Risks
are real
If
you look at the history of human endeavour, you will see that success
was very often based on taking risks. Our ancestors who spread across
the world must have taken massive risks in moving to new continents,
with new climates and new natural threats. Sailors in mediaeval
times thought they might fall off the edge of the world or be eaten
by sea monsters in crossing the oceans, and many explorers did indeed
never return. Galileo and Madame Curie were only two of the great
names of history who lost their lives because of their scientific
quests. The list is endless. Risks are real. But as a species we
would not have got far without taking them.
Yet
today we seem to devote an enormous amount of energy to avoiding
risk. Health and Safety legislation places a responsibility on everyone
to make things safe. Every torn carpet has to be reported in case
some trips on it, and every piece of plaster peeling off the kitchen
wall in case it drops in someone’s soup. We back this up with
legal action in which authorities pay out millions in damages for
operations which went wrong or for people who stubbed their toes
on proud paving stones. The result is that insurance premiums go
up, and some activities and services have to be abandoned because
they are uninsurable.
It
affects children too. Parents worried about dangerous roads take
their children to school by car, instead of them walking, whether
accompanied or alone. Standards of hygiene mean that children no
longer have their “peck of dirt” and do not develop
immunities through exposure to bacteria and germs. Parents prefer
them to stay indoors and play on their computers, rather than go
out and be vulnerable to stranger danger or bullying on the streets.
The
dangers of risk avoidance
This
culture of risk avoidance has two main consequences.
The
first is that in trying to avoid some risks people are exposed to
others. The child protected by careful kitchen hygiene has reduced
immunity to the sources of illness. The increased incidence of asthma
is put down to this by some experts. The child who is driven to
school has less exercise and risks becoming obese. The child who
does not go out to play risks not developing peer friendships, becoming
an isolate and failing to learn social behaviour.
The
second consequence is that children do not learn how to deal with
risk. How can you learn about balance and fear of heights if you
don’t climb a tree? If you don’t walk to school and
have to cross roads, how do you learn to cope with traffic? If you
don’t go to stay with friends, how do you learn independence
and how to deal with homesickness?
In
running Udby Children’s Centre, Steen Lasson used to get children
to cross a high rope aerial walkway on their first day in the home.
It was a frightening challenge, but success gave a sense of achievement
to the children, and it meant that adults were setting the pace.
The risk aversion pedlars would have prevented this activity.
The
need for balance
In
arguing against risk avoidance - wrapping children up in bubble
wrap in case they fall – it would be foolish to suggest that
children should be simply exposed to risk. A little child who does
not yet understand about traffic needs to be held firmly by the
hand as good traffic sense is explained. Children on adventure holidays
need the right equipment, training and leadership. Risk needs to
be assessed and prepared for, but it is in facing the challenge
of new experiences that children learn, and that entails a degree
of risk.
Things
may then go wrong, and those responsible need to have thought in
advance of back-up strategies to cope, but this is not a reason
for risk avoidance. Education should be full of calculated risks,
in which children are challenged to achieve and get the satisfaction
of succeeding in a new field.
We
also need to take a new look at comparative risk. If the fire precautions
require big notices which stop the children’s home looking
homely, then maybe we use other ways of ensuring that the children
know how to get out. The atmosphere that helps the children settle
and belong is more important than the slight chance that the written
sign will help them escape in a fire. If commercial insurers will
not cover activities because of remote possibilities of accidents,
the Government should provide cover. It is more risky for children
not to have a stimulating range of activities, and insurance companies
should not dictate education policy. If parents do not let children
play outside the home because of stranger danger, we need a level-headed
assessment of the reality of that risk, and if – despite its
rarity - it is deemed to be serious, we need to devise safe play
areas.
The
human spirit
It
is interesting that extreme sports are attracting large numbers
of people who want the excitement of real risk. It is not just a
question of skiing, with the chance of a broken ankle, but of running
with bulls or climbing in severe conditions where it is known that
death rates are high. It is an inbuilt part of the human psyche
and physiology; the adrenalin gives us a kick and we like a challenge.
Another
bit of us, of course, wants to be safe and secure and to avoid harm.
Overall, as a society, we have to get the balance right. At present,
it seems that the balance has swung too far towards achieving safety
and penalising those who take risk.
Not
only that. The impact of risk avoidance is insidious. The amount
of data that has to be collected in case we are called to account
is massive and the bureaucracy involved becomes dominant. If, to
avoid salmonella, we have to keep fridges at a certain temperature,
why can’t their temperatures be recorded electronically, without
wasting staff time on keeping records? The result of all these safety
measures is to divert staff time, and thus money, away from the
children, which on balance is poor prioritisation.
We
need to make sure that society enables its members to achieve, to
develop and to attain new goals, and does not stifle them, or reduce
their creativity and ability to cope. As a species, humankind needs
to keep on taking risks, including serious ones. It needs to prepare
to cope with them, but that is not the same as avoiding them. The
bravest people in battle are those who know the odds they face,
who prepare to cope with them, but who face them nonetheless. Some
of them are killed in the process, but some succeed, and without
them the war is not won.
