The Race for Our Children to Grow Up

Looking at how the changing social and technological advances are putting pressure on children to grow up at a faster pace.

Many of the economically successful countries around the world, such as the UK, USA, Germany, and now the UAE as well, have had to constantly evolve in order to keep up with all the continued social and technological advances out there. This progression has meant that the people living in these countries have access to quality healthcare, increased job opportunities, international exposure, and competitive education standards. While this growth has been beneficial in many ways, these changes have also brought forth with them a set of new challenges and potential risks, one of them being within the education sector where children are now under increasing demand to live up to the new expectations set by society.

The education sector in these parts of the developed world has changed its approach as we now have children starting school at an even younger age. While our children are in a position to have access to a lot more information and support at an earlier age, they are now also under tremendous pressure to learn and grow up faster than ever. We now see children as young as 4 years and 8 months being enrolled in year 1 at schools while many of them are not developmentally ready at that age for such an academically challenging stage. These children not only have to endure 7 to 8 hour long school days, followed by after school activities, but also end up bringing back homework to practice reading, writing, and mathematics.

In the book, Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About It, an example is given that 12-year-old children may be technically capable of driving, but they are not allowed to do so because they do not have the developmental maturity to sit behind the wheel. Similarly, while some 5-year-olds may be able to grasp year 1 academic requirements, this does not mean that they should be doing that.

In countries such as Finland and Denmark, children are only required to enroll in year 1 at the age of 7 as they believe, and rightly so, that before this age children should be free to roam around, explore, play, and simply be just children. Both these countries are renowned for their high literacy and academic achievement rates. Research has been conducted comparing England to the likes of Finland and Denmark, and it has been found that Scandinavian children had better concentration, longer attention spans, and few behavioral problems as compared to the English. In fact, research has shown that this early pressure on children actually feeds into emotional and behavioral difficulties.

If the research is available and the outcomes of these Scandinavian school systems are obvious and positive, then shouldn’t this be what we emulate. How aware are we that we are placing children under academic pressures at delicate ages, and shaping them into being the stressed youth and adults we see today battling with a number of mental health issues. Is that really what we want for our future generations?

References:

Sue Palmer (2006), Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About It, Orion Books