What price a childhood?

Richard Butt
1/ 2/2008

JUST about everyone says it. We cosset children too much these days.

I don’t suppose anyone really wants them to go up chimneys, down the mines or bobbing in and out of looms, like many did in the 19th century.

But now allowing them out of adults’ sight for a moment is about as socially acceptable as bunging a kitten into a blender.

My nephew was allowed to cross a main road near where I grew up only when he went to high school a couple of years ago. When I was at primary school I used to cycle on that very road to a village six miles away.

Yes, there are more cars on the road now. I suppose there is more danger. But I suspect our fear of danger has not grown much more than the reality.

Being out of sight of your parents, building dens and playing – and fighting – with each other was how we learned a lot of important things. These days we’d call them ‘social skills’.

Being constantly under the gaze of a doting parent means a lot of that can never happen.

Recently, I’ve been covering a lot of stories at schools. Even after all these years, whenever I go into a school I hear Mr Walker’s words "Against the wall or not at all!" which he yelled to us as we lined up for dinner (it was never lunch).

Anyway, I went to Reddish Vale Technology College to see the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, talking about its bid to become the country’s first Co-op trust school.

We were, I confess, much more interested in the Home Secretary’s revelation the day before that schools could soon get metal scanners to check for knives.

Mr Balls told me that if schools that wanted them, they should get them. Jenny Campbell, the headteacher, said airport-style detectors were a possibility at her school too.

That does seem a big step. After all, stabbings don’t happen actually inside schools every day – or even every month.

The school itself has CCTV and is surrounded by a spiky metal fence. It’s to keep the vandals out – and Ms Campbell said there had been serious problems in the past, so that’s understandable.

But that CCTV, the spiky fence and the buzzer system also keep children in.

Last week’s news that toddler Leonie Terry went missing for 20 minutes from her nursery in Gorton made the national papers. Of course, she was only three years old.

But all schools have taken it upon themselves to be more responsible for their pupils than they used to be. If they didn’t, they might get sued.

Some of my fondest memories of school happened at dinnertime, when a gang of us would leave Mr Walker and his rhyming couplets and walk into town, go to the chippy and play Space Invaders at an amusement arcade.

Nowadays, that would be unthinkable. Children would not be allowed to dice with death like that.

I’m talking about visiting the chippy.

The three big concerns at schools these days were once reading, writing and arithmetic.

Now they’ve been joined by alcohol, obesity and cigarettes, as headteacher Dr Antony Edkins of Harrop Fold School in Little Hulton, Salford, told me when I reported there on an initiative to keep kids off booze. So schools have taken it upon themselves to safeguard their pupils not only during the school day, but for years afterwards.

In fact, they seem to be in loco parentis forever.

A child’s diet – and whether they smoked or drank – was once the responsibility of parents. So why do schools feel they have to get involved? Mission creep?

Perhaps this is a tacit accusation by the State – in its widest definition – that parents are failing in their job.

So there’s a strange paradox. On one hand, parents are being accused of bringing up ‘cotton wool kids’ and on the other they’re accused of neglecting them.

I’m just glad I’ve never reproduced.

Richard Butt edits Channel M’s early evening news – every weeknight from 5pm