Britain’s unhealthy obsession with formal education appears to be stressing out the country’s youngest children. A recent story in The Guardian reports that toddlers starting at nursery, after being at home since birth, experience high levels of stress in the first weeks after separating from their mothers, and are still showing “chronic mild stress” as long as five months after their first day in the new environment. Remember, we’re talking here about children as young as eleven months old. I repeatedly tell my British friends that in Switzerland, children don’t go to school until they are seven years old – and yet the country scores third in OECD world rankings for educational attainment. Does anyone know of comparative data on stress among children (and their parents) in different countries? It would be instructive to compare the two league tables.