The Story of Childhood by Libby Brooks Page B

secret discoveries about the natural world. While they were considered to be safe, the unofficial nature of these spaces allowed children to imbue them with their own distinct meaning.
    In his book
Solitude
, Anthony Storr makes a compelling case for intimate personal relationships being but one source of health and happiness, arguing that the capacity to be alone is fundamental to creative development. Storr noted that while there has been a great deal of research into children’s relationships with their parents and with other children, there is virtually no discussion of whether it is valuable for them to be alone. ‘Yet if it is considered desirable to foster the growth of the child’s imaginative capacity,’ he wrote, ‘we should ensure that our children, when they are old enough to enjoy it, are given time and opportunity for solitude. Many creative adults have left accounts of childhood feelings of mystical union with Nature; peculiar states of awareness, or “Intimations of Immortality”, as Wordsworth called them … We may be sure that such moments do not occur when playing football, but chiefly when the child is on its own.’
    Solitude not only fosters creativity, argued Storr, but relates to an individual’s capacity to connect with, and make manifest, their own true inner feelings. When the contemporary childhood experience is one of containment and surveillance, what becomes of self-discovery and self-realisation? Without privacy, both physical and psychological, how do children become aware of their deepest needs and impulses?
    It may seem odd to talk of surveillance after discussing thelack of collective oversight of children’s outdoor pursuits and how that feeds a suspicion of adult strangers. Now friendly adult eyes have been replaced by webcams in nurseries and tracking devices for teenagers, while community surveillance has been superceded by centralised databases.
    This intrusion is not at the behest of individual adults. Many parents would be horrified if they were aware of the extent of detailed information recorded in computer databases without any respect for the privacy of the children it relates to. The universal children’s database, planned under the Children Act 2004, which was to hold basic details of all under-eighteens, now appears to have been shelved in favour of the National Pupil Database, which is to be updated by a termly school census. It also seems that a number of other databases, held by agencies like Connexions and Sure Start, will be allowed to feed into this national archive. And in January 2006, the government was forced to defend the storage of around 24,000 DNA profiles of children and young people, despite the fact that none had been cautioned, charged or convicted of an offence.
    Privacy campaigners are particularly concerned that these databases will include subjective opinions about the behaviour, well-being, and potential criminality of children, as well as basic factual information. At the time of writing, there is no facility allowing pupils or parents an independent adjudication to correct this. The consequences are far-reaching. A toddler who has been identified as aggressive or bullying will carry that prognosis into adulthood. The impact of such intrusion on children’s sense of privacy has yet to be investigated.
    Rosie swings her legs from a branch of her special tree, rigorously inspecting a wedding party that has spilled from Rushden Hall, a grand old building set in the bosom of thepark. She started climbing this tree last year: ‘I came to the park with my grandma and I thought it was a good tree and I thought I could build a little fence around it and put a sign round it saying “Rosie’s tree”. I am going to have a gate in my fence and other people would have to have a special key.’
    She spots the bride. She is wearing a russet gown. ‘She looks lovely!’ says Rosie approvingly.