Perhaps this is the problem, not the solution?
And in other ways, our
children are better off than we were. In general, our generation is more
emotionally aware than our parents’ was. We and their teachers think harder
about the effect of our words on them: for instance, we know that, “What you
did was naughty” is less damaging than, “You are a naughty girl”. And
fathers of my age are much more involved and affectionate than their fathers
were.
Re: “What you did was naughty” is less damaging than, “You are a naughty girl”
Both phases are damaging. At a friend’s nursery the word “naughty” is banned and has been replaced with the word “silly”. Mary Ann Sieghart needs to update her pc manual before she damages anymore children.
It has been known for years by those who care to check such things that, compared with other European countries, Britain has a high rate of teen pregnancies and a high drop-out rate from education and training at the age of 16.
I posted here just a few days back these amongst other recent press cuttings:
“Only half of those on apprenticeships in England finish them, the chief inspector of adult education has found. Although standards of training had improved dramatically overall, David Sherlock said low apprenticeship completion rates were ‘unacceptable’.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6169843.stm
“According to the Office for National Statistics, unemployment among 16 and 17-year- olds has risen from 19.9 per cent when Labour came to power in 1997 to 25.3 per cent now. The number of unskilled jobs has dropped from 8 million in the 1960s to 3.5 million now.
“A recent Treasury report predicted that the number of unskilled jobs would drop to only 600,000 by 2020, making it almost impossible for unskilled teenagers to find work.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article1292132.ece
According to this bar chart in The Economist for 24 August 2006, Britain is especially well-endowed with low-skilled young people compared with most other major European economies:
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7843638
I have serious difficulty in believing that the findings of the UNICEF report came as a complete surprise to the government. If it did, I can only conclude that they are even more incompetent than I had supposed.
You must not say “naughty”. The phrase is “not appropriate”.
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