MUST-HAVE CULTURE 'IS DAMAGING FAMILY LIFE' !!!!!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Must-have culture 'is damaging family life'


By Daily Mail Reporter
13th May 2010


The ‘must-have’ culture is piling pressure on parents to spoil their children, a leading headmaster has warned.
Parents feel compelled to buy the latest gadgets and enrol their child in every after-school club to keep up with their peers, according to Graham Gorton, chairman of the Independent Schools Association.
And he suggested that this pressure risks damaging family life.

In his speech to the ISA’s annual conference in Bournemouth today, Mr Gorton will say: ‘Over recent decades we seem to have created a “must-have” culture amongst our young people.

‘Many see that they may be perceived to be failing as parents if they do not ensure that their children have the latest gadgets and electronic devices along with their peers.
‘Many parents also, I suspect, feel pressured to enrol their offspring into every conceivable club or afterschool activity that is available, including through the weekends.
‘This must have an impact on the very precious family time that exists.
‘Long gone, it seems, are those times when a whole weekend ahead with nothing planned was seen as a luxury and a perfect opportunity to spend time together and share those valuable and irreplaceable moments of childhood.’

Mr Gorton, who is headmaster of Howe Green House School in Hertfordshire, a private school for three to 11-year-olds, warned that children were being robbed of their childhood by constant testing.
‘Are we not in danger of robbing our pupils of the very essence of childhood by constantly judging their development against a target-driven educational system?

‘Is the world of education, which is currently driven by legislation, jeopardising these opportunities to learn?’
The ‘creeping tide of legislation’ is tying the hands of private schools, Mr Gorton warned, and teachers are leaving the profession after becoming disillusioned at the red tape issued by central government.
‘I know that this feeling of overburden is especially felt in smaller schools who still have to meet the same bank of regulations as larger educational establishments,’ he said.
‘As a result I hear from many colleagues that they have just had enough and may seek to leave a profession to which they have given their lives and is in their blood. This is a sad, if not tragic, situation.’
The ISA represents 300 independent schools in the UK and abroad.