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Posted by Bill S on February 12, 2008 at 12:05:47 pm EST
In reply to People prefer videogames to the outdoors posted by Bill S on February 5, 2008 at 7:48:13 pm EST

MTB416 said

Quote:

The old days don't seem as cool as some people would like to think.

Then again, the "new days" (as in, the current fashion/fad) isn't as cool as some people think, either. And besides which, what is "cool" today will be old hat and decidedly uncool within a week or so.

f_klock's post makes an excellent point. The do-gooders who are trying so hard to protect us from ourselves and from every imagined hazard may also be missing something that has to do with self-reliance, and even the body's own way of protecting itself. There is a lot of medical evidence that children "protected" from a lot of things in the environment have less resistance to diseases and more problems with allergies than "unprotected" kids. As f_klock's post also points out (where did this come from, by the way?), you used to have to pay the consequences of your actions, and you often learned by observing what happened to your peers.

If all the playgrounds are padded, how will a kid learn that falling on the ground is gonna hurt? If a kid is not allowed to fail, how is s/he going to learn to deal with failure (or even as the line in the old song goes "when you fall down, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, try it all over again")? If every breaking of the law is forgiven as "it was just the neighborhood he lived in" or "the kid was abused", and even a slap on the wrist is considered cruel and unusual punishment, then what is learned may well be "do what you feel like, there is no penalty."

Here in Palo Alto, in the K-5 level in the schools, competitive activities are frowned on. Reason? If you have a competition, there is only one winner, which makes all the other kids feel bad. If you have more than one competition, eventually everyone loses sooner or later, which means that every kid will run into situations where they feel bad, lose self-confidence, etc. (no, I am not making this up).

We hear a lot of complaints in this area about the youth having "nothing to do" if you don't let them play video games, text, watch TV, watch YouTube, make YouTube videos. I work with youth groups, and often get the complaint when out on a hike or when invited to look at the stars at night that it is "boring" or "nothing to do". They want to retreat to their IPods or pocket Gameboys, or complain when there is no cell coverage (I have seen them texting or talking on the cell to a friend standing within 20 or 30 feet - hey, ever hear of talking face to face?)

Mostly, I feel it isn't so much that the "old days" or current fashion is more or less cool than the other - they are just different from each other (yeah, here in Palo Alto, we are told that if a kid feels s/he is "different", then s/he will feel bad about him/herself, and runs a high risk of committing suicide). But I agree with the point of the article in f_klock's post - the big thing lost from the "old days" (even as recently as 2 or 3 decades ago) is the sense of responsibility for oneself and one's actions and the sense of self-reliance, and even a sense of caring and responsibility for others, both those close to us and more generally the rest of our species.

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