Madness

Nanny is worried about our mental health, maybe it's the stress of living in an all seeing all pervasive and interfering Nanny state that is having a negative effect on our mental well being?

Anyhoo, Nanny is so worried that she has decided to start checking up on our mental well being.

Nanny intends to start at the very beginning, and intends to target children.

Children as young as four will be expected to get in touch with their feelings, by filling in questionnaires; which ask if they are "optimistic about the future" and "dealing with problems well".

Nanny's old chums in the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), who I have featured a few times on this site (see tag at the end of this article), have drawn up the guidelines for this load of tosh.

Primary schools in England will have a duty to improve children's emotional and psychological well-being.

Schools will be expected to combat factors that are "likely to lead to poor mental health or mental disorders"; by introducing programmes to help children make the transition to secondary school, teaching "emotional literacy" and providing specialist counselling services and family therapy.

NICE says that a school's success in making its pupils happy will be measured by indicators, developed by Warwick and Edinburgh universities. These "indicators" monitor positive attributes, such as confidence, resilience, attentiveness and the ability to form good relationships.

Nanny's "well-being scale" involves putting 14 statements to individuals about their thoughts and feelings and asking them whether they feel like that often, rarely, some of the time, all the time, or never.

They are based, so it would seem, on those most "excellent and scientific" self-help quizzes in women's magazines.

So that's alright then!

Wouldn't it have been cheaper just to give the kids an edition of Cosmo or something?

Now, aside form this being a colossal waste of time and energy (in terms of actually doing the children any good), there is in fact another hidden motive for Nanny's attempt to "help" with children's' mental health.

Can you guess what that is?

Yes, that's right...

Nanny intends to collect the data from thousands of pupils, from the age of four to 11.

She doesn't say what she intends to do with that data though.

A cynic might argue that Nanny will use the raw data to build a series of government communication "initiatives" targeted at the young, that ensure they tune in exactly with the mind set of those under 11. The result being a nation brainwashed for subservience to Nanny.

Needless to say, those with some knowledge of education etc think that this "initiative" is a load of old bollocks.

Kathryn Ecclestone, a professor of education at Oxford Brookes University, said:

"There is no robust, independent evidence

that making children and young people talk

about their feelings in formal rituals at

schools will develop lifelong emotional literacy and well-being.

Inserting a vocabulary of emotional vulnerability,

where children are encouraged to feel different

or told they have low self-esteem,

is likely to encourage the very feelings of

depression and hopelessness it is supposed

to eradicate. Although ideas about well-being

seem benign, they are based on judgemental

assumptions about 'appropriate'

feelings and how to deal with them.

But if you try to challenge this educational

bandwagon, you are accused of

being in 'emotional denial'."

Nanny wants the children to feel vulnerable and depressed, so that she can "rescue" them and be seen to be their saviour. Happy well adjusted children would reject Nanny and her ideas, and are therefore a threat to Nanny.

As ever we see another great "initiative" from Nanny based on no scientific evidence whatsoever.

We pay these morons in NICE to come up with this load of old tosh, are we in fact mad?

The end result will be a nation of self centred, spoilt emotional cripples; a nation of skint Paris Hiltons.

Makes you want to scream, doesn't it?