On Character
On Character
On Character
My Bury Free Press Column:
Over the past few weekends our brilliant History team has taken different groups of students to visit the First World War battlefields in northern France and Belgium. There, our youngsters have witnessed the grim claustrophobia of the trenches and the unthinkable scale of battlefields adjoining outstretched cemeteries.
They have paused amid the bleak black tombstones at Langemark, the German cemetery in Ypres, looked up great great grandfathers, and located the graves of former students from our school. Then they stood in silence for the poignant Last Post.
We think this sense of giving young people a vivid sense of the past is essential. We know who we are by knowing where we have come from.
As the twentieth century poet Philip Larkin put it: ‘Never such innocence again’.
That concept of ‘innocence’ is an interesting one. Today is Comic Relief day and hundreds of young people, at schools in our area, across Suffolk and the UK, will do silly things to raise money for good causes here and overseas. Along with thousands of adults, they will make fools of themselves and be childish.
Yet it sometimes feels as if being able to be a child – to regain our childish ways - is falling out of fashion. Two weeks ago a survey by the Netmums website made depressing reading for anyone concerned about what our society’s values may be doing to childhood.
The survey reported that more than two-thirds of parents feel their children’s childhood ends before they become teenagers. 16% said their child’s innocence was lost by the age of 10, with many blaming the internet and a shallow celebrity culture.
Social media seems to be a source of particular worry with half of girls aged seven to 13 apparently fretting about how many friends they have on Facebook.
Netmums co-founder Siobhan Freegard said: “It’s shocking that childhood now ends by 12 years old. The pace of modern life is snatching away precious years of childhood – they should be playing for the sheer joy of it without worrying what they look like or whether they’re popular.”
Being a parent was never harder. I’ve just finished reading a book recommended to me by the Dean, Frances Ward. It’s by Paul Tough and is called How Children Succeed. It’s all about building character and outlines the essential experiences all children need to go through en route to adult life if they are to have a real sense of self-discipline and be ready to play their part in the world.
One of the most important ingredients, says the author, is that children need to know how to deal with failure. And one of the biggest obstacles in this is - you’ve guessed it - parents. Tough says: ‘what kids need more than anything is a little hardship, some challenge, some deprivation that they can overcome’.
And one major barrier to that, he reckons, is parents who overindulge children, who protect them from dealing with failure.
No wonder parents must sometimes think they can’t win.
But Tough isn’t saying that parents should leave their children to fail. He’s not saying we should abdicate our responsibilities.
Instead he’s saying we should let children taste failure more – feel the inevitable daily disappointment of things not going right - and then help them by talking to them about how to cope with it.
Childhood, in other words, should help prepare our young people with the skills and values to become the next generation of adult citizens. Which isn’t the same thing as squeezing the joy out of childhood by age twelve.
Let’s continue to savour those childhood years.
Geoff Barton
15 March 2013
Friday, 15 March 2013