Are They Having Fun Yet?
Play that is good for kids, and presented as such–by best selling authors, by teams of experts, by parents–doesn’t strike me as all that playful. It sounds like eating your peas.”
So writes Walter Kirn in an article titled “Boys Gone Mild” in this week’s New York Times Magazine. Kirn is responding to the popularity of the recently published Dangerous Book for Boys, a book that encourages boys, and their fathers, to get out and do stuff–stuff ranging from coin tricks and tying knots to hunting and cooking a rabbit.
The Amazon web page for The Dangerous Book for Boys includes an interview with author Conn Iggulden that includes a question about just what he and his co-author (and brother Hal) tapped into when they wrote this suddenly very popular book. Iggulden’s response touches on some of the same important ideas expressed in our own recent No Child Left Inside conference at Schoodic:
In a word, fathers. I am one myself and I think we’ve become aware that the whole “health and safety” overprotective culture isn’t doing our sons any favors. Boys need to learn about risk. They need to fall off things occasionally, or–and this is the important bit–they’ll take worse risks on their own. If we do away with challenging playgrounds and cancel school trips for fear of being sued, we don’t end up with safer boys–we end up with them walking on train tracks. In the long run, it’s not safe at all to keep our boys in the house with a Playstation. It’s not good for their health or their safety. … Nothing gives me more pleasure than to know the book is being used with fathers and sons together, trying things out. Nothing is more valuable to a boy than time with his dad, learning something fun–or something difficult. That’s part of the attitude too. If it’s hard, you don’t make it easy, you grab it by the throat and hang on for as long as it takes.
Anything that provides more motivation for children and parents to do things together is a good thing. If The Dangerous Book for Boys sets the stage for boys and dads to spend more time doing stuff, that’s a good thing.
The more critical questions that Walter Kirn raises in his New York Times Magazine article have to do with moving beyond these good things–kids doing more things with parents–to more organized programs that try to prescribe these good things for kids. Kirn makes two points. The first is that, as we all remember our childhoods of playing in the woods, building tree houses, fording streams, and otherwise engaging in grand adventure, there is risk reaching nigh unto certainty we romanticize all of this. As Kirn puts it: “Who knew at the time that playing and getting hurt would come to be regarded later on as exotic, threatened activities sorely in need of a cultural revival led by concerned adults?” His second point grows out of the phrase “led by concerned adults.” Concerned adults can easily fall into the trap of creating structured programs intended to ensure that kids enjoy unstructured time out of doors. Hello?
None of this is black and white, or simple. Scouting, for example, always had highly structured elements, but still led to unstructured experience. I do a lot of sea kayaking, and I am here to tell you that it takes a good bit of structured training before you can really, safely, enjoy unstructured time on big water.
But, still, Kirn is raising some questions that we should keep in mind as we work to create more opportunities for kids to play, work, and learn in the outdoors. if you have a chance to see it, Kirn’s brief article is worth a look.
– Bill Zoellick
Note: This entry was originally posted on the Kids Outside website.