Playing “too safely” prevents learning

By Dr. Daniela Origgi – Export Manager TLF

This is the subject of a recent article by the RSA, the British Society for the encouragement of arts, crafts and commerce, whose primary objective is to remove the barriers to social progress

According to the RSA, children need to learn to live in the real world. If we wrap them in security and worries they will find it difficult, as adults, to face up to even the simplest challenges.

Numerous scientific studies show that in countries like the United Kingdom, where safety assumes excessive importance compared to growing and learning needs, the number of children who have serious difficulties in facing modern life is steadily increasing.

The difficulties which today’s children have to face are not very different from those of the past: to understand their roles and responsibilities in the family, at school and in other contexts; to find a way of laying the foundations for a future career; to create strong bonds with family, contemporaries, friends and partners. Modern society has perhaps rendered these challenges more complex, but they remain and do not disappear once the child enters the adult world.

Ensuring that the child acquires control over his own destiny is essential to growth, and this can only happen if he is given the possibility of experiencing loyalty and self-esteem. The child must be able to learn for himself what are the limits that define good behaviour in public life.

The case of a group of children from Birmingham is significant: a police officer banned them from playing hopscotch, one of the oldest and most harmless games ever known.

So what is the solution? Should we stop setting ourselves the objective of “zero risk childhood”?

The playground equipment industry has long understood that safety at any cost is creating great dilemmas. “Play Safety Forum”, the British organisation assigned to define safety parameters in playgrounds, has had to undertake a major review in the last few years to redefine the purpose for which playgrounds are created, that is, to play and learn.

The documents produced by the work group of the Forum, taking up theories already put forward in the sixties and seventies, encourage adults to allow the child to undergo the experiences vital to his growth.

Mia Kelmer Pringle, a childcare expert from those years, wrote in 1973 in The Needs of Children, “How can responsibility be given to the immature and to the irresponsible?” This was the answer: “There is no way out of the dilemma; the child will always remain immature and irresponsible if we do not give him the possibility of exercising responsibility himself”.