I Am Not Hamlet

I'm finding out how different a world it is for my children versus my childhood in the summer.  Now I've got the summers off because I teach (or try to anyway) and am able to spend quite a bit of time with my children, yet I want them to realize that I'm not going to incessantly entertain them.  They need to find things to do on their own.  The sizable difference, between myself and them, is that many of their friends don't have the summer "off."  These children are in daycare, at a grandparents, somewhere other than home.  There aren't many children around for mine to play with. Growing up in the '70s, I seem to remember most of my classmates available for playing nearly all the time.  Now, so many families have to send both parents to work that the children aren't home to play in the summer.  That's what I'd call a "cruel, cruel summer."

Some in our society bemoan the low literacy rates--heck, the apparent lower interest in the the enterprise of reading itself. We've got rising obesity and diabetes among the young, along with who knows what other "conditions" psychiatrists and psychologists have yet to "diagnose." Children don't play outside as much (this is a battle in my own house), many appear to be regularly incurious about the world. What to be done? What to be done, frets the English teacher. Why not, starting with the president all the way down to mayors, tell parents and children not to buy video game systems, hold off for a while on buying that movie or TV show on DVD, let the cable bill lapse for a month or two; don't add another song to the ipod for a month. Instead, buy a new board game, plan several trips to a park, go to the library and borrow some books to read aloud. Notice I did not say that the government should ban video games, DVDs, cable TV and such. That wou...