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Young’s family values
Kirsty Young detests pushy parenting. For her new BBC series, T_h e
British Family, the presenter studied the sociological forces – such
as feminism and increasing affl uence – that have shaped the modern
family. She concluded that today’s children were both overloaded with
material possessions, and treated as aspirational objects themselves.
“We’ve become much more child-centric these days,” she told the
Radio Times. “It’s kind of a badge of honour to say your life revolves
around your children. It’s partly a function of choice: if you’ve given
up work to ‘do’ children, that choice must be justifi ed. And I think
people these days are preoccupied with children as an extension of
their own success. So we try to funnel them into all these areas of
achievement: the Chinese lessons or the Kumon maths – the whole
Baby Einstein thing.” She would never dream of hot-housing her
own young daughters (by the millionaire entrepreneur Nick Jones).
“I remember going to look at a nursery for my daughter and seeing
all these three-year-olds sitting working away at their improving
exercises. My mum came with me, and afterwards she asked me:
What do you think of that? And I said, ‘If my child’s not coming
home covered in snot and poster paint, it’s been a bad day at nursery.’
T_h e idea that they’re going to come home and show me their jotters
C
B just makes me want to puke.”
:
B
T
O
O
H
P
Primaries
fall short
Statistics
Some 38 per cent of 11-year-
of 2009
olds in England do not master
the basics of English and
189 children
from all
Maths by the time they leave
families poor
primary school, according to
enough to
Government performance
qualify for
tables. The results, based
free school on National Curriculum Sats
meals exams taken in May, also show
achieved
that in 855 of England’s 15,000
three ‘A’
state primaries, fewer than 50
grades at A
K
C
per cent of pupils achieved the T
O
level last year;
S
R
required basic standard both
E
175 pupils at
T
T
in English and Maths – this was
U
Eton got three
H
:
S
‘A’s. (Daily
a record high, up from 798 T
O
O
schools last year.
H
Mail)
P
✒
WWW.FIRSTELEVENMAGAZINE.CO.UK SPRING 2010 FIRST ELEVEN 13
pp13-15FESpr10 News FINAL.indd 13 28/1/10 17:23:31
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