Is Messing About Missing?

07/06/2004

"Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right." - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms

Is Messing about Missing?

In his Exchange book, Places for Childhoods: Making Quality Happen in the Real World, Jim Greenman discusses today's world for children...

"We are a society perhaps more attentive to children than any other; but it is a limited attention, most often directed toward parents and children as consumers. Organized around children's needs and desires and parents' desires for their children, goods and experiences are packaged, bought, and sold -- Cabbage Patch dolls, Suzuki violins, parent-child classes, computer camp. Needs are defined or created and marketed; goods and services are rushed in to fill the gap....

"What is missing? For many children, it is a sense of the variety of life -- the real world of people and nature and machines and an opportunity to explore the world and be a part of it. In the past, children did not need special places for play. They had more free time in houses, backyards, fields and streets. They lived amidst shops and trades people and mothers and fathers working in and around the home. And they had the time and freedom in their lives to mess about...

"It is not just that aspects of children's quality of life have changed, but their education as well. It is in messing about that children dream dreams and discover what they might be. Messing about is when children act on the world and discover what it is made of and how it works."

Places for Childhoods is featured as this week's Web Sale item of the week. You can buy Places for Childhoods at a 20% discount by going to: http://mail.ccie.com/go/eed/0234

For more information about Exchange's magazine, books, and other products pertaining to ECE, go to www.ccie.com.