Posted July 20, 2011

Is So Much Too Much

By Harry E. Berndt

The Internet, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and a host of other sources for information pour forth mountains of information 24 hours every day. Many people the world over work many hours each day – ten hour shifts are common, and some people work two jobs, and many work six or seven days a week. So much information and so little time to digest it often can mean that nothing is really ever learned about anything. But one must be an informed citizen or face being manipulated by charlatans who flourish in a society that winks at lying for profit. Perhaps a little information from reliable sources, obtained by the individual, would trump the plethora of information stemming from radio and TV talk programs? Oh, right, who has the time?

Children are expected to attend classes five and a half or six hours a day and take home demands for several hours of homework. Many children are also expected to become proficient in one or another sport – tennis, ice hockey, swimming, skiing, baseball, football, gymnastics, etc. An article which appeared in the New York Times, Sports Training Has Begun for Babies and Toddlers quotes one owner of a sports program for infants stating that she hears all the time from parents who say, "Our kids are superstars when they're in middle school and they get into sports". According to the article, these programs exist in some 200 locations with 157 in the United States. "There are millions of American parents worried to death that their children might fall behind somebody else's kid." Is so much training and homework too much for our children? When do they have the opportunity just to play and use their imaginations and creativity? And through all of this, adults are with them almost every minute. I'm old and can remember when adults were considered by children to be another race and were never seen except at dinner. Adults were around and certainly were aware of what children were up to, but they were not part of the children's play; they didn't hover around and were not coaches or cheer leaders for their kid's team. The kids scheduled their own games with the kids on another street. Everyone wants to be a winner, and kids wanted to be winners, but that was not the driving point – playing the game was the point. Is so much control over what children do really better for them than having them use their imaginations and creativity to create their own rules of the game?