Why can’t Scottish kids learn and play outdoors?

I'm doing an investigation for Radio Scotland at 9am on June 15^th called Killing with Kindness – and I need your help.

British children record the lowest feelings of wellbeing in Europe (according to UNICEF 2006). Could that because so many are cooped up indoors without stimulating play because of adult fears over safety?

Ludicruous reasons for keeping kids indoors are now commonplace. If they have a picnic in a field with cowpats they could get ecoli (though no case of this happening has ever been recorded in Scotland.) If they throw snowballs they could blind other kids with pieces of grit picked up by mistake. Home-baking has been banned from Dundee schools, conkers are banned, petting farms where kids can touch animals are banned -- all in the name of safety. And at the same time, surveys suggest British children are confused about the connection between basic foodstuffs like eggs and farm animals like hens and wary about walking to school or just exploring their own suburban neighbourhood -- never mind hill-walking or mountaineering. No wonder

By contrast in Norway every kindergarten child has a statutory right to be outside one day a week - and every child has the right to a kindergarten place from the age of one (with prices capped at £200 per month.) The result (and perhaps the cause) appears to be an adult outdoors culture where families spend holidays in mountain cabins, leave work early to go ski-ing in winter and hill-walking or swimming in summer.

How does outdoor play condition adult abilities and attitudes to the great outdoors?

Well, I've just come back from filming kindergartens in Norway where the children spend the bulk of the day outdoors in snow and rain and temperatures of minus 5 degrees. Many kindergartens are situated near farms where the kids feed and play with animals, watch slaughtered cows being dissected, grow tomatoes and make hay. They are even present when the farmer wrings the necks of chickens - and no-one complains - health and safety, teaching unions, parents or children. The Norwegian belief is that children have far more energy than adults and need ways to physically release it. They also believe that children divorced from the whole of nature – the cycles of life and death -- become couch potatoes, estranged from nature and the outdoors and less independent, confident, co-operative and happy as young adults. Sound familiar?

UNICEF's wellbeing index shows the Nordic countries like Norway are at the top and Britain is at the bottom of the 17 countries surveyed. On every indicator – health, drug use, educational attainment and general happiness – British children are doing less well than Norwegian children.

Could that be because we are spending too little cash on the early years of life – and too much trying to "retrofit" skills onto the casualties of poor childhood learning experiences?

How can you help?

Well I need someone to come on the programme on June 15^th between 9-10am who disagrees!

Someone who will argue that kids need to be kept safe indoors. Or that Norway's track record is impossible to emulate – or dodgy. Or that kindergartens are never as good as homecare for the 0-3 age group. All I'm finding are people who agree – but aren't doing very much to create change. Who is generating all this fear of the outdoors in Scotland? Names and suggestions or volunteers welcome at admin@feistyproductions.co.uk

Meantime, how do I know I'm in Scotland? I'm sitting in a flat overlooking Holyrood Park listening to a guy practising the bagpipes on his own at 10pm. Wonderful, atmospheric ancient pibroch -- free and spontaneous. I just wish we could make this country's society match the beauty of its music.

Comments

[Heather Melohn]

Hi Lesley, I'm afraid I don't fit your need of being willing to disagree with your points - quite the opposite - I agree wholeheartedly and I'm chuffed you're going to cover this topic. I think your points illustrate the fallout from a wider cultural crisis - who are we, as Scots today? We want the conveniences of US culture; faster, harder, cheaper economy and lifestyle yet if we look just across the water to Scandinavian Europe instead of peering blindly into the Atlantic we can see a much healthier, more sustainable and more culturally appropriate role model to guide us up and out of dead ends with health, defence, education, economy and environment.

I think maybe a big part of the problem is perhaps as a nation we're lacking that cohesive cultural identity that would give our policy makers an opportunity to work with positive vision instead of floundering around applying sticky plasters to haemorrhaging cultural limbs and debating home baking risk assessments for school fairs.

More power to you on this - great topic.