Juno News - February 25, 2019


More schools must let kids be kids


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

193.13063

Word Count

686

Sentence Count

38

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The sun is bright, water is wet, and kids are going to sometimes hurt themselves when
00:00:06.500 they play.
00:00:07.920 You can of course do things to mask these realities.
00:00:11.080 You could put something in a watertight container, you could put on sunglasses, or you could
00:00:15.520 keep kids locked up in the classroom all day, but it's not going to change the fundamentals
00:00:19.400 that these things are in fact going to happen.
00:00:22.980 They're the realities of the universe, and I'm glad that some schools are finally realizing
00:00:27.180 that and embracing it rather than discouraging it.
00:00:30.700 Two schools in Quebec, elementary schools, have done away with their bans on rough play,
00:00:35.960 and they've put in a novel concept that in the long run studies show will actually make
00:00:40.040 kids less prone to injury and will make it certainly more enjoyable for them to get out
00:00:44.900 into the recess yard.
00:00:46.860 The first Quebec school to really investigate making this change was the Quatrevain Elementary
00:00:51.340 School in Saint-Apollinaire, Quebec.
00:00:54.060 This school put a rule in where there is a play fighting zone.
00:00:57.980 The zone is marked by cones.
00:01:00.100 Inside the cones, you are allowed to rough house.
00:01:02.840 This means you can pull people's coats, you can pile up, you can push them over, you can
00:01:07.120 roll around on the ground together.
00:01:09.120 You can really do anything that's in these rough games with the exception of violence itself.
00:01:14.160 So kicking, hitting, biting, or throwing objects.
00:01:17.740 If you don't want to do this, you don't go into the zone.
00:01:20.480 If you say stop, all the kids around you have to stop.
00:01:23.820 And the school has even told kids there are ways to fall without making it as likely for
00:01:29.160 them to hurt themselves.
00:01:31.020 So this is a great example of putting some limits and boundaries in place but letting
00:01:35.280 kids be kids.
00:01:37.160 So successful has the program been that another elementary school in Quebec nearby has adopted
00:01:42.560 identical rules to put forward this plan for itself.
00:01:46.480 And some parents are raising concerns, but for the most part, parents are liking this.
00:01:50.940 Parents are liking it.
00:01:51.940 Kids are liking this.
00:01:52.940 The school is liking this.
00:01:53.940 What's the problem?
00:01:54.940 Well, we've had a lot of litigiousness in society, which certainly contributes to the
00:01:58.960 idea, the fear of lawsuits, of being a mitigating factor in letting kids or not letting kids do
00:02:04.740 certain things.
00:02:06.300 But for the most part, it's generally speaking been this mentality of coddling.
00:02:10.160 That if you want to protect someone from getting hurt, you have to do all of these things
00:02:13.640 short of or including bubble wrapping them.
00:02:16.560 And this will eventually mitigate injury.
00:02:19.900 But the problem is it takes away the rights and the abilities of kids to learn how to play
00:02:24.340 and navigate the world without getting injured.
00:02:27.580 So when they are put in a situation where harm is possible, it becomes probable.
00:02:33.800 You know, one trailblazer in dealing with this was actually a school in Auckland, New Zealand,
00:02:37.760 the Swanson School, which about five years ago introduced policies banning the bans.
00:02:43.640 They banned a lot of the bans that existed on rough play and let students navigate the
00:02:48.140 world around them.
00:02:49.400 And one great story that the principal told was of a parent whose kid broke their arm.
00:02:53.660 The parent summoned a meeting with the principal and said, please don't change the rules.
00:02:58.040 Kids are going to break their arms.
00:02:59.680 I hope we're getting to an age where we're realizing that the helicoptering of kids is not
00:03:03.680 helping anyone in the long run.
00:03:05.680 Calgary, for example, has introduced a junk playground, which has a lot of things that
00:03:09.460 you wouldn't think are toys on it and things that, yes, could potentially be harmful.
00:03:13.920 But the goal is to allow kids to navigate the world themselves.
00:03:17.640 When we talk about a snowflake generation, we have to look into what we're going to do
00:03:21.620 to make it easier for kids to navigate the world themselves.
00:03:25.240 And eliminating the rules that keep them from just being kids is a great step in a necessary
00:03:30.520 direction.
00:03:31.520 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.