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The subject of children's education is seldom out of the news. Parents are vocal in their demand that their children get good education. Most first world countries have been obliged to allocate large budgets to improve educational facilities and standards. The knowledge base that children acquire is steadily improving. In spite of all this money and energy it appears that we are not producing the results we hope for. Where are the well-balanced all-rounders, content with their life? Where are the happily married couples who are respected by their children? Judging by the success of the national lottery it seems that most of us believe that winning a fortune is our best chance for the 'good life.' We all say we want good for our children, but the public records show that whatever our intentions, they are not whole-hearted. In England, which is a relatively wealthy country, 18 percent of children live below the poverty line. Twenty percent of our children are sexually abused in their homes. Many are physically assaulted. This takes no account of the assaults on their self respect and dignity, as children are obliged to adopt the standards current in their society whether they like it or not! If they refuse to obey they are punished, if they continue to resist this brain-washing they can be imprisoned, and generally brutalized. If they accept their conditioning and become obedient they go on to do the same for their children and the same old merry-go-round is perpetuated. The police fight an endless battle against crime of all sorts. A lot of their resource is used to catch adult children, but a large proportion of their effort is directed to catching child criminals. That is, children who commit theft, burglary, arson, and even murder as they show their discontent with the society that raised them. There is so much crime that our prisons are over-crowded and under-funded. We hear that in the USA more money spent on locking people up than on educating them! What is wrong with our country, or rather, what is wrong with our parents? Our parents have our children in their care for the first six or seven years. What they learn during those formative years provides the basis for their behaviour as adults. We must look to parents for a change. These pages are designed to question the traditional way we raise our
children at home - we have been doing what our parents did to us and what their
parents did to them for too long.
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