THE INNOCENCE OF CHILDHOOD ?

My own childhood was `interesting.`Having been born just before the outbreak of WW2 I spent the first five years living in that part of Hampshire which forms the approaches to Southampton.  Most nights I slept under the stairs and heard the bombing of Southampton Docks and other important strategic targets in the area.   I guess I thought that was how life was - I knew nothing different.

But when peace arrived and the bombing stopped and I slept in a bed and when my father came back from his five years of incarceration in a PoW camp we moved to the village of Hythe on the western shore of Southampton Water.   And it was there that I discovered just how interesting, exciting and free being a child could be - our back garden backed on to the shore, the New Forest was just up the road and me and my school chums were given the freedom to explore - we were never indoors it seemed - there was so much to see and do and it was all done with a carefree innocence, devoid of health and safety issues and any thoughts of what adult life might bring.

And I now see reports that children in schools these days are to be given lessons in how to form relationships, how to become aware of and respect diversity, how to recognise and deal with mental health issues, to be taught about the abomination that is FGM  and, yes, to recognise health and safety issues and no doubt to be told about climate change and the perils of plastic.

I`m sure all this may be worthy endeavours but I do wonder whether much of this is designed to make the teaching profession feel better in this age of over protective political correctness.  But most of all I wonder whatever happened to the innocence of childhood when those like me were allowed to be children.