I know I may sound like a cliché—when I went to school as a kid I had to walk through knee-deep snow uphill for three miles in both directions. Not really, but my friends and I would wander through orchards and vineyards, talk, joke, play tag, and eventually reach the schoolyard where we would meet up with more friends and join a group game of marbles. It was all about social interaction, games, and having fun with friends. Since I was that kid, walking my meandering route to Prince Phillip Public School in St. Catharines, things have changed.
Decades later I deposited my own kids at a bus stop and watched as a big yellow school bus whisked them away. Today, as a grandfather, I stand on a corner with the neighbourhood parents as we drink our morning coffee and deliver our children to the school bus and meet there again for the afternoon pick-up. We make sure the bus driver sees us to ensure that parent and child have connected and all is safe before driving on.
Childhood has become safer and perhaps more sterile and less fun. But not all bad. I think of some of the things we did as kids—the trees we climbed, the holes we dug, the games we played—and I wonder how I physically survived. We swam in the Welland Canal. We built rafts for lake travel. We did 20-mile bike trips, all with no parental knowledge or input.
Times have definitely changed and we have become more protective, I think to a fault. When I drive through any neighbourhood in any town, large or small, in southern Ontario I very rarely see kids outside at play individually or in groups. Likely if I drove through a neighbourhood in any village, town, or city anywhere in Canada it would be the same. Perhaps the only exception to my observation is the iconic road hockey, which I hope never disappears from the urban landscape. It gives me hope for the future.
I believe children have lost their ability to organize themselves to play in groups without adult supervision. If I took a random sample of kids and gave them baseball equipment or a soccer ball and placed them in a field, my guess is they would not know what to do. They could not make teams, select captains, show leadership, designate positions, negotiate division of labour, mediate disputes, or most importantly, have fun outside together participating in physical activity. I suspect that children of today’s generation would be in a social void without the ability to organize themselves in that situation.
I am 70 and grew up before computers and the Internet. My TV world had 12 channels with little violence. TV time was regulated and generally was a family activity which included Ed Sullivan, Mr. Green Jeans, and Captain Kangaroo. I walked to school and played hard outside at recess and lunch. When I got home from school I put on my “play clothes” and went outside with my friends and was gone until dinner. My parents may have had a vague notion of where I was and with whom I was playing.
We built forts, played hide-and-go-seek, organized baseball and football games, made hockey rinks and played all the seasonal sports without adults. We camped out in the backyard and explored the neighbourhood on our
bikes, reenacted cops and robbers, and pagans and missionaries when our sisters played with us, all without the intervention of a single adult.
As night fell, mothers in the neighbourhood would call out for their kids to come in for dinner. We would yell back, “five more minutes,” to buy more time. Once inside, we would eat as a family with no TV on in the background. After dinner was homework and more unsupervised indoor playtime, building plastic models of cars and trucks using my Mechano set, or mini bricks, or more likely pieces of scrap wood from my Dad’s basement woodworking shop. I read Hardy Boys books and then went off to bed to repeat the process the next day. Life was good. I had a wonderful childhood.
I can’t help but contrast what I experienced growing up with what I observe today and can’t help thinking that iPads, cable, Netflix, video games, Internet, cell phones, and the like have been more curse than blessing. Children and young adults are losing connections with each other, the family fabric is suffering, and dialogue is being muted with the pause button of the electronic age.
I recognize that society is not the same and neighbourhoods are not the safe havens they were when I grew up. It is a darker environment now and children do need protection. But when I see children hustled off to gymnastics, swimming, and music lessons, then soccer and all the other organized activities available today, I think we have gone too far in another direction. I think that busy schedules and too much organization may stifle imagination and other benefits of individual and group play. We have come so far that we have organized, protected, and structured our children to the point where they need more breathing space to play with other kids in the absence of electronics and adults. Give them a ball, a bat, a skipping rope, a football, or a doll and let them play and see what they do. They may surprise us!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marty Rempel
Marty Rempel has been an educator since graduation from Western in 1976 and has seen many changes in attitudes and values towards learning and education. He is currently a principal of Metro International Secondary Academy in Markham, ON. He has lived and taught in the Bahamas, Germany, Kuwait and China.
This article is featured in the Fall 2022 issue of Canadian Teacher Magazine.
