Polling the Children

What does life look like to a child in elementary school? For once, someone has asked the children themselves--not just their parents. A nationwide survey of more than 2,200 seven-to eleven-year-olds, released last week by the private Foundation for Child Development, indicated that most children feel good about their lives, their families and just being themselves. But many are also afraid. More than two-thirds are scared that "someone bad" is skulking about their neighborhood, waiting to break into their homes. A quarter of the children are afraid that they will be attacked when they go outside--with some justification, since more than 40% have been harassed by older kids or adults while playing. Children addicted to television (those who watch four or more hours daily) are twice as likely to be fearful; nearly 25% of all the children are frightened by TV "shoot 'em ups" and other violent programs.

As for education, more than 75% of the children reported that they liked school and a whopping 90% said they approved of their teachers and classmates. But all is not idyllic in the classroom either. About two-thirds of the children worry about tests, an equal number feel ashamed of mistakes, and more than half object to classroom disorder and unruliness (never, or so they said, perpetrated by themselves). And, it seems, parents are still wielding the stick. More than 75% of black children and 66% of whites say that their mothers want them to be "one of the best students in the class."

How will the data be used? Nicholas Zill, the research psychologist who directed the study for Temple University's Institute for Survey Research, said he hoped his report would give children a voice in influencing their own "physical and psychological well-being." One of his chief recommendations: stricter regulation in the "disaster area" of television.

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