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Transcript from tape of a talk given by Dr Meyer Hillman July 2000 in Glasgow at the Play Scotland Conference. This document is very long so we've divided it up for ease of navigation, however the greatest benefit comes from reading it in its' entirety. To skip to sections
of interest please click on the links below: I am very grateful to you all to have been invited to speak at this conference and whilst I have come up from London, I would just like to state that I do have claims on Scottish ancestry. I'm not such a Sassenach as I look . My Mother was born in Scotland and my Father, ninety two years ago, was first year entry into McIntosh's newly built School of Arts in Glasgow here. By way of introduction I just wanted to say that I very much appreciated what Elaine Smith has just said and I fear there is a difficulty for those in following on from those who have already spoken and developing the same themes. But at the outset I would like to make the point that the word play is inappropriate to use in the context of children, it is LEARNING. A learning experience. In the case of adults play is like tennis or whatever but in the case of children but it is far more important not to use the word play, in my judgement, simply because that implies that play is something relatively superfluous. It implies that it doesn't matter if children don't play, it does matter and that is , I suppose, the theme of what I have to say. It is, to point out, as Elaine Smith was saying, that children's lives have become increasingly circumscribed and I attach a great deal of the explanation for this in the way in which our society has become more and more adult-centred with adults instinctively and understandably wishing to advance their interests. Safe Places To Play One of the ways that has been done is by the acquisition and use of cars which have steadily eroded the quality of life of children. Of course, they benefit from their parents having cars to take them about, but of fundamental importance is childrens' independence which has been lost in that process. And what has progressively happened over the years is that childrens freedoms have been taken away from them. Our research has shown that. Here I will quote only one widely quoted statistic from our research. Whereas, in the early 1970's ,and this is for the country as a whole, 80% of the children went to school on their own , twenty years later only 9% go to school on their own. We also found that whilst the great majority of children own bicycles, very few of them are allowed to use them on the public highway and yet the bicycle is, of course, a fundamental form of transport. Healthy, health promoting, giving huge amounts of freedom, cheap to provide and very safe given proper facilities. But with this adult-centric, car-centric society we have lost the appreciation of the significance of cycling and walking for their lives. Children who have been adversely affected in other ways as a consequence of this whole process. The traditional play space, or learning space as I would call it, I have called it in papers the informal classroom outside in the local neighbourhood has been taken away from them.. The street has a social function which has been taken away, and it is so important, not only for children but for society as a whole. That is something that we need to do something about.
We have attempted to minimise the risk to children by limiting their exposure to all risk. Society tries to prevent all children from misbehaving and Stuart has already referred to the monstrous initiative with the idea of curfews on youngsters. There is a certain logic in following this course of action (curfew) but it leads to less cycling and walking but the logic lies in the fact, of course, that cycling and walking are far more dangerous per mile travelled than they are in travelling by car. There is a certain logic in instructing children about traffic hazards in that they defer to traffic, a certain logic that they learn to cope with traffic but it then leads to these curfews imposed. Curfews, I mean in the widest sense of the word, in a way that adults would never accept. But because children are increasingly treated as second class citizens rather than people for whom we have a responsibility to ensure that there is a safe environment for them... recoding poor at this point….. curfews can be seen to be an invidious and more widely developed mechanism which is having very damaging effects…..poor tape here…. Play is when children learn to make decisions when on their own, how to act responsibly, how to assess the motives of those they don't know. You can't learn it just by being told. You've got to learn it through your own experience. You can't learn about the dangers of running too fast without falling over and grazing your knees. Children are far less likely to have adventures, to get up to mischief, to extend their personal frontiers, to gain self confidence from being made to act sensibly. All the essential components of growing up into responsible citizens are, and I would argue and it's a commonly shared opinion now though it wasn't ten years ago, that the withdrawal of young people from their local neighbourhood , is incurring psychological costs in terms of their physical and emotional development.
Elaine Smith has already referred to the report that came out this week called "Couch Kids". This shows the damaging effects on their physical development because children are not getting sufficient exercise .That particular report showed that already a fifth of children at the age of five are overweight. Diet has a role to play, but it is far more to do with the fact that they are not running about as much and getting around on a daily basis as part of the routine of their daily lives. Now the conclusion of that report, "Couch Kids", which was produced by the British Heart Foundation, reached the conclusion (which I thought was very partial), which was, that we need to ensure that there is more time given over to P.E. in schools. Well, it's all very well to talk about time for P.E. in schools but what we need to recognise is that children go to school on only about one in two days of the year if you include weekends, holidays, half terms. We need to think far more widely, given the need for daily exercise. It's not just in the confines of P.E. where in practice the amount of exercise children tend to get is not very intensive, certainly the finger of suspicion points far more at the damage being done because children are being denied the opportunities for walking and cycling because we haven't had the sense and the decency to make the environment for them safer. One of the approaches that has been adopted and which is widely commended, although I think that Elaine Smith again made the point and I feel sorry for people following me because I think they will want to say many of the things that I'm saying, but this is the cost of the order of speaking. Safe Routes to School is an excellent idea but journeys to school account for only just over a third of all travel. Only ten percent of child deaths and serious injuries on the roads occur on the journey to and from school?
So why this concern with the journey to and from school? Why not more broadly with creating safe routes for children? We need to cover all their activities and I have a suspicion that one of the explanations for this is, although I don't think it is ever expressed in this way, is that the emphasis on safe routes to school is because more parents are taking their children to school and this is interfering with the commuter traffic and adding to congestion. That is it's origin rather than a concern for the freedom of children to be able to get around on their own and go to school on their own. Mix with friends and, as I say and I think it an important one, and I say provocatively, get up to mischief and suffer the consequences of doing what may be described as misbehaving or whatever. That's the way we learn not by being told how to behave but by misbehaving and getting into trouble and I think it's a terribly important aspect of growing up.
There is another process allied to this, which is in effect again, putting children into this role of second class citizens which are the campaigns of 'Stranger Danger'. Which is, in effect, teaching children to be distrustful of people they don't know. This is extremely damaging to the whole concept of community to imply to children, and add to an instinctive paranoia that parents have and that children develop from their parents, that if people they don't know are about or talk to them they may be potential rapists , abductors , molestors or worse. And the consequence of that is extremely damaging and I think that we need to take these issues more seriously, this whole culture of attempting to minimise the risk to children. Children need to learn how to deal with risk, to learn how to cope with it. It's all very well in the short term thinking that we do children a good service by minimising the risk to them but what evidence I have…and Stuarts limited my time so much that I can't quote directly from research findings …but it is that the more you deny children exposure to risk the more they will be at risk in their teenage years because they have no personal experience to fall back on. So I argue that these approaches, including curfew, are very damaging to young peoples' physical, social and emotional development. It is too high a price to pay and that it may be counter-productive and in the same way that I would argue that resistance to germs is promoted by mild levels of infection and this is coming out of current medical research. So to is coping with bullying and intimidation best promoted by developing mechanisms based on personal experience. Of course give children advice what to do about bullying but don't aim to totally protect them from the sort of hazards of real life because then they won't be able to fall back on that personal experience. Reducing exposure of children to risk can make children more vulnerable, not less vulnerable later on . children need to take risks to find out where their personal and public boundaries lie and when to exercise caution. Our surveys looked into the reasons why parents impose these restrictions and whilst in the early years the main reason was traffic this has rapidly, over the years been joined by their fears of their children being molested and assaulted or whatever by strangers. The statistics do not bear that out at all. Every year about 5 to ten children are murdered by strangers and as I have observed and Kate Moorcock here has heard me make the point , a very powerful point, yes, children are at extreme risk from strangers but it's strangers behind steering wheels. There lies the danger and they're not at risk of strangers who are pedestrians and the statistics, as I say, bear that out. We have got to be very careful in terms of inculcating this fear in childrens' minds and the problem is that it has a complimentary effect which is that we as adults are less likely to talk. It's an instinct , I think , adults have to talk to children as adults but we are less likely to do so now because children have been instructed that if someone they don't know speaks to them then there is something a bit odd about that adult. There was even a campaign mounted a few years ago that you should RUN , YELL and TELL if a stranger approaches and talks to you . Yell, Run and Tell your parents, the police. So that we, and as part of growing up, part of the excitement of my life as a child in London was in fact mixing with adults and getting to know adults other than my parents and close family. And it is as a measure of progress, I think, that if children know more and more adults then that will contribute to the quality of their lives and they aren't just dependent on the nuclear family for their information and the whole learning process. So, in summary, I argue that the local neighbourhood must provide this unique base for children and young teenagers to develop their basic physical and social skills without adult supervision and that we should allay their fears about the consequent risks …the fears among their parents…which have lead to these growing restrictions placed on their freedom . We've got to embrace the full spectrum of childrens lives so that they are able to spend more of their leisure time in the outdoor environment and on their own .
The whole proposition that we need to create more playspaces for children is again only partial because it implies, in my book that it is like creating Bantustands ( this is an African word I think for ? safe haven ? concentration camp…Colin ) for children. Safe places in which they can play that you have to take them to and then they can play on their own but usually then with an adult watching them . We have got to get children free of this total adult surveillance. They have got to be free to be naughty, mischievous almost wicked and learn what are the consequences and if they are denied that then they are going to get up to much bigger mischief when they are in their teenage years. I believe then
that we must tackle the problem at it's source. From this perspective
may I suggest just five simple courses of action which seem to me
to be fairly obvious. 2 We have got to change our cultural attitudes so they are not treated increasingly as second class citizens , They are people for whom we have a responsibility ….as I said before…to ensure they have got a safe environment….in which they can get around and learn and experience things and learn. 3 We have to be more tolerant of misbehaviour and that is a very important aspect. We all misbehaved as children . What sort of society are we trying to create in which misbehaviour is thought of as wicked and we have to clamp down on it. 4 We have to put far more emphasis on education so that the public is better aware of the substantial benefits of getting about on foot and on cycling and running around and going places and recognising that the factor which most explains why these restrictions have been put on children in terms of their getting about is indeed, Motor Traffic, and that we have got to do far more to create this safer environment and recognise that the street also has a social function.
Again , the whole idea of home zones is very attractive indeed but it's so partial, again it's little Bantostan areas where your child is safe because speed limits are restricted or it's a no end road. Why should we be limiting them to that extent? Is it because we still want to allow vehicles to be driven at unsafe speeds which clearly they currently are. If I tell you the statistic that over the last twenty years or so 200,000 children in this country have been killed or seriously injured and nearly all of them by motor traffic cars . Now we can't just escape from this by saying that it's necessary for the Economy and that the Economy depends on it. The Economy does not depend on cars being driven at high speed and for that reason there is a very strong case indeed for cars to be driven at speed limits of no more than 20 mph and even perhaps lower than that. What that would do would be to add a very marginal amount on people's travel . It's not as if it's going to destroy the economy and in fact it may well create the environment in which we go back to a situation in which far more people will use the bicycle which will develop the health benefits as well. Another statistic which is relevant to this , I'm not that old but at the beginning of my adult life the cycle mileage in this country exceeded car mileage and now the ratio is over 80 to 1. And it is because we have overlooked the importance of non motorised forms of transport. The more people who make their journeys on foot and by bicycle , particularly bicycle, the better off society is . Every mile travelled by car imposes on the quality of life for everybody else. We should not be promoting that as a solution to out travel patterns.
And finally I would say that we need to encourage the media not to be so damaging in terms of the way in which they report and exaggerate the incidence of criminal activity. It has the unfortunate outcomes of increasing parental prohibitions on childrens freedoms and adults unduly anticipating social behaviour problems from children when these incidents when they are reported. I believe that the measure of success based on policies based on this approach will be seen in a more relaxed and friendly community with more people on the streets, more young people getting around on their own and becoming streetwise and more of them mixing with so called strangers. So I would advocate encouraging children to talk to strangers and not the reverse and it is a fundamentally different approach that I am recommending as a way of dealing with the problems which are the subject of discussion at this conference. I will end by putting forward what I think to be four key questions which derive from what I have said. You may wish to discuss these in your groups. 1 What are the elements of an outdoor environment in which young people can best let their innate creativity flourish? 2 What steps need to be taken to encourage politicians and the public alike, to recognise the crucial role of childrens' independent activity has outside the home and the impact that has on their development? 3 What are the most effective ways of dealing with parental fears for their children's safety outside the home 4 Is it necessary to re-appraise the policy and practices of attempting to minimise children's exposure to risk? Thank you very
much.
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