The growing interference of the state in the bringing up of children in the United Kingdom - and possibly elsewhere - is a worrying and controversial trend, but it has yet to become a major issue. It could become one, however, if a few more articles could be devoted to it in the daily papers, articles such as the one that appeared in the Weekend Telegraph for Saturday, 27 January, 2007. Under the title “Big Nanny rules”, Ross Clark examined the issue at length. The pursuit of total child safety, said this father of two children, becomes counter productive. Restricted to boring playgrounds and denied opportunities to take risks or satisfy an appetite for adventure, children are likely to gravitate to far more dangerous places, such as railway lines. It seems that excessive monitoring of simple pleasures, such as walking and swimming, has also led to a severe shortage of adults prepared to work with children. Small wonder, he said, that children spend so much time in front of the television set.
Of the few specific instances of bureaucratic interference highlighted by Ross Clark, one, in particular, caught my attention. He had come across a case where a teacher was told that, before allowing children to collect seashells on the beach, he must have a life-saving certificate! Apart from revelling in the absurdity of this notion, I wondered if that teacher rushed away to obtain his certificate or simply refused to let his charges pick up seashells. He may have been bold enough to ignore the injunction, but as his job could have been on the line he may have complied. Then I began to consider the injunction in the light of my own job: writer of books about seashells for would-be collectors of same, including children.
If I am told that, in future, my books must carry a warning that a child may come to grief while picking up seashells, rather like the warnings on cigarette packets, I doubt that I shall want to write any more of them. On the other hand, if I am allowed to continue advocating the educational, social, and therapeutic benefits of collecting these treasures of the sea, as I have always done, I may write one or two more. In any event, I have no doubt that children will still collect seashells on the beach, whether or not their parents or their teachers have first collected their life-saving certificates.