
In Britain’s Playgrounds, ‘Bringing in Risk’ to Build Resilience - onuralp
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/world/europe/britain-playgrounds-risk.html
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davnicwil
> in Shoeburyness in Southeast Britain

Completely off topic, but this made me chuckle, and I thought it might be
interesting to point out.

This sounds completely weird to a British ear. For some reason, don't ask me
why, we don't _ever_ refer to North/South/East/West in the context of
'Britain' but only in the context of the countries within it. Southeast
_England_ is the 'correct' phrasing.

Just an interesting and funny example of completey unintuitive local language
quirks being exposed by an outside perspective. Of course it's totally logical
to say 'Southeast Britain', and seeing that it looks weird made me, for the
first time, notice it and question why we don't.

~~~
tzs
I saw a made-for-TV movie about the Steven Stayner kidnapping [1]. Stayner was
kidnapped when he was 7 while walking home from school in Merced, California.

No one knew if he had been kidnapped, murdered, had an accident, or ran away.

There's a creek named Bear Creek that runs through Merced. At one point in the
movie someone in law enforcement suggests that they dredge "the Bear Creek" to
search for Stayner's body.

That probably sounded fine to most people watching, but it seemed very wrong
to me. I lived in Merced or the surrounding countryside from 7 until I went to
college, with several years living a block from Bear Creek, and I never heard
anyone call it "the Bear Creek". It was always just "Bear Creek" or "The
creek".

I once made a list (since lost) of assorted creeks, rivers, lakes, and other
prominent geological features around the US and what the locals called them.
Some almost always used "the" and some almost always did not. I could not
discern any pattern to which did and which did not.

I wonder if a given locality is consistent on this? E.g., if they omit "the"
from their local river, will they also omit it from their local lake?

I wonder if intelligence agencies, when sending people trying to pass as
natives to someplace to spy, train them on this level of local lingo minutia?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Stayner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Stayner)

~~~
Kluny
I'm from a town called Campbell River. There's a river called Campbell River
running through it. The river is The Campbell River and the town, of course,
is just Campbell River. Talking about the actual river was awkward. You had to
say "We're going up the River next weekend," and people would ask "Which
river?" because there are several in the area. Then you could say "The
Campbell River." It was necessary to have this exchange every time.

~~~
whatshisface
Wouldn't "we're going to the Campbell River," and "we're going to Campbell
River" be distinguishable?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Yes, but...

Local dialect almost prohibits certain speech.

I bought a pressure cleaner today. Where I'm from, South Australia, everyone
colloquially refers to them as "a Gurni", all the locals here in Tasmania call
them "a Karcher". These are the two leading brands.

The hardware stores here sell both, but if you say to someone here in Tasmania
"hit it with the Gerni" they'll screw their face up and then you have to have
the conversation about how everyone back in South Australia calls them "a
Gerni".

So, I think, it turns out easier to just use the local lingo even if it has
some peculiarities that seem clumsy.

My other favourite is "sack truck" vs "hand trolley".

Words are fun!

------
RobLach
It's odd that older generations feel the need to build in risk into
playgrounds when any kid will be just fine pushing risk. It's moreso
overbearing parents halting their fun.

I remember sitting in park watching kids daring each other to climb on top of
the plastic safety spiral slide and try jumping down the ground from 15 feet
up. Eventually a gaggle of adults kept lining up to talk them down to be more
safe.

Not to mention kids these days are under a massive amount of social
stigmatization through social media that permeates their daily lives. At least
back in the day when you got beat up at school you could go home and feel safe
for a bit. Nowadays your bullies come home alongside your Facebook account.

I tend to believe that the resilience built into the current teenage
generation is unprecedented. When I see others complaining about a lack of
grit in kids I see a generation that has developed a strong set of coping
mechanisms for a reality older generations are simply blind to.

~~~
DanBC
Children push risk, and so you need safer forms of risk built in to allow
children to feel the risk, rather than trying to eliminate all risk at which
point children do fucking stupid things like

> climb on top of the plastic safety spiral slide and try jumping down the
> ground from 15 feet up

~~~
truculation
_> Children push risk_

Yes, a healthy boy can't even sit on a chair without tipping, rocking,
swivelling, etc. Put peril in parks or promote _parkour_.

------
truculation
_> One such audit found that a popular climbing structure, open since the
early 1980s, presented “a medium to high risk potential for severe to fatal
injuries”_

Ah, they must mean the _tree._ Popular since 198000000 BCE.

------
ume
Tokyo (not sure about the rest of Japan) has similar with a number of 'play
parks' within larger parks. Rope swings, makeshift slides, saws, hammers and
nails abound. The kids come back smelling of smoke from the communal bonfire
though...

See [http://playpark.jp](http://playpark.jp) (Japanese only)

~~~
m_mueller
also their normal playgrounds are nice. Tarzan swings, metal bar jungle jims,
wood and metal slide houses and fenced in sandboxes are standard, plus they
pretty much all have public toilets and water fountains. In general I find
infrastructure for families great here, even in such a crowded place.

------
hyper_reality
> (In the United States, a country with far higher litigation costs,
> government agencies overseeing play safety are not known to have made any
> such changes.)

That's the first time in a while that the New York Times has really made me
laugh. The article pictures British schools as a model of educational
enlightenment, and takes a swipe against an obsessively litigious culture
that's seeping into the lives of infants. It shows how implementing
commonsensical educational policies is a bipartisan issue, and that the wider
litigious culture is the roadblock to helping kids develop well-tuned
resilient and risk-taking behaviours.

~~~
ukulele
Agreed on not holding British schools up too high, but as an American, I have
to agree with the author's swipe that any US facility that intentionally
provided bricks on a playground would be in for a world of hurt financially.
It would not end well.

------
linkregister
I showed this article to my Commonwealth wife and she chuckled. Most Brits
recall school as a place where physical and verbal bullying is commonplace,
much more prevalent than is perceived in other countries. Maybe the
playgrounds are sanitized, but the risk of physical injury at the hands of
ones' school mates is ever-present.

~~~
Angostura
UK schools have done a _lot_ to combat bullying in recent years. My kids’
experience of school is _quite_ different to mine.

------
Glawen
The next step would be to remove all those Safety signs (e.g. mind the step,
look left, drowning risk in front of the sea... ) in the streets and see how
many people die due to their absence.

~~~
achamayou
Those signs are not primarily there to prevent death, they exist to prevent
lawsuits, or at least mitigate their impact.

~~~
Glawen
I know, but i still find them stupid and i will always joke about them
preventing death. It is just such a contrast with continental Europe which do
not have them.

~~~
gambiting
Yep. I lived in UK for 8 years now and I still find them jarring. Warning
signs on literally everything. Damn automatic doors have to have no fewer than
3(!!!) warning signs(automatic door, sliding direction and watch out glass) -
it's insane. It's like living in a society of toddlers where everything has to
be safety labeled.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I like how in Star Trek TNG the lift in Engineering is an exposed platform
with handrails. Deep Space 9 has some of these as well.

Only the _Turbolift_ is fully enclosed because it travels fast.

In _the future_ there are no safety signs.

~~~
icebraining
The USS Enterprise was a military ship, though, not exactly open to the
general public.

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stctgion
Shoeburyness, home of the MoD testing range. I moved to the Kent coast as a
child. I was surprised while playing on the school playground that none of my
friends even noticed the deep booming sound every few minutes. The range must
be 50 miles away across the estuary but it's still loud enough to rattle
windows.

~~~
cup-of-tea
It's also quite close to the Richard Montgomery Exclusion Zone.

------
mirimir
At eight, I was playing with WWII ammunition. I mean, it was everywhere. But
damn, that was stupid.

------
John_KZ
It sounds like a specific playground for parents that want to feel special.
It's a ridiculous idea, and dangerous for the kids.

