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In Britain’s Playgrounds, ‘Bringing in Risk’ to Build Resilience
- davnicwil 9y ago> 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.
- beschizza 9y agoAnother favorite American-perspective truth about Britain I enjoy is when towns in Essex are described as London suburbs. It's inconceivable to me (I lived in Chelmsford for a few years as a teenager) but quite true.
- colordrops 9y agoIf you mean that it's too far out to be considered a suburb, places even farther out from Los Angeles than Essex is from London are described as suburbs of Los Angeles, so I don't know if it's an American perspective. Apologies if you meant something else.
- tialaramex 9y agoTypically a suburb is related by function rather than distance. For example I grew up in what's called a "dormitory village" built in Metroland - which is a type of suburb. Like most cities London used to expand by gradually encroaching on surrounding non-urban land - most parts of what we'd now think of as inner London were originally villages on its outskirts, and the city just kept growing. The last batch of growth was "Metroland", the North West expansion of London's underground railway to neighbouring towns last century. And then people said "Enough" and the planning rules were altered to create a "green belt" into which London could not grow. But Metroland is still there, just stuck at the first phase where it's connected to the city but not yet urbanised. You can wake up in your nice cottage amid open countryside in the village of Chesham, walk a few minutes to a London Underground station incongruously sited amidst this setting and travel to your job in the City of London (which you need because a cottage in rural-seeming Chesham is fantastically expensive...). The dormitory villages don't make any sense without the huge city to absorb all these workers, so they're defined by it and by the transport links that make it practical to live in this village yet work in the centre of the city, they are suburbs.
- noja 9y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grZ6371HcJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grZ6371HcJE
- cup-of-tea 9y agoIt's not true, though. Those towns have their own history and their own characters. Suburbs are places where housing is built specifically for people who work in the main urban area.
- dictum 9y agoTo a non-British ear, Shoeburyness is what sounds weird ;)
- Aloha 9y agoI don't even mentally error check placenames in the UK - someone could tell me Wibly-upon-Fluberstuck was a place and I'd probably believe it.
- oakesm9 9y agohttps://www.anglotopia.net/ultimate-list-of-funny-british-place-names/ https://www.anglotopia.net/ultimate-list-of-funny-british-pl...
- KJKingJ 9y agoLooking just on the London Tube and Rail map[0] alone, there's plenty of both odd and amusing station names (East India! Cockfosters! Cyprus! Barking! Elephant and Castle!), and many that are pronounced completely differently to how they appear (the number of visitors who I hear ask for directions to 'Lie-chester Square' for example!). [0]: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/london-rail-and-tube-services-map.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/london-rail-and-tube-services-map....
- noja 9y agoVery funny. (My cousin was born in Wibly-upon-Fluberstuck)
- maxxxxx 9y agoIt sounds like it should mean something but it doesn't.
- userbinator 9y agoA measure of how soft the ground is, by observing how far one's shoes get buried in it.
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- tzs 9y agoI 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
- btrettel 9y agoReminds me that many people in southern California put "the" before highway names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_freeways#Freeway_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_freeways#F...
- Kluny 9y agoI'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 9y agoWouldn't "we're going to the Campbell River," and "we're going to Campbell River" be distinguishable?
- cup-of-tea 9y agoYou don't have to put so much effort into not offending anyone. It's fine to say "that's not British English, by the way". Half of your post is dedicated to not offending delicate Americans by reassuring them that they're not wrong. I'm sure they know.
- hyper_reality 9y ago> (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 9y agoAgreed 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.
- ume 9y agoTokyo (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)
- dasil003 9y agoReminds me of the Berkeley Adventure Playground.
- m_mueller 9y agoalso 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.
- linkregister 9y agoI 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.
- mirimir 9y agoAt eight, I was playing with WWII ammunition. I mean, it was everywhere. But damn, that was stupid.
- RobLach 9y agoIt'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.
- Gustomaximus 9y agoIts really interesting POV. I do wonder if this is conflating different development areas. The social side is much more direct route to emotions, belonging and self worth. While playground adventure is more about challenging your brain to allow you to do what feels dangerous but you can overcome. I did tread twice in what you said "I see a generation that has developed a strong set of coping mechanisms for a reality older generations are simply blind to". Very pertinent.
- DanBC 9y agoChildren 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 9y ago>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.
- John_KZ 9y agoIt sounds like a specific playground for parents that want to feel special. It's a ridiculous idea, and dangerous for the kids.
- Glawen 9y agoThe 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 9y agoThose signs are not primarily there to prevent death, they exist to prevent lawsuits, or at least mitigate their impact.
- Glawen 9y agoI 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 9y agoYep. 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 9y agoI 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 9y agoThe USS Enterprise was a military ship, though, not exactly open to the general public.
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- stctgion 9y agoShoeburyness, 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 9y agoIt's also quite close to the Richard Montgomery Exclusion Zone.
- truculation 9y ago>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.