Source: Timesonline >> Read Full Article and Comment
Children are being forced to grow up too quickly in a culture that refuses to recognise that human beings are naturally dependent on one another, the Archbishop of Canterbury warned yesterday.
(Gareth Fuller/PA)
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, delivers his Christmas Day sermon at Canterbury Cathedral in Kent
Dr Rowan Williams condemned the pressure on children to become “active little consumers and performers” at the earliest opportunity.
Preaching at Canterbury Cathedral, Dr Williams said contemporary life had become characterised by a basic impatience about learning. He said that too many people, including the elderly and children, were expected to stand on their own feet without support from outside.
“We send out the message that if you’re not standing on your own two feet and if you need regular support, you’re an anomaly. We’ll look after you (with a bit of a sigh), but frankly it’s not ideal,” he said.
The message being sent out to children today was: “We shall test you relentlessly in schools, we shall bombard you with advertising, often highly sexualised advertising, we shall worry you about your prospects and skills from the word go. We shall do all we can to make childhood a brief and rather regrettable stage on the way to the real thing, which is ‘independence’, turning you into a useful cog in the social machine that won’t need too much maintenance.” Parents should learn to enjoy their children’s dependence on them, instead of forcing them prematurely into independence. …Continue Reading
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