Accidents Happen - In Praise of Risky Play

I'm really fascinated at the moment by the notion of risk in the learning environment: how we control it, how far we should control it, how we can possibly find the right balance? As a society, we're becoming more and more risk averse - the threat that 'someone might sue' has lead to organisations slavishly following the 'rules', and forgetting that common sense is often the best yard stick of all. In the snow earlier this year, vast numbers of schools closed because of the risk that children or parents might slip over. But all this did was encourage those same children to head off to break their bones sledging down the nearest hill. Those of us who work in education have, to my mind, a duty to teach children how to be careful, how to calculate risks. And we can only do that if we allow them to take risks in the first place. Of course, these must be calculated risks. The other morning the children at my local preschool were using some real life cups and saucers, made of proper pottery, for their tea party. This was in the spirit of the Montessori approach, where you teach children to handle proper stuff, rather than all those plastic toys that are so risk free. But it was a calculated risk - the staff supervised them closely, and we didn't hand them a load of wafer thin champagne glasses and some sharp carving knives as well.

I went to a outdoor play meeting a while back, where someone from the Children's Society gave a fascinating talk about the Forest Schools in Denmark. What really caught my attention was the slide of a dead animal. The idea is that children are encouraged to bring in anything they find, and that includes roadkill, which they study and handle and just generally explore. The initial response from the group was 'ugghhh' and 'did they wear gloves?' (no they didn't was the answer). The next response was 'what on earth would Ofsted say?'. I have to admit, though, my over-riding thought was 'Why on earth didn't I think of that earlier?' Because a few months ago, there was a dead hedgehog on the lane just outside the little pre-school where I volunteer. I watched fascinated as day by day it attracted flies, which laid their eggs, which hatched into maggots, until the hedgehog eventually melted away into the ground. Now I'm kicking myself - what a missed opportunity! And how much learning our children would have got out of studying that lovely creature and its very sad demise!

During the course of my career in education, I've taken a good few risks. Sometimes they paid off, other times they didn't, but I've always aimed to give the children a measure of trust. Sometimes it works and they repay the trust you've shown them, sometimes it doesn't and things go wrong, students let you down. But that's no excuse for not doing it, because if they never get the trust, they never get the chance to prove themselves worthy. I guess the story of Flour Babies illustrates this point perfectly (go to the Lessons page on my website for details). The first time I did this activity was in a London school, with your typical mix of London kids. And they treated those bags of flour as though they were their own, real babies, taking the greatest of care of them for the entire week. Those babies had faces painted on them, cuddly toys, blankets, names. The students did me proud. The second time I tried the activity was in a school overseas, where the students came from much more privileged backgrounds. Within a few hours of handing out the bags of flour, there was a line of sobbing girls at my door, complaining that 'the boys have kidnapped our babies'. Hot on their heels was the caretaker, not looking best pleased. 'Come into the playground now please, Miss Cowley', he said. I rushed outside, only to find the flour baby massacre taking place. But I'd do that activity again, in a heartbeat (in fact I do it again at most of the training courses I deliver - you'd be amazed at how the teachers respond to the idea - not always good but definitely always interesting.)

I was looking for some quotes yesterday, about being brave and taking risks, to add into a keynote speech I'm giving shortly about transformational learning. There was a quote from T.S. Eliot which really struck a bell: "You have to risk going too far to discover how far you can really go." Yes it might go wrong/you might look stupid/the kids might think you're weird/someone might bang themselves/your classroom could get trashed (delete as appropriate) but be brave, dear reader. As Shakespeare memorably wrote, 'screw your courage to the sticking-place and we'll not fail'.