Life child’s play if kids ruled world
THERE WOULD BE A LOT TO LIKE ABOUT A PLANET CONTROLLED BY CHILDREN, AND MAYBE SOME CHANGES WOULD BE FOR THE BETTER
THE topic of a school speech has been dominating my household conversation this week.
What would happen if children ran the world?
This tantalising scenario is to be written on to palm cards and delivered to classmates.
The expected apocalypsestyle scenario was of course the first thing that came to mind.
In this world, the adults exploded from seriousness, rules and as punishment for making kids eat vegetables.
The below is what you’d expect it to look like:
• Kids tearing through shopping centres on those skate shoes, scooters and bikes, getting their chops around any food item that is in reality so far removed from actual food.
• Epic Nerf gunbattles.
• Real late nights to at least 10pm.
• Pizza for dinner every single night. But then there would be no adults to cook the pizza so hopefully they would be old enough to know how to use a microwave, which would produce second-rate pizza but still worth the effort.
• Mandatory sleep-ins, especially on school days … although school no longer exists.
• No homework. Ever.
• Desks and school chairs would be formed into a massive pyre and lit up.
• Far less pollution.
• Bikes ridden everywhere.
• A slower pace of life.
Wait a minute, what? We took a closer look at the question.
“You know, this question doesn’t say anything about adults not being around,” I said.
“This is just a scenario where the kids are in charge.”
So what would be the positives from kids being in charge?
• The world would be in far better shape. I don’t mean economically but environmentally. So many kids really do care about the world they live in. They are worried about climate change and they hate when trees get cut down. They are an inspiration and us big kids need to listen to them more.
• Profit would never, ever take precedence over someone’s wellbeing or the state of the environment.
• This COVID-19 isolation slower pace of life would be permanent. Kids know how to live in the moment. They don’t get caught up in their heads the way we have all learnt to.
• Playing would be the priority and this would only make families stronger.
• After-school activities would be strictly optional. Do our kids really love all those commitments? Some of them do, no doubt. I think many would prefer a quiet afternoon.
• No one would care about their weight or ridicule others for their shape and size, skin colour or where you come from. These are all learnt behaviours.
We live in the real world and putting the kids in charge is a crazy notion but school topics such as this have got to lead to questions about the status quo.
Those kids just need to work on their argument that pizza should be eaten for dinner every night though.