I thought decline of fitness was normally blamed on the stopping of compulsory PE at state schools (unless one is a left winger, than it is blamed on thatcher milk snatcher...[emoji849]).
I think Andy Kirkpatrick's point of view is pretty close to the answer.
In trying to remove the unpleasant risks and situations of childhood for the next generation, perhaps the struggle and challenge that a child needs to overcome in order to grow has been reduced or neutered.
I've posted this elsewhere, the podcast is excellent
Andy Kirkpatrick | Risky Play
To take this one step further, perhaps one unexpected side effect of Health and safety legislation and culture is that sometimes the unlucky, maladept and necessary ablative lessons survive. Instead of survival of the fittest, we have an evolution based on safety of the unfittest.
I think Andy Kirkpatrick's point of view is pretty close to the answer.
In trying to remove the unpleasant risks and situations of childhood for the next generation, perhaps the struggle and challenge that a child needs to overcome in order to grow has been reduced or neutered.
I've posted this elsewhere, the podcast is excellent
Andy Kirkpatrick | Risky Play
Although I spend a great deal of time in hostile environments, my laboratory of risk has always been playgrounds. They say you can judge a society by its prisons - I would add it’s playgrounds as well, as the people you find there will be your society. What I’ve noticed in our playgrounds is that the children who spin faster, that swing and climb higher, seem more physically and emotionally healthy than those who are told not to go too high, or too fast, or always in sight of anxious parents.
Our risk aversion is at the heart of many of our problems of dependance, self determination, mental illness, our blame culture. If we are unable to be afraid, and face that fear, or to have rites of passage, then children can never grow, and we brick ourselves in with fear. What this kind of play teaches children is one of the most important rules of life, the ability to hang on tight and be brave.
I was lucky in that I was perhaps the last generation of British children to play in parks laid in concrete - the weed of black rubber that spread across the parks of my youth - the first sign of the safety culture to come, risk and adventure slowly designed out of children’s lives. The total cost of rubber matting since the 1970s is in the range of four hundred million pounds, and accounts for 40% of the cost new playgrounds. Just think of all the amazingly dangerous playgrounds we could have built for that.
To take this one step further, perhaps one unexpected side effect of Health and safety legislation and culture is that sometimes the unlucky, maladept and necessary ablative lessons survive. Instead of survival of the fittest, we have an evolution based on safety of the unfittest.