Archbishop of Canterbury says children better off not being born
19 Sep 2006 by Jon Barlow
The results of a questionnaire published yesterday have revealed that 9 out of 10 children would be happier if they had never existed at all. The other 1 in 10 were said to have suffered some sort of mental health problem. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Atkinson, has suggested that too much pressure is being put on children during childhood and is resulting in many of them being distressed.He blames increasing standards of living and material possession for this unhappiness. The former Mr Bean star stated that there "...should be a greater emphasis on imaginative play and spirituality." He has suggested that clergy should expose themselves to children earlier in order to foster this change in attitude. The Archbishop went further and suggested that parenting classes should be offered to struggling families. This has been rejected by family planning consultants who state that the British public do not have any difficulty becoming parents.
Standardised testing is also blamed for stress in childhood. The examinations have often been described as difficult and are unfair to less able students who may not do as well as their brighter counterparts.
TV presenter and clever person Lord Robert Winston has however hit back at suggestions that children should be tested less often, saying that there is insufficient evidence to assume that children become stressed as a result of examinations. Lord Winston encouraged the government to intern all children under the age of 15 into a Huntingdon Life Sciences laboratory for further testing. He seeks to prove that subjecting study participants to needless, tedious experiments may cause them some stress. This is also thought to be the basis of "Test the Nation" programmes on BBC One.
