UK education: The Nanny State and why “schoolification” of the under-sixes is not cool

For my mum – a full-time housewife with a working husband – the daily routine involved a bit of light cleaning, wheeling me in a buggy to the corner shop, buying groceries and having dad's dinner on the table at 6pm. At the weekend, the family went out together in the car, which could also prove boring.

During this era, kids were allowed to be kids. We hopped, we skipped, we played on local wasteland, we built dens, we rode our bikes in the street. At nursery school, we didn't obsess about being ready for primary school and the further education system, nor did we fixate on our body shape and how it compared to that of famous celebrities and pop stars. We didn't have a plethora of extra-curricular activities to increase our potential.

The 70s school kid had never dreamed of a Wii, Nintendo DS or Playstation (Space Invaders was as far as it went) and we did not worry about endless upgrades to our gadgets. Nor did we stare at the television for several hours a day.

Generally, the one TV in the house would be commandeered by dad, who wanted to watch football or The Two Ronnies.

Fast forward 40 years into the generation of the ubiquitous games console, Sky multi-room households and kids aged five using the internet. This is also the generation of the hassled single parent who must juggle two or more roles every day, while having just one pair of hands, while letting Sponge Bob or Grand Theft Auto entertain the kids.

On top of that, this generation has schools telling parents how to conduct their lives; parents being treated as a glorified taxi service for endless after-school activities (the kids could spend time relaxing at home – heaven forbid!); and the family's movements during term-time are controlled with a fist more iron than Thatcher's. Woe betide any parent who books a flight 1-2 days outside an official school holiday to avoid it costing three times at much: they'll receive a £100 penalty fine and a visit from Social Services.

Speaking a single mother of the 2000s, I can see how far things have changed, and not for the better. It seems to me that parents not only work endlessly but exist to be chastised. I'm as guilty as any parent of using Sponge Bob as a convenient evening, weekend and school holiday childminder... otherwise, how would those unexpected jobs ever be completed?

Whereas my folks had spare time to play Monopoly, Snakes & Ladders and Snap with their offspring, my kids are more likely to play Angry Birds on a smart phone, while Mummy tries to clean the house, at the same time as answering emails and “monitoring social media”.

The maker of Angry Birds, Rovio, has recently completed a Finnish trial of a game for six year olds, called Angry Birds Playground. The game is about to be introduced to China. Presumably, it teaches youngsters the social skills that a recent survey of 2,000 UK childcare workers, parents and teachers say they need: suggesting, by proxy, that many are lacking these skills when they start school.

With research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggesting that the average young person will have spent 10,000 hours gaming by age 21, a proportion of those hours are presumably spent staring at screens during the pre-school period, while mummy and possibly daddy rushes around being all things to everyone: maid, cleaner, cook, taxi, self-employed home-worker. I've always suspected that games involving the brash, all-American Ben 10 could cause anti-social behaviour in the playground... “that guy looks funny, he's an alien – blast him with your superpowers!”.

And the rot doesn't stop at screen fixation. Now, there is learning fixation. The 2,000 person child-carer study states that “social skills and independence can be more important than academic skills for the under-fives”. Errr... here, we are talking about little people who have only just learned to button their coat, drink from a proper cup and wipe their own bottom, because they are still in preschool or reception year at primary school.

The research highlights growing concerns about the “schoolification” (as well as the rampant “labelism”?) of the early years, with educational achievement and being school-ready becoming the dominant force, and with play being pushed aside in nurseries to allow the shift towards formal learning. So, out goes the play-dough and in comes trigonometry and quadratic equations.

Meanwhile, the NHS is proposing to teach parents of potentially disruptive kids aged three to 11 how to play with their kids to improve the parenting quality, as well as approving strong anti-psychotic drugs for children, despite controversy amongst professionals about the side-effects of these substances. It is suggested that “one in 11 children might be an ASBO child”.  Or labelled as such.

Excuse me but aren't kids at the lower end of this age bracket generally a bit disruptive? Isn't this one small step from the terrible twos, where one's offspring is expected to throw their toys and scream if they don't like the broccoli on their dinner? The NHS initiative, bless it, aims to teach parents to avoid saying no, especially if this ubiquitous word triggers bad behaviour, and to find alternative strategies for dealing with the difficult child. That will be an interesting approach when little Ivan is tugging a dog's tail and it's about to bite him, or he's about to do a wee-wee in the middle of the supermarket. If softly-softly doesn't work, there's always the drugs!

According to yet more advice issued to local authorities by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, schools should consider running parenting classes (surely taxpayer-funded schools exist to, ahem, teach the children, not the actual tax-paying adults) and systematically measure children's happiness to stop them going off the rails. Parents are being told that "it's good for children to smile." Well, no sh*t, Sherlock! Whatever next?

Unsurprisingly, with the Nanny State ramping up its activities concerning the education of under-sixes, and their parents too, there are some calls for England to look to other countries – Wales, even - where kids are still allowed to be kids and adults aren't treated like kids.

Ironically, and on a more serious front, where the idea of measuring happiness is concerned, a Google search reveals countless cases of child death or suicide involving those as young as six. Some UK children have killed themselves to escape school bullies, while other succumbed to to academic pressure. Yes, bullying went on during the 1970s and 80s but back then, the kids didn't tend to carry knives.

According to a study by new mental health charity, MindFull, 32% of under-16s in the UK have experienced suicidal thoughts. Some of the driving factors were stated as bullying, pressure over school work, bleak future prospects and pressure to have the “perfect body”. In line with this, a recent case in which a “promising 17 year old” school boy threw himself under a train cited pressures over school work as a cause of depression. Something is going seriously wrong here if both the kids and parents feel pressurised.

With parents stretched to their limits by work/life balance, kids amusing themselves with console-based shoot-em-up games instead of interacting with their family or playing out, and schools taking the role of parent/guardian - while telling the actual parents how to think and act - where will it all end? Can we put a whole nation of kids on Ritalin, just to keep them engaged, while wondering what label to give the generation involved in this whole palaver?

Meanwhile, it would be useful if console games developers could devise new titles such as Positive Body Image, Life Beyond School Work and Academia isn't Everything. I would also like to see Junior Cleaning League. Surely that would be better than raiding tombs and stealing cars, while hoping to become an ultra-thin pop prince/princess after the schoolification years are finished. Perhaps the game could rewind us to 1970, or to another country where balance still prevails.

Or, perhaps, the beleaguered parents should just collapse on the sofa - in front of Super Nanny State - while waiting for someone to come along, feed them juice containing performance-enhancing substances out of a sippy cup, and wipe their bottom.