A COLLEAGUE is worried that his elder son, in the third grade, spends too much time playing outside, playing games on the computer, watching television and reading books other than his course material.

He wants to restrict these activities so that the child can focus on his studies and perform better in class. He is partially worried about his younger son too, for the same reasons, even though he is a first grader.

When asked if one hour or so a day was not enough for academic work so that the children could spend the rest of the time on other types of creative activities, he said that the competition in class was too intense to allow that. One hour of academic work, other than the time spent in school, was definitely not enough, he said — this for a Grade 3 student.

What happens when the child reaches Grade 8 or thereabouts? Will he come from school and then spend the rest of the day, until almost bedtime, in tuition sessions and self-study sessions? This does not sound like a fun-filled childhood. Or even an optimal one, if the goal is to prepare the child for life.

When I look back on the time we were in school, and admittedly it was quite some time back, I remember that we hardly spent an hour a day on academic work.

Usually we had mathematics and/or science homework, sometimes English and Urdu homework and the hour was mostly spent doing the assignment.

We finished this quickly so that we could be free. The rest of the day was spent playing cricket or hockey in the neighbourhood, going biking, watching television (it was only Pakistan Television initially and later Indian state TV), and hanging around with cousins and friends. I remember this childhood with a lot of fondness.

Of course, we were forced to spend a lot more time with our books when examinations were close, especially the more important ones. But the rest of the time was quite relaxed.

There was more pressure in the final year of O-levels and in the two years of A-levels, but that was to be expected. Will children of this generation be better or do better than the ones of the last? Though I hope so, I doubt it.

Things have changed a lot. We have video games, computers and more than 100 television channels to choose from. Neighbourhoods, in many areas, have become less secure and society has become more violent and has been exposed to, as a whole, much more violence.

Letting children go out, allowing them to hang out with neighbourhood kids, play on the road or in the local playground, or even allowing them to bike has become a lot harder. But this should, at worst, mean a shift in leisure and creative activities, not a focus on school books and academic work.

Interestingly, when I teach undergraduates, especially first-year university students, I see some consequences of the above changes. Children definitely come in with more A- and O-levels, they come in with better grades, but they are also more isolated, appear to be more gullible, have less experience of interpersonal relationships, are less street smart and generally have lower levels of curiosity and, at some level, less ambition.

Are these consequences of the changes that are happening because of how we now bring up our children?

Sometimes I can see the physical consequences of more sedate childhoods too. The youngsters that I teach appear to be less comfortable, physically, with themselves; they carry themselves more awkwardly, they are less coordinated and are not used to physical exertion.

This is not true for all youngsters, of course, but I am talking of trends here. Those who have been involved in sports or other rigorous physical activity do not exhibit this discomfort with their physical beings.

I taught at a foreign university a few years back. One of the most glaring differences in undergraduates there and in Pakistan was exactly this. The students there, even at 18 or 19, had, for some years, managed their own social lives, had worked — part-time or during summers — at various jobs, had been managing their own bank accounts and money even when they were still being subsidised by their parents.

Even those who came from privileged backgrounds had this experience. It made a world of difference in how they approached learning, in their confidence levels and in the conceptualisation of their medium- to long-term plans and ambitions in life.

Many of the 18- to 19-year-olds that I teach in Pakistan, in contrast, do not know why they are in university, what they want from life and what they want to be. I am not talking of specific career goals here. It is normal for undergraduates to experiment with this or that. But even to experiment with what you want to be, you need to have an idea of what to experiment with and how. It is this meta level that is clearly missing.

We need a lot more balance in how we bring up our children. They need to be protected and nurtured but optimal protection and nurturing requires exposure to life and expected demands.

School work is important, but it is only one factor in what determines success in life. Interpersonal and social skills, better self-knowledge, emotional maturity, physical conditioning and being street smart, among a host of other factors, are important and there should be some effort, on the part of parents, to ensure that all these dimensions are taken care of as their children grow up.

The writer is senior adviser, Pakistan, at Open Society Foundations, associate professor of economics, LUMS, and a visiting fellow at IDEAS, Lahore.