We
love the world of The Dangerous Book for Boys, but few of us actually
want our children falling out of trees
Considering how many parents have declared that seven is quite old
enough to travel alone, it is amazing how few
children of this age one sees of a
morning queuing at bus stops, flashing past on tiny cycles or crossing
arterial roads hand in hand, just as we did in the 60s on the way to the
blacking factory.
Either
they are so minute as to be hard to spot or, like the game of conkers
and the company of William Brown, independent travel is rather less
appealing in practice than when a point about the malignity of
elf'n'safety officialdom needs to be made. Though, as the education
secretary Michael Gove proved last
week, a widespread insincerity about the joys of traditional childhood
does not diminish its political value as a jobsworth-insulting
technique. While parents were denouncing the council that bossily
pronounced Isabelle McCullough too
young to cross a main road alone (although her school bus driver was
also of this opinion), Michael Gove was widely taken at his word when he
said: "We need to change our bubblewrap culture; we need a
Dangerous Book for Boys
culture." I can only think the Gove family had more success than mine
with page 252, Hunting and Cooking a Rabbit, in which the authors assure
the timid: "There is a great satisfaction in pulling off a difficult
shot over a distance."
As for
schools, even teachers with access to
a gun and a 30-yard range may find it difficult to provide boys with the
recommended knives for skinning and disembowelling the dead animal – a
heavy-bladed cleaver or, failing that, a penknife, preferably with a
serrated edge. And how many teenage boys would wish to risk their own?
"A standard kitchen knife," warn the authors, Hal and Conn Iggulden, "is
likely to be damaged if used as a chopper."
Although, as its millions of adult readers will know, the Igguldens'
delightful book abounds in stories, poems, lists and harmless
occupations from the era when there was nothing to play with besides
nature and old newspapers, this is not, obviously, the content being
advocated by Mr Gove in his campaign against our risk-averse society.
The greatest risk, where failure to make a paper aeroplane or boat is
concerned, is the crushing disappointment of the parent who realises
that her affection for
The
Dangerous Book for Boys
is generated in the same part of the
brain that responds to faux-vintage cupcakes and will not be satisfied
until it owns a Cath Kidston sewing box shaped like a rustic cottage.
No, what
appeals to an educationalist such as Gove or Toby Young or, going back a
bit, Thomas Arnold, are potentially bloody activities that will, as
proven throughout the empire, cultivate the manly attributes. Girls,
with their innate sissiness, appear to be less at risk from bubblewrap.
It is not yet clear if he will get permission for his year seven bomb
disposal course, but the state academy to be opened by Toby Young still
promises to produce specimens in the fine, Baden-Powell mould, given its
founder's fear, when he endorsed Gove's approach, that schools are in
danger of producing "cautious little wet noodles who daren't say boo to
a goose". It cannot be long, for example, before youthful knife crime
and muggings are conducted in nervous silence.
"We need
to dismantle the whole edifice of mollycoddling rules and regulations,"
says Young, "so our children are free to play proper, old-fashioned
games even if they involve risk of injury." Without this kind of
physical threat, Digby Jones, the businessman and favourite of the
sportsman turned noodle Gordon Brown, is another who fears for the
nation's future. Before he quit government to devote himself to baking
ever-harder conkers, Lord Jones lamented "cotton-wool kids" whose
unfamiliarity with discomfort is "potentially fatal to our economics and
social wellbeing". Is he right? One turns, instinctively to Maggie
Atkinson, the Commissioner for Children, who is charged with
representing their views. Would children like life to be more dangerous?
Tellingly, perhaps, Ms Atkinson would not risk talking.
Parents,
however, seem sympathetic to Gove's proposal for more dangerous schools,
for boys at least. (For girls, although Mr Gove has yet to identify an
inspirational text,
The Great Big
Glorious Book for Girls, coincidentally co-authored by Mrs
Gove, advocates a different, yet equally vintage routine featuring
sewing, daisy chains and Chinese burns). Even if there is little
evidence around to suggest strong parental interest in the benefits of
personal injury, research indicates that they would like the state to
supply some risk, as a corrective to its excessive vigilance. A survey
commissioned by the British Toy and Hobby
Association has just found that three-quarters out of the 2,000
parents it asked think that schools are too concerned with safety at
playtime. Explaining the findings, a psychologist said: "Parents go nuts
if their children get hurt at school."
Plainly,
if politicians talk disingenuous rubbish about the improving nature of
risk then so, equally, do many parents. Schools may be over-zealous
enforcers of safety regulations, but it is parents who invest in buggies
built like tanks, and in four-wheel-drive tanks used as buggies, parked
in mother-and-child slots designed to protect precious young legs from
excessive walking.
It is
not long since parenting websites now targeting Lincolnshire county
council were accusing the supposedly irresponsible parents of
Madeleine
McCann. After that, the pursuit switched to social workers
for betraying Baby P. Contrary to Tory principle, mollycoddling in
schools is not all big-state officialdom gone mad, but an answer to the
public mood post Dunblane, Soham, successive child protection failures
and occasional, inexcusable accidents on Outward-Bound style adventures
of absolute pointlessness (unless Sir Digby knows some CEOs who owe
their careers to kayaking). Not forgetting
Esther Rantzen and her tireless efforts for the compensation culture: "How much could
you claim?"
One of
the charms of
The Dangerous Book
for Boys, of course, is that it depicts a prelapsarian, pre-Rantzen
state in which parents thrill with pleasure, rather than dread, when a
child requests the tree, timber, drill, decking, hammer and "60
man-hours" required to build a treehouse in their idyllic, firing range
size garden. "Along with a canoe or a small sailing dinghy," say the
authors, "a treehouse is still one of the best things you could possibly
have." Thanks.
One
could easily hate the Igguldens, except that this stuff really satisfies
the same kind of yearnings as
Swallows and Amazons
and
The Railway Children,
Just William and the
Famous Five. Touching as it is, that Gove should share this glimpse of
his fantasy world, we are stuck with Jacqueline Wilson. |