Every public amenity or meeting place has been turned into a crèche, not for the benefit of the children but for the parents, who happily sit and gossip, oblivious to the mayhem their children are causing. Children run up and down in the library, church services are conducted over a constant babble of children talking or crying or playing with toys. Is there any escape? I recently asked a child of about six to stop running and jumping over an unfenced but obviously private lawn. Her father shouted (expletives deleted) that she was “only a child and can do what she wants”. Surely in many cases it is the parents who need the boot camp, not the children.
Mary Loveitt
Haywards Heath, Sussex
TIGHT LEASH: I wondered if anybody had noticed how similar the current child-rearing approaches are to dog training? I am neither a parent nor a dog owner (the latter only through default), but I was a dog trainer and a devout follower of The Dog Listener. Jan Fennell’s techniques bear striking resemblance to the suggestions in your article.
Children, like dogs, are a danger to others and themselves if allowed to run amok. Both flourish in an environment where they know who is in control and who to respect — and not out of fear.
Advertisement
So maybe my idea for combined puppy/baby socialisation classes will finally take off. Then again, maybe not.
Polly Pownceby
Pontcanna, Cardiff
CONTROL: I agree with Minette Marrin (A few good (brawny) men could pacify our schools, Comment, February 6). I am a bursar of a large secondary school in Devon and over the past 12 years have seen a worsening of behaviour. Some classes are so disrupted that no teaching takes place, taking up almost 70% of senior management time.
I once had to edit out a letter that was being published in our newsletter from an Italian child on an exchange programme with us. It said that in England you go to school to have fun and meet friends and he enjoyed that because in Italy you go to school to learn.
Advertisement
One of the reasons for this deterioration is the policy on inclusion. Money has been taken away from special schools (not to be confused with facilities for special (disabled) needs). They were expensive with only a handful of children and a large teaching force but they were needed to deal with pupils with huge behavioural problems.
We now find “included” children whose behaviour is so bad there is little we can do with them — or indeed their parents.
You only need a handful of these in a school to see the huge drain on staff energy and management time. But that is only one reason, Another is a British cultural problem. Many parents don’t value education and this is naturally passed on to their children. Gone are the days when parents wanted their children to be better educated than they were so they could do better in life then they did.
Name and address supplied