With our emphasis on making education a competitive sport, we are sacrificing the well-being of our children for the purpose of "success." In our search for our kid's better education, are we doing our kids more harm than good? This article explains why the system's "hurried child" approach to education and success may lead to disastrous results.
Our children are caught in the midst of a hurried world where they must compete and worry about their ability to headoff the competition from nursery school onward. At age three, they are placed on waiting lists to enter into the best preschools in their community. They move upward to first grade only to face the heat of added pressures to do well, to produce, to learn, and sometimes even to succomb to the stress and strains of the new age of education. Their childhood is traded off to the best schools, to homework, to competition and standardized testing. Instead of making friends and playing outside after a hard day at school, they cram for homework and tests and look at other kids through the eyes of a competitor, rather than through the eyes of friendship.
Education and learning are important tools in today's world. But unlike their parents, our children are deprived of their childhood. They are babies thrown into an adult world with adult values and because of that they may be the smartest generation in one way, but the most unhealthy in another way. While we went outside to play after an hour or so of homework, our kids are working well into the night- sitting with their books and computers - building their brains and depleting their bodies. What they have gained in brainpower, they have lost in physical, emotional, and developmental stages along the way.
Learning is a wonderful thing, and it is important that our children value the essence of a good education. But, it should not consume the child and his or her every moment, depriving them of the play and laughter, physical exercise and friendships that we, as kids, enjoyed and thrived upon. It is our hope, as parents, to improve our children's lot in life so that they will have every chance of doing better than than we did. But, we should not be blinded by the importance of education alone. Rather, it is the BALANCE of education and FUN that help a child to develop into a well-adjusted and intelligent human being. One without the other is only half as good as the whole. And, we need to be concerned that we are pushing our kids into an adult world all too fast for the proper stages of child development to take hold. And, we need to ask ourselves if we are doing them more harm than good by tipping the scales of balance too much in favor of education and too little in favor of childhood bliss.
More kids today are on antidepressant drugs; many are obese; and the suicide rate among our children is staggering. Could this be the result of a hurried child, rushed to grow up and to face the stresses and strains of a highly competitive educational system all too soon? We need to search beyond the obvious, and to think that perhaps - just perhaps - we may be the cause behind too many of our youngsters racing from cradle to coffin with a sadness in their eyes that cannot be eliminated with medications, but cannot be denied exists. Lighten up, America. Our children are dying to get ahead. Let our kids be kids until they are ready to grow up - and let them smile a little while longer before rushing them into the pool of sharks, treating them like the bottomline where only the statistics of their standardized tests and facing the competition are what really count in life. Let them live!
