Am I the only one that looking at what the kids are doing in the pictures consider it totally normal?
In Spain we used to do way more dangerous things than those.
And it was risky, one of our friends died in the river jumping over a slippery stone and hitting his neck with a stone while falling backwards. I have to say he was pretty nuts and was in constant danger everywhere.
Another friend is in wheelchair after jumping badly from a big 20 meters high rock to the Mediterranean sea. We all jumped the rock. It was funny, but you need to know what you are doing.
But those are two cases over hundreds of people I knew well over my life.
We learned to do bunny hops and do jumps and go downhill. Skiing over rocks outside official circuit.
You leaned early on how to manage risks and how to say no when your friends want you into doing stupid things(or you are not skilled enough for the task). I really appreciate those memories(and continue doing risky things like BASE jumping).
I have to say that my friends doing risky things now that we are adults never had significant problems. They became experts managing risk and some of them even teach it.
So in my opinion total freedom has its drawbacks and is not a pie in the Sky, but it is worth it.
I went to school in the UK, Germany, Hong Kong, Chicago - mostly boarding school in the UK.
When I was a kid (5-13), our principal form of entertainment was "go outside, do whatever". This usually entailed building fortresses out of junk, which usually involved deep excavations, traps that could actually kill (sash weights suspended in a tree, with tripwires, anyone?), and construction high up fir trees with "found" supplies. We used to go boating (on this neat lake full of totally lethal floating islands of rotted vegetation), unattended, and nobody thought anything of us taking a pile of unexploded mortars from the school fireworks show and sticking them in a bonfire. 7 year olds. Smart enough to know to run like hell and lie behind a dip in the land.
People got hurt all the time, with everything from broken bones to cuts and grazes to the occasional airgun pellet in an unfortunate place. The school matron was a very busy woman.
Once a year, the school had an organised "paddock war", in which everyone would arm themselves with whatever they could lay their hands on (cricket bats, improvised clubs, slingshots, etc.), and go beat each other senseless. Not sure this is quite the same picture, but it was a very effective way to get the pent-up aggression of 250 7-13 year old boys out in a single sitting, and not something that would happen today.
The headmaster, an old submarine captain, used to take a group of the older (10+) boys out on a ramble into the woods, always to a new spot, and would then just either leave us there, with our task being to get all of us back unscathed, or play hunter-killer games. Retrospectively I have a feeling he was actually sneaking off to have a drink in the woods, but it was a great experience.
Every single person with whom I played at that school is an entrepreneur. Every single one takes risks, wins, loses, and while their weltanschauungs vary hugely, from liberal to authoritarian to conservative to socialist, there's a common thread of willingness to try anything - that anything can be done - so long as one is willing to attempt it.
The same school is now co-ed (no bad thing, but has been used as the "reason" for change) and has done away with the outdoor play, having replaced it with a sterile, monitored, playground.
And we wonder why people are increasingly sheltered and closeted, with increasingly small worlds, with increasingly small sets of symbols with which to associate, and increasingly small ranges of thought.
We took away childhood and replaced it with a life of infantilism.
To a degree, true, although what wasn't clear from the above, admittedly, was that I'm a child of the 80's. I was fortunate to go to a school during those precious formative years in the late 80's/early 90's which refused to comply with the growing culture of pandering to parents' irrational media-driven fears. I didn't select my classmates!
Most of my generation did not play freely. I would go home from school holidays and attempt to muster neighbours/random local kids/friends into going for an explore/insane expedition into the local wasteland/abandoned buildings/woods/caves/whatever. Very few takers, and my mother got no end of "your child is a ne'er-do-well trying to lead my Johnny astray".
Humans are moving even stronger toward the K. People used to have many more children than they do now, and infant mortality was worse.
On top of that (for the child) taking a risk was worth it - if you didn't do really well, you did really badly.
These days things are more "even", a basic level of survival can be had easily, there is no reason to take big risks. The rewards for risk taking are more in terms of luxury than basic life.
I recall climbing up our 2 story middle school's roof to look for tennis balls that we accidentally hit up there. I can't imagine that happening today. Same with climbing up our house's drain pipe to let ourselves in the 2nd floor window. And the list keeps growing.
I love the memory of 'recalling' balls. Mainly footballs. Terraced by terraced houses, it was not unusual to scale a 10 foot brick wall (leg-up from friends) - getting back was the hard part.
Exiting the school gates to walk up the road (because the particular wall was unscalable, or there were dogs) was uncomfortable: "Ding-dong [at the front door of the neighbouring house]. Please Sir, may we have our ball back?" where a usually polite person would visit their back garden to return a football'.
And climbing on the roof of a Victorian structure where sand-brick was weathered sufficiently over a century of school children climbing up it to provide nice pockets and footholds.
Is this seriously not the case today? I'm only in my 30s...
Before people say that this school will get sued, it is useful to know that this school is in New Zealand.
Because of the way our healthcare system works, we cannot sue for personal injury here [1].
>Because of the wide range of help available from ACC after an injury, you can’t sue for personal injury in New Zealand, except for exemplary damages. This applies to overseas tourists too.
ACC is possibly the best thing about NZ, and most surprising. For example, you can go hiking (tramping as they call it here), fall down, break a leg... and ACC will fly out a helicopter to get you, bring you to the hospital, patch you up and send you on your way. All at no cost to you. As OP said, this counts for anyone on NZ soil, regardless of nationality. Keeps lawyers at bay. It's great.
I know of friends in the US who don't go mountain biking etc. because they're between jobs and can't afford the potential hospital bills. That is simply sad.
Compare that to the thousands of dollars an average medical plan in the US costs - and we still have to pay out of pocket for many medical expenses too!
The 400$ only covers the use of a bike. There's also 0.95% of you salary taxed for workplace injuries and 1.26% for non-work injuries. Then there's car registration which is about 200$/yr and a tax added to petrol which comes included in the $/Litre cost (they put the figure at 330$/yr). 2600$ is a rough estimate of my ACC levies paid each year. I think there's also some portion of cigarettes and booze that goes to ACC as well.
One of the negatives is that when you're in need of an operation but it's not immediately life threatening you're prioritised and end up on a wait list which could be several years long.
A bit off topic, but there are definitely good and bad aspects to both systems.
A great book on this topic is How to Live Dangerously by Warwick Cairns. He tells the story of a school in Norway that conducted a similar playground experiment. In that study, they had two playgrounds -- a "safe one" with rubberized mats and chaperones keeping a watchful eye and a "dangerous" one with tall structures, concrete, piles of wood, metal poles and no adult supervision at all. Within a couple days, several kids in the dangerous playground had broken limbs or had minor scrapes, but they continued the experiment. Within a couple weeks, the injuries had subsided and the kids in the dangerous playground were exhibiting all sorts of positive behavior. Compared to the "safe" playground, these children were happier, healthier, and more socially developed and getting along better with each other.
I did all sorts of crazy stuff growing up. I'm thankful I had parents who gave me a large radius to roam and didn't freak out (too much) when they had to drive me to the emergency room on occasion. The radius for which kids are allowed to play outside has been shrinking dramatically over the past few years. Humans are notoriously bad at risk assessment. We're more worried about child abductions than childhood obesity. Statistically speaking, only one of those is a real issue today.
I read this article [1] just a few days ago about how kids are over protected now. It also includes the Swanson Primary School story too. An excerpt "...I’ve mostly met children who take it for granted that they are always being watched..." struck me, it definitely was not like that while I was growing up.
Besides, is there a time line for the Swanson Primary School story? The article I linked to mentions this as an experiment conducted in 2011. If this is true, I would love to know how it has progressed since.
Thanks for sharing that link. This paragraph in particular jumped out at me in regards to all the efforts that have been made to rubber surface everything:
We might accept a few more phobias in our children in exchange for fewer injuries. But the final irony is that our close attention to safety has not in fact made a tremendous difference in the number of accidents children have. According to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, which monitors hospital visits, the frequency of emergency-room visits related to playground equipment, including home equipment, in 1980 was 156,000, or one visit per 1,452 Americans. In 2012, it was 271,475, or one per 1,156 Americans.
No, it's not. That's one injury per population amount, so the lower the second number the less people you "need" to get one injury.
Assuming a fixed population size of 1 million, given the 1980 prevalence of injuries you'd expect about ~689 injuries. With the 2012 prevalence of injuries you'd expect about ~865 injuries. So it's actually an increase, not a drop.
I still think that if you live in a large city that it's unsafe to let your kid ride on the bus by themselves too early.
I might be totally wrong in using this analogy, but just because it's statistically unlikely that I will die in a fire doesn't mean I will tempt fate and use fire recklessly in my home.
> Humans are notoriously bad at risk assessment. We're more worried about child abductions than childhood obesity. Statistically speaking, only one of those is a real issue today.
Quit talking nonsense. A young boy got abducted mere blocks from where I live not more than 3 years ago. Those parents would give anything to have an obese kid right now.
Asking parents to make decisions based on the aggregate damage child obesity does to society rather than the acute damage an abduction does to their family is ridiculous.
According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, about 115 children / year are the victims of “stereotypical” kidnapping. These “stereotypical” kidnappings involved someone the child did not know or was an acquaintance. The child was held overnight, transported 50 miles or more, killed, ransomed or held with the intent to keep the child permanently.
115 children out of ~74 million in the US. I understand it's a highly emotional and tragic experience when it happens, but statistically speaking, the odds of your child being kidnapped are roughly the same as them being struck by lightning. Part of the problem is the amplification effect of modern media. Kidnappings are sensational stories and we have a very human and empathetic reaction to them. Public perception would indicate that the odds of an child abduction are way higher than they really are. The biggest risk to your kids being abducted is one you probably don't want to admit -- around 200,000 children/year are abducted by a family member. Another 58,000 by people they know. Restricting your child from playing outside probably won't do much to help those far larger threats to their safety. I know it's an emotionally charged subject, especially for people who have been directly effected by it, but when you look at it rationally, the numbers speak for themselves.
Again, in my case, it didn't need to be amplified by the media. It happened around the corner, to an 8-year old child whose parents wanted to grant him some independence. He was literally kidnapped on the first day they let him walk home from school alone.
I understand that stranger abduction is a rare occurrence. What I don't buy is the approach of divorcing that statistic from the "parental overprotectionism" that so many of you decry. Yes, kidnappings are probably trending down (I don't know for sure...I can't find any statistics other than from 1999) at the same time that parental protectionism is trending up. Isn't that the whole point?
> The biggest risk to your kids being abducted is one you probably don't want to admit -- around 200,000 children/year are abducted by a family member.
I don't mind admitting that at all. I just don't see what it has to do with my argument (which might be admittedly difficult to read now since it doesn't fall in line with the HN hive mind).
I usually live an Asia and often tell local people that the great play equipment available to children there would be disallowed in parts of the west (eg. my native Australia) due to health and safety concerns, generally as a result of mandatory insurance and greedy insurance companies.
No longer are swings and see-saws available! Instead, you get a padded piece of artificial plas-floor with a carefully rounded (so when your kid falls on it, they won't bleed - just pass out), mid-height (so you can't claim you didn't see it, but it's not high enough to fall off) not-thing (so you can claim it was custom designed for safety) in funkified ultra-hue (so it's easy to see and you can't claim it was a dangerous obstruction when your kid falls over it and knocks their teeth out).
As a result, we are failing to teach our children to cope with the real world.
I'm from Australia as well. I lived in Canada for a while and we use to joke that when there was snow there'd be signs saying you can't play in the snow.
Canadian parent here. You are absolutely right and it's ridiculous. Kids are extremely sheltered these days and it's ruining them. I find the problem is that there always needs to be someone to blame. Well, sometimes kids just do things that get them hurt. It's part of growing up.
If you don't know what it feels like to fly down a ice covered hill on a piece of plastic, hit a jump, and run smack into another kid, you did not have a proper Canadian childhood.
American here, I've been run over by guys on skis more than once at the local sledding hill growing up. My favorite sled was literally a rolled up piece of stiff plastic...fastest thing on the hill and I routinely had other kids wanting a ride.
Not just insurance, though that is a factor. Parents get more hysterical over injured kids than they used to. If a kid gets injured, it's more likely for the parents to raise a stink. In ye olde days if a child got injured at the playground, parents would deal with the injury. Nowadays there's more (in relative terms) that would demand what it going to be done and harass the relevant manager. Add in that media love such stories these days, whereas previously the prevailing opinion was "well duh, kids skin their knees when they play".
It doesn't take many such parents - you could have a hundred kids and only a couple of parents like this - and you too would be using this super-safe stuff. The other parents could be fine with skinned knees and bruises, but you may as well save your time dealing with the angry parents so you can do the rest of your job.
I am an Australian parent, and whilst I agree there's some liability-averse nonsense[1], the parks we go to do still have swing and see-saws. Maybe a different state or council?
[1] E.g. a local spot where kids would jump from a rock ledge into water. Council concerned about liability put up a 6' fence. So now kids jump from an unstable footing at a greater height - but hey, the council can avoid liability.
This is my favorite quote from the article: “I’ve been the principal who’s stood there and said ‘Oy, kid! Get off your bike! You’ve got to walk your bike!’ Then I’d go away and think ‘Why the hell did I say that?’”
As a teacher in an after-school program myself, I find myself thinking this or something similar nearly every day.
What upsets me is that more often than not, the answer to "Why the hell did I say that?" is not the children's safety, it's that it's what I'm expected to say or that I want to look responsible around other teachers or parents.
The fact is, a principal is in a far better position than a teacher to change a school's culture, and indeed, a cultural shift is what is necessary for kids to have greater freedom on playgrounds. As a teacher, I have to weigh not only what I value (kids' freedom and developing understanding of social/physical interactions) but also what the school (administration and other teachers) and parents value.
Great article. A key quote that the editors highlight: “Reasonable risks are essential for children’s healthy development." As a teacher, I want kids to ask questions, explore, and inquire in the classroom. Why shouldn't this extend to physical and social exploration on the playground? It strikes me that in most Western culture, we reward risktaking behaviors in academic and business environments, so why should we devalue it in in childhood recreational environments?
When I was in elementary school, much of the playground was built out of old car, truck, and tractor tires. There were conventional swings and slides, but there was also a tractor-tire tower to defend, a couple of car-tire geodesic-sphere-like structures, and other such wonders but the jewel was TireTown, a fortress built out of tires with tire bridges connecting to two smaller structures. TireTown was easily two meters high, and an agile kid could easily climb onto the roof and slide down one of the provided poles.
All of this was done with materials to hand, not safety-certified foam and plastic, although many of the tires were glued fast together for greater structural support. Nobody batted an eyelash. Nobody complained. This was the 1980s, which I still think of as being not that long ago, but compared to today we had it much better off. Just to be certain, and doubtful that something as wonderful as TireTown would be permitted by today's standards, I checked the satellite images of my old elementary school.
All the tire structures -- completely gone. And the playground area seems a lot smaller than I remembered it...
Yeah, I grew up with something like that too. It was a huge wooden and steel fort. Mostly two, but even three "kid" stories tall. If you fell it was into hard mulch.
All manner of unstable bridges, and tunnels and swings and things. Every so often they'd bring the kids out to paint designs on the fort. My favorite were the ones kids painted in the very adult inaccessible tunnel system made out of reused palette wood. It was rare to come home from a day of playing on it without a splinter of a bruise or something.
The most awesome piece of a 4 story steel rocket ship. It was incredibly tall and once you got up in the top you could rally some friends together to coordinate shaking it and make some of the other kids cry from fear it would topple over. There was also a huge geodesic dome made out of steel piping (and a couple other various lattice like steel tube structures) that were pretty easy to climb wrong and get hurt on. A couple of the structures were maybe 10-12' tall and made of recycled telephone poles, so you leave the playground with a little tar or whatever they treat the wood with. If you climbed to the top, there was usually a comfortable platform or something to rest on.
Any day of the week in summer you could go and there would be hundreds of kids climbing and fighting and fantasizing and falling all over that structure.
Today the playground has a small slide and a small set of very safe and boring, very generic, equipment. I've driven by it quite a few times and have yet to see even a single child on it.
edit oh and I almost forgot. In one neighborhood, our playground was literally made out of molded concrete. It looked almost exactly like this set.
And it was awesome. Since it was so durable, you didn't feel bad scratching it with rocks or throwing rocks at it. It was rough surfaced too so you didn't want to be too tough with it. And if you fell, it was right onto concrete surface. All the interesting geometries and surfaces made kicking balls, or dropping balls and frisbees and things into the concrete tubes loads of fun.
This sounds exactly like my elementary school playground in Alberta (so much so I had to wonder if we went to the same school, but then I imagine there were photostated plans for getting a playground up quick with old tires and chains that made the rounds in those days). Everything in Canada has gotten way too safe. In Germany however, they've still got a lot of downright expressionist playgrounds. This ladder I witnessed the other day for instance.
It was in Leduc actually. I'd like to think that enterprising Albertan tire recycling firm figured out how to make a side business in playgrounds and that these were everywhere.
Man... I'm only 23, and I grew up in New Zealand. This is really cool, but I think the parents are the main factor that needs to be dealt with regarding this general idea.
When I was 8, my dad and I built a wood + iron motorised go-kart, and then I drove it all around ours (and the next-door neighbours) property. I crashed hard, broke my arm... and it was awesome. I'm still into high-octane risk-taking fun (I'm currently working getting my solo jump license yay), but I do it as safely as possible.
I think learning risk-management is a key thing that kids are missing. I was lucky to have parents that pushed me out of my comfort zone into doing cool stuff (I trained in Taekwondo for 12 years, including 6 months in Busan, South Korea, and got my 16 year old ass kicked for the entire 6 months) -- my brothers also have grown up well adjusted to dealing with risk and excitement and danger. But others I know in my generation and below are afraid of risk, afraid of danger, and I think that's a shame...
> I think learning risk-management is a key thing that kids are missing.
I agree completely. Call it 'common sense', 'street smarts,' whatever. It's having the nous to think through what you're about to do and judge whether you're at risk of ending up in trouble, and it starts with learning the hard way that the branch you're about to stand on to climb up the tree is woefully rotted and is about to give way under you. You can't teach this stuff in classrooms, either. It's really something that has to be learned through running across a slippery piece of ground and falling over.
I still remember back when I was 6, I was playing soccer in the school grounds with other kids at lunchtime and went to slide tackle some kid. Turns out he jumped, and I didn't realise until it was too late that there were big wooden plank hurdles right behind him. I slid into them and split my eyebrow open pretty decently (I still have a patch of no eyebrow from the scar, 2 decades later).
When the school first aid room called my mum to have her come and get me, she told them that she was busy at work and I'd have to wait a bit. She knew I was alive and not going to get any worse and so knew it wasn't an emergency. Kids get hurt, it's what happens.
The other cool thing was that we had quite a bit of bushland on the school grounds and the children were allowed to play in it. We ended up forming fiefdoms and building forts and having little mock wars. It is fascinating to look back at because on top of the flagrant OH&S issues it'd raise (kids stabbing and beating each other with sticks), there was a huge political aspect to it all. Every year, you'd work out which teacher had a classroom clock that was slightly ahead of the rest, and therefore would get out to lunch slightly sooner. Those kids would be super valuable as they'd be able to run to the forts and protect their own / sabotage others freely, before the reinforcements arrived. There was serious negotiation and political power play going on amongst kids and it would've no doubt made a bunch of child development PhDs happy had they known about it.
It's hard to quantify, but I am sure that the exposure to this sort of playground environment had undoubtably a huge role in my upbringing and subsequent approach to risk and risk management in life. As such, I've been fascinated by the OP's study for a bit now and I am really glad it's being done. A lot of people talk about the problems with bubble-wrapping children these days and it's going to be good to see if it is an actual phenomenon instead of just rose-coloured reminiscence.
Mock wars: Yes! We did the same, to the point where we had diplomats and assasins, and it spread across through class-time as well. It even started my entrepreneruial spirit: I packaged up and sold "ammo" (rubber bands set up for maximum power and a small "gun" to shoot them from, tagged with a colour for your team) haha. Of course, that was very much a no-no (you'll get hit in the eye and go blind!) but it was amazingly fun and I'm pretty sure helped us understand tactics far better by applying them in the real world ;)
I can't see how the the same thing won't happen though - one kid suffers some form of awful permanent damage (or death) and then the rules and safer equipment come back.
It seems like the wager the west has generally accepted is that we aren't willing to accept the the gains from 'risky' play compared with the small chance of tragedy.
Where there's less risk of being sued, the outcome of that wager is likely to be different.
Here in New Zealand, you can't sue for personal injury, each school sets its own rules via a parent-controlled school Board and parents have quite a bit of discretion about where their kids go to school. If a school has deficient processes when injuries occur, parents will walk.
And one death is visible. A generation lacking risk analsis skills, physical activity and knowledge of how to be rough but not aggressive is harder to see. SO harder to sue to prevent.
I think the sue for visible problems approach is one of your bigger problems in the USA. And in your current society until someone can sue for making Playstation more acceptable than Playtime I don't see any easy solutions.
The problem in the US isn't lawsuits, it's lack of decent health care. The lawsuits are a forseeable outcome of parents who could be financially devastated if their child has a bad injury.
I always assumed that in the US it was because of the litigious nature and never stopped to consider the fact that if your kid breaks their arm it's $10k for the parents to fix it. Thinking about it from the healthcare point of view is amazing.
As well as considering just health care costs also consider health care versus income. E.g. if a parent had to pay for a broken arm in the '80s US did they risk bankruptcy more or less then now?
> “Of course a child is not allowed to kill another child,” Mr. McLachlan said. “One of the rules I said facetiously is kids aren’t allowed to hurt other people. But in fact they are. … If you hurt somebody in a game where you are playing hard, or a boxing match or a stone-throwing competition, for me it’s absolutely fine — as long as the other person was willing to get hurt.”
This is a very interesting article but is the administrator being serious when he talked about boxing matches? My American English parses that to mean throwing punches actual physical contact between fists and the body. Surely that is a bad idea?
I remember having boxing and wrestling matches in the playground at school (from very young up until the age of 17 when I finished) ... things like body hits only and slaps to the head and face. As long as no-one went psycho it was pretty good to get your energy out (and since there were always other boys standing around watching if someone did go psycho they were shut down pretty quickly so no-one ever got hurt badly).
Yeap, boxing means the same in Kiwi English as it does in American English.
The point is to get away from the cotton wool or 'Helicopter Parenting' model. If we don't allow kids to do the risky stuff then they don't until they reach adolescence. I am firmly of the opinion we have to get them doing it while they are young; while they still listen to us (parents, adults, etc) and while they are small and less strong.
When we wrap them in cotton wool they reach adolescence with no understanding of risk but plenty of testosterone. Then they start to experiment without years of experience in informal risk assessment.
I have also read of a school that is achieving higher academic results by encouraging Bullrush. Think rugby without a ball - tackling, running, dodging, actual physical contact (or American Football but without the stopping and without any pads, etc.)
Yeah sure, you didn't grow up boxing and wrestling with your friends?
Hell, we used to have stick fights and beat each other with sticks, or play full contact football without any gear.
We used to also climb all over parking structures, up and down trees, construction sites, ditches, rain water drains.
One thing you learn from punching around with your buddies is the unwritten agreement of fairness. You only punch or slap as hard as you want to get punched or slapped. The golden rule works both ways!
I thought I grew up in a pretty overly coddled time. Are things really this bad?
Eh, there's a certain logic to saying 'boys are going to beat each other. Supervise it and let them vent it in a controlled manner and it's better for all'.
We didn't have boxing, but teachers realised pretty early on that boys were going to play tackle rugby at lunch time, since from about grade 6 onwards it was offered as an extracurricular sport. The idea was that the kids and teachers reached an agreement that they'd let us play it if a teacher (usally one of the coaches of the school teams) was present to referee it and make sure we did it safely. It was a pretty good, common-sense solution to something that was going to happen anyway, so they instead went with risk-minimisation.
We did too. Our principal used to be a boxer, and had a "if boys must fight, i want to see a fair fight and i'm reffing it", so it was a thing right after school.
Everything fight I've seen between two willing participants (not bullying) is that it isn't really very dangerous. I'm 36 and I still love to spar. I do it with boxing headgear, a mouthpiece and gloves now, but when I was young my friends and I always used to fight for fun with no gear. Sometimes it was fists only. Sometimes grappling, kicks, punches. Sometimes it was with hockey sticks. The worst that ever happened was a few bloody knuckles, busted lips or black eyes. When friends or brothers are fighting you know that you should stop if you punch someone in the throat or drop them in any other manner.
Interestingly enough I've been on a bit of a kick today researching Sudbury schools that are entirely kid run, and from what I can tell every initiative that gives students more freedom seems to be beneficial.
The problem is giving students freedom is often thought of as synonymous to allowing more violent behavior to take place. When rules are put in place to protect victims that is understandable, but most rules instead decide that students should not be allowed to voluntarily choose to do things adults think are unsafe. Honestly, I hope we can break that belief.
I think the school thing is symptomatic of an irrational attitude to risk in general. We're all going to die one day and life should be about having the best experience along the way.
I moved around a lot as a child, but one of the schools I went to for a couple of years when in primary school was a Steiner school.
The school had a large pond, with geese (that would chase and bite you if you got too near), and a school cow that would wander around keeping the grass trimmed.
Next to the school was an huge piece of land we used to call the quarry. It was an developed piece of land that had hills with trees and bushes growing all over. I'm sure there were snakes around, there were definitely plenty of large ant hills, and other small critters. Usually once a week our class would tramp over there, and play tag.
People would get scratched up running through a bush or fall over and skin a knee. But that was part and parcel of the experience. I think I recall someone breaking an arm or getting a knock to the head when they tripped over something - that was treated appropriately by the teacher.
I remember going on a week (or two?) school camping trip up to Queensland; at one spot we found a natural spring pool for swimming and a small waterfall (maybe 5-10 meters high? scarily high for me anyway) - everyone took turns jumping off the waterfall into the pool.
Nowdays I look at what schoolkids get to do, and it's none of that stuff. Climb a tree? no way, you might fall and hurt yourself. So what, it's part of living and learning.
In London, Parkour Generations runs kids parkour classes (http://parkourgenerations.com/class?classtype=youth). While they do have dedicated gyms most of the classes are still run outside, in keeping with the general philosophy of parkour. A lot of what is taught in these classes is not specific physical techniques but instead how to be aware of your own limits, how to push your limits safely and how to deal with fear. The effect on the confidence and maturity of the kids is incredible.
The general feeling of a lot of traceurs is that not only do padded floors and crash mats not keep you safe, but that training only in 'safe' environments makes you dangerously complacent. Soft landings disguise lots of dangerous habits and it only takes an awkward angle or a turned ankle to turn that into a broken bone. Anecdotally, my only parkour injury occurred in NYC where (thanks to the wonderfully friendly NY police) I spent a few months only training indoors in a padded gym.
I've been trying to get into parkour for the last couple of years. Just to understand the moves.
But it's different from just letting kids run amok. A parkour class actively teaches you the progressions, how to safely bail etc. Not sure I want to remove all the rules. But I definitely agree that kids should be exposed to dangerous situations.
It's sad that in some cultures/places/families this is considered as something "unconventional or even quirky. The modern "children should live in a bubble" overprotective approach is not only making the kids useless for some things in the future, but also causes some mental issues or even disorders of varying severity (but of course, on the other hand, diagnosing every kid with ADHD and every teenager with depression is equally unfathomable for me).
There was a TED talk (can't find it, possibly [1]) with some guy describing how he's doing 'dangerous' summer camps for kids. It included fire, sharp tools, etc. That's when I realized the summer camps I went to and I still visit as a supervisor/counsellor/leader would probably be banned and I executed in some places... [1] - http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_...
This reminds me of something related. I don't force my children to wear helmets when they ride their bikes. When we are out, people yell at me "Where's their helmet dad?". These are the same type of people who force the removal of swing sets at the parks in my area.
Helmets are a bit like bullet proof vests. If I was to be sent to some unknown part of Afghanistan and I had the option of placing a bullet proof vest in my luggage I would probably take it, just in case I needed it when I got to wherever it is in Afghanistan. However, for a gentle stroll to the shops or a trip to the back garden I probably wouldn't think to wear a bullet proof vest. Yet, actually, only last week some girl got hit in London by a stray bullet and, with her life being a mess right now, I had really better go for the bullet proof vest. Had she been wearing one then she might have avoided that neck injury.
Personally I do not wear a bike helmet, however, if some of my former mountain bike friends called up and took me out riding all day on trails I did not know then I would find a helmet and make sure it was properly fitted to my head. So I am not absolutist when it comes to helmets.
As it happens I have sold thousands of helmets and fitted a few hundred for people. Along the way I read the instructions and you do need helmets to fit properly, i.e. with the straps tight. I have also noticed that most cyclists including those in the peleton ride along with the straps somewhat less tight than they should be. Hence I suggest that rather than have helmet debates with people you helpfully point out to them that (if they are wearing a helmet) that the straps are dangerously done up. Point out to them that they could get strangled by their helmet in an accident if, due to the straps not being very tight, the helmet slips back. Assist them in getting their helmet setup properly, by which time they should not be able to move their jaw and give you any more lip :-)
While I am absolutely against the cotton-wool wrapping of kids we see I would disagree on this. I always make my kids wear helmets when riding bikes, whilst still allowing them to do jumps and race down the hill etc. The way I see it, the helmet reduces the risk of serious long term injury and doesn't take anything away from them pushing their safety boundaries when riding about.
Agreed. IMO helmets are one of those treatments against a low-likelihood, high-consequence risk. The treatment also comes at very little inconvenience, so it's a no-brianer (pun not intended) to choose to do so.
Banning kids from riding bikes around cars? I can understand why that's considered a bit too overprotective, but helmets to me seem like a common-sense method of resolving a significant risk with insignificant inconvenience.
You can learn to fall / jump off a bike properly as well. Watch some videos of dirt jumpers, despite doing backflips, a lot of them go without helmets.
Yeah, look I agree with the general sentiment of letting kids take risk and learn responsibility, but my two small kids (who do skateboarding, BMX racing, surfing, rugby and a lot of general "rumbling") are NOT allowed to ride without helmets and I wear one too. I survived not having one as a kid (nobody did then), but I wear one too now, and seriously the upside/downside equation here is a no-brainer.
I get where you are coming from, but you want to associate bike riding = helmet wearing.
From training wheels to full-speed downhill riding should only take 6 months. You want to encourage helmet wearing as a habit before that progression occurs.
My child had a very large crash that occured because he went down a hill and got confused as to which side of the bike the brake was on, because he was riding an unfamiliar bike. He had ridden down that hill many times. He crashed heavily at a high speed, enough to knock a tooth out and lost a lot of skin on his face, elbows, hands and knees. The helmet had serious damage and had to be thrown away. I don't want to think what would have happened had there been no helmet. He was 4 at the time.
I let them ride down hills to get used to the speed as part of learning, so that when they do get older they don't make bad mistakes. I also ride on the road with them to develop their traffic awareness. But helmets are a vital part of that.
I had several high speed crashes on my bike during school years. It was only luck that meant I didn't hit my head hard.
This is great and can/should be applied to other schools within New Zealand. Extreme restrictions do effect the kids and I believe that having the freedom to learn some valuable life lessons (while they are already absorbing so much) is a massive positive that outweighs the risk of injury.
My younger brother came home from primary school (elementary school) last year with a playground "Rule Sheet" -- You should have seen the response to ridiculous rules such as "Children can climb trees as long as they have one foot on the ground at all times." -- Even though the trees mentioned are less than 3-4 metres high.
It is a hard thing to manage just due to so many parents and their different styles of parenting but I do think a medium can be reached.
The probability of one kid being killed or seriously injured in this one school in, say a year is nearly zero so it won't happen and everyone will think it's wonderful. But if all schools do it all the time, you'll start to see some fatalities and brain damages where rules would have prevented them and people will start saying "let's forbid high forts with concrete to fall on" etc.
Anecdotal story. As a kid playing in the street I ended up under a moving car. The only reason I'm alive is somebody alerted the driver in time. We don't notice rare accident deaths, but we do notice pervasive safety measures (don't play on the road even in a culdesac anyone?)
In Spain we used to do way more dangerous things than those.
And it was risky, one of our friends died in the river jumping over a slippery stone and hitting his neck with a stone while falling backwards. I have to say he was pretty nuts and was in constant danger everywhere.
Another friend is in wheelchair after jumping badly from a big 20 meters high rock to the Mediterranean sea. We all jumped the rock. It was funny, but you need to know what you are doing.
But those are two cases over hundreds of people I knew well over my life.
We learned to do bunny hops and do jumps and go downhill. Skiing over rocks outside official circuit.
You leaned early on how to manage risks and how to say no when your friends want you into doing stupid things(or you are not skilled enough for the task). I really appreciate those memories(and continue doing risky things like BASE jumping).
I have to say that my friends doing risky things now that we are adults never had significant problems. They became experts managing risk and some of them even teach it.
So in my opinion total freedom has its drawbacks and is not a pie in the Sky, but it is worth it.