Nursery World - A demoalising system

Jenny Mosley and Ross Grogan have a very strange idea about how adults can help the development of morals in young children ('Doing good', 22 February) - rewards and punishments with a dash of public humiliation. The smiley sun with rays of yellow clothespegs decorated with photos of children may strike you as being cute, or amusing, or plain tacky. But for a young child, the act of taking their special photo off the smiley sun, and putting it on to the sad cloud, is a public act of rebuke. Some three-year- olds will not have the capacity to bear this.

The smiley sun with rays of yellow clothespegs decorated with photos of children may strike you as being cute, or amusing, or plain tacky. But for a young child, the act of taking their special photo off the smiley sun, and putting it on to the sad cloud, is a public act of rebuke. Some three-year- olds will not have the capacity to bear this.

Then I read that 'Golden Time' is offered to those children who manage to remain as little rays on the golden sun. This seems to involve taking core nursery experiences like clay and dance out of the main curriculum, and turning them into trivial rewards. I doubt that it's even worth bothering to make a pot or develop a dance if you only have ten minutes. It's a system, in other words, that would wreck a decent nursery curriculum.

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