Who’d be a child these days? Minded and supervised every minute, shepherded and chauffeured, trussed up against the weather and disinfected to death.
In the name of care and protection, the gods of health and safety have put the kibosh on childhood freedoms.
What a sterile existence today’s youngsters lead, with no risk, no adventure, no decision-making, no opportunity to develop problem-solving or coping skills – and too clean to cultivate immunity to common infections.
Whether at home or at school, our degree of vigilance over the young has reached ridiculous proportions.
Mothers are obsessed with hygiene – sanitising surfaces, mopping floors and washing toys. One wonders how many generations survived to school age without stair safety gates, Milton and baby-wipes, in homes with open fires and every second adult smoking. And what were they thinking of later, letting us out to play in the streets entirely unsupervised, with the sole sanction, “Be home in time for your tea.”?
Then, of course, any passing adult witnessing misbehaving would’ve immediately intervened. I remember some of us climbing up the back of the billboards beside the Midland cinema and Mrs Curtis and Mrs Cheshire out at their doors threatening to call the police. We weren’t long shinning down. What small sins we committed.
Parenting then was not ‘child-centred’, nor was it interpreted as providing an inexhaustible source of entertainment for children. From school age onwards, we were thrown on our own resources. Had you voiced the complaint “I’m bored,” or “I’ve nothing to do,” you’d soon find yourself washing dishes, dusting, fetching in coal or running messages for elderly neighbours who lived alone, with the warning, “Don’t dare let them give you anything for going!” Now you daren’t send a child unaccompanied to the corner shop.
We spent after-school and holiday hours playing tig, skipping or marbles, scootering or roller-skating round the neighbourhood, hunkering in somebody’s vestibule if it rained; illicitly paddling in a park stream, building dens, making a little fire on waste ground glittering with shards of broken glass and boiling spuds in an old paint tin; biking off for a lemonade and custard-creams picnic, falling out and making up again. Then home for tea, scratched, bruised, dishevelled, dirty and dog-tired.
The rough and tumble of the school playground was where you acquired new skills, learned to choose your friends wisely, stand up for yourself and face down the bully. And the one who ran to tell the teacher was heartily despised.
Childhood was a world apart – our own kingdom, where we ruled and adults rarely intruded.
These days, schools have fallen victim to creeping health and safety legislation – every activity hedged about by sanctions. All outdoor play must be supervised – in some schools ‘no running in the playground’ is the rule. Pupils must be kept indoors when it rains. Ditto, snow, (which in my day triggered an excited mass exodus to the yard) sliding and snowballing vetoed. “Dangerous games (conkers, yo-yos etc) forbidden. We played cricket with a real cricket ball. Every playground tumble, cut or bruise recorded in an accident book. No plasters put on cuts in case it results in an infection. A sick child may not be conveyed home in a teacher’s car unless accompanied by two other children. Protective eyewear necessary in science or craft classes. Fluorescent tabards on school trip. The ‘risk list’ is endless…
Now the chief inspector of Ofsted has appealed for common sense and a review of “overbearing policies that fail to distinguish between real and imagined risk and limit pupils’ opportunity to broaden and enrich their minds and help them develop resilience and grit.” At last. Somebody determined to unwrap the rising generation from its cotton wool coddling.
I wouldn’t swap my hazard-ridden, germ-laden, scabby-kneed childhood and liberal country-school education for anything. It taught me independence and initiative, to calculate risk, take the consequences of my actions and stand on my own two feet. It also taught me loyalty, generosity of spirit and the value of friendship. Most importantly, it fired my imagination…
