Comments on: The Case of the Missing See-Saws

By: CJ Fearnley

CJ Fearnley — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:29:12 +0000

Gever Tulley has a couple of very good videos at ted.com on the issue of teaching children to learn about the world that are relevant to your inquiry: Gever Tulley teaches life lessons through tinkering and Gever Tulley on 5 dangerous things for kids.

By: Selena Deckelmann

Selena Deckelmann — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 05:04:21 +0000

Have you ever seen flying foxes? http://www.adventurelogue.com/destinations/flying-fox-ride-in-new-zealand.html

They have playground versions of these all over the country in new zealand. Other than being freaking awesome, and suitable for adults to play on as well, I thought to myself – what has gone so wrong in america that we don’t have fun like this anymore?

Anyway, if there was a message for me, it was: I want to live with these crazy people that teach their children to play unsupervised on dangerous ziplines in a country that is largely a tropical paradise.

Not really what you were talking about, but I liked your thought.

By: Ben Peters

Ben Peters — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 05:34:22 +0000

What could be more fitting than the name “see saw” for something, now in the past tense, that, to use, one has to first see another? The “see saw” describes itself! It is something one must see that we only rarely can say we saw. (To your tally, I last saw a see-saw near the Columbia river gorge between Washington and Oregon.) Very much in favor of arguments, like yours, that challenge zero-sum assumptions about the relationship between risk and security. Of course, see-saws allow for betrayal (drop the other guy off) as well as cooperation, which is probably part of the larger creative risk part of play your argument supports.

By: Michael Glass

Michael Glass — Tue, 11 May 2010 05:48:35 +0000

I wonder how many kids are actually injured at official playgrounds. Perhaps this is my heritage as someone not from the city, but I didn’t spend much time in parks or playgrounds as a kid. I spent a lot of time in (much larger) school yards than exist here, and a lot of time in the woods.

As such, the sanitization of schoolyards isn’t something that I find meaningful. Most of the damage inflicted upon me as a youngster was due to some “mock” violence I was participating in. Many of our schoolyard games involved fighting or scaring each other. It wasn’t malicious, but it was terribly violent (… and fun).

I think when it comes down to it, kids can be pretty nasty (even when it’s all in good fun). Removing the see saw doesn’t remove the kids’ (from my experience) unrelenting appetite for violence, chaos, and competition to see who has the least fear. I almost see the games in the play ground as distractions from the terrible things kids would be doing without them. The see saw and the merry go rounds are really only dangerous when misused (see: p.s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRasoZMirRc). Without those, there will always be the age old “get as far from the ground as you possibly can and jump” or the classic, “fight and grapple until someone stops having fun, perhaps because they’ve been seriously injured”.