Once upon a time, not so long ago, parents were supposed to educate children in the ways of the world. But the Government appears to have turned that arrangement on its head. Now it is deemed the job of children to teach parents right from wrong.

A Department of Health survey reveals that a third of parents say that their children know more than them about healthy eating campaigns. This will come as little surprise to those who are aware of how sermons on eating five portions of fruit and vegetables, recycling everything and never bullying a fly have replaced religious indoctrination in our schools.

For Dawn Primandproper, the Health Minister, the survey proves that children can teach ignorant adults a lesson. “We welcome the fact that children are absorbing our five-a-day messages and can teach their parents to eat more healthily.”

This follows on from public health campaigns that used children as a stick to beat adults into giving up smoking. Eco-campaigns also encourage kids to enforce recycling rules, with books such as How to Turn Your Parents Green (eg, fine them for letting the tap run while cleaning their teeth), that would turn any self-respecting adult green around the gills.

Our children are apparently being educated as self-righteous foot soldiers in a crusade to re-educate us in the official doctrine of “Healthy Living, Whether You Like It Or Not”. The innate tendency towards sanctimoniousness and zealotry among youngsters who see things in fairytale black-and-white terms (“five veg a day good, one fag a day bad”) makes them natural narks.

Amid all the talk of liberties and fears of an “Orwellian” state, these trends rarely get a mention. Yet there is a long history of authoritarian regimes using children to do their dirty work. The official “child heroes” of George Orwell's 1984 were members of jolly groups such as The Spies, who bullied and informed on their petrified parents. We are some way from that and it was rather heartening in that survey to learn how many children use their knowledge of five-a-day simply to fool their parents about how many greens they eat. But still...

The nursery-rhyme dream of “a world ruled by children” has always seemed more like a nightmare to me. But the prospect of a world where children are taught to force feed their parents official lifestyle propaganda seems worse. How else might our kids be encouraged to re-educate us ignorant parents? Will they give us the party line on saving our pocket money, or bedtime, or what not to watch on TV? Or maybe one day they will come home from green sex education class, and tell us off for having them in the first place.

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