Freedom to be a kid without any safety rules
Parents and educators are often torn over finding a balance for children's play between safety and anything-goes freedom. Today we hear why some experts say kids should be allowed to play in a risky environment....
Parents and educators are often torn over finding a balance for children's play between safety and anything-goes freedom. Today we hear why some experts say kids should be allowed to play in a risky environment.
Erin Davis is a documentary maker working on a new film about The Land, an adventure playground in Wrexham, North Wales where kids are encouraged to play with sharp tools, run with a pointy sticks, create and destroy as they chose, and to take risks.
The thought of letting kids play with blades and fire might have many parents anxious to press 911. But a principal at one elementary school has decided to inch his playground closer to the anarchy.
Erin Davis is a documentary maker working on a new film about The Land, an adventure playground in Wrexham, North Wales where kids are encouraged to play with sharp tools, run with a pointy sticks, create and destroy as they chose, and to take risks.
The thought of letting kids play with blades and fire might have many parents anxious to press 911. But a principal at one elementary school has decided to inch his playground closer to the anarchy.
- Bruce McLachlan is the principal of Swanson School in Auckland New Zealand and he has ditched the playground rules.
- Roger Hart spent more than forty years studying child's play. In 1972, he set up shop in a small rural town in Vermont to begin a research project for his geography dissertation. For two years he tracked the movement of 86 children in order to better understand how children view the world they live and play in -- especially when adults aren't around. In 2004, he went back to the town to repeat the study with a new generation of children and discovered startling differences. Roger Hart is a professor of environmental psychology and geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and we reached him in New York.