A Long Hard Road for Children

The headlines today scream that children are now too much trouble. Doesn't anyway stop to think what it must be like to be a child? We have created a world where the poor kids are always competing, must always be better, faster, quicker, cleverer than their peers.
Our education system cannot teach our children basic literacy and numeracy skills so we are destroying any hope for the future. Too many children feel disenfranchised, and they are right to feel that way. We offer them next to nothing.
If they fail, they face the scrapheap, unless they choose to become drug dealers. If they pass every exam they take too many will also fail: ending up in poorly-paid jobs where nobody respects them as people, but merely as money-making cogs in the machinery of business.
Young women too often find an alternative – pregnancy. The father of the child easily abrogates responsibility, leaving the hapless young mother and the state to bring up the next generation of failures.
This may sound pessimistic, and its meant to be. There are many success stories, people who struggle against insurmountable odds to achieve their goals. That's not the argument, indeed that fact can be turned round into the face of educationalists because our entrepreneurs have often failed at school.
In this town of Felixstowe teenagers are given little encouragement. Their wishes are not really considered, and few facilities are provided. They were promised a skateboard park ten years ago, their children are now waiting for that to happen.
These bright sparkles in our midst are the future. We must give them more time to develop, not treat them as consumers to be sold even more plastic junk. The toy industry should be swept away - it sells rubbish.