The Overprotected Kid

I came across an article by Hanna Rosin posted in The Atlantic recently.

Involved as I am in rebuilding the Scouts Canada program the issues raised in the article resonated for me. As the article headline says:

A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer. A new kind of playground points to a better solution.

Our challenge with the new Scouts Canada program – The Canadian Path – is not programming for youth, but persuading adults (Scouters) to engage the youth in the planning and doing of all activities/adventures. It’s proving extremely difficult for many of the more experienced Scouters to let go – to take the kind of role described in the article for the adults at “the Land”:

The park is staffed by professionally trained “playworkers,” who keep a close eye on the kids but don’t intervene all that much. Claire Griffiths, the manager of the Land, describes her job as “loitering with intent.” Although the playworkers almost never stop the kids from what they’re doing, before the playground had even opened they’d filled binders with “risk benefits assessments” for nearly every activity. (In the two years since it opened, no one has been injured outside of the occasional scraped knee.)

Read the article – it raises a ton of interesting questions for those of us developing learning programs for young people.