Timesonline | Times2| Let's not push our children to the max

Opinion - Mary Ann Sieghart

The Times
October 12, 2006
Times 2

'Are you signing up your toddlers for Suzuki violin lessons? Supplementing the maths teaching at school with Kumon maths at home? Do you somehow fit the ballet, drama, judo and karate around football and chess club? The great news is: the latest research says this will all make your children do better in school! Well, it might or it might not. It will certainly turn them into exhausted, regimented automatons, so used to taking instruction that they would walk blindly off a cliff if their ballet teacher told them to. It will stunt their imaginations, leave them no time to themselves and teach them nothing about how to cope with boredom. [...]'