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Monday
Jan 05th
Home arrow News arrow Character Education arrow The kids are not OK, top educator warns
The kids are not OK, top educator warns PDF Print E-mail
Written by TOMOKO OTAKE, Japan Times   
Monday, 05 November 2007

suepalmer.jpgSue Palmer's advice on how to bring up children might sound — if not heard in context — too old-fashioned, too alarmist or even maybe too naive to prepare their loved ones for the rapidly changing, fiercely competitive society of the 21st century.

The prominent literacy specialist from Edinburgh sparked debate in Britain and elsewhere last year, when she suggested in her ominously titled book "Toxic Childhood" that the rapid social changes of our lives, including the shift in women's roles and our increasingly technology-driven culture, are damaging children's mental health, as well as causing a wide array of learning and behavioral problems.

Sure, we have all come to hear more about a growing list of problems afflicting children, including bullying, dyslexia, autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and Asperger's syndrome. But can they really be resolved by the no-nonsense tips in Palmer's book? Are they simply down to junk food, the lack of time we spend with kids, or our gaming and TV cultures?

While science has yet to fully discover the causes of these complex problems, with experts saying that some are at least in part genetic and neurobiological, Palmer, 58, suggests — through her exhaustive research of written materials and many interviews with experts — that the modern childhood has been rendered "toxic" by all of these little "risk factors" combined together: poor diet, lack of sleep and outdoor play, too much staring at screens, and excessive consumerism.

Where do we start to change things? And who is responsible? Palmer does not mince words when she says the "quality time" argument of recent decades — which assured career-oriented moms that everything would be fine if they spend 20 "quality" minutes with their kids every day — was a "desperate excuse" by women to feel better about abandoning their traditional responsibilities.

But she clearly separates herself from those die-hard types with a stone-age mind-set that women belong only in the kitchen. In an interview with The Japan Times during her weeklong visit to Japan last week, which coincided with the publication of the Japanese translation of her book, titled "Kodomo wa Naze Monsuta ni Narunoka (Why Children Become Monsters)" (published by Shogakukan), Palmer stressed she is just as guilt-ridden as any other career woman and the mother of a grownup daughter.

"All the way through writing the book, I was getting [these thoughts like], 'Ah! I failed on that! Oh, I did that wrong!' And I would ask my daughter, 'Do you think I harmed you?' " she recalled with a laugh in the corner of the faculty room at Yokohama International School, where she was visiting as a keynote speaker for the school's annual Bridging the Gap Conference for teachers, parents and the wider community. She also responded with an emphatic "We are not playing a blame game!" when a 10th-grade male student at YIS asked her who is to blame for the misery of today's children. She added, later, that we all need to talk more, share problems and rebuild communities — instead of waiting for the state to act or resigning in fatalism.

"If you could detoxify children's lives, you can detoxify society," she said.
Click here for an abridged version of a two-hour interview.
Last Updated ( Monday, 05 November 2007 )
 
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