Yesterday, I said that I would devote the week to consolidating some of my thoughts on 5 key myths that I believe are being perpetuated by a closed loop incorporating the government, experts, the media and much of the general public – what I can only refer to as “we” . These myths are damaging to all families, but because of the current consultation they are of a particularly timely relevance to families who choose to home educate.
Today’s myth is: Children today require greater protection
Let’s get one thing straight: childhood, if it ever existed beyond a cultural construct, was never some idyllic canter across a buttercup-strewn field. Not in medieval times, not 300 years ago, not 50 years ago. Children throughout the ages have been put at risk (amongst other things) squalid living conditions, poor sanitation, near-starvation, ill health, child labour, war, and poor life expectancy.
Human progress has allowed us to develop to such a degree that these significant risks are virtually non-existent for the majority of children who live in this country. We are safer and have more resources than ever. Yet we are ever-distracted by the elusive risks that still remain, and, from our vantage point of comfort, privilege and arrogance, we are obsessed with attempting to reduce those risks to nothing. We do this by legislating, rule-making and dictating at every opportunity, pre-empting all imaginable risk by designating an array of human actions, practices, behaviours and even thoughts as forbidden, dangerous, or taboo. Especially when we do it in the name of child protection, no-one even murmurs.
But what do children today require protection from, exactly? Over the last decade or two, the government, experts and the media have been falling over themselves to tell us what we want or expect to hear. What we now need to hear - and what we parrot back to others without thinking.
How fractured society is. How dangerous the internet is. Why technology is responsible for a rash of behavioural and mental disorders. That adults are a threat to children. How the outside environment is so hostile that virtual realities are vital, and how the insides of our homes are so riddled with risk we need expert advice on how to live. How parents themselves pose the biggest risk to their own children. How the government must do something, implement initiatives, utilise early interventions, start programmes, legislate, take responsibility, be accountable.
And we listen, and we believe, and we agree that yes, of course we need this help. The government should do more. We need another law to protect us from ourselves. We can’t be trusted to get it right, and what’s more we can’t rely on those around us - they might be a paedophile, or a terrorist. Better to call a hotline and report our suspicions instead. And so we become more dependent on each pronouncement from on high, and increasingly unsure of our own beliefs. In any case, what feels right must be wrong, because now there’s a law against it, or we saw it exposed on the television, or the health visitor told us not to do it.
Paradoxically, Lord Laming's recent review into children’s services has suggested that an emphasis on box ticking, form filling and excessive red tape has allowed vulnerable children to remain at risk. Of course, the tens of recommendations he makes to improve the situation won’t end up adding to the already stultifying bureaucracy, I am sure. The advent of this information could conceivably have led to:
Outcome a) Policy makers realise that they have taken things too far; the concept of state-as-omniscient-protector is doomed to fail and, in fact, it is safest for all concerned that responsibility for each child lies first and foremost with their parent or carer, whose ultimate accountability should be made utterly clear. Existing legislation underpins these assertions.
But there is no doubt that it will actually lead to:
Outcome b) Policy makers have not taken things far enough to ensure every child’s absolute safety and wellbeing at all times and, indeed, ought to create new legislation and take further measures (and lots more money, obviously) to assume increasing responsibility for all children, thus trampling over the civil liberties of all concerned in order to avoid the small and often theoretical risk of child abuse.
We are safer and have more resources than ever, but we are not happier. And we are not happier because we are living in a damaged society, that much is true. But our society has not been damaged by human progress or social change; technology or the internet or adults have as much potential for moral good as they do moral harm.
Our society has been seriously damaged by those in positions of power and authority who decided on our behalf, with our inert collusion, that freedom from is always more important than freedom to. The concept of freedom from is inevitably accompanied by the incessant obsession with protection, the growth in legislation, the emphasis on rights, and the death of personal responsibilities.
For the most part, we aren’t even consciously aware of the control we have lost over our own lives. But subconsciously, we know that something fundamental is missing. That much is evident from the malaise and discontent, the mental disorders, the blame culture, the empty materialism, the anger and aggression, the cult of easy celebrity, the death of community, the disconnected families, the disaffected young people.
If we choose to trust people to have children, rather than the state producing and raising our future generations in test tubes, all children cannot and will not be prevented from falling through the net, no matter how much we might prefer this to be otherwise - unless we are also prepared to live in a totalitarian society and give up our precious liberties, one by one.
It is an uncomfortable question, and one which the government relies on no-one daring to answer honestly – but is the theoretical possibility of the continued existence of child abuse a price to pay for us all - children and adults - to live in a more cohesive, sustainable and naturally protective society?
