[alibarber]

At some point last year I read an article, probably in the Guardian, about what school was like at the time (when it was open) for the kids. Not allowed their own toys, forced to stand on markers on the ground, not allowed to mix with their friends or just play in the dirt and be, y’know, kids. I don’t have children, but I really started to question whether it was worth it - the poor things.

[lclarkmichalek]

Doesn’t sound too dissimilar to schools before the pandemic. They weren’t exactly libertarian paradises

[alibarber]

No they’re not - but it wasn’t all that long ago that I was in school myself and it sounded extremely dissimilar to how I remember it - particularly for younger kids, who spend all day outside of lessons running around yelling and playing sports or doing activities and all.

[nostrademons]

What era? My own childhood (in the 80s) was filled with recess and free-play and gym class. However, I got the perception from parents of kids who attended elementary school in the late 00s and 10s that recess has been cut or dramatically shortened and nearly everything is scheduled and academically-oriented. This predates COVID, and is a consequence of the general climate of fear and hyper-competitiveness that's followed the 08-09 financial crisis.

My kid plays in the dirt, but he does it with me, not at preschool (where apparently they don't even do play-dough and sand these days). He does have some recess & free-play time - I can't imagine managing a 3-year-old without it - but it's time-boxed into 30 minute increments.

[alibarber]

I was in junior school (<11 years old) in the UK in the late 90s. Lunch time was an hour and a half of (obviously eating) and loosely supervised running around in a field with a ball, attempting to climb a tree, using your imagination to play games with your friends, falling out with your friends one day, learning how to make up the next, falling out of said tree and being patched up by the school nurse. There were music clubs and science and art ones too, where you’d mix with other years. The library had computers that a few of us learned HTML on, and later the internet.

I’m not really looking back through rose tinted glasses, this was also at a quite competitive academically driven private school (if you did not then pass the 11+, bye bye) but like, you really were free to do a lot. Perhaps things really have changed then (and I really have gotten old), I like to hope not. I dunno - I really just don’t think it’s fair to do that to the young. Especially coupled with the justification that ‘if you do rough and tumble play with your mate you will kill your grandmother’ reasoning that they must have picked up on.

[blacktriangle]

It wasn't worth it.

[alibarber]

Honestly - I have to agree with you, no matter how unpopular an opinion that is. I got to watch my elderly relatives die long before COVID was a thing, which was of course very sad. But no one tried to take my childhood away to prevent it (which it wouldn’t have anyway) - like what seems to be happening now to some extent.