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Report Suggests That Nanny State Might Actually Not Be For the Best
tonyreadsnews writes "Usually, 'thinking of the children' is a starting point to impose limitations on video games and internet in general. For once, a study requested by UK's Prime Minister seems to be a bit more objective than most. In the Executive Summary (PDF) 'Children and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe — this isn't just about a top-down approach. Children will be children — pushing boundaries and taking risks. At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and
shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim.' I think that is an important point that most studies miss, that just 'thinking of the children' and locking the bad stuff away is actually setting them up for failure later in life. A direct link to the full PDF is also available."
At the same time, UK Social Services is committing acts of terrorism (yes, kidnapping threats are acts of terrorism) against a family with fat children.
Hypocritical much?
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
I was confused there. I could have sworn that creating a risk-averse society was going to lead to a more daring and entrepeneurial economy, a government with balls of steel that stands up for the principles its society claims to hold dear, and a society of people who are independent and capable of functioning on their own without cradle-to-grave hand holding.
Of course the greater issue is how we got down this path in the first place. People don't want to admit it, but it's the feminization of society. It is offensive to modern values to suggest such a thing, but simple observation will show you that the outrage over these restrictions is far more common and fiercer in men than women. Women may disagree with the excesses, but they don't disagree with the principle nearly as much as men do because as voting records have shown countless times in many countries, women tend to value security over freedom. Ever wonder why most libertarians tend to be men?
I'm not trying to bash women here, I'm just saying that society as a whole has taken on an overtly feminized aura to it. There is no balance anymore, the way there used to be.
The problem with your thinking is that it seems to assume that children are just like adults, that they think the same way, have similar value systems, et cetera -- they just lack experience, so they should be "brought up to speed" in much the same way an ignorant adult would be.
Not so. Children are fundamentally different from adults. They don't think the same way. They don't experience the world the same way. Check out any good textbook on cognitive development and couple it with close, unprejudiced observation of your own children.
Most importantly, the way children think changes fairly rapidly as they grow. How a child reacts to a naked tit, for example, completely changes from age 1 to school-age, and again in middle school, and once again at sexual maturity. A wise parent considers these changes, and does not try to use the same reasoning and the same solutions at all ages.
And, in recognition of the fact that children don't think the same way at the same age, society tends to say that certain experiences should be shoved into certain age ranges, when they are easiest to successfully understand and cope with (either for the child or for the adults around him). It's among our oldest traditions as a species, the idea that certain experiences are best at certain ages, and it would generally be gross folly to overturn them without damn good reason. ("Gee! Tt seems reasonable to me! What could possibly go wrong?" doesn't qualify, by the way.)
The same arguments apply to purely intellectual stuff, too. For example, the present trend to teach algebra skills as early as grade 5 or 6 is almost certainly badly misguided. The mental circuitry required to easily learn algebra is usually (although not in every case) not "hooked up" until early adolescence. That means kids are tortured with stuff that is very hard to get, when waiting a few years would make it a piece of cake. Again, a failure to understand that children are not merely miniaturized, ignorant adults.
The human race has successfully raised children for millenia, risks and all. The idea has always been to see them to adulthood, whenever that happens to roll around culturally, and then see them out the door. If this happens, you have successfully passed your Darwinian challenge course. If they learned enough from you in the process that they succeed in punting your grandkids out the door, the formula has continued to demonstrate its adaptive suitability. "Protecting" children - and even adults from miniscule risks, you know, terrorists for example, or guns even, is scarcely beneficial except to the nuerotic. Consider that the US homicide rate last year was 5.5/100K. The automobile related death rate is nearly three times that, and guns and cars are our favorite risks supposedly. The birthrate, at an all time low, is still one hundred times that. Violent USians haven't even nipped a dent their birthrate. The conclusion is that "protections" for such miserably minor risks do not make any sense demographically or economically. The only sense they DO make is within a society where media defines "social problems" - animal rights, disabled access, child risks, lead based paint, asbestos, ect. - and politicians act to look as if they are earning pay.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
when I was younger (and no, I'm not that old) me and some friends would regularly meet up in the morning, raid respective parental kitchens for a pack lunch and vanish for 9-10 hours. We'd walk >5miles, make swings from old rope and swing out over the water cress beds, get soaked, throw stuff at each other and generally behave like children. This was before sat nav, gps, mobile phones and our parents had no way of contacting us. We all had small change for the public phones and the one time we needed help (someone broke a coller bone) we managed on our own to organise things.
It was simply how children behaved.
Now mothers are frightened to let children out of their sight, and a whole generation is growing up mollycoddled and unable to think on their own or take risks. Worse, numerous studies show that without exposure to other people, children to play with etc., they grow up lacking many social traits they need to learn from their peers and with little immunity for many common viruses. And don't even get me started on education.
It's sad, and I wonder (a) how we got to this situations and (b) how to get out of it.
It is horrific, but I believe it is necessary. "Intelligent" people breed far less then "unintelligent" people do. Since we're all striving towards democracy, this can only mean the collective devolution and dumbing down of our society (one only need to look at the last few US elections to see this). As horrific as it may be, the only way to keep this from happening is to indeed introduce some means of population control. Why not keep the uninterested and unqualified parents out of the process at the same time? We spade and neuter our pets after all, why not our peers? -W
Bingo.
Insert Ferris's monologue from "Atlas Shrugged" here.
(Oh, alright, here:
-- Ayn Rand, 'Atlas Shrugged' (1957))
-- Alastair