Disrespecting Childhood

            The authors of “Disrespecting Childhood” are covering a lot of the hard-hitting topics of how we treat children. Lots could be said about whether or not childhood is mishandled nowadays, but I have to say that I agree with Dudley-Marling, Jackson, and Stevens. I have seen it first-hand. The school that I grew up in recently took away the second recess session for the fourth through sixth graders so that we didn’t have to have more days of school than were absolutely necessary. The idea that administration would reduce an already limited amount of free time that those kids had so that everyone could get out of school a few days earlier deeply upsets me.

            People like to say that kids will be kids yet, they expect them to act like adults. How do people expect kids who can barely understand basic table manners to attend a professional setting and act perfect for hours? Something even more outrageous is the idea that kids who haven’t even graduated high school yet have to choose a career path that will supposedly last the rest of their lives, costing thousands of dollars. The more years that pass, the less I believe that childhood and what it means to be a child/adolescent is taken seriously. Kids seem to be either a deduction on taxes, a way for adults to prove that they aren’t useless to society (not good at their job, not members of society, might as well have a child), or a way to carry on the family name and everything associated with it. Kids aren’t allowed to simply exist, learn by trial and error, and grow anymore.