Scotland

Sunday Herald - Glasgow, Scotland,UK

TV children ‘losing core language skills’

By Jenifer Johnston

Children of poor parents at greatest risk of stunted communication skills

A LEADING childhood expert has warned that children are increasingly losing their core language skills because their parents don't communicate with them enough, risking their entire education.

Sue Palmer, author of the book Toxic Childhood, will tell a high-profile conference later this month that she believes more and more children are starting school without basic communication skills, then struggling to move on to formal learning such as reading and writing.

Palmer is expected to tell the The Kids Are Alright? conference in Glasgow that the Curriculum for Excellence, the new curriculum for Scottish pupils, risks being undermined because parents are not talking and listening to their young children and are bringing them up on television and video games.

continued.She told the Sunday Herald: "Children are losing communication skills year on year.

"The Scottish Executive have established a set of brilliant aims for children - successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens, effective contributors. But every single one of them is underpinned by good language skills.

"Our big problem is that our children's language ability is going down by the week. They are immersed in a screen-based, sedentary lifestyle of TV, video games and indoor play.

"One primary school headteacher from Wishaw told me that when children are arriving in his school they have only very simple words and a jumble of visual images', which hits the nail on the head."

She said the problem lay more with parents than with teachers, and expressed the fear that children from deprived backgrounds were being hit hardest.

"Parents aren't talking to their children as much as in previous generations," she said. "To give one example, some nursing mothers watch TV while they are breastfeeding instead of singing or talking to their baby. It really starts as early as that.

"For a long time it was not politically correct to point these things out as the feeling was, and is, that this is a problem more concentrated in deprived areas. But the message is starting to come through. It is a major nettle to grasp."

There has been little academic research into whether children's basic vocabulary is decreasing. However, Palmer urged education bosses to "forget what happened in their own childhood" and concentrate on current problems.

"One thing education chiefs aren't aware of is that a lot of ancient wisdom has been lost they are basing their ideas on what happened to them as a kid," she said. "They are thinking back to their own time as children, when nursery rhymes and singalong songs were universally given to children. That isn't realistic any more."

Scotland's commissioner for children and young people, Professor Kathleen Marshall, who will also be speaking at The Kids Are Alright? conference, said the issue was pressing and urged more support for parents.

"Sue's comments are relevant to the recurring debate about parent education. Whenever the issue arises, you find some who scoff at it and query why this generation needs education on a supposed natural' skill," she said.

"However, the world is changing fast. Parents need help to meet new and unknown challenges in areas such as communications technology, foodstuffs (often unhealthy), available drugs, and expectations of their own role in the family and in the wider world."

Liz Cullen, an expert in early education at Glasgow University, said it was important that thorough research be carried out into children's communication skills before generalizations about parents are made.

"I wouldn't like to suggest for a minute that all children from all parents in a deprived socioeconomic setting are not getting good communication skills," Cullen said.

"However, on the whole we see a trend towards more directional and instructional communication from some parents in that group rather than expressive or imaginative communication," she added.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Executive said they were "not aware of any evidence to suggest that children are starting school with poor communication skills", adding that young pupils were "performing particularly strongly at reading".

Comment: So every time you tell a child to "Go watch TV," are we going to feel guilt? Probably not. What we find at school is that 2 of 30 children know what a nursery rhyme is and can actually recite one. What we can promise is that we will bring up the rear with poetry, nursery rhymes and children's songs.