There's much discussion on how to teach
our children the skills they will need for the future, and how to
pass on our skills to them. Everyone is aware that this is not
happening any more the way it used to in the recent past. And so we
end up with elaborate structured programs: summer camps, nature
programs, teen centers, etc. These artificial structures awkwardly
attempt to duplicate the effortless organic learning that kids used
to do so naturally.
What has changed? What keeps kids from
getting out in, and engaging with, their surrounding world, and
assimilating all that knowledge? Computers, computer games, internet,
and other similar technology generally get blamed, but that's an easy
excuse. It's like blaming the fast food industry for America's weight
and health problems.
I'm a human ecologist by definition -
at least that's technically what my degree is in. And my human
ecology instincts whisper that there are two major factors that open
the doors for kids to engage with their world. One is physical space.
The other is, simply, other kids. Provide these two elements in the
correct magic configuration and you can then pretty much sit back and
let everything else unfold.
Here's what you need for the other kids
part: One, a minimum number; I'm not sure what that is exactly, but I
suspect it's somewhere around a dozen at least and more is better.
Two, close proximity to one another - ideally within a few doors, but
certainly within easy walking distance. And three, you need kids of
various ages. Kids tend to interact with, and learn much more from,
older kids, especially siblings, than from parents.
Here's what you need for the physical
space part: a widely diverse and safe habitat. Just like the
biologists always say when speaking of healthy ecosystems. Kids need
houses, decks, barns, garages, sheds, tree forts; they need yards,
gardens, hedgerows, woodpiles, neighborhoods, sidewalks and streets; they need
woods, fields and bodies of water. They need small towns with small
stores, libraries, movie theaters, railroad tracks and ice cream
stands. They even need abandoned buildings and lots.
Put a bunch of kids into a diverse
habitat and watch the chain reaction. The kids know what to do. All
they need are the basic resources - much more basic than we seem to
think. Then, they can walk, run, ride bikes, swim, skate, play games
and get creative.
I can't help thinking that all the
countless dollars that communities invest in structured programs for
kids - the nature programs, camps, teen centers, etc. - would be so
much better used for the longer term investment of transforming their
physical space; for diversifying their habitat; making it safe; and
for creating the sort of housing that fosters neighborhoods with lots
of kids. Our problem is one of isolation and of physical space
"monoculture."
Here's some of the things we taught
ourselves as kids.
Political, social, administrative and
organizational skills: secret clubs, which of course had to have
secret club notebooks, passwords, languages, codes, badges, mottos,
rituals, officers, and admissions tests and ceremonies. We designed
and made all these things ourselves. The clubs ran more smoothly than
our town governments do and were much more fun.
Electronics: we built our own "radios"
and other communications devices from painted blocks of wood and
various components from our dads' workbenches. When my
electronically-obsessed brother got older, he built a Star Trek
communicator that looked and sounded exactly like the real thing and
actually worked. Well, he couldn't talk to alien life forms or get
beamed up, but he could communicate with other nearby humanoids with
radios or CBs. He also built a radio station in the basement with a
broadcast radius of about a block, which would play requests when we
wrote them on paper airplanes and flew them down the basement stairs.
Engineering design & construction:
golf ball and marble rolling trails on hillsides, with bridges,
tunnels and jumps. Forts - on the ground, under the ground, and above
the ground in trees - one of my fondest memories is the warren we created in the neighbor's enormous brush pile which included entire trees. Bicycle trails and jumps. Toy boats, airplanes,
helicopters, parachutes, and kites. Building bricks and tinker toys
and erector sets. Bird feeders, bird houses, pet shelters. Twig
houses and villages. Rafts, bridges and dams. We knew the properties
of stone, water, snow, ice, soil, wood and plant materials - and
sometimes fire. I didn't even realize I knew these things until a few
years ago when I tried working with a friend who didn't.
Wilderness survival skills: shelters,
stalking, making weapons, foraging - and fire. For a time it was all
the rage to snitch the big glass lenses off the local railroad
semaphores. About ten or twelve inches in diameter, flat on one side
and convex on the other, and two or three inches thick in the center,
they could focus sunlight to a pinpoint of glare that would start a
fire in literally about three seconds flat. Do not try this at home.
Oakland had nothing on us. The neighborhood nearly burned down
several times every summer until kids figured out how to control the
fire... or maybe the fad died out.
Truly, it's amazing we didn't kill
ourselves. I pale now to think of some of the things we did; skating
on the brook right to the edge of the gaps in the ice comes to mind.
But we never seemed to really get hurt. The worst injury was probably
Carrie Sarchesian who fell off her bike while riding no hands and got
a mild concussion.
Parents, on the other hand, were always
getting wounded in the most embarrassing ways. Mr. Brunelle fell
through his swimming pool deck and broke his leg, and my Dad borrowed
my bike one day, forgetting that these newfangled bicycles had hand
brakes instead of foot brakes. He went all the way down the hill
without remembering this, at rapidly increasing velocity, wildly and
ineffectually pedaling backwards, and flipped over the curb at the
bottom in what must have been a spectacular display of aerial action
adventure, if anyone had been there to see. He survived; my bicycle
did not.
Kids today will never exactly duplicate
most of the things kids did thirty years ago - nor should they.
Intimate relations with computer and internet are a part of today's
kids' lives and an important skill for their future. They are not the
only skills, but we will find that the kids know this if we give them
half a chance. Today's children will interface with the world, their
world, in ways we can only imagine - and in ways we can't imagine.
They will fuse past and present and future in new and unexpected
configurations. All we need do is turn them loose together in a
diverse habitat.
