It's sad that we have to teach kids lessons
in how to find happiness

Schools in Britain are teaching 11-year-olds how to be happy. The government even flew in an American psychologist to show how it's done.

Not everyone is convinced it's the way to go. Some experts fear that filling young heads with psycho-babble will only make youth more unmanageable. Teaching them how to be happy, they argue, may have the effect of persuading them they're distinctly unhappy. They'll be coming home from school yakking on about their "traumas" or claiming to be "stressed-out."

Are there teachers in B.C. propagating this obsession with happiness? It wouldn't surprise me.  Progressive" ideas in education spread like the plague. Any distraction from teaching kids what might actually be useful to them is seized upon as a panacea. It's as if we sense something isn't quite right about what we're doing, but don't really have much of a clue about how to change it.

The kids must wonder what kind of a world they live in.

Away from the immediate family -- and the professionals in the classroom -- they don't interact with other adults the way we did. That's because we're terrified of putting them in harm's way. The lurking pervert is the nightmare of our times.

Canadian sociologist Prof. Frank Furedi says this leads to a situation where "young people's behaviour is uncontained by the intervention of responsible grownups." Furedi, now teaching at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, adds that "the real damage is done when children are as young as seven or eight." Their isolation from the adult world also means they spend more time alone -- in front of the television or, increasingly, on the Internet.

It's been estimated that children aged 11 to 15 spend 53 hours a week watching TV, playing video games or surfing the web -- an increase of 40 per cent in a decade. Parents know instinctively that this is too much and make an effort to limit it. But, busy as they are, they'll often turn a blind eye to get some peace. They may still feel badly about it -- and the prophets of doom are lined up ready to fuel their guilt.

British psychologist Dr. Aric Sigman recently claimed that kids who watch too much television are at risk of autism, bad eyesight, obesity, diabetes, depression and premature puberty. He calls it "the greatest health scandal of our time." Children under three, he said, should be banned from watching TV. And until they're five they should be restricted to no more than 30 minutes a day.

Not everyone agrees television alone is to blame for fat, sad, oversexed teens. As Furedi says: "Every parent knows that children should be out playing in the open air." It's getting them out there that's the problem.

"We seem to have lost the capacity to simply say that it's not a good idea for children to watch too much TV," Furedi says.

It's worth the effort, though.

Then they might not need lessons in how to be happy.

Alan Ferguson
13 March 13, 2007

http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=a943d299-df1c-4707-a58d-eb6925a39ba5

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