Helen Martin: We're running the risk of ruining childhood

Published on Monday 30 November 2009 08:54

I WAS fortunate enough to have been born in the days before health and safety got its killjoy talons into childhood.

Oh, the happy hours we spent dicing with death or the loss of an eye as we played with conkers; the exhilaration of getting "the bumps" on your birthday, knowing that at any moment you could fall to the ground and be concussed; the heady buzz of making slides at the bottom of the playground where, if you "overshot the runway", you could be impaled on railings; and run, catch, kiss, in which we had unlimited scope for catching and passing on all manner of viruses and bugs

Those were the days when most of us stole our mother's plastic-coated washing lines to use as class-size skipping ropes. A whip with one of these things and you could draw blood, or at least have a weal that lasted for weeks.

It all happened in the school playground, a place designated for fun and exercise. At lunchtime and playtime it was our territory. We didn't even have playground supervisors in those days. Occasionally, if a couple of boys were having a fight and a small crowd had gathered, a teacher might appear to break it up. Otherwise, they left us to let off steam and continue with what – in those days at least – was seen as normal childhood behaviour.

Probably among the tamest of all our activities was British Bulldogs, a sort of pre-rugby workout that involved getting from one side of the playground to the other, fending off anyone who tried to stop you. That's the same British Bulldogs that has been banned by an Edinburgh high school because it carries "a significant risk" of injury to pupils. It's understood that Firrhill High put the knackers on this playground favourite because several pupils have sustained minor injuries.

You just have to wonder what that means. A bruise? A skinned knee? A knocked-out tooth?

I don't blame Firrhill. I suspect that so much paperwork now goes with every injury report, no matter how minor, that they can be forgiven for trying to avoid the time-consuming bureaucracy. They will also be plagued with over-protective parents who think the school is responsible if their child sustains the slightest scratch. Not to mention the dreaded health and safety risk assessments and judgements. We've all become such toadying, rule-following, over-regulated wimps that we've squeezed all the joy out of childhood.

Of course, children did suffer "minor injuries" in the old days. Someone would dab the wound with stinging iodine (usually more painful than the original cut), attach a plaster and tell you to stop snivelling and go back out and play until the bell rang.

Perhaps if the blood didn't stop, they'd phone your mum – depending on whether or not your home was equipped with a telephone, because many were not. I suppose an ambulance would have been summoned if necessary, but I can't remember anyone coming to serious harm despite the comparatively blatant disregard for health and safety that prevailed at the time.

Parents never complained, probably because we did much more dangerous things while in their care. We rigged up rope swings over a 30ft drop in the nearby woods; we went scrumping for (stealing, in today's speak) apples; we slid down barn roofs and went sledging on tin trays we'd further greased with candle wax; we "tightrope walked" on the sewage pipes spanning a nearby burn and went bareback riding.

Presumably, today, the ideal, well-behaved child who wants to be a nuisance to no-one stands motionless in the playground with an iPod, petrified by the constant message from parents and teachers that so many activities are "dangerous". And we wonder why cotton wool-padded kids today go mad when they escape the straitjacket of adult supervision, never having previously had a chance to learn about adventure, risk and consequence.

Their number's up

IF I was a bit of a man-made global warming sceptic before, I am more so following the revelations that scientists are refusing, despite endless public information requests, to publish their data and suggesting – in leaked e-mails to each other – that the case may be over-stated.

We can't trust science any more because research (like almost everything else) is dependent on big fat grants and industrial backing. If it turns out that the planet is doing its own thing and there's little man could, or should, do about it, the funds would stop and tens of thousands of scientists would be out of a job.

By all means cut waste, conserve energy and be "green" for the sake of it. That can only be a good thing.

But spare me the doom-laden lectures and bullying prognosis until the brains behind it have the courage and honesty to put their figures out for public scrutiny.