Please can we have our ball back?

10th March 2008
By Paul Cooper

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Having been asked to digest the recent conservative report on childhood and play, More Ball Games, I could not help but compare my own upbringing in the 1950s and 1960s with what is on offer to children today.

I guess it is easy to get misty eyed about one’s own childhood, but other than some elements at school, namely lessons, the daily stand up wash with a flannel at the sink and sprouts, childhood was pretty idyllic.

Parents of that generation also had their fears, knowing that an hour of Torchy the Battery Boy and Animal Magic would hardly keep us indoors for long. In the 1960s, something nearly as hypnotic as the internet threatened to keep children hidden inside, the invention of subbuteo.

The report has its heart in the right place and should be congratulated above all for their aim of reclaiming public space. The more politicians can publicise the importance of getting children out into the world (instead of being holed up in front of the TV or computer screen) the sooner we’ll move out of the rubbish position at the bottom of the UNICEF well-being league.

It is the physical, social and emotional benefits of playing out, all of which are essential for genuine human well-being. There is a concern that we might hand over the responsibility of children’s play to over-organised, structured and often expensive schemes, that teach our children to ‘play’.

The only experts I have ever come across on children’s play are small and don’t have receding hairlines and mortgages.

Many sports have got sucked into this dynamic and in children’s football we now have the ‘Premiership for tots’ with children as young as seven playing in leagues with subs and adult rules and expectations. I bet there are no subs in the school playground where children are still in control of their own game.

As well as reclaiming public space, we need more play rangers both to police these areas and help create a safe environment where children can lead and play on their own terms.

Children don’t need expensive, brightly coloured areas — they just need the space.

Other areas of outside play that can be quickly improved are in the school playground.

With the pressure on schools to reach their necessary targets, play time has been reduced, with shorter lunch times and in some cases the afternoon break time being done away with altogether.

The above are all quick, cheap and effective fixes using structures that already exist and that will certainly see some positive improvements, but we also need to think long term and seriously about how we can incorporate a more child-friendly and safer environment with new housing projects that start at both the front and back door of every new house that is built.

We need more green spaces to play in, streets where children and cars can co-exist and more thought given to how all the community can benefit from more forward planning.

The report makes a good fist of understanding the challenges and it is certainly a good start for the battle that lies ahead for all the political parties.

The next election, more than any other, will be fought out in the nation’s parks and playgrounds and perhaps the sound bites will be ‘Play, Education, Play, Education’ (and in that order). As the old Sinatra song goes, ‘you can’t have one with out the other’.

Paul Cooper is Co-founder of ‘Give Us Back Our Game’

Filed Under: , Childhood, , Play
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