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Listen to thisLast week was the school mid-term break here in Edinburgh and I took off with my family to Skye, an island off the West Highlands of Scotland, immortalised in the Skye Boat Song, which tells of Bonnie Prince Charlie's escape from the government forces after the Battle of Culloden in 1745. Elements of a strong Presbyterian tradition remain in the Western Isles and indeed the weekend past marked the first Sunday flight to another of them, an event that triggered a protest by those who thought this would bring an end to traditional Sunday observance in the islands. An air of austerity and a bleakness of climate seem to complement the stunning and haunting beauty of the place. Once my older son came to terms with the fact that there was not a MacDonalds or a theme park within anything like striking distance, we settled down to a different type of holiday, revolving around walking in Skye's numerous hills, beaches and forests.
One of the few similarities between the academic
life and Child and Youth Care practice is that you don't put your work
behind you. Family experiences trigger memories from practice or serve
to reinforce or question reading and teaching around child development.
Hopefully the comparisons and analyses are sufficiently unobtrusive as
to avoid any lasting damage to my kids!
What came to mind in the course of clambering up hills and mountains was
just how much kids are capable of. Even my 5-year-old managed to walk
for hours and miles on end and to thoroughly enjoy simple things like
hopping over stepping-stones and finding the skulls of dead birds. The
Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky talks about development proceeding to
the zone of proximal development. This idea might be summed up in the
experience most of us have in playing sport. If we want to progress, its
best to play someone just a little bit better that yourself so that you
can move up to the next level of competence. Central to Vygotsky's
thinking is that learning is a social process, in which the role of the
more expert other is fundamental to the learning process. This I think
has implications for Child and Youth Care practice where our role might
be thought of as arranging experiences through which kids might learn,
grow and develop. The trick is pitch these experiences at a level that
both challenges kids to move to their next level but that is also
manageable for them. And of course, we've got to be participants in
those experiences for learning and growing is a joint affair through
which we gently lead kids to that next stage (and occasionally perhaps
they lead us). The power of intense joint experiences is tangibly
evident, as kids seem to grow and develop in front of our eyes. I recall
similar experiences from practice when we used to take groups of boys on
cycling trips round the youth hostels in the Highlands, witnessing them
gel as a group and in their relationships with us staff.
With some sadness, I reflected as we climbed hills, my own three kids under 10 and a borrowed three-year-old who, were I still in practice, I now wouldn't be allowed to do what we were doing because I didn't have the necessary outdoor expedition training and as a result would not be allowed to take groups on any ascent beyond 1000 feet, regardless of how safe it might be. I couldn't take them swimming to the beach either because I don't have the requisite life-saving certificate. Now obviously staff who are responsible for other people's children need to have some awareness of risk and of safety precautions, but I fear that we've lost any sense of perspective in this age of the risk assessment, when the health and safety officer is king. That was brought home to me when, on a rainy day (and there are a lot of rainy days in Skye), we went to the island's swimming pool. Before we were allowed in we were handed a leaflet detailing the rules of engagement, i.e., any child under 8 had to be in the one-to-one presence of an adult at all times, regardless of whether they could swim or not. As my wife observed, these rules would have made it impossible for her or I alone to take our own children swimming. The rules had apparently been introduced after a drowning in another of the Council's pools. Surely the best bulwark against kids drowning in swimming pools is for them to be able to swim, yet the council through its reaction to a tragedy, presides over a situation where parents cannot take their children swimming.
We all no doubt have particular of stories or axioms, which help us, make sense of our practice. One, which sticks in my mind, comes from a keynote speaker at the Realities and Dreams conference held here in Scotland back in 1996. The speaker whose name I can't remember but who I think was Danish was describing the centre he ran and how it was set in grounds with tree houses and assault courses. He said that he was often asked whether kids hurt themselves on this equipment. He agreed that they did at times but that his philosophy was 'Better a broken arm than a broken psyche.'
