The press has been drowned in a tide of stories about our education system. There is the issue of taking your children out of school on holiday, the SAT’s test debacle and the general unhappiness of teachers due to new government expectations. We know teachers work very hard, I don’t think we would ever dispute this, however, I feel we need to realise how hard the children work too. My children have all been very lucky to live near some very good schools. My youngest is now at junior school, she has had three lovely years at infant’s school, only to be thrown into junior’s. I say “thrown” because it has been a major shock to her system. At infants, she may have had some books to bring home and read, or the odd project to work on, now things seem to have become more serious. We have “spellings,” a weekly homework and reading to do. I’m a big believer in education, and I especially think all children should learn to read for enjoyment (something I do all the time), but I also believe they should have down time, that everyone in fact should have downtime. Life is so fast paced and competitive I feel we have very little time to sit and reflect on things. And frankly, now I’m on child number four, I’m fed up with arguing about homework. If you work it out our children are in fact at school and under the care of their teachers longer than they are with us. By the time they come home from school, completed said spellings, reading and the weekly homework, eaten their dinner, watched some television, had a bath and gone to bed, we have probably interacted with them for only minutes. Why spend the little time you have with them, arguing? I could be seen to be a bad parent in the fact that I don’t make my daughter religiously do her spellings and homework, I rely on her to express a want to do this. What brought the issue home to me was recently when my daughter was worried about what job she was going to do when she’s grown up. I think kids should still be kids, and in fact that us adults should “chill out” a bit. There is plenty of time for the “seriousness” of life to catch up on us all. Live in the moment I say, I think there’s a famous latin saying that reflects this sentiment but I can’t be bothered to “google” it right now.