Sunday, January 16, 2011

Are Suva kids becoming couch potatoes?


from w.
This morning I read an article in an Oz newspaper with a by-line but I later discovered the writer had pinched it from an American website at least six years ago. It was about the difference between the lives of children from the 50s compared with today. Retro dreaming of course as some of those activities were in fact dangerous. So here are pictures showing the activities of kids. Of course location counts and opportunities and fashions and certainly our grandchildren know more about computers, play stations, mobile phones, texting, than we ever can know. My childhood was piano, reading, drawing, climbing trees and chasing sheep or playing in a shearing shed. Being rural Australia. Peceli's childhood was in Naseakula village, finding crabs and fishing and riding a bike around the village. The next generation did things differently but there was still curiosity, learning, exploring, engaging with adventurous experiences, climbing mountains, and so on. Today's children seem sedentary (TV, computers, electronic games) but they also can play basketball, skate, swim, and play various kinds of football as well as being very helpful around the garden and barbecue. One thing though is that parents and grandparents sometimes fear the dangers of modern life and instead of the children walking to school, some children go by taxi in Suva! Well, it's the same price for six people as the bus ticketing!

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