We’re rearing the most supervised generation of children in history.
Whether at school or at home and even at play, they’re almost always under a vigilant adult eye in an environment insulated against hazard or accident and hedged about by health and safety sanctions.
I’ve been watching a fascinating television series called ‘The Secret Life of Four and Five Year Olds’.
Its premise is simple. Put a random group of boys and girls dissimilar in all but age, in a well-equipped indoor/outdoor play area, with a wide range of activities and some simple tasks to perform – the entire proceedings unobtrusively monitored by a couple of child psychologists and television cameras.
Here was society in microcosm – the embryonic blueprint for the ‘Big Brother’ house and ‘I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here’.
On very short acquaintance the natural leader, the risk-taker, the attention-seeker, the bully and the placator all manifested themselves, as did the manipulator, the loner, the timid and the telltale. Some were articulate and confident, some diffident and shy in coming to terms with the others.
Above all, they were spontaneous, having not yet learned the social tricks by which we adults disguise our feelings and react to events and situations in what we think are appropriate ways.
Their raw responses to perceived unfairness, disappointment and rejection resulted in entirely predictable sulks and tears.
As in every amorphous group, one or two personalities dominated.
When it came to problem-solving, e.g. conveying water from one container to another using a variety of implements, while the boys rushed headlong for sieves, ladles and beakers, the shyest, least vocal of the girls picked up two lengths of guttering, connected them directly from one tank to the other and accomplished the job in record time.
They say it’s surprising what a person will do if they think they’re unobserved. In a ‘deferred gratification’ exercise an intricate architectural arrangement of dominoes was laid out on the floor with a large notice saying ‘DO NOT TOUCH’. The instruction was underpinned by a verbal warning before the adults left the room.
One by one, the children abandoned their play and approached cautiously – the boldest first. Panic rose, the obedient pleading “Come away,” the less so egging him on. One touch was all it took. With rippling rapidity the dominoes toppled, the whole edifice collapsed and the camera caught the culprit’s expression of pure, white-faced horror at what he’d done.
“We knocked it down!” he wailed, carefully deflecting the blame from himself alone.
Similarly, when an ice-cream dispenser was left unattended with the same sanction, another reckless rule-breaker released a stream of rapidly-melting vanilla within minutes.
The less courageous, having witnessed the sin already committed and, torn between doing the right thing and doing the popular thing, succumbed with gusto. In neither case was there any adult judgment or retribution visited upon the perpetrators – though I’m sure their parents must’ve been mortified at the thought of their darlings’ blatant disobedience being broadcast on national television.
The children spent a week in each other’s company, displaying many charming character traits, some not so admirable and in advertently betraying a great deal about their rearing, the values espoused in their homes and the influence of popular culture.
Feelings ran high. Friendships were forged and fractured, sometimes in the space of a day.
One girl announced that her “heart had shrunk” when her erstwhile Best Friend Forever arbitrarily transferred her affections to another.
The more precocious regarded the macho ‘bad boys’ as potential boyfriends, “because them they could kiss”. One self-proclaimed tomboy who abhorred girly things, began to revise her opinion of herself when another slathered her in eyeshadow and lipstick.
Male discussions on what a belly button’s for yielded the sage suggestion that “it’s probably to stop your blood from falling out.”
For the most part there was kindness and empathy.
I taught five-year-olds for a goodly portion of my school career and found them both endearing and exasperating. Bless them, they’re working out what life is all about – and they can’t start learning that early enough.
