Campaign for Adventure

After our strictures on the war against conkers - you don't have to read the Daily Mail to care about things like that - we are pleased to note the existence of the Campaign for Adventure.

We are even more pleased to note that a Lib Dem MP - Patsy Calton from Cheadle - is one of its parliamentary sponsors and chaired a meeting of the Campaign last December.

One of the speakers there was this blog's hero Frank Furedi. The report of his speech is worth quoting in full:

Frank Furedi explained that he feels very angry about the sanitisation of his child's experience in an urban adventure centre where there are a cluster of adults making sure the children are "safe". He noted that society's developing attitudes to risk have been imported from the US and regretted that observation of the state of affairs in the US suggests we may still be at the beginning of the process.

He made three key points: "Children's relationship with risk should not be a passive one - a risk should not be felt to be 'hanging over' them. Instead, children should learn to interact with risk and manage it."

There is a trend towards a new definition of safety in society - increasingly the concept of an accident is resisted. He illustrated the absurdity of this by proposing a way of eliminating bicycle accidents - simply ban bikes. "Clearly we must not deprive young people of experience - we must still leave them scope to work things out for themselves." Whenever a serious accident happens, there is a tendency to press the button of regulation. Society should resist this.

We need to encourage young people's childlike sense of adventure - finding novelty in everything they do. We must respect and applaud this sense. It's about cultivating an ethos of risk taking with responsibility - we must trust children and believe in their capacity to handle life.