Post by minge tightly on Feb 4, 2009 12:43:50 GMT
Instead of protecting us, a rule-bound, risk-averse, box-ticking culture is making us passive and increasingly inhibited
Regulation is fashionable. Applied to bankers and markets, we are freshly aware of its virtues. Yet while we have been under-regulating financiers, we have been over-regulating the social sphere. It is having an insidious, destructive effect on the way we engage with one another. In schools, public services and in our dealings with strangers, our rule-bound, box-ticking, risk-averse culture is designed to protect us from one another. Instead it is making us steadily more fearful and passive. Rather than building a safer or more cohesive society, this tide of regulation is steadily snapping social bonds.
This week I was talking to a teacher - let's call him Simon - about the barriers he is instructed to put up between himself and his teenage pupils. He and his colleagues are warned by the school never to engage with pupils emotionally, ask a lone child to stay behind for a talk after class, or respond to any confidences about their lives. A fear of paedophilia has morphed into a general panic about adult-child relations. The priority isn't pupils' wellbeing but to protect teachers from any accusations - either of sexual misconduct or of responsibility for pupils' subsequent behaviour.
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/04/society-regulation
Spot on, this Precautionary Principle is running rampant through the public and third sector, and it's making work far harder to complete than it should be.
Regulation is fashionable. Applied to bankers and markets, we are freshly aware of its virtues. Yet while we have been under-regulating financiers, we have been over-regulating the social sphere. It is having an insidious, destructive effect on the way we engage with one another. In schools, public services and in our dealings with strangers, our rule-bound, box-ticking, risk-averse culture is designed to protect us from one another. Instead it is making us steadily more fearful and passive. Rather than building a safer or more cohesive society, this tide of regulation is steadily snapping social bonds.
This week I was talking to a teacher - let's call him Simon - about the barriers he is instructed to put up between himself and his teenage pupils. He and his colleagues are warned by the school never to engage with pupils emotionally, ask a lone child to stay behind for a talk after class, or respond to any confidences about their lives. A fear of paedophilia has morphed into a general panic about adult-child relations. The priority isn't pupils' wellbeing but to protect teachers from any accusations - either of sexual misconduct or of responsibility for pupils' subsequent behaviour.
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/04/society-regulation
Spot on, this Precautionary Principle is running rampant through the public and third sector, and it's making work far harder to complete than it should be.
