Lorelei Armstrong writes to the New Scientist complaining  (tongue in cheek) that “atheism does not seem to lead to moral depravity, despite measured prejudices”. (New Scientist, 19 August, p 22)

“I was promised moral depravity. Which way to moral depravity?”.

Quite. Actually, non- believers are often those who help the old and the poor and who are less likely to end up in jail for dishonest acts.  To suggest that because you are not a declared Christian you must be morally depraved is outrageous.

There is a very famous born-again, in-your-face, tele-evangelist  in Texas called Joel Osteen who has a huge house, earns an annual fortune from his followers and has a private jet, among other goodies.  He was recently in the news  for doing absolutely nothing for the people, his own congregation included, made destitute and homeless by  hurricane Harvey, compounding his un-christian behaviour by publically claiming that he is busy helping the sufferers.  If all that is being said about him is true, then who is morally depraved?

“Queueing has become a symbol of Britain’s civilised, fair, quiet way of doing things. But is it all it is cracked up to be? The person at the front of the soup kitchen line gets fed first even if the one at the end is hungriest. The youth at boarding gate five gets to sit down before the pensioner with an arthritic hip. There is more genuine fairness in Mediterranean countries where people do not have the decency to queue but do have the decency to not queue well. When buses arrive, for example, you don’t see groups of young men muscling their way to get on first. People generally give way to the weakest and frailest. To think queuing is morally superior is to confuse fairness with orderliness, a particularly British mistake.”  (Julian Baggini in The Guardian)

This is total nonsense.  Nowadays in London nobody queues.  This is because so few bus passengers are  British.  The bus arrives and everyone moves towards the entrance in a phalanx.  No, there is seldom any pushing and shoving, but nor does anyone “give way to the weakest and frailest”.  You could have been there at the bus stop for a quarter of an hour, but it doesn’t stop people from Mediterranean countries and elsewhere edging on board first and taking the vacant seats.  Why?  Because there are no longer any unspoken courtesies or accepted ways of doing things.

I live (in London) on the same street that my grandmother lived.  There  used to be an orderliness about life there.   A real queue formed for a bus,  and, yes, old, frail ladies were nonetheless allowed on first because manners and consideration were important.  People (generally) walked on the left hand side of the pavement because this is the side you drove on; now there is no accepted side, just dodgems.  My point may seem petty but these little things made the boring but necessary things in life easy and predictable.  There is nothing wrong with “orderly”.   Mr Baggini of the Guardian is too young to remember little politenesses and courtesies – or, apparently,  orderliness as well.

(My wife thinks I’m getting crotchety and grumbly.  Well, I guess “yes”, maybe I am!).

Part of an interview conducted  by Sarah Lyall with David Cornwell ( John Le Carre) and Ben Macintyre, writers on the theme of spying:

Sarah Lyall:   Is there something about the British psyche that makes spying, or at least duplicity, an enticing prospect?

Ben Macintyre: We Brits are particularly susceptible to the double life, aren’t we? Is it because we are a sort of theatrical, and sort of unfaithful, culture?

John le Carre: I think it’s because hypocrisy is the national sport. For our class in my era, public school was a deliberately brutalizing process that separated you from your parents, and your parents were parties to that. They integrated you with imperial ambitions and then let you loose into the world with a sense of elitism — but with your heart frozen.

B.M. There is no deceiver more effective than a public-school-educated Brit. He could be standing next to you in the bus queue, having a Force 12 nervous breakdown, and you’d never be any the wiser.

J.L.C. When you’ve become that frozen child, but you’re an outwardly functioning, charming chap, there is a lot of wasteland inside you that is waiting to be cultivated.

S.L. David, you’ve spoken about your childhood, your outrageously criminal father, how you were sent to boarding school when you were 5, the lies that permeated everything. How did all this come to play when you were recruited by MI5?

J.L.C. The truth, in my childhood, didn’t really exist. That is to say, we shared the lies. To run the household with no money required a lot of serious lying to the local garage man, the local butcher, the local everybody. And then there was the extra element of class. All my grandparents and all my aunts and uncles were entirely working class — laborers, builders, that sort of thing. One of them worked up telegraph poles. And so out of that to invent, as my father did, this socially adept, well-spoken, charming chap — that was an operation of great complicity. And I had to lie about my parental situation while I was at boarding school. I only mention these things because they’re the extremes of what can warp an Englishman.

B.M. What you’ve just described — is it the root of your fiction? Your ability to think yourself into someone else?

J.L.C. Absolutely. I mean childhood, at my age, is no excuse for anything. But it is a fact that my childhood was aberrant and peculiar and nomadic and absolutely unpredictable.

A personal comment: As it happens, John Le Carre preceded me by seven years at the same boarding school.  I totally agree with his comments about it.  The difference between him and myself is that I am the only person I know who was never interviewed by the, er, government – I would have made a disastrous spy.  The experience did, however, incline me to the civilised and humane teachings of Epicurus.  The “wasteland inside me” simply had to wait 50 years to be cultivated.

Last Saturday I discussed the the unhappiness of teenagers.  I would now like to pursue the subject Why has their unhappiness reached such huge proportions? Many reasons have been put forward: a rise in the divorce rate,  a shift away from intrinsic to extrinsic goals, which can lead to a sense of not being able to control things, and higher expectations from parents who expect their kids to get to university. ; and technology, which is addictive, and which  is also accused of addling the brain.

But another interesting reason has been put forward. Children aren’t learning critical life-coping skills because they never get to play anymore. One researcher says that anxiety and depression is caused by the decline in opportunities for free play and the increased time and weight given to skills like reading.
If play seems trivial, it’s not. Play is brain-building for babies and young children. There is a sequence of how children develop, from the moral and emotional to the social and intellectual, says Dr. Ellen Littman, a clinical psychologist. Each phase requires building certain muscles, whether to do maths or make a friend.

“There is a developmental sequence and you can’t violate it all that much,” Littman days. For example, circle time in preschool is not about learning the alphabet or mastering Old MacDonald as much as it is learning to be part of a group, mastering the art of taking turns, and starting to listen.But preschool is increasingly about preparing kids for kindergarten, which used to be about play, but now operates more like first grade. Kids are expected to sit for longer and focus on more academic tasks, relegating play to recess. In 1998, 30% of teachers believed that children should learn to read while in kindergarten. In 2010, that figure was at 80%.

Children can do mathematics in first grade, but they are not developing the normal skills that come from interacting with play, including how to manage their emotions. Playing—unstructured time, with rules set by the kids (no adults acting as referee)—is how kids learn independence, problem-solving, social cues, and bravery. Adults fail to let kids have any independence for fear they will be abducted or hit by a car. Children learn to control their own lives when adults aren’t around to do it for them.

Too many parents micro-manage their kids’ every mini-success (while extolling the virtues of failure ) , helping them with homework, science projects, setting rules, then wondering why they can’t set their own.  They expect their children to try their hardest—at everything: school, music, soccer, piano, judo, street dance. They say it’s not all about winning, but celebrate winning in spades. They encourage kids to find a passion and make sure they are not sitting at home on their phones, or—god forbid, feeling bored.

Some answers

– Free play is not optional. It’s essential to healthy development.- Pull back on organized, adult-led activities, and allow kids to organise their own play, where they set the rules and parents play a less dominant role. But actually plan the free time to make sure it happens
– Try to get schools to open in the afternoons with monitors, but no organized activities.
– Advocate for a shorter school year and lots of downtime for dreaming.
– ban homework for young kids. Homework does more harm than good. Encourage kids to read actual books, and ban on computers during certain hours.
– children can’t be good at every subject. Let them fail a bit.