16th November 2001
It was decided by those who are experts in the attention span of children that the film "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" should be only one hour and twenty minutes long. This was despite the fact that hours more expensive material had been made. The little dotes would not be able to keep their minds on the job of watching the film, so yards and yards of film had to be left on the cutting room floor.
Having enjoyed the Wexford Opera Festival once again and, being a supporter of the Opera Theatre Company, I set off for Dun Laoghaire to see The (Little) Magic Flute, described as "a version of Mozart's classic opera adventure especially prepared for young people", at the new Pavilion Theatre.
There I was in the middle of this lovely new theatre with about fifty adults and several hundred children. The dress code was not quite the same as Wexford, track suits and trainers being more in evidence than black ties and party frocks but, if anything, the audience in the Pavilion was more rapt.
The show started at 7.30pm in a thick aroma of chocolate but once we heard the first notes from the five young musicians who made up the orchestra not one sweet wrapper opening could be heard.
Now I will admit the Magic Flute is a very lively opera but the fun the cast of six brought from the words and music was incredible. The Cork born Papageno, Joe Corbett, spoke but mercifully did not sing in the vernacular and obviously the children of Dun Laoghaire think all Corkonians are a big laugh. Nichola Sharkey made a terrifying and elegant Queen of the Night and what a voice! Victoria Massey played half a dozen parts delightfully. How Eugene Ginty managed to play both Tamino and Monostatos I don't know, because both seemed to me to be on the stage at the same time. Sinead Campbell was every inch the beautiful Princess Pamina and John Milne oversaw the show as a majestical Sarastro.
These six kept the children spellbound for an hour, then out for the intermission, fizzy drinks for the 300 children, wine for the rest of us and we were towed back in by the track suits and trainers brigade who were determined we would all be sitting on the edge of our seats for the second half well before the cast were ready to begin.
Total silence as we started again, I didn't see even one child stir in his or her seat and some of them looked as young as five or six. At the end, after fire, smoke, water (in buckets, luckily) the cast sang "The brave are victorious, they shine like the sun", which as every child knows is the proper ending to any good story. Enthusiastic applause followed and several curtain calls.
Now the point of the description of my night at the opera is that I am really skeptical about this attention span problem with children. If the subject is entertaining enough and if there is some sort of participation for them they all seem to swing along with the show. While the opera was not like a pantomime where interaction is encouraged the singers and musicians were right there in the flesh beside the children which is so different from television or even the most expensively produced film.
Science week took place recently. Due to the alarming decrease in the number of students taking higher level physics and chemistry the Department of Education and Science has decided to promote an interest in science from primary school on. I saw on television a class of children aged about seven experimenting with magnets and the teacher explaining magnetism didn't seem to be having too difficult a time holding their attention either.
During the passage of the Mental Health Bill through the Houses of the Oireachtas the Child Psychiatrists were amongst those who expressed most concern about the Bill and its inadequacies. This obliged me to take more notice than I might normally of behavioural problems in children and their treatment.
I was amazed at the enthusiasm in the United States of America for putting children on Ritalin. Now it may be an exaggeration but from some of the articles I read it looked as though teachers could demand a child should be put on Ritalin or the child would be refused admission to school if he or she, but usually he, was considered disruptive.
Some child psychiatrists in America have expressed their concern about the medicalisation of some behavioural problems and have queried the long term effect of psychotropic drugs on the brains of such a large number of children. The Surgeon General's 1999 report on Mental Health states that one in five children and adolescents experience the signs and symptoms of a mental disorder each year and it emphasises that children with emotional distress or troublesome behaviour are increasingly being labelled as mentally ill and given psychotropic drugs. The child psychiatrists who are querying this increased use of psychotropic drugs suggest that while some severely disturbed children may need these drugs, with many their difficulties may be due to poor schools, stress within their families or other environmental factors.
Psychological problems in children and adolescents receive much less attention than they deserve. The courts do not have the psychologists to deal with children who come before them, the family law courts being particularly badly effected. The schools are short changed, too.
Last year a report carried out by Maria Lawlor and Deborah James for the North Eastern Health Board found that 21% of adolescents interviewed had clinically relevant psychological problems. Is the environment we have created for our children in Ireland so faithfully modelled on America, important in the distress of these children?
Senator Mary Henry, MD
