I go through periods where I listen to a lot of podcasts while I work and other when I don’t; today I’m already on my third. I’ve listened to two Design Matters with Debbie Millman, and now I’m on CBC Radio: Ideas, The Hurried Child:

Buying achievement. Rigid regimens. As a society, we are keeping children busy with the business of childhood. Tutoring and computer centers for children are a booming business, and have become America’s top franchise of the decade. A new age of anxiety has invaded childhood. IDEAS producer Mary O’Connell examines the costs and consequences of the hurried child.

This is a newer phenomenon in North America, but has been going on for decades in places like South Korea and Japan (Korea’s currently experiencing funding cuts to these government funded programs). Here, much of it is attributed to the “inspirational movement” of the 1970s, fathered by Wayne Dyer (author of Your Erroneous Zones, and, of course, the ongoing influences of the Me Generation.

So, interesting stuff. AND it refers back to antanaclasis(!), and Tom Wolfe’s essay, The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening.

Photo: flickr.com/terrapin_flyer