Adventure Playgrounds

For my literature review, I researched and wrote about adventure playgrounds. Adventure playgrounds were first created in Europe when it was observed that children likes to play on bombed sites and practically everywhere other than designated playgrounds. These playgrounds are in response to adult-made prescriptive structures, which children quickly grow bored with. instead, these are spaces where children are allowed to build and alter their own structures, cook over fires, get in the mud, and a variety of other activities that are normally prohibited in playspaces. These dangers are counteracted by the presence of trained adults who fill the role of an unobtrusive observer, stepping in only when needed. This way, children can engage in creative and free play with managed risk, which is developmentally advantageous. While widespread in Europe, these adventure playgrounds never really caught on in the United States. Concerns about safety and liability have stifled their popularity, and there are only a few of these unstructured playgrounds in the country. I find this interesting, and perhaps unfortunate.

An adventure playground in Berkeley, CA–one of the very few in the country.

This raises a lot of questions for me about personal responsibility and trends in parenting styles. Perhaps Americans are too reliant upon institutional rules to keep them safe; I think that this may lead to negative consequences for our citizens. There is a personal example that comes to mind for me. I grew up in a rural area and was raised in a family where hunting was prevalent. As a child, I took a class with my dad about gun safety and was taught how to properly handle firearms. Last year, I went to a shooting range with my boyfriend and one of our close friends. This friend had never held a gun before and was an advocate of gun control. When it was his turn to shoot, I started to see why. Because he had no experience and was not used to handling anything that was dangerous, he was treating the loaded gun in a very lax fashion. It was terrifying. Because his world was very safe and sheltered, he did not have a strong sense of responsibility for the safety of those around him. This was a very unsettling experience for me, though not because I was concerned he was going to accidentally shoot me. I was very troubled that someone who I thought of as very intelligent and capable could have so little concept of danger. Perhaps our society has put so much emphasis on safety that we are actually doing people a disservice. If a child falls on a playground and lands in a soft bed of rubber chunks, maybe he will never learn that roughhousing can lead to a scraped knee-or worse. I do not think that we are doing our children any favors by presenting them with sterilized constructed environments with no possible risk. We show them a false and artificial world that is not the actual world we live in.