria Climbié Inquiry, January 2003

(3) The missed lesson of the Climbié inquiry, by Helene Guldberg, 31 January 2003

Parenting debates at the Battle of Ideas

The Battle of Ideas 2008 will be a two-day festival of high-level, thought-provoking debate organised by the Institute of Ideas and hosted by the Royal College of Art.

The ‘Battle for the Family’ strand on Saturday 1 November contains three important debates.

10.30-12.00: Professionalising parenting

Parents, apparently, are a bunch of amateurs. No wonder all the youth of today are binge-drinking, obese, antisocial yobs. What is needed, we are told, is constant monitoring of parents, and learning and development support where necessary. How did parenting become the big idea in the 21st century, and why have so many social concerns come to be understood through the prism of parenting?

Speakers

Zoe Williams - columnist, the Guardian; particular interest in feminism; and babies. 
Christina Hardyment - writer and historian with special interest in family and domestic matters; author Dream Babies: Babycare Advice from John Locke to Gina Ford
Dr Ellie Lee - lecturer in social policy, University of Kent; co-ordinator of Pro-Choice Forum
Nancy McDermott - journalist; member of the New York Salon; chair Advisory Board of Park Slope Parents, second largest parenting group in the USA
Chair: Jane Sandeman - convenor of the Institute of Ideas Parents Forum

13.30 - 15.00: The problem with families

The ‘problem of the family’ has long been a pet subject of social commentators. In the past, critics worried about the threats posed by single parenthood, homosexuality and permissiveness. But with the rise of therapy culture and the mainstreaming of the view that your parents ‘f*** you up’, the policy focus has shifted from a concern about a few ‘problem families’ to the assumption that all families are essentially problematic. What can we expect for the future of the family, when its very existence gives policymakers sleepless nights?

Speakers

Jennie Bristow - writer on parenting issues and intergenerational relations; author Guide to Subversive Parenting; columnist, spiked; editor, Parents With Attitude.com
Yvonne Roberts - senior associate, The Young Foundation; writer and broadcaster
Erin Riley - executive producer, documentaries, BBC Radio; created and produced Bringing Up Britain (presented by Mariella Frostrup); series 1 was broadcast March 2008; series 2 begins New Year 2009.
Jennifer Howze - lifestyle editor, Times Online; manages and blogs on Alpha Mummy.
Chair: Sally Millard - founder member, Institute of Ideas Parents Forum; opinionated mother of two.

15.30 - 17.00: Is ‘poor parenting’ a class issue?

Whereas the welfare state attempted to counter the problems facing low-income families through financial assistance, the therapeutic state pursues these families with a relentless programme of emotional support and childrearing advice. From the war on junk food and youth binge drinking to the pressure exerted on parents by schools to improve their own literacy levels, recycling habits, and compliance with healthy lifestyles, the orthodoxy of ‘good parenting’ often seems to be a thinly-veiled attack on the way adults live their lives – often with a heavy dose of snobbery. Are a child’s life chances really determined more by parental behaviour than by family income? Is it right to use children as a conduit for attempting to change the behaviour of ‘hard-to-reach’ adults? What makes a ‘poor parent’ anyway?

Speakers

Val Gillies - senior research fellow, ESRC Families and Social Capital Research Group, London South Bank University; author, Marginalised Mothers: Exploring Working Class Experiences of Parenting
Suzi Godson - columnist, Body and Soul, The Times; writer on sex, relationships and the family; author, The Body Bible: Every woman’s essential companion
Dr Jan Macvarish - researcher and lecturer in the sociology of family life and intimate relationships; author, Teenage Parents’ Experiences of Parenthood, What is ‘the Problem’ of Singleness?
Dr Dalia Ben-Galim - senior research fellow, Social Policy, Institute for Public Policy Research
Chair: Beverley Marshall - Institute of Ideas Parenting Forum; working mother (senior product manager, publishing; mother of three children under five).

See more information here.
Book tickets here.

Licensed to Hug

Published in June 2008: Licensed to Hug, a report by Frank Furedi and myself about how the national vetting system is damaging relations between generations.

Read Frank Furedi’s cover story in the New Statesman, or the introduction to the report on spiked.

See the storm of media coverage here.

Licensed to Hug is published by Civitas.

By

Media coverage of ‘Licensed to Hug’

The report Licensed to Hug, by Frank Furedi and Jennie Bristow, generated considerable press interest.

The following appeared on 26 June 2008.

A quarter of adults to face ‘anti-paedophile’ tests. Daily Telegraph - front page

Time for sanity in the vetting of volunteers. Daily Telegraph - leader

Government will crack down on unnecessary CRB checks, Phil Hope says.  Daily Telegraph

Are we overprotective of our children? Daily Telegraph - discussion

Has vetting damaged trust? Today, BBC Radio Four

Adults ‘scared to go near kids’. BBC News Online

Is our response to child sex abuse in proportion? BBC News Online - Analysis by Mark Easton

Child safety laws mean adults ‘scared to approach children’. Guardian

Child protection laws are ‘poisoning the relationships between adults and children’. Daily Mail

Quarter of adults must be CRB checked under new rules. The Times (London)

Paedophile label scares off adults. London Metro

Child protection measures ‘increase risk to children’. Inthenews.co.uk

Adults Scared Of Children. Raising Kids

New report explores the damaging effects of child protection policies. innovations report, Germany

Escalation in child protection measures make adults ‘afraid to interact with children’. 24dash.com

The following appeared on 27 June 2008.

An obnoxious brat in the street, a chilling leaflet… and my 14-year-old son who chants ‘Childline’ when I try to hug him. By Tom Utley. Daily Mail

This child protection hysteria deflects attention from a real, and growing, danger. By Dominic Lawson. The Independent

Protecting kids is far from child’s play, by Tim Gill. Guardian - Comment is Free

Acting on instinct, by David Wilson. Guardian - Comment is Free

Are we overprotective of our kids? Guardian - news blog

Parents banned from ferrying children to sports matches. Daily Telegraph

Baby photos that fall foul of the PC police, by Lesley Thomas. Daily Telegraph

‘I was treated like a paedophile’, by Julian Joyce. BBC News Online.

Londres multiplie les contrôles antipédophiles. Le Figaro (France)

Esther Rantzen’s fury over kid check. The Mirror

Welcome for record check on volunteers. Dorset Echo / Daily Echo

Letters to the Telegraph, including from Meg Hillier MP, Home Office Minister

The following appeared on 28 June 2008.

John Pinnington sacked after CRB check reveals unsubstantiated abuse allegations. Telegraph

New Report Explores The Damaging Effects Of Child Protection Policies. Medical News Today

Letters to the Telegraph

The following appeared on 29 June 2008.

If we can’t learn to trust each other, we will lose ourselves and our children. By Tim Lott. Independent

Parents are kidding themselves over child protection. By Rod Liddle. Sunday Times

There is no law against photographing children. By Jemima Lewis. Telegraph

The following appeared on 30 June 2008.

We’re all victims in Meg Hillier’s mad world. By Philip Johnston. Telegraph

Letters to the Telegraph

The following appeared on 9 July 2008.

I launched Childline to protect the most vulnerable - but unleashed a politically correct monster. By Esther Rantzen. Daily Mail

Bureaucrats killing future British tennis stars. By Jim White. Daily Telegraph

The following appeared on 13 July 2008.

Paranoia has taken over child protection, by India Knight. The Sunday Times

The following appeared on 1 August 2008.

The Damaging Effects of Child Protection Policies. Children Webmag

Also see:

Thou shalt not hug, by Frank Furedi. New Statesman, 26 June 2008

Now you need a licence to interact with children, by Frank Furedi. spiked, 26 June 2008

Childcare: child’s play is now a minefield, by Frank Furedi. Daily Telegraph, 26 June 2008

Licensed to Hug. Civitas blog, 26 June 2008

Down with the Early Years blueprint!

The Independent Schools Council (ISC) has complained to children’s minister Beverley Hughes that the government’s Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework violates parents’ human rights by denying them the freedom to choose how they educate their children. I don’t know about human rights - but the point about parental choice is a very good one.

The EYFS has been criticised already, by educationalists who object to the prescriptive, didactic character of its aproach. Children develop at different paces, it is argued, and professionals should have the autonomy to choose which method of childcare or education that works best. I agree with this - we are talking about little kids here, from birth to five, and it is extraordinary that the government thinks a blueprint for developing the ideal child is possible, necessary or desirable.

But my big concern with the EYFS is that which the Independent Schools Council has brought out - the impact on families’ privacy and parental autonomy in child-rearing. The EYFS casts parents in the role of ‘partners’ in raising children, the clear implication being that professionals know best. The fact that professionals are then denied the opportunity to make use of their own skills and experience, instead being told that they need to dance to the tune of government policy, makes it even worse!

As the ISC also points out, parents who don’t like the way the EYFS operates cannot opt out of it through choosing private daycare (as they could with schools), as the government, through Ofsted, inspects all childcare for the under-5s. This seems to me an absolute racket: the state does not provide childcare, expecting parents to pay through the nose for it, yet reserves the right to make every private daycare organisation adhere to the misguided standards laid down by a policy framework that undermines both parents and childcare professionals equally.

It’s great news that some people are causing a stink about this. I wonder what parents can do to make their objections known? Any ideas, please post at the parents’ forum!

What’s youth binge drinking all about?

Dire warnings about young people suffering from increased rates of liver disease provide the latest instalment in the ongoing British panic about teenagers binge drinking. And yes, I believe that this is largely a panic. The young generation are not all going to end up dead before their 30s because of having one crate too many of beer; and the policy pronouncements brought in by policymakers (and supermarkets) to try and stop young people from drinking are only going to make for a more illiberal climate for all of us.

But there is something about the amount, and the way, that young people drink today that makes me a little concerned - not about their health, so much as the state of their lives. An interesting comment by Melanie McDonagh in today’s Times argued that ‘fixing the price won’t fix the problem’, and concluded:

‘The truth is that there are graver reasons than price for why young people are drinking to nihilistic excess. It may be a product of social deprivation, it may be that drink is a stimulant for lives that lack much love or meaning.’

Without sharing what appears to be McDonagh’s assumption that teenage drinkers are all poor and unloved, it seems to me that she does have a point about the ‘meaning’ of life for today’s teenagers. Specifically, what it must be like to live for over a decade in the netherworld between childhood and adulthood - old enough to drink, but not yet considered responsible enough to hold down a job, start a family, live a fully adult life.

The process of infantilisation that is trapping young people in education for years on end and encouraging them to behave like kids when in their twenties must, I imagine, be quite frustrating for the young people concerned. And whereas adults pride themselves on being able to hold their drink, for young people with no responsibility or anchor in grown-up life, why not just get off your head one night and spend the next day sleeping it off?

The problem is probably nothing like so straightforward as this. But McDonagh’s right: it’s certainly not as straightforward as simply stopping kids getting their hands on lager.

By Jennie Bristow

What do you think? Continue the discussion at the parents’ forum.

Do responsible parents have to be boring?

Last week I wrote a defence of parents getting drunk on holiday - and then wrote a longer version in my ‘Guide to subversive parenting’ on spiked. The spiked version immediately generated some stern emails.

‘It really encapsulates the hippy generation that’s now “grown up”,’ said one. ‘Everything plays second fiddle to adults enjoyment and fulfillment, it seems. Personally, I don’t believe the slogan ‘the interests of the child are paramount’, but your degree of dissociation from responsible parenting really takes the biscuit.’

‘The comments in your article illustrates so clearly the British love affair with alcohol, where getting pissed in public is never frowned upon, but rather treated as a harmless bit of fun,’ said another.

These emails made me think a bit - because I am often arguing about the need for parents to behave like grown-ups, and be treated like grown-ups. Is there a contradiction between that and getting really drunk on holiday (which, as I noted, is not advisable, though it is not the end of the world)?

It seems to me that ‘responsible parenting’ these days has become synonymous with leading a boring, conformist life - starting with cutting out all partying behaviour pre-pregnancy, and continiung right through until your kids leave home. In fact, this is a denigration of responsibility - being a responsible parent involves far more than being safe and healthy: and not least, it involves refusing to live your life solely through your children. In today’s conformist times, people seem to get the point about growing up meaning living an anxiety- and safety-ridden healthy lifestyle - which is probably why people are so reluctant to grow up! What is more difficult is accepting that being an adult means taking risks, making mistakes, and living a fully-rounded life.

OK, so a fully-rounded of life might not mean several pints of lager in Portugal, but it does mean being able to enjoy yourself. The fact that parents seem to experience having children as a trap that prevents them from living the life they want is more of a problem in my view than individual parents occasionally having too much fun.

By Jennie Bristow

What do you think? Let off steam at the parents’ forum.

A storm in a Sangria glass

It’s a shocking story. Two British parents get very drunk in charge of their three children on the first day of their holiday in Portugal – and end up paraded through the European media as an ‘example’ of parental fecklessness on a grand scale. I cannot be the only parent to have contracted the jitters from this. Is there no refuge from the dictates of Totally Responsible Parenting Behaviour – even when you spend hundreds of pounds on a family holiday in the sun?

The facts, such as they are known, are these. Eamon and Antoinette McGuckin, from Northern Ireland, allegedly collapsed in a ‘drunken stupor’ in front of their three young children at their Algarve hotel in the early hours of Saturday morning. The couple were taken to hospital and their children to a children’s refuge overnight. Accusations and denials are running thick and fast, with the Portuguese authorities considering charging Mum and Dad with abandonment and negligence, while Mum is demanding blood tests after claiming that she only drank three lagers.

The facts of this bizarre case are far from clear. One obvious question, though, is how has the story so quickly reached the Portuguese and British media? It cannot be a coincidence that this latest fable on parents behaving badly has cropped up on the anniversary of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, and the degrading, parent-bashing circus that ensued. While the jury may still be out on the question of whether it is OK for a middle-class couple to leave their kids asleep in a room while they go out for dinner and a glass of wine, getting paralytic in front of your children (on lager!!) makes for an easy moral outrage. So the McGuckins quickly cease to become people, and are held up as photo-fit examples of how British parents quite typically behave on holiday – uncivilised binge-drinkers who put their kids at risk.

I find this view far more sickening than anything the McGuckins might have drunk on their first day in Portugal. Parents are quite entitled to enjoy themselves on holiday, and drink something a little stronger than lemonade. And parents should be allowed to make mistakes. If you get too drunk in a hotel bar, you should be able to rely on people to help you out: not to send in the authorities and splash your humiliation across the international media. It’s enough to make the back garden look attractive as a holiday destination.

By Jennie Bristow

What do you think? Let off steam at the parents’ forum.