Our young were robbed of social interaction at crucial points in their development, causing irreversible harms
This week it was revealed that children’s eyesight is now much worse than before lockdown. Children are now three times more likely to suffer from myopia (short- or near-sightedness) as they were in the 1990s.
This is shocking but not surprising – in order to remain healthy, the lens of a child’s developing eye must frequently alternate its focus between objects that are both near and far. If extended periods of time are spent indoors or worse, staring at a tiny screen, the risks of myopia increase substantially.
Yet this is exactly what we forced our children to do when schools were closed for months on end. Myopia is not something that will “resolve in time”. Affected children will require expensive optical care for life, and a few will face serious complications.
But sadly, this is just one small part of a tragic lockdown legacy. Post-pandemic, we have seen rises in special educational needs and a deterioration in child mental health. One of the most scandalous “covid hangovers” is the 160 per cent increase in severe school absence.
Many generations have faced worse tragedies than lockdown. I would prefer my children to have to wear glasses than to lose their lives in war. Nevertheless, we must seek to learn the lessons of our recent past if we want to prevent similar mistakes in the future.
So why did Britain shut its schools for longer than any other country in Europe, bar Italy? Why did ministers – mostly against their better instincts – capitulate to teachers’ unions and the media, rather than acting in the best interests of children?
It seems we have lost our traditional understanding of the nature of childhood, now viewing children as mini adults rather than as distinct and uniquely vulnerable. As such we failed to understand that lockdowns would have had a far more serious effect on children than on adults. Most adults bounced back quickly from enforced isolation, yet children who were robbed of social interaction at crucial points in their development may never recover.
We see childhood is also misunderstood in other areas: the drive to teach gender theory to primary school pupils who can barely write their name; the nonchalance with which children are given access to the online Wild West; and the trend for exposing children to “climate catastrophism” without a care for the anxiety induced. The traditional view that children must be shielded from adult concerns is gradually being eroded.
Some believe that what we need is a push for more “children’s rights”, but this is mistaken. Adding more baubles to the Christmas tree of statutory individual rights will not protect children; rather it will just force them to compete with every other interest group.
There is an alternative philosophical approach to childhood which, unlike the framework of competing individual rights, has stood the test of time. This is the belief that children have an innate or sacred worth and that they require fierce societal protection that demands adults sacrifice for children rather than the other way around. These principles were truly counter-cultural at the dawn of Western civilisation, but we must return to them again if we want our children to thrive. Our collective myopia is not a biological one but an inability to see the importance and uniqueness of childhood.
First published in The Telegraph | September 27 2024
