I'll second the sentiment of this article, with barely reading the intro paragraph. It'a hard to even arrange playdates because most of my elementary kid's friends are shuffled around to various...
I'll second the sentiment of this article, with barely reading the intro paragraph.
It'a hard to even arrange playdates because most of my elementary kid's friends are shuffled around to various heavily structured activities 5 days a week.
Kids need downtime to be bored, so they learn to entertain themselves with their own creativity. They need to be able to play together in large groups without a grownup mediating every little bit, the way sports do.
Otherwise they start having anxiety when they're faced with having to make decisions without an authority figure presenting them options. I'm half convinced this is part of why there's such a rise in anxiety disorders...people have been conditioned from a young age to only make decisions within a tight framework of authority, and without it (when they venture out into the world), they feel lost and hopeless. This would also help explain the rise of children living at home longer, although economics play a huge role in that as well.
Was this normal for people growing up 20 years ago? Did I just grow up poor? I see this everywhere these days but back when I grew up me and my friends had maybe 1-2 things a week (and they were...
kid's friends are shuffled around to various heavily structured activities 5 days a week
Was this normal for people growing up 20 years ago? Did I just grow up poor? I see this everywhere these days but back when I grew up me and my friends had maybe 1-2 things a week (and they were usually youth group or boy scouts, so it was only like 1-2 hours in the evening.) Most days were just me and my brother going back into the woods with the neighbor kids and building forts or exploring
It wasn't like that for me or any of my private school friends. We were "latchkey kids", who had to make their own way home from school because (shock and horror) both of our parents worked full...
It wasn't like that for me or any of my private school friends. We were "latchkey kids", who had to make their own way home from school because (shock and horror) both of our parents worked full time out of the house. But the media was talking it up as a scandal that there was so little attention paid to us in those three hours a day that we were unsupervised.
When you say latchkey kid, when did that start? I'm in my early 30s, but I lived down the street from middle school and my parents figured that was a good time to stop leaning on the after school...
When you say latchkey kid, when did that start? I'm in my early 30s, but I lived down the street from middle school and my parents figured that was a good time to stop leaning on the after school program and let me chill at home. I had a number of things I went to, mainly karate and music stuff or friends' houses, but I had a decent amount of time to myself and was fine.
... Aside from how I ended up terminally online like a year later, and my ADHD exacerbated, and my procrastination hit a peak, and all of my grades slipped until high school, but aaanywaaay
I started as a latchkey kid in 2nd grade in the early 80's, so I would have been 6-7. I have vivid memories of climbing on the counter to get at hidden candy, haha. I can't remember where my...
I started as a latchkey kid in 2nd grade in the early 80's, so I would have been 6-7. I have vivid memories of climbing on the counter to get at hidden candy, haha. I can't remember where my little brother was during all this, probably at a babysitter.
We were not well off. Both parents worked, so I took the bus home from school and was on my own for a few hours. It was a new town so I couldn't go hang out with friends and didn't have any idea if it was common or not. I didn't think about that kind of things at that age, I figured my experienced was the same as everyone else's
Same here, but 30 years ago here. And maybe I'm in a bubble, but here's one of my kid's friend's schedules circa first grade: Monday:Soccer Tuesday: After school program, then Dance Wednesday:...
Same here, but 30 years ago here.
And maybe I'm in a bubble, but here's one of my kid's friend's schedules circa first grade:
Monday:Soccer
Tuesday: After school program, then Dance
Wednesday: Grandma's (no friends)
Thursday: After school program, then soccer
Friday: Swim lessons
Saturday: Scouts and soccer games.
Sunday: Nothing
My kid's schedule:
Monday: Nothing
Tuesday:After school program
Wednesday: Nothing
Thursday: Nothing
Friday: Nothing
Saturday: Scouts
Sunday: Nothing
There is a scout troop here that advertises how noncommital and flexible it is, how they always work around all the sports activities and its not a big deal if you miss the 2x monthly meetings. It's basically a joke program for the kid's resumes more than a functional scouting program.
Gosh, that's sad. I did Girl Scouts, and there was no way I (or any of the other girls in my troop) were going to miss that. It was enormous fun. We went camping, made costumes, played games, rode...
There is a scout troop here that advertises how noncommittal and flexible it is, how they always work around all the sports activities and its not a big deal if you miss the 2x monthly meetings. It's basically a joke program for the kid's resumes more than a functional scouting program.
Gosh, that's sad. I did Girl Scouts, and there was no way I (or any of the other girls in my troop) were going to miss that. It was enormous fun. We went camping, made costumes, played games, rode horses, put on plays, etc. Of all the structured after-school activities I did, it was the only one I liked and quickly became the only one I was willing to do — I think because of how varied it was and how it utilized play, creativity, and exploration as learning devices.
Echoing other posters, I was very middle class and was growing up 20 years ago. My parents might arrange for something fun to do as a treat or something as a special ocassion but day to day it was...
Echoing other posters, I was very middle class and was growing up 20 years ago.
My parents might arrange for something fun to do as a treat or something as a special ocassion but day to day it was "go outside and play with your friends" or something. My mum got upset when I wanted to play video games or watch TV instead.
I was 17yo, 20yrs ago. But I feel like I started seeing some of it back then. Growing up in the 90s, it was definitely the whole "come back before the streetlights turn on" thing. One apartment...
I was 17yo, 20yrs ago. But I feel like I started seeing some of it back then.
Growing up in the 90s, it was definitely the whole "come back before the streetlights turn on" thing. One apartment complex we lived in in the early/mid 90s was just full of kids running around. When my family moved to our first house in the mid/late 90s, that neighborhood had kids everywhere outside, all the time. My brother and I were just another pair of the numerous neighborhood kids.
We moved a couple more times by the time I was 17. My younger brother would've been like 12-13yo. And him and his friends were frequently out and about. They'd ride their bikes everywhere or just walk around.
However, I started noticing that there were rarely kids younger than my brother outside in our neighborhood. And I knew they were kids younger than them in that neighborhood, because we lived across the street from an elementary school! But most parents either walked or drove to the school to drop-off/pick up their kids. And that'd be the last I see of them for the most part until the next day.
If they were playing outside at all, they typically stayed in their yards/driveways. If they ventured further, it wasn't very far. Our house was on a large semicircle street that connected back to the main street and had like 2 or 3 cul-de-sacs attached. There were definitely kids who lived in those several houses, but I noticed that the kids rarely left the semicircle. They wouldn't even go to the school playground. I thought that was strange. Aside from a couple years in college, I lived at home til my mid-20s. And even when those kids got older, into middle school, I still rarely saw them.
Me, my friends, my brother, his friends, girls, boys...we were all over the place growing up. We had to have known the neighborhoods better than our parents because we would bike ride or roller blade all over the place, even to neighboring subdivisions. Which weren't always connected by easily accessible roads; we'd make paths through not-yet-developed fields/forests to get there. I have literally played around in storm drains and houses under construction! Yes, I realize how unsafe that is, but we did it. We survived.
We had video and computer games, too. I had access to the Internet at home in the mid/late 90s. But we'd still go outside all the time. As far as activities outside of school, I did scouts and basketball for a year or two. My brother played soccer for a few years. But that was it. And most of our friends were the same. For both of us, it was only in middle/high schools that we started getting more involved in things. But never so much that we didn't have time to relax or hang out with friends.
So I always thought it was weird in the last neighborhood was seemingly devoid of children playing. I thought helicopter parenting and all that was just a phase; something Gen Xers did. I didn't realize we as Millennials would end up doing the same (luckily, I don't have kids).
Mother by Pink Floyd Boomers raised in the wake of WWII, Gen X raised in the shadows of the Cold War, Millenials in the wake of 9/11 (and the wars that followed). A lot of generational trauma...
Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry.
Mama's gonna make all your nightmares come true.
Mama's gonna put all her fears into you.
Mama's gonna keep you right here under her wing.
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing.
Mama's gonna keep baby cozy and warm.
Ooh baby, ooh baby, ooh baby,
Of course mama's gonna help build the wall.
Boomers raised in the wake of WWII, Gen X raised in the shadows of the Cold War, Millenials in the wake of 9/11 (and the wars that followed). A lot of generational trauma about keeping your kids safe from strangers and the world at large.
I lived 5/10 minutes walk from my elementary and highschool, and my parents insisted on leaving work, coming to pick me up from school and dropping me off at home. Often, it means I'd be waiting...
I lived 5/10 minutes walk from my elementary and highschool, and my parents insisted on leaving work, coming to pick me up from school and dropping me off at home. Often, it means I'd be waiting for them for half hour or more, until the whole dang school is empty sometimes. It was insane. Walking home wasn't possible, the doors* are bolted from the inside, only way in was with a car. They were so traumatized it was practically neurotic.
Edit: And windows. The windows were steel bar'd, upstairs and down. I often "joked" that if the stairs caught on fire at night, we'd all be dead.
We had those bars on our windows when I was a kid, but they had hinges and a kickplate under the window to unlatch them in an emergency precisely for that reason. Dunno if they were an optional...
We had those bars on our windows when I was a kid, but they had hinges and a kickplate under the window to unlatch them in an emergency precisely for that reason. Dunno if they were an optional upgrade or legally mandated, though.
I wonder if my parents would have sprung for the kickplates if they knew it existed. my guess is mandated. Growing up in that Triangle Shirtwaist Factory reenactment house always made me somewhat...
I wonder if my parents would have sprung for the kickplates if they knew it existed. my guess is mandated. Growing up in that Triangle Shirtwaist Factory reenactment house always made me somewhat worried about those window bars.
I’m only 29 and I didn’t have too many structured activities. I did cub scouts as a kid, robotics club after that. Was in a couple school plays. But beyond that it was mostly building forts,...
I’m only 29 and I didn’t have too many structured activities. I did cub scouts as a kid, robotics club after that. Was in a couple school plays. But beyond that it was mostly building forts, riding bikes, and playing video games.
At some point I remember accounting for all of my free time after school and it was most often something like 6 or 7 hours. Some classmates were shocked and had like one or two.
This goes back many decades if you were, say, Asian kid with academically driven parents. See Wikipedia entry on Kyōiku Mama (Education mother) If y'all watch/read Dragon Ball, the main...
This goes back many decades if you were, say, Asian kid with academically driven parents.
Post-war Japan in the 1950s made it a "national mission to accelerate its education program. Children of this era had to distinguish themselves from peers at an early age if they hoped to get into a top university. Entrance exams for these children began in kindergarten.[19]
By the mid-1970s, pressure to achieve in children created the need for specialty schools. Seventy percent of students continued their long school day at juku or "cram schools".[19]
In the 1980s, a series of suicides linked to school pressures began. Elementary and middle school students took their lives after failing entrance exams.[19]
If y'all watch/read Dragon Ball, the main character's son was first introduced as an adorable 4 year old, with an overbearing Kyōiku-Mama. That chapter was published in 1988.
I wouldn't say being poor is necessarily the prerequisite. More like, does one's parents subscribe to the meritocracy / rat race mentality that's far more commonly seen in some cultures than others, PLUS the neurotic level of anxiety about pushing the kids. There's some correlation, but not 1:1
Example, my parents were dirt poor and they really believed in education uplifting people out of poverty. But they also didn't super push, just quietly paid for stuff. Compared to others who were also poor who pushed hard, as well as those who were wealthy who also pushed hard.
I'm 24 and my childhood was like yours. After school, I'd just roam the neighborhood free, go from door to door asking if my neighbors' kids wanna come out to play, and just do whatever until...
I'm 24 and my childhood was like yours. After school, I'd just roam the neighborhood free, go from door to door asking if my neighbors' kids wanna come out to play, and just do whatever until dinner, then go home to eat (unless I was eating at a friend's house), and then go outside again until bedtime.
My sister who's 16 now, had very little of that. Mostly due to the lower numbers of children in the area, but also because other children had scheduled activities, additional tutoring for maths, music/dance courses, and the like. Nowadays she has a friend group but they see each other less and less because one friend has a helicopter grandma and the other one got a boyfriend, and now acts like a teenager who just got a boyfriend lmao.
We definitely had some structured activities when I grew up (I'm in my late 20s), but it didn't even get past once a week until middle school. People might load up on extracurriculars in high...
We definitely had some structured activities when I grew up (I'm in my late 20s), but it didn't even get past once a week until middle school. People might load up on extracurriculars in high school depending on their interests and how much their parents were pushing for them to get into a good college, but even then 5 days a week was definitely not the norm.
I'm here to talk about the article as it is written. Correlation not causation. Author made no attempt to justify linking these concepts other than it being "exactly what [they] would expect, in...
I'm here to talk about the article as it is written.
Over the same decades that children’s play has been declining, childhood mental disorders have been increasing.
The decline in opportunity to play has also been accompanied by a decline in empathy and a rise in narcissism. [...] A decline of empathy and a rise in narcissism are exactly what we would expect to see in children who have little opportunity to play socially.
Correlation not causation. Author made no attempt to justify linking these concepts other than it being "exactly what [they] would expect, in this article.
Children can’t learn these social skills and values in school, because school is an authoritarian, not a democratic setting. School fosters competition, not co-operation; and children there are not free to quit when others fail to respect their needs and wishes.
Where do I even start with this mess. Let me begin by saying that I don't necessarily disagree, and I could even fill in the blanks and imagine what they're trying to say and maybe even write an in depth analysis agreeing with them. But it's missing from their text, s'all.
First of all, the writer blames narcissism and lack of empathy on authoritarianism. How does democracy encourage these traits? Are children reading comics at home a democracy? Does free time in the woods encourage less narcissism somehow? Not to mention that we have whole dang civilizations of empathetic and non-narcissistic people's throughout history, living in authoritarian societies. In many Confucian cultures, it is held that personal freedom and disrespect towards others/elders is what causes lack of empathy and rise of narcissism.
And then competition and not being free to quit is blamed. I've seen the counter-argument countless times: that participation awards and being free to quit freely encourages narcissism. Peter Gray then goes on to say he's got a whole dang book arguing for this to be true. I'd just like to say that this article makes me less likely to want to read a book written by someone so obviously biased and takes so many unsubstantiated leaps in their writing.
I agree the article doesn't really make a clear argument, and I think the point they are trying to make has been made better in other books/articles. To the questions you raise, I think the gist...
I agree the article doesn't really make a clear argument, and I think the point they are trying to make has been made better in other books/articles.
To the questions you raise, I think the gist the article is inexpertly communicating is that unstructured and unmediated play between children gives them opportunities to learn social give and take, compromise, conflict resolution, etc. I've read on the idea before, but am not used to seeing the references to democracy and authoritarianism, etc. rather, other sources I've seen have focused on the benefits of peer self regulation and mediation without an authority figure stepping in and solving problems for them. But the leap to associating those things to democracy and authoritarianism seems a bit of a leap away from causally explaining the benefits to making moralistic arguments.
I could make the leap to authoritarianism simply because you can witness how drasticly kids behaviors change in absence of an authority figure, often for the better. The lightbulb clicked for me...
I could make the leap to authoritarianism simply because you can witness how drasticly kids behaviors change in absence of an authority figure, often for the better.
The lightbulb clicked for me when I saw a Scout become 200x more engaged as soon as their parent left the room.
If you never learn to function without an authority, authoritarianism will be far more comfortable than democracy.
I'm wondering if half the rebellion in classrooms is children rebelling in the safest place they can.
I suppose it is about being careful not to mix up separate claims and arguments. Studying and examining casual links between types of play and social development requires one set of arguments and...
I suppose it is about being careful not to mix up separate claims and arguments. Studying and examining casual links between types of play and social development requires one set of arguments and claims. Linking it to the second point about authoritarianism, etc, requires a second set of arguments and claims. So I think the point I and the person I replied to was making is that the article was sloppy in the presentation.
As an aside, I remember from an old philosophy class in college that examined ethical dilemmas through the lens of people's based on how they developed/adopted their morals. I forget many of the...
As an aside, I remember from an old philosophy class in college that examined ethical dilemmas through the lens of people's based on how they developed/adopted their morals. I forget many of the details, but there was a bit of a watershed where some people active to an outside authority to derive their morals, and others tend to self-develop them. People who tended to subscribe to outside authorities would rate things like stealing medicine for your sick spouse as being more wrong than those who didn't. There was a lot more nuance than that, but it's was an interesting class.
I find it interesting that we can, as a culture, simultaneously hold the beliefs that children left to their own devices will at once descend to Lord of the Flies, and at the same time evolve a...
I find it interesting that we can, as a culture, simultaneously hold the beliefs that children left to their own devices will at once descend to Lord of the Flies, and at the same time evolve a society that is more egalitarian than the one we have developed over hundreds/thousands of years.
To be frank, this is why education needs to be evidence based and evolving, not based on our feelings.
The real answer is all things in moderation. Without good role models (who may mor may not be authority figures) at all, kids will almost certainly revert to Lord of the Flies. However, without...
The real answer is all things in moderation.
Without good role models (who may mor may not be authority figures) at all, kids will almost certainly revert to Lord of the Flies.
However, without ample freedom to explore and interact without authority's influence (and monitoring), it hampers the ability for self-discovery.
Of course in real life, when a group of young boys were shipwrecked, they worked together and survived for over a year Lord of the Flies was very much about a particular author's view of humanity...
Lord of the Flies was very much about a particular author's view of humanity and a counterpoint to stories of the British "civilizing" others with a story of British children reverting to savagery
I don't think it's true that kids will revert to violence. And I'm not sure how much their role models matter there.
It's honestly really weird how Lord of the Flies has largely supplanted the book it was written directly in response to, Coral Island, as a classic on school reading lists. In Coral Island, three...
It's honestly really weird how Lord of the Flies has largely supplanted the book it was written directly in response to, Coral Island, as a classic on school reading lists. In Coral Island, three boys are marooned in the South Pacific and have your standard Robinson Crusoe-esque experience. To quote its wikipedia:
The major themes of the novel revolve around the influence of Christianity, the importance of social hierarchies, and the inherent superiority of civilised Europeans over the South Sea islander
Lord of the Flies was explicitly written in response to how unrealistic Golding found Coral Island, and while he claimed it was supposed to portray "children who behave in the way children really would behave?", it's not just about children going crazy without adult supervision. It was written very intentionally to critique a book that was overly concerned with the inherent superiority and civility of white British people, and as a result is addressing human nature and the nature of so-called civilized people more than it's saying anything about children specifically.
Yeah I'm not as familiar with the specific book but I knew it was written in response to one. I feel like I've seen that before where the book that gets famous enough to last through history is...
Yeah I'm not as familiar with the specific book but I knew it was written in response to one.
I feel like I've seen that before where the book that gets famous enough to last through history is not the "original" but part of a response/conversation to something current at the time. (And I guess arguably all media may be in conversation...) But I don't know if I have the search terms to pin that down
On the other hand, I've watched a toddler beat another child with a bat because the other child walked near their toy. Shades of grey and all that. Some would, some wouldn't. Depends on their...
On the other hand, I've watched a toddler beat another child with a bat because the other child walked near their toy.
Shades of grey and all that. Some would, some wouldn't. Depends on their upbringing so far.
I met some first graders talking about how Asians all eat dogs. I'm sure they'll be a blast to work with on an island.
Well if you're discussing entirely different developmental ages, sure. 1st graders repeat what they've been told and toddlers are still working on empathy as a concept. Children are people, with...
Well if you're discussing entirely different developmental ages, sure. 1st graders repeat what they've been told and toddlers are still working on empathy as a concept.
Children are people, with all the pros and cons therein.
No idea what the cause is (I suspect it’s multi-factor, and thus complex), but I have anecdotally observed this trend starting slowly around the late 90s, and snowballing ever since. As a parent...
No idea what the cause is (I suspect it’s multi-factor, and thus complex), but I have anecdotally observed this trend starting slowly around the late 90s, and snowballing ever since. As a parent of two kids (12 and 8) at time of writing, this was a big concern of mine even before having kids - would they ever get an opportunity for unstructured play?
When I was in elementary school (1980 to 1986), I used to walk to school (~1Km away) with a group of kids ranging from 6-11 years old, and often on my own, even in the winter when it was cold and dark. After school we’d often go outside and just bump into each and start playing, but even then using the phone to call each other first to arrange things was becoming more and more common, and this is something my dad lamented (just go ring their doorbell!). By junior high (87-89), we never rang doorbells any longer, it was always call first to figure when/where to “hang out”. That said, play was completely unstructured, and I did some absolutely insane things and managed to survive (sheer luck, no joke),
Anyhow, the key was that when I went outside, there were other kids already there just messing around, so there was stuff to do. These days, there are no kids outside. I mean, AT ALL. Some kids are kept really busy, but other kids who aren’t really busy are still kept indoors because there are no other kids outside which creates this feedback loop that keeps kids indoors. Here’s where things get interesting though… they’re not “doing nothing”, they’re playing… a lot, it just doesn’t look like the play I (most of us) experienced.
My kids are busy playing and learning in a virtual world, along with millions and millions of other kids. Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, etc. are where they gather these days to play, and they do play. My wife and I try to give our kids as much freedom to play as they see fit, and we try hard to maintain their privacy, but obviously we overhear them and their chatter is… almost exactly as it was back in our day.
Point being that on one hand my wife and I have all this anxiety about our kids, hoping they are developing normally, heck hoping that they even have the chances to develop “normally”. But, very little that they do looks familiar, on the surface, and thus is another source of anxiety. However, digging into it a bit more reveals that they are still playing, it’s just very, very different, and yet the same. It’s not physical (which makes it much more difficult to promote physical health), but their social development seems to be progressing quite well (oddly enough).
Anyhow, long ramble over. Kids are playing as much as they ever have (if not more), but it’s just very different, and this causes a lot of anxiety amongst parents, and probably moral panic in the Gen-X (my gen) and Boomer generations.
Yes, definitely the feedback loop. It goes for the parents too: I don't see other parents letting their kids out --> must not be socially acceptable here I'll keep mine in And that's very...
Yes, definitely the feedback loop. It goes for the parents too: I don't see other parents letting their kids out --> must not be socially acceptable here I'll keep mine in
And that's very interesting to note about ringing someone's door bell. These days it's almost rude to even call someone without texting first. Walls are not higher all around us
This was an interesting article. I'm not sure why it didn't happen this time, but usually there's a tag or parenthetical in the title that notes the publishing date if the article is more than a...
This was an interesting article. I'm not sure why it didn't happen this time, but usually there's a tag or parenthetical in the title that notes the publishing date if the article is more than a few months old (this one came out in 2013). I had to scroll back and check when I kept seeing references to the Obama administration and no mention of COVID. But while this is a ten year old article, the argument is one I still hear very often.
Anyway, I want to preface this by saying that I don't know very much when it comes to research in evolutionary psychology, children's psychology, or child development. I should also note that I'm a fucking moron. Having said that, I am a teacher. And for the past six years I've worked in early childhood education - two years teaching in China, two years getting my degree and permit, and two years teaching in the United States. I've worked in two very different systems with very different philosophies and I've spent a decent amount of time seeing how children learn and play. And when I think about who was stronger in areas like cooperation and creativity during free play, it was without a doubt my Chinese students, even though they had maybe 1/3 of the total play time my American students have each day. Huge disclaimer - this was before covid whereas my American students are all post-covid, and the socio-economic conditions were significantly better for my Chinese students.
I agree with the broad concept that children today need more engaging, creative play but I don't think this is an issue that schools can resolve on their own, nor do I think it is the fault of the education system. The author focuses a great deal on education systems and the push to focus on academics over play, but there isn't a whole lot of evidence that school is the problem. He cites the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, and how the average scores have been dropping since 1984, but public schools in the 1960s weren't exactly known for open curriculums and additional play time. He talks about gaofen dineng but frames it in a way that blames the school rather than the complex set of social factors that result in children spending more of their free time focusing on their studies.
If we're going to address this issue, we need to recognize what's going on outside of school. Things like technology and screen time, helicopter parenting, and in the case for my students, the lack of safe, public spaces where children can play freely.
Well said, there are many many issues at play here that the article author just didn't even touch upon, much of it outside of school. It's a complex problem that requires more than pointing...
Well said, there are many many issues at play here that the article author just didn't even touch upon, much of it outside of school. It's a complex problem that requires more than pointing fingers at free play.
For what it's worth, PISA published their 2022 data on creativity, alongside their traditional science math language test results. Top of the list: Singapore. (Short article with link to full report). And there is nothing at all democratic about the famous Singapore curriculum/pacing.
As with the 3 PISA core domains, Singapore once again topped the table in the Creative Thinking test, with its students achieving a mean score of 41 points out of a possible 60. Korea and Canada both scored 38 points, followed by Australia on 37 points. New Zealand, Estonia and Finland scored 36 points.
And I'm very glad you mentioned this:
socio-economic conditions were significantly better for my Chinese students.
The author has a very obvious chip on his shoulder to sing praises for the school he chose for his own kid, at $9500-12000 a year. He also neglected to mention that democratic schools have been around for 100 years and nearly all of them have folded.. So, while I'm glad this school worked for him and his kid, I'm really not sure about his point that this style of school, or how much play, determines outcome any more readily can be explained simply by wealth.
"Genes associated with intelligence"... are an essential part of a positive feedback loop: When children demonstrate an aptitude at any activity, we reward them with more resources — equipment, private tutors, encouragement — to develop that aptitude; their genes enable them to translate those resources into improved performance, which we reward with even better resources, and the cycle continues until as adults they achieve exceptional career success. But low-income families living in neighborhoods with underfunded public schools often cannot sustain this feedback loop [...] without these additional resources, the full potential of those genes was never realized.
I feel like we could replace genetic enhancement in this fiction with any other advantage/idea: free play; technology in school; unschool/democratic school/homeschool/cram school/boarding school; coding and STEM initiative.... A lot of it will ultimately loop back around to present wealth as a predictor of future wealth.
Free play for a rich kid might mean visits to the family stables, a walk in a safe neighborhood, ride to the museum, browsing a well stocked family library, foraging in private back woods, tinkering with a stocked workshop/bench with latest tech. Meanwhile free play for a poor kid might just be staring at a blank wall and can't go outside without a car/supervision.
I'll second the sentiment of this article, with barely reading the intro paragraph.
It'a hard to even arrange playdates because most of my elementary kid's friends are shuffled around to various heavily structured activities 5 days a week.
Kids need downtime to be bored, so they learn to entertain themselves with their own creativity. They need to be able to play together in large groups without a grownup mediating every little bit, the way sports do.
Otherwise they start having anxiety when they're faced with having to make decisions without an authority figure presenting them options. I'm half convinced this is part of why there's such a rise in anxiety disorders...people have been conditioned from a young age to only make decisions within a tight framework of authority, and without it (when they venture out into the world), they feel lost and hopeless. This would also help explain the rise of children living at home longer, although economics play a huge role in that as well.
Was this normal for people growing up 20 years ago? Did I just grow up poor? I see this everywhere these days but back when I grew up me and my friends had maybe 1-2 things a week (and they were usually youth group or boy scouts, so it was only like 1-2 hours in the evening.) Most days were just me and my brother going back into the woods with the neighbor kids and building forts or exploring
It wasn't like that for me or any of my private school friends. We were "latchkey kids", who had to make their own way home from school because (shock and horror) both of our parents worked full time out of the house. But the media was talking it up as a scandal that there was so little attention paid to us in those three hours a day that we were unsupervised.
When you say latchkey kid, when did that start? I'm in my early 30s, but I lived down the street from middle school and my parents figured that was a good time to stop leaning on the after school program and let me chill at home. I had a number of things I went to, mainly karate and music stuff or friends' houses, but I had a decent amount of time to myself and was fine.
... Aside from how I ended up terminally online like a year later, and my ADHD exacerbated, and my procrastination hit a peak, and all of my grades slipped until high school, but aaanywaaay
Likewise, it was middle school for me.
I started as a latchkey kid in 2nd grade in the early 80's, so I would have been 6-7. I have vivid memories of climbing on the counter to get at hidden candy, haha. I can't remember where my little brother was during all this, probably at a babysitter.
We were not well off. Both parents worked, so I took the bus home from school and was on my own for a few hours. It was a new town so I couldn't go hang out with friends and didn't have any idea if it was common or not. I didn't think about that kind of things at that age, I figured my experienced was the same as everyone else's
Same here, but 30 years ago here.
And maybe I'm in a bubble, but here's one of my kid's friend's schedules circa first grade:
Monday:Soccer
Tuesday: After school program, then Dance
Wednesday: Grandma's (no friends)
Thursday: After school program, then soccer
Friday: Swim lessons
Saturday: Scouts and soccer games.
Sunday: Nothing
My kid's schedule:
Monday: Nothing
Tuesday:After school program
Wednesday: Nothing
Thursday: Nothing
Friday: Nothing
Saturday: Scouts
Sunday: Nothing
There is a scout troop here that advertises how noncommital and flexible it is, how they always work around all the sports activities and its not a big deal if you miss the 2x monthly meetings. It's basically a joke program for the kid's resumes more than a functional scouting program.
Gosh, that's sad. I did Girl Scouts, and there was no way I (or any of the other girls in my troop) were going to miss that. It was enormous fun. We went camping, made costumes, played games, rode horses, put on plays, etc. Of all the structured after-school activities I did, it was the only one I liked and quickly became the only one I was willing to do — I think because of how varied it was and how it utilized play, creativity, and exploration as learning devices.
Echoing other posters, I was very middle class and was growing up 20 years ago.
My parents might arrange for something fun to do as a treat or something as a special ocassion but day to day it was "go outside and play with your friends" or something. My mum got upset when I wanted to play video games or watch TV instead.
I was 17yo, 20yrs ago. But I feel like I started seeing some of it back then.
Growing up in the 90s, it was definitely the whole "come back before the streetlights turn on" thing. One apartment complex we lived in in the early/mid 90s was just full of kids running around. When my family moved to our first house in the mid/late 90s, that neighborhood had kids everywhere outside, all the time. My brother and I were just another pair of the numerous neighborhood kids.
We moved a couple more times by the time I was 17. My younger brother would've been like 12-13yo. And him and his friends were frequently out and about. They'd ride their bikes everywhere or just walk around.
However, I started noticing that there were rarely kids younger than my brother outside in our neighborhood. And I knew they were kids younger than them in that neighborhood, because we lived across the street from an elementary school! But most parents either walked or drove to the school to drop-off/pick up their kids. And that'd be the last I see of them for the most part until the next day.
If they were playing outside at all, they typically stayed in their yards/driveways. If they ventured further, it wasn't very far. Our house was on a large semicircle street that connected back to the main street and had like 2 or 3 cul-de-sacs attached. There were definitely kids who lived in those several houses, but I noticed that the kids rarely left the semicircle. They wouldn't even go to the school playground. I thought that was strange. Aside from a couple years in college, I lived at home til my mid-20s. And even when those kids got older, into middle school, I still rarely saw them.
Me, my friends, my brother, his friends, girls, boys...we were all over the place growing up. We had to have known the neighborhoods better than our parents because we would bike ride or roller blade all over the place, even to neighboring subdivisions. Which weren't always connected by easily accessible roads; we'd make paths through not-yet-developed fields/forests to get there. I have literally played around in storm drains and houses under construction! Yes, I realize how unsafe that is, but we did it. We survived.
We had video and computer games, too. I had access to the Internet at home in the mid/late 90s. But we'd still go outside all the time. As far as activities outside of school, I did scouts and basketball for a year or two. My brother played soccer for a few years. But that was it. And most of our friends were the same. For both of us, it was only in middle/high schools that we started getting more involved in things. But never so much that we didn't have time to relax or hang out with friends.
So I always thought it was weird in the last neighborhood was seemingly devoid of children playing. I thought helicopter parenting and all that was just a phase; something Gen Xers did. I didn't realize we as Millennials would end up doing the same (luckily, I don't have kids).
Mother by Pink Floyd
Boomers raised in the wake of WWII, Gen X raised in the shadows of the Cold War, Millenials in the wake of 9/11 (and the wars that followed). A lot of generational trauma about keeping your kids safe from strangers and the world at large.
I lived 5/10 minutes walk from my elementary and highschool, and my parents insisted on leaving work, coming to pick me up from school and dropping me off at home. Often, it means I'd be waiting for them for half hour or more, until the whole dang school is empty sometimes. It was insane. Walking home wasn't possible, the doors* are bolted from the inside, only way in was with a car. They were so traumatized it was practically neurotic.
Edit: And windows. The windows were steel bar'd, upstairs and down. I often "joked" that if the stairs caught on fire at night, we'd all be dead.
We had those bars on our windows when I was a kid, but they had hinges and a kickplate under the window to unlatch them in an emergency precisely for that reason. Dunno if they were an optional upgrade or legally mandated, though.
I wonder if my parents would have sprung for the kickplates if they knew it existed. my guess is mandated. Growing up in that Triangle Shirtwaist Factory reenactment house always made me somewhat worried about those window bars.
I’m only 29 and I didn’t have too many structured activities. I did cub scouts as a kid, robotics club after that. Was in a couple school plays. But beyond that it was mostly building forts, riding bikes, and playing video games.
At some point I remember accounting for all of my free time after school and it was most often something like 6 or 7 hours. Some classmates were shocked and had like one or two.
This goes back many decades if you were, say, Asian kid with academically driven parents.
See Wikipedia entry on Kyōiku Mama (Education mother)
If y'all watch/read Dragon Ball, the main character's son was first introduced as an adorable 4 year old, with an overbearing Kyōiku-Mama. That chapter was published in 1988.
I wouldn't say being poor is necessarily the prerequisite. More like, does one's parents subscribe to the meritocracy / rat race mentality that's far more commonly seen in some cultures than others, PLUS the neurotic level of anxiety about pushing the kids. There's some correlation, but not 1:1
Example, my parents were dirt poor and they really believed in education uplifting people out of poverty. But they also didn't super push, just quietly paid for stuff. Compared to others who were also poor who pushed hard, as well as those who were wealthy who also pushed hard.
I'm 24 and my childhood was like yours. After school, I'd just roam the neighborhood free, go from door to door asking if my neighbors' kids wanna come out to play, and just do whatever until dinner, then go home to eat (unless I was eating at a friend's house), and then go outside again until bedtime.
My sister who's 16 now, had very little of that. Mostly due to the lower numbers of children in the area, but also because other children had scheduled activities, additional tutoring for maths, music/dance courses, and the like. Nowadays she has a friend group but they see each other less and less because one friend has a helicopter grandma and the other one got a boyfriend, and now acts like a teenager who just got a boyfriend lmao.
We definitely had some structured activities when I grew up (I'm in my late 20s), but it didn't even get past once a week until middle school. People might load up on extracurriculars in high school depending on their interests and how much their parents were pushing for them to get into a good college, but even then 5 days a week was definitely not the norm.
I'm here to talk about the article as it is written.
Correlation not causation. Author made no attempt to justify linking these concepts other than it being "exactly what [they] would expect, in this article.
Where do I even start with this mess. Let me begin by saying that I don't necessarily disagree, and I could even fill in the blanks and imagine what they're trying to say and maybe even write an in depth analysis agreeing with them. But it's missing from their text, s'all.
First of all, the writer blames narcissism and lack of empathy on authoritarianism. How does democracy encourage these traits? Are children reading comics at home a democracy? Does free time in the woods encourage less narcissism somehow? Not to mention that we have whole dang civilizations of empathetic and non-narcissistic people's throughout history, living in authoritarian societies. In many Confucian cultures, it is held that personal freedom and disrespect towards others/elders is what causes lack of empathy and rise of narcissism.
And then competition and not being free to quit is blamed. I've seen the counter-argument countless times: that participation awards and being free to quit freely encourages narcissism. Peter Gray then goes on to say he's got a whole dang book arguing for this to be true. I'd just like to say that this article makes me less likely to want to read a book written by someone so obviously biased and takes so many unsubstantiated leaps in their writing.
I agree the article doesn't really make a clear argument, and I think the point they are trying to make has been made better in other books/articles.
To the questions you raise, I think the gist the article is inexpertly communicating is that unstructured and unmediated play between children gives them opportunities to learn social give and take, compromise, conflict resolution, etc. I've read on the idea before, but am not used to seeing the references to democracy and authoritarianism, etc. rather, other sources I've seen have focused on the benefits of peer self regulation and mediation without an authority figure stepping in and solving problems for them. But the leap to associating those things to democracy and authoritarianism seems a bit of a leap away from causally explaining the benefits to making moralistic arguments.
I could make the leap to authoritarianism simply because you can witness how drasticly kids behaviors change in absence of an authority figure, often for the better.
The lightbulb clicked for me when I saw a Scout become 200x more engaged as soon as their parent left the room.
If you never learn to function without an authority, authoritarianism will be far more comfortable than democracy.
I'm wondering if half the rebellion in classrooms is children rebelling in the safest place they can.
I suppose it is about being careful not to mix up separate claims and arguments. Studying and examining casual links between types of play and social development requires one set of arguments and claims. Linking it to the second point about authoritarianism, etc, requires a second set of arguments and claims. So I think the point I and the person I replied to was making is that the article was sloppy in the presentation.
Oh yes, didn't mean to dispute that as a whole, the article itself is a bit of a mess.
As an aside, I remember from an old philosophy class in college that examined ethical dilemmas through the lens of people's based on how they developed/adopted their morals. I forget many of the details, but there was a bit of a watershed where some people active to an outside authority to derive their morals, and others tend to self-develop them. People who tended to subscribe to outside authorities would rate things like stealing medicine for your sick spouse as being more wrong than those who didn't. There was a lot more nuance than that, but it's was an interesting class.
I find it interesting that we can, as a culture, simultaneously hold the beliefs that children left to their own devices will at once descend to Lord of the Flies, and at the same time evolve a society that is more egalitarian than the one we have developed over hundreds/thousands of years.
To be frank, this is why education needs to be evidence based and evolving, not based on our feelings.
The real answer is all things in moderation.
Without good role models (who may mor may not be authority figures) at all, kids will almost certainly revert to Lord of the Flies.
However, without ample freedom to explore and interact without authority's influence (and monitoring), it hampers the ability for self-discovery.
And there is science to back this free-form play up.
Of course in real life, when a group of young boys were shipwrecked, they worked together and survived for over a year
Lord of the Flies was very much about a particular author's view of humanity and a counterpoint to stories of the British "civilizing" others with a story of British children reverting to savagery
I don't think it's true that kids will revert to violence. And I'm not sure how much their role models matter there.
It's honestly really weird how Lord of the Flies has largely supplanted the book it was written directly in response to, Coral Island, as a classic on school reading lists. In Coral Island, three boys are marooned in the South Pacific and have your standard Robinson Crusoe-esque experience. To quote its wikipedia:
Lord of the Flies was explicitly written in response to how unrealistic Golding found Coral Island, and while he claimed it was supposed to portray "children who behave in the way children really would behave?", it's not just about children going crazy without adult supervision. It was written very intentionally to critique a book that was overly concerned with the inherent superiority and civility of white British people, and as a result is addressing human nature and the nature of so-called civilized people more than it's saying anything about children specifically.
Yeah I'm not as familiar with the specific book but I knew it was written in response to one.
I feel like I've seen that before where the book that gets famous enough to last through history is not the "original" but part of a response/conversation to something current at the time. (And I guess arguably all media may be in conversation...) But I don't know if I have the search terms to pin that down
On the other hand, I've watched a toddler beat another child with a bat because the other child walked near their toy.
Shades of grey and all that. Some would, some wouldn't. Depends on their upbringing so far.
I met some first graders talking about how Asians all eat dogs. I'm sure they'll be a blast to work with on an island.
Well if you're discussing entirely different developmental ages, sure. 1st graders repeat what they've been told and toddlers are still working on empathy as a concept.
Children are people, with all the pros and cons therein.
Lord of the Flies just isn't a good example
No idea what the cause is (I suspect it’s multi-factor, and thus complex), but I have anecdotally observed this trend starting slowly around the late 90s, and snowballing ever since. As a parent of two kids (12 and 8) at time of writing, this was a big concern of mine even before having kids - would they ever get an opportunity for unstructured play?
When I was in elementary school (1980 to 1986), I used to walk to school (~1Km away) with a group of kids ranging from 6-11 years old, and often on my own, even in the winter when it was cold and dark. After school we’d often go outside and just bump into each and start playing, but even then using the phone to call each other first to arrange things was becoming more and more common, and this is something my dad lamented (just go ring their doorbell!). By junior high (87-89), we never rang doorbells any longer, it was always call first to figure when/where to “hang out”. That said, play was completely unstructured, and I did some absolutely insane things and managed to survive (sheer luck, no joke),
Anyhow, the key was that when I went outside, there were other kids already there just messing around, so there was stuff to do. These days, there are no kids outside. I mean, AT ALL. Some kids are kept really busy, but other kids who aren’t really busy are still kept indoors because there are no other kids outside which creates this feedback loop that keeps kids indoors. Here’s where things get interesting though… they’re not “doing nothing”, they’re playing… a lot, it just doesn’t look like the play I (most of us) experienced.
My kids are busy playing and learning in a virtual world, along with millions and millions of other kids. Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, etc. are where they gather these days to play, and they do play. My wife and I try to give our kids as much freedom to play as they see fit, and we try hard to maintain their privacy, but obviously we overhear them and their chatter is… almost exactly as it was back in our day.
Point being that on one hand my wife and I have all this anxiety about our kids, hoping they are developing normally, heck hoping that they even have the chances to develop “normally”. But, very little that they do looks familiar, on the surface, and thus is another source of anxiety. However, digging into it a bit more reveals that they are still playing, it’s just very, very different, and yet the same. It’s not physical (which makes it much more difficult to promote physical health), but their social development seems to be progressing quite well (oddly enough).
Anyhow, long ramble over. Kids are playing as much as they ever have (if not more), but it’s just very different, and this causes a lot of anxiety amongst parents, and probably moral panic in the Gen-X (my gen) and Boomer generations.
Yes, definitely the feedback loop. It goes for the parents too: I don't see other parents letting their kids out --> must not be socially acceptable here I'll keep mine in
And that's very interesting to note about ringing someone's door bell. These days it's almost rude to even call someone without texting first. Walls are not higher all around us
This was an interesting article. I'm not sure why it didn't happen this time, but usually there's a tag or parenthetical in the title that notes the publishing date if the article is more than a few months old (this one came out in 2013). I had to scroll back and check when I kept seeing references to the Obama administration and no mention of COVID. But while this is a ten year old article, the argument is one I still hear very often.
Anyway, I want to preface this by saying that I don't know very much when it comes to research in evolutionary psychology, children's psychology, or child development. I should also note that I'm a fucking moron. Having said that, I am a teacher. And for the past six years I've worked in early childhood education - two years teaching in China, two years getting my degree and permit, and two years teaching in the United States. I've worked in two very different systems with very different philosophies and I've spent a decent amount of time seeing how children learn and play. And when I think about who was stronger in areas like cooperation and creativity during free play, it was without a doubt my Chinese students, even though they had maybe 1/3 of the total play time my American students have each day. Huge disclaimer - this was before covid whereas my American students are all post-covid, and the socio-economic conditions were significantly better for my Chinese students.
I agree with the broad concept that children today need more engaging, creative play but I don't think this is an issue that schools can resolve on their own, nor do I think it is the fault of the education system. The author focuses a great deal on education systems and the push to focus on academics over play, but there isn't a whole lot of evidence that school is the problem. He cites the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, and how the average scores have been dropping since 1984, but public schools in the 1960s weren't exactly known for open curriculums and additional play time. He talks about gaofen dineng but frames it in a way that blames the school rather than the complex set of social factors that result in children spending more of their free time focusing on their studies.
If we're going to address this issue, we need to recognize what's going on outside of school. Things like technology and screen time, helicopter parenting, and in the case for my students, the lack of safe, public spaces where children can play freely.
Well said, there are many many issues at play here that the article author just didn't even touch upon, much of it outside of school. It's a complex problem that requires more than pointing fingers at free play.
For what it's worth, PISA published their 2022 data on creativity, alongside their traditional science math language test results. Top of the list: Singapore. (Short article with link to full report). And there is nothing at all democratic about the famous Singapore curriculum/pacing.
And I'm very glad you mentioned this:
The author has a very obvious chip on his shoulder to sing praises for the school he chose for his own kid, at $9500-12000 a year. He also neglected to mention that democratic schools have been around for 100 years and nearly all of them have folded.. So, while I'm glad this school worked for him and his kid, I'm really not sure about his point that this style of school, or how much play, determines outcome any more readily can be explained simply by wealth.
I read a Ted Chiang speculative fiction short "opinion piece" the other day, titled "It’s 2059, and the Rich Kids Are Still Winning : DNA tweaks won’t fix our problems.(2019) that touched on this:
I feel like we could replace genetic enhancement in this fiction with any other advantage/idea: free play; technology in school; unschool/democratic school/homeschool/cram school/boarding school; coding and STEM initiative.... A lot of it will ultimately loop back around to present wealth as a predictor of future wealth.
Free play for a rich kid might mean visits to the family stables, a walk in a safe neighborhood, ride to the museum, browsing a well stocked family library, foraging in private back woods, tinkering with a stocked workshop/bench with latest tech. Meanwhile free play for a poor kid might just be staring at a blank wall and can't go outside without a car/supervision.