Lost Art of Drawing the Line (eBook)

All across America, playgrounds are being closed or stripped of standard equipment. In 1997, Bristol, Connecticut, removed all of the seesaws and merry-go-rounds from its playgrounds. When told of the decision, the face of thirteen-year-old Jennifer Bartucca fell with disappointment. 'Every time I come here, I ask a friend to go on the seesaws. It is one of my favorite things to do at the park,' said Jennifer: 'I love merry-go-rounds. My father would push me on them when I was a little kid.' Nicole LaPierre, sixteen, was equally disappointed. 'If you play right, you're not going to get hurt.'

Being safe has come a long way since Ralph Nader pointed out the absence of safety guidelines for cars and other consumer products. Avoiding risk is now practically a religion. But it's not clear that the results are necessarily what most people want. Some towns, for example, have the resources to replace the playground equipment with new, safer alternatives, including transparent tubes to crawl through and a one-person seesaw that works on a spring. Can you wait? The new equipment is so boring, according to Lauri Macmillan Johnson, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Arizona, that children make up dangerous games, like crashing into the equipment with their bicycles.

The headlong pursuit of safety is killing off the simple pleasures of life. Why take a risk on an activity that's not absolutely necessary? The town of Park City, Utah, had a proposal to make bicycles available for free to tourists and others, both to alleviate the traffic and to make the town more attractive. Most people old enough to ride a bicycle are aware of the hazards. But accidents happen, and after concerns were raised about the possibility of a horrible accident, the plan was stopped. Better safe than sorry. Larck Lake, in West Virginia, had been open to fishermen and picnickers since 1993. But the officials got scared because teenagers coming up to a party there often decided to go swimming. 'We felt that, sooner or later, there would be an accident,' said Fred Stottlemyer, an official with the company that owns the lake, 'so we decided to close the lake to recreational use.' Bob Petryszak, who bought a house nearby because of the lake, was disappointed. 'This is a great place to fish. The recreation it provides is a great asset to the area. There should be a way to keep it open.'

Fun is optional, of course. The prophets of safety certainly practice a gloomy earnestness. But some activities that we've cut out are pretty important. Psychologists tell us, for example, that children need affection. Even before there were psychologists, most people, and animals as well, showed affection to their young. But in America, hugging or, indeed, even a pat on the back is now considered so dangerous that teachers can't do it. 'Our policy is basically don't hug children,' said Lynn Maher, speaking for the New Jersey chapter of the National Education Association (NEA). The guidelines of Pennsylvania's NEA chapter urge teachers to do no more than 'briefly touch' a child's arm or shoulder. Michigan passed a law that forbade teachers to touch students for any reason. We're well on our way to a society where, as Ann Welch, a special-education teacher in Virginia, put it, 'we tell children that karate is okay and hugs aren't.'

Being safe, maybe extra-safe, is what we say is happening. But nobody really believes that. What's going on has little to do with risk to other people. It's mainly about avoiding legal risk for the person conducting the activity. 'Ultimately, we came to the conclusion we were exposing ourselves to too much liability' by allowing people to keep using Larck Lake,...