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... enjoyment, fun and creative learning in childood. Every child's birthright.
Latest Reviews:
M The Agricultural History Review, Volume 56, Part II, 2008
Carrier’s Cart to Oxford
This is a book about a world which has all but disappeared. A former teacher and academic, Mrs Masheder is now in her nineties and here presents us with an account of her childhood in rural Oxfordshire. Elegantly and persuasively written, the book reveals a memory as clear as the morning dew. Men and animals long dead, kindly and eccentric vicars, tramps slumbering in haystacks, gaily-coloured gypsy caravans, and a world dominated by order and regularity and the endless cycle of the seasons; all are recalled with astonishing clarity.
What Elsfield lacked in physical sophistication (dark, dank, if picturesque houses, no electricity, stand-pipes and long-drop privies) was amply compensated by the vibrancy of the community and the sense of belonging and communal harmony which prevailed. There may have been few alternatives to farm labour or domestic servitude for the sons and daughters of poorer families, but this situation was generally accepted until the 1930s when economic opportunities broadened and the deference born of dependence began to evaporate. Before this, though, parish church and village school propagated the idea of a rigid social hierarchy which tended to be paralleled in the alarming pecking order of the school playground. If many children from labouring families were educated in the village school rather against their will, they would have taken some solace from the knowledge that, however poor they might be, they were eminently superior to those lesser breeds in the Empire who daily counted their blessings as subjects of that most benevolent of Emperors, our dear King George V. The celebration of Empire Day was always great fun for young people, as were the village outings, fairs and fetes, and the shenanigans associated with seasonal festivals. To the unfortunate child growing up in today’s febrile emotional climate and subject to the unwholesome dictates of political correctness and risk averse ‘healthunsafety;’ fascism, life in 1920s Elsfield would seem paradisical. There was tea to be taken in hay and harvest field, trees to be climbed and ponds and streams to be fished, birds’ nests to be sought, rabbits to be snared, gardens and allotments to be played in and kisses to be stolen in wood and meadow. And there were darker things to be learned. Closeness to animals may have engendered a respect for certain values, yet when kittens were drowned and pigs slaughtered, a child soon awoke to the nature of mortality and the transcience of earthly things. The same child would learn something of the hypocrisy of a society which so passionately and cruelly condemned illegitimacy and even something of the nature of sexual deviancy through unwonted contact with the occasional exposers and molesters who lurked in all communities.
One of the great virtues of this book is its freedom from nostalgia. If, like me, the author deprecates the inevitable abandonment of the English village by its indigenes and the almost total severance of the village’s link with the surrounding farm land, she does not make a big issue of it. The old, stable, well-ordered community has gone, and whatever the efforts of some advenae to revive seasonal festivals, it will never return. After all, Maypole dancing, like Morris dancing, is a wholly ludicrous activity when disconnected from the realities of the agricultural and vegetational year.
Mrs Masheder’s book is a valuable contribution to the growing volume of published recollections of the earlier inter-war period. I am sure I will not be alone among her readers of a certain age in noting that much of what she describes in the 1920s would have been readily recognizable to a child of the 1950s. The old village was a long time a-dying.
By R. J. Moore-Colyer
Aberystwyth University
‘GROWING OLD DISGRACEFULLY’ Organisation
Shirley Meredeen
Mildred Masheder’s latest book sets out to address the benefits of positive parenting in today’s world. She writes that the book is for parents who want to give their offspring the best possible childhood, challenging on every level the pervasive influence of the consumer society.
From her extensive research Mildred quotes many examples of positive parents. One such explains “children need to feel loved and safe, starting at the early stages with constant one-to-one care from a loving adult. They need a balance of loving attention and clear boundaries with family routines, regular shared mealtimes and peaceful rituals at bedtime.”
In her chapter on values, Mildred makes the important point that overwhelmingly, a child’s value system is modelled on what they witness at home. If we want our children to be truthful and honest they will be put to the test if we resort to ‘white lies’ and “Tell them I’m out”, when there are easy alternatives to be used. We can only be good role models, she writes, if we promote them actively.
She quotes Jamie Oliver as a good model in encouraging children and parents to jointly understand, shop for and prepare healthy foods. Mildred wants to encourage greater responsibility in parents, both in the home and as lobbyists for a change in the attitudes of politicians with power over children’s wellbeing.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, writes of his admiration for this book: “We have to admit that the condition of our children and young people in the UK gives plenty of cause for real concern. There are issues around the mental health of young people, around the provision of safe and accessible leisure space for them, around parenting and how it is best learned, around how to balance protection with the need to give them appropriate challenges. Mildred Masheder is a commentator of rare clarity and wisdom in these matters.”
We all have responsibilities to present and future generations, as parents, as grandparents and as bystanders and I would encourage all readers to buy, and publicise this book within their families, local schools and communities.
Shirley Meredeen
‘Growing Old Disgracefully’
Camden New Journal. 26th February 2009. Precis of an article written by Bernard Miller
Mildred’s latest book, ‘Recapturing Childhood: Positive Parenting in the Modern World’, could not have appeared at a more opportune moment. Addressing many problems highlighted in The Good Childhood Inquiry, she adopts a different tack. Where the inquiry recommendations may appear excessively prescriptive – lists of what should or should not be done – Mildred’s book demonstrates co-operation and collaboration in practice, bringing together and presenting positive examples of what families and individuals all over Britain do to foster collaborative efforts. Her book is packed with parent’s contributions, recounting the fun they are able to have at low or zero cost.
For Mildred, the most valuable approaches are summed up in the Beatles’ song title ‘All You Need Is Love’. Often, when asked what they want, children say they would like parents to sit down and listen to what they’re saying.
She believes in the “It takes a village” approach. Children learn by taking risks that horrify some parents, but somehow youngsters have an innate sense of security and can be trusted not to do things too dangerous for themselves.
One essential element of recapturing childhood is to trust children. That is true respect. It sometimes means failing, but we learn by our failures.
For parents, teachers and carers at a loss about how to improve children’s lives and futures without waiting for governments to get the message and change policy direction, this book will be an invaluable tool.
NURSERY WORLD, 5th February 2009
Mildred Masheder, former primary teacher and lecturer in child development, has drawn on her years of knowledge and experience of working with children to write this guide on raising children in today's society. She draws on many parents' stories to address issues such as positive behaviour, happy schooling, feelings and emotions, and positive parenting. Her wisdom includes, "There is no such thing as a bad child,
only a 'sad child'."
Recapturing Childhood
"This is the title of Mildred Masheder’s latest book in the defence of children. At the beginning we are informed that UNICEF recent studies have shown the UK to be at the bottom of league tables concerning children drawn up in 21 economically advanced nations. The tables are about material well-being, educational well-being, health, safety, family and peer relationships, behaviour and the perception young people have of themselves. Right across the board there seems to be failure to achieve a certain notion of what childhood should be. To some extent we can measure material well-being, educational achievement, state of health and behaviour at least when it transgresses certain norms. Assessment of relationships and self-worth draws one into a field where the markers are not so clear.
For anyone who grew up before the Second World War some image of childhood as experienced will be remembered. Contrasts and comparisons with the child’s experience today may come to mind which go beyond nostalgic memories rose-tinted by distance. Not only has electronic technology impacted with huge effect on the lives of everyone but also inner perceptions of the world around us have been undergoing a sea-change. It might be true to say that the child doesn’t see the adult in the same way as before. Greater efforts have to be made to help the child to see afresh nature and its creatures. By seeing is meant much more than what is taken in by the eye. It is more an apperception than a perception. The changed relationship shows in many ways which are partly unconscious and cannot be explained as the result of external effects like T.V. and the internet etc. although these have a significant role in our lives. Expectations and fears are different from what they were two generations ago. The preoccupations that once were confined to the adult have now invaded the child’s consciousness. Is loneliness among children on the increase? The adult world then becomes a burden or gets rejected. Also the harmful influences that affect children are so widespread in our society that it is impossible to avoid them. Protection is best found in strengthening the child’s sense of self which is fostered through confidence in relationship especially with adults. The younger the child the more he or she is vulnerable. It is a great test for the parents to provide both a safe haven and the encouragement to test the water and gradually venture out. Each child has its own timetable.
In spite of the low grades attained by the U.K. in the UNICEF tests there seems, nevertheless, to be in the public in general a high level of concern about our children. If this is not a false reading how can the discrepancy be explained? Has the way of life that has evolved in recent decades simply become hostile at the physical, psychic and spiritual levels to children’s welfare? Are the competing pressures, social and economic, on adults and on family life now so strong that the best- intentioned parents are unable to create the space where childhood can flourish? Are schools under such pressure to deliver education prescribed by the state and at the same time to take on board intractable social and psychological problems that, for some, failure seems guaranteed? How many changes need to be made, at how many levels before childhood can be recaptured!
In many ways the influences on children have moved out from the family. This may be good or bad but it has diminished parent responsibility and may have deskilled parenthood. The school now has to share the shaping of young lives with the media culture which aims to entertain and not to educate. Solutions offered to the problems of children growing up in contemporary Britain will be readily challenged so diverse are people’s expectations, traditions and motivations. An understanding of the basic needs of childhood cannot be separated from the understanding of the human being. The view that the human being is a random product of material nature on the one hand and the view that the essence of the human is of a soul, spiritual nature on the other, are the ends of a wide spectrum. One’s proposals for reform are bound to be coloured by where one stands in the spectrum. But there are many practical steps that can be taken by anyone of good will. Mildred Masheder offers no doctrine. She always starts with the child or young person and with sympathy and understanding makes the needs visible. The response to the needs lies with the parents and in many simple but far-reaching ways she shows what that responsibility involves. Each chapter has contributions from parents giving their experiences as well as helpful ideas. Local and government authorities also have an essential part to play if there is to be improvement in those areas considered poor by UNICEF standards.
At the end there is a description of the practice in Steiner schools and another appendix sets out the aims of the Charter for childhood. ‘A gem of a book that we all need to read’ is how this book is described in the Forward by Dr Neil Hawkes, an international educational consultant.
We live in a time calling for change in the way our lives are ordered, in economics, finance, in political aims, in what we eat and in what we do to our environment. Let us not ignore the changes we need to make in the way we bring up and educate children. The existing priorities focusing on tests and league tables have not helped the UNICEF league tables. Recapturing Childhood makes us aware of some of these changes and invites us to act."
John B. Thomson
Review by Jenny Overton, Art Teacher and Art Therapist
"My immediate response to Mildred Masheder’s inspiring book on children was, “at last, someone understands deeply and communicates clearly the birthright of our children to a happy healthy life”. How has our education and care of children gone so badly wrong? Mildred gently explores all aspects of their needs as they grow, always referring to the current pressures of our modern life and the dilemmas that parents and teachers face in finding a healthy balance between inner and outer worlds. She reminds us of the natural creativity and exuberance that children have in the beginning, and the impact of the world around them as they are influenced by the media, the constrictions of health and safety, anxiety, stress, fear, discouragement and, above all, lack of love and attention.
Mildred treads sensitively this tricky path offering other ways, seeking not to criticise or condemn, always being positive, creative and deeply understanding of the dilemmas on all sides. She somehow conveys that we are all, as vulnerable human beings, caught up in this crisis of how to give our children the very best beginning. Her aim is to nourish the strength and sense of identity they need as they grow to maturity in this, more than ever before, confusing and dangerous, yet rich and beautiful world.
Over and over again, the recurring theme of love – unconditional love and acceptance – flows through this exceptional book. It is so obvious when we read Mildred’s book and yet how often forgotten when trying to resolve a child’s problems. There is no substitute for love and time.
So Mildred and the contributing parents remind us over and over to return to this core, this truth, so that happy, healthy, creative, confident and sensitive children grow to become our next generation. "
Jenny Overton, Art Teacher and Art Therapist
January 2009
Sara Firmin, Artist and educationalist, October 2008
"Much time and energy is being spent on the rise and cause of youth crime and anti-social behaviour. Educationalists, politicians, medics, health care and social workers, psychiatrists, church leaders and academics all agree that there is a very big fault line running through our attitudes to the whole question of bringing up children in a materialistic, technologically-obsessed society where league tables rule.
By this autumn 2008, a legally-binding national curriculum with 69 targets includes – the ability for a child to master a simple sentence in both reading and writing before the age of five.
Now is the time to seriously concern ourselves with the dealing of these issues at source instead of waiting for them to develop and congeal into what now seems like insurmountable problems.
The intention of this book is to do just that by promoting very practical but imaginative ways of helping parents of young children to navigate their way through this very seductive consumer society we all live in; use the positive benefits that technology gives us without stifling the emotional, spiritual, and physical needs of the young child. It sounds simplistic and almost old-fashioned to talk about – love, positive encouragement, setting realistic boundaries, using play, art, music, but the experience of parents and grandparents which comes at the end of each chapter bears this out.
An excellent book that could be used in schools, colleges and the home as a basis for discussion."