Dateline: Oct 21
Dateline visits a NZ school where "free range" kids are allowed to enjoy playtime without rules.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under Programming
Dateline visits a New Zealand school where “free range” kids are allowed to enjoy playtime without rules.
It sounds like a child’s dream and a parent’s nightmare… a school with no rules.
But at Swanson School in Auckland, New Zealand, a blind eye is turned at break time while the kids run amok outside.
On Tuesday’s Dateline, reporter Dani Isdale joins the children as they climb trees and fences, skid around on bikes, wrestle with each other and fire makeshift weapons around a playground littered with potential hazards.
It’s all allowed … and even encouraged. The teachers don’t intervene, and the kids are left to sort out any issues themselves.
“The need to wrap up our kids in cotton wool and not give them an opportunity to hurt themselves… you are actually taking away a lot of learning opportunities,” says principal Bruce McLachlan on the thinking behind it.
When playtime ends, serious learning begins and he says the children are much more receptive, confident and cooperative after their ‘free range’ play.
The kids love it, but do parents think he’s gone too far?
Tuesday at 9.30pm on SBS ONE.
Share
- Tagged with Dateline
3 Responses
I went to a small country school in NZ and that sounds like a typical day in the playground. No safety matting under the climbing frames (“jungle gyms”), games of bullrush and rugby, tiggy with a tennis ball (proudly showing off the bruises when the ball hit you at 100mph!). Too much mollycoddling these days 😉
Sounds like my school 60 years ago. Unfortunately, society has changed, much for the worse, but most parents go to the extreme.
Just sounds like my childhood….went out in the morning after chores…home for lunch and home before dark….the whole neighbourhood kept an eye on all kids…Now with helicopter parents and wrapped in cotton wool…but then the streets were much safer…drugs etc barely heard off…and few folk had cars…so not lots on the roads.