The Coddling of the American Mind Chapter 9 The Decline of Play
Author: Greg Lukianoff, Jonathan Haidt Publisher: New York, NY: Penguin Random House. Publish Date: 2019-8-20 Review Date: Status:💥
Annotations
231
Why don’t kids like to be “it”? Why, at the start of a game of tag, do they each call out, “Not it!” and then point to the loser, the last one to reject the role?
A provocative answer can be found by looking at the play of other mammals, most of which have some version of chasing games. In species that are predators, such as wolves, their pups seem to prefer to be the chasers. In species that are prey, such as rats, the pups prefer to be chased.1 Our primate ancestors were both prey and predator, but they were prey for much longer. That may be why human children particularly enjoy practicing their fleeing and hiding skills.2
423
- LaFreniere (2011), p. 479, asserts that “[i]n games involving chasing, children seem to prefer the fleeing position (e.g., in the game of tag and in all games modeled after tag, the preferred position is to be chased), which suggests that such play has more to do with our legacy as prey than our legacy as hunters.”
231
When seen from a distance, child’s play is a strange thing. Peter LaFreniere, a developmental psychologist at the University of Maine, notes that children’s play “combines the expenditure of great energy with apparently pointless risk.”3 But if nearly all mammals do it, and if some of them get injured or eaten while doing it, it must offer some pretty powerful benefits to compensate for the risks.
423
- LaFreniere (2011), p. 465. See also: Sandseter & Kennair (2011). See also: Gray, P. (2014, April 7). Risky play: Why children love it and need it. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201404/risky-play-why-children-love-it-and-need-it
231
It does. Play is essential for wiring a mammal’s brain to create a functioning adult. Mammals that are deprived of play won’t develop to their full capacity. In one experiment demonstrating this effect, rat pups were raised in one of three conditions: (1) totally alone in a cage; (2) alone except for one hour a day with a normal, playful young rat, during which time normal rough-and-tumble play occurred; and (3) same as condition 2, except that the visiting young rat was treated with a drug that knocked out rough-and-tumble play while leaving other social behaviors, such as sniffing and nuzzling. When the young rats were later put into new situations, those that had engaged in rough-and-tumble play showed fewer signs of fearfulness and engaged in more exploration of the new environment.4
423
- Einon, Morgan, & Kibbler (1978). See also: Hol, Berg, Ree, & Spruijt (1999) for another experimental study with rat pups, and see Mustoe, Taylor, Birnie, Huffman, & French (2014) for a correlational study with marmosets. See a review of this literature in Gray (in press).
232
A key concept from developmental biology is “experience-expectant development.”5 Human beings have only about 22,000 genes, but our brains have approximately 100 billion neurons, with hundreds of trillions of synaptic connections. Our genes could never offer a codebook or blueprint for building anything so complex. Even if a blueprint could be passed down in our genes, it would not be flexible enough to build children who were well adapted to the vast range of environments and problems that our wandering species has gotten itself into. Nature found a better way to wire our large brains, and it goes like this: Genes are essential for getting the various cell lines started in the embryo, and genes guide brain development toward a “first draft” in utero. But experience matters, too, even while the baby is in the uterus; and after birth, it matters enormously. Experience is so essential for wiring a large brain that the “first draft” of the brain includes a strong motivation to practice behaviors that will give the brain the right kind of feedback to optimize itself for success in the environment that happens to surround it. That’s why young mammals are so keen to play, despite the risks.
Note: imprint vulnerability
423
- Black, Jones, Nelson, & Greenough (1998).
232
It’s easy to see how this works with language in humans: The genes get the ball rolling on the development of brain structures for language, but the child must actually encounter and practice a language to finish the process. The linguistic brain is “expecting” certain kinds of input, and children are therefore motivated to engage in back-and-forth reciprocal exchanges with others in order to get that input. It’s fun for them to exchange sounds, and later, real words, with other people. A child who was deprived of these linguistic interactions until puberty would be unable to fully acquire a language or learn to speak normally, having missed the “critical period” for language learning that is part of the normal developmental process.6
423
- Johnson & Newport (1989). For a review of the famous case of the feral child “Genie,” see Curtiss (1977). For deaf children things work the same way, with signs. Spoken words are not essential, but communication with others is.
233
It’s the same logic for physical skills (such as fleeing from predators) and social skills (such as negotiating conflicts and cooperation). The genes get the ball rolling on the first draft of the brain, but the brain is “expecting” the child to engage in thousands of hours of play—including thousands of falls, scrapes, conflicts, insults, alliances, betrayals, status competitions, and acts of exclusion—in order to develop. Children who are deprived of play are less likely to develop into physically and socially competent teens and adults.7
423
- This, at least, is the argument made by many researchers who study play, including Gray (in press), LaFreniere (2011), and Sandseter & Kennair (2011). We note that there is no direct experimental proof of this strong version of the claim—that play deprivation in childhood will alter adult personality. Controlled experiments such as the ones we described with rat pups can never be done with humans. In the rest of this chapter, we show why we think the claim is plausible and likely to be true.
233
Research on play has increased rapidly since 1980. Evidence for the benefits of play is now strong, and there’s a growing body of scholarship—suggestive though not conclusive—linking play deprivation to later anxiety and depression.8 As stated in one review of this literature:
Research has shown that anxious children may elicit overprotective behavior from others, such as parents and caretakers, and that this reinforces the child’s perception of threat and decreases their perception of controlling the danger. Overprotection might thus result in exaggerated levels of anxiety. Overprotection through governmental control of playgrounds and exaggerated fear of playground accidents might thus result in an increase of anxiety in society. We might need to provide more stimulating environments for children, rather than hamper their development [emphasis added].9
423
-
Gray (2011). See also: Gray (in press).
-
Sandseter & Kennair (2011), p. 275.
233
Given this research, and given the rising levels of adolescent anxiety, depression, and suicide, which we described in chapter 7, our educational system and parenting practices should offer kids more time for free play. But in fact, the opposite has happened.
233
the most beneficial forms of play have declined sharply since the 1970s,
234
Peter Gray, a leading researcher of play, defines “free play” as “activity that is freely chosen and directed by the participants and undertaken for its own sake, not consciously pursued to achieve ends that are distinct from the activity itself.”10 Piano lessons and soccer practice are not free play, but goofing around on a piano or organizing a pickup soccer game are. Gray and other researchers note that all play is not equal. Vigorous physical free play—outdoors, and with other kids—is a crucial kind of play, one that our evolved minds are “expecting.” It also happens to be the kind of play that kids generally say they like the most.11 (There is also a good case to be made for the importance of imaginative or pretend play,12 which is found not only in less rambunctious kinds of indoor free play but often in rough-and-tumble outdoor free play as well.)
423
-
Gray (2011), p. 444.
-
Singer, Singer, D’Agostino, & DeLong (2009), cited in Gray (2011).
-
Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Berk, & Singer (2009).
234
Gray notes the tendency of kids to introduce danger and risk into outdoor free play, such as when they climb walls and trees, or skateboard down staircases and railings:
They seem to be dosing themselves with moderate degrees of fear, as if deliberately learning how to deal with both the physical and emotional challenges of the moderately dangerous conditions they generate… . All such activities are fun to the degree that they are moderately frightening. If too little fear is induced, the activity is boring; if too much is induced, it becomes no longer play but terror. Nobody but the child himself or herself knows the right dose.13
423
- Gray (2011), p. 456.
235
Unfortunately, outdoor physical play is the kind that has declined the most in the lives of American children. The study that offers the clearest picture of the relevant trends was carried out in 1981 by sociologists at the University of Michigan, who asked parents of children under thirteen to keep detailed records of how their kids spent their time on several randomly chosen days. They repeated the study in 1997, and found that time spent in any kind of play went down 16% overall, and much of the play had shifted to indoor activities, often involving a computer and no other children.14 This kind of play does not build physical strength and is not as effective at building psychological resilience or social competence, so the drop in real, healthy, sociable free play was much greater than 16%. That study compared Generation X (who were kids in 1981) to Millennials (who were kids in 1997). Twenge’s analysis of iGen, the current generation of kids, shows that the drop in free play has accelerated. Compared with Millennials, iGen spends less time going out with friends, more time interacting with parents, and much more time interacting with screens (which can be a form of social interaction but can have some negative effects, as we discussed in chapter 7).15
423
- Hofferth & Sandberg (2001), cited in Gray (2011).
236
Compared with previous generations, members of iGen have therefore had much less of the kind of unsupervised free play that Gray says is most valuable. They have been systematically deprived of opportunities to “dose themselves” with risk. Instead of enjoying a healthy amount of risk, this generation is more likely than earlier ones to avoid it. Twenge shows how responses have changed to the survey question “I get a real kick out of doing things that are a little dangerous.” From 1994 through 2010, the percentage of adolescents who agreed with that question held steady, in the low 50s. But as iGen enters the dataset, agreement drops, dipping to 43% by 2015. If members of iGen have been risk-deprived and are therefore more risk averse, then it is likely that they have a lower bar for what they see as daunting or threatening. They will see more ordinary life tasks as beyond their ability to handle on their own without help from an adult. It should not surprise us that anxiety and depression rates began rising rapidly on campus as soon as iGen arrived.
424
- As shown by mediation analyses in Twenge et al. (2018), which found that all forms of screen time are associated with negative mental health outcomes. Peter Gray, however, takes a more positive view of social interaction mediated by screens. He believes that it is real social interaction, and that multiplayer video games are a form of play. He also notes that online social interaction has the advantage of occurring, typically, without any adult supervision. He agrees, however, that online interaction lacks the benefits of vigorous physical play and that some forms of online interaction may turn out to be harmful to mental health. P. Gray (personal communication, February 8, 2018).
236
In contrast to the decreased time spent in play between 1981 and 1997, that same time-use study found that time spent in school went up 18%, and time spent doing homework went up 145%.16 Research by Duke University psychologist Harris Cooper indicates that while there are benefits to homework in middle school and high school, provided it’s relevant and in the right amount, achievement benefits in elementary school are smaller, and homework that isn’t realistic in length and difficulty can even decrease achievement.17 Yet elementary school students have seen an increase in homework over the past twenty years.18 Some schools even assign homework in kindergarten. (Lenore Skenazy told us that when she asked her son’s teacher why homework was being assigned in kindergarten, the teacher responded, “So they will be ready for homework in first grade.”19)
424
-
Hofferth & Sandberg (2001).
-
See review in Shumaker, H. (2016, March 5). Homework is wrecking our kids: The research is clear, let’s ban elementary homework. Salon. Retrieved from https://www.salon.com/2016/03/05/homework_is_wrecking_our_kids_the_research_is_clear_lets_ban_elementary_homework. See also: Marzano, R., & Pickering, D. (2007, March). Special topic: The case for and against homework. Educational Leadership, 64(6), 74–79. Retrieved from https://www.lincnet.org/cms/lib05/MA01001239/Centricity/Domain/108/Homework.pdf. See also: Cooper, Lindsay, Nye, & Greathouse (1998). See also: Cooper, Civey Robinson, & Patall (2006). See also: Cooper, Steenbergen-Hu, & Dent (2012).
-
“In the last 20 years, homework has increased only in the lower grade levels, and this increase is associated with neutral (and sometimes negative) effects on student achievement.” National Education Association. (n.d.). Research spotlight on homework. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/tools/16938.htm
-
L. Skenazy (personal communication, January 23, 2018).
237
Why is this happening? Why have we deprived kids of the healthiest forms of play and given them more homework and more supervision instead? One of the major reasons for the decline of all forms of unsupervised outdoor activity is, of course, the unrealistic media-amplified fear of abduction, which we described in the previous chapter. In one large survey, published in 2004, 85% of mothers said that their children played outdoors less frequently than they themselves had played when they were the same age. When asked to select reasons to explain why their children didn’t spend more time on outdoor play, 82% of the mothers chose “safety concerns,” including the fear of crime.20
424
- Clements (2004), cited in Gray (2011).
237
But there’s a second reason, a second fear that haunts American parents and children—particularly those in the middle class and above—far more than it did in the late twentieth century: the college admissions process.
237
When the parents of Millennials and iGen were children, early education was very different than it is today. Take a look at a checklist from 197921 that helped parents decide whether their six-year-old was ready to start first grade. It has just twelve items, and almost all of them are about physical and emotional maturation and independence—including one item that could get parents arrested today (#8).
425
- Whitley, C. (2011, August 1). Is your child ready for first grade: 1979 edition. ChicagoNow. Retrieved from http://www.chicagonow.com/little-kids-big-city/2011/08/is-your-child-ready-for-first-grade-1979-edition. (We thank Erika Chistakis for pointing it out to us.)
237
IS YOUR CHILD READY FOR FIRST GRADE: 1979 EDITION
Will your child be six years, six months or older when he begins first grade and starts receiving reading instruction?
Does your child have two to five permanent or second teeth?
Can your child tell, in such a way that his speech is understood by a school crossing guard or policeman, where he lives?
Can he draw and color and stay within the lines of the design being colored?
Can he stand on one foot with eyes closed for five to ten seconds?
Can he ride a small two-wheeled bicycle without helper wheels?
Can he tell left hand from right?
Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home?
Can he be away from you all day without being upset?
Can he repeat an eight- to ten-word sentence, if you say it once, as “The boy ran all the way home from the store”?
Can he count eight to ten pennies correctly?
Does your child try to write or copy letters or numbers?22
425
- Whitley (2011); see n. 21.
238
Compare that to one from today. A checklist from a school in Austin, Texas, has thirty items on it, almost all of which are academic, including:
Identify and write numbers to 100
Count by 10’s to 100, by 2’s to 20, by 5’s to 100
Interpret and fill in data on a graph
Read all kindergarten-level sight words
Be able to read books with five to ten words per page
Form complete sentences on paper using phonetic spelling (i.e., journal and story writing)23
425
- St. Theresa’s Catholic School (Austin, TX). (2012, January). Expectations for incoming first graders. Retrieved from https://www.st-theresa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/1st_Expectations.pdf
239
Kindergarten in 1979 was devoted mostly to social interaction and self-directed play, with some instruction in art, music, numbers, and the alphabet thrown in. Erika Christakis notes that kindergarten classrooms would have been organized to build social relationships and facilitate hands-on exploration (such as with blocks or Lincoln Logs) and imaginative and symbolic play (such as a store or housekeeping corner with props and costumes). Back then, kindergarten, which for most children was a half day, probably looked more like what passes for a progressive preschool today, consisting of “open-ended free play, snack, singing songs with rhyming words for a little oral language exposure, a story, maybe an art project and some sorting games or block building for math awareness.”24
425
- E. Christakis (personal communication, October 21, 2017).
239
Today, kindergarten is much more structured and sedentary, with children spending more time sitting at their desks and receiving direct instruction in academic subjects—known as the “drill and skill” method of instruction, but that teachers not-so-affectionately call “drill and kill.”25
425
- Christakis (2016).
239
There is growing evidence that with young children, these methods can backfire and produce negative effects on creativity as well as on social and emotional development.26
425
- Gopnik, A. (2011, March 16). Why preschool shouldn’t be like school: New research shows that teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire. Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/03/why_preschool_shouldnt_be_like_school.html. See also: Gray, P. (2015, May 5). Early academic training produces long-term harm. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201505/early-academic-training-produces-long-term-harm
240
Researchers at the University of Virginia compared kindergarten classes in 1998 (composed of some of the last members of the Millennial generation) to kindergarten in 2010 and found that by 2010, the use of standardized tests in kindergarten was much more common. Teaching methods and classroom organization had changed, and far more time was spent on advanced reading and math content. The study also found that teachers’ academic expectations of kindergarteners in 2010 were far higher than they had been in 1998,27 a trend that seems to continue. For example, today’s Common Core kindergarten math standards include “construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others,”28 and reading skills include “read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.”29
425
-
Bassok, Latham, & Rorem (2016).
-
Common Core State Standards Initiative. (n.d.). Introduction to Common Core. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/introduction
-
Common Core State Standards Initiative. (n.d.). English language arts standards » Reading: Foundational skills » Kindergarten. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/K
240
In response to things like the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, state preschool standards, a general emphasis on testing, and then the introduction of Common Core standards, the preschool and kindergarten landscape has changed enormously.30 Christakis laments that social time and play have been sacrificed in preschool to keep up with academic expectations for kindergarten readiness. As she reports, kindergarten teachers still claim that the most important skills for kindergarten are not academic but social and emotional (like listening and being able to take turns).31
425
-
E. Christakis (personal communication, June 2, 2017).
-
“Ironically, when today’s kindergarten and first-grade teachers are asked to name the school-readiness skills most important for preschoolers to master, they invariably still rank social and emotional skills, such as being able to take turns or listen to a friend, above pre-academic skills, such as number and letter identification. But parents often see things very differently.” Christakis (2016), p. 7.
241
Beginning in preschool and continuing throughout primary school, children’s days are now more rigidly structured. Opportunities for self-direction, social exploration, and scientific discovery are increasingly lost to direct instruction in the core curriculum, which is often driven by the schools’ focus on preparing students to meet state testing requirements. Meanwhile, especially for wealthier kids, instead of neighborhood children finding one another after school and engaging in free play, children have after-school activities like music lessons, team sports, tutoring, and other structured and supervised activities.32 For younger children, parents schedule playdates,33 which are likely to occur under the watchful eye of a parent.
426
-
Pew Research Center. (2015, December 17). Parenting in America: Children’s extracurricular activities. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/17/5-childrens-extracurricular-activities
-
Mose (2016).
241
For children of many educated parents with means, instead of afternoons and weekends spent hanging out with friends or resting, that nonschool time is increasingly used to cultivate skills that will allow those children to stand out later on in the college admissions game. It’s no wonder that parents work so hard to plan their children’s time. What eight-year-old has the foresight to play the tuba or girls’ golf—activities that might make them more attractive to colleges?34 What thirteen-year-old has the organizational skills and forward thinking (not to mention transportation plan) to follow the advice of The Princeton Review, which urges students to increase their appeal to colleges by picking one community-service activity early on and sticking with it year after year, volunteering two hours a week through senior year?35
426
-
Scholarship America. (2011, August 25). Make your extracurricular activities pay off. U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/the-scholarship-coach/2011/08/25/make-your-extracurricular-activities-pay-off
-
Princeton Review. (n.d.). 14 summer activities to boost your college application. Retrieved from https://www.princetonreview.com/college-advice/summer-activities-for-college-applications
242
It has become much more difficult to gain admission to the top U.S. universities. For example, in the 1980s and ’90s, Yale’s acceptance rate hovered around 20%. By 2003, the admission rate was down to 11% and in 2017 it was 7%.36 So it makes sense that parents have increasingly teamed up with their children to help them pack their resumes with extracurricular activities. It’s what former Yale English professor William Deresiewicz calls “the resume arms race,” and any family that doesn’t come together to play the game puts their child at a disadvantage. “The only point of having more,” Deresiewicz explains in his book Excellent Sheep, “is having more than everybody else. Nobody needed 20,000 atomic warheads until the other side had 19,000. Nobody needs eleven extracurriculars, either—what purpose does having them actually serve?—unless the other guy has ten.”37
426
-
Yale University Office of Institutional Research. (2016, November 30). Summary of Yale College admissions class of 1986 to class of 2020. Retrieved from https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/w033_fresh_admissions.pdf
-
Deresiewicz (2015), p. 39.
243
Given the fierce competition, parents in some social circles convey a sense of panic about children’s grades, even in middle school—as if not getting an A will determine the course of a child’s life. This would normally be a clear example of catastrophizing, but in some highly competitive school districts, it may not be entirely unrealistic. Julie Lythcott-Haims puts it like this: “Let’s say this is math. If they don’t get an A in sixth-grade math, it means they might not be on track to be in the highest level of math in high school, which means they won’t get into Stanford.”38 So it isn’t surprising that so many parents are hovering and oversupervising, not just to ensure safety but to ensure that children do homework and prepare for tests.39 Some of these parents may think that making sure their children do whatever it takes to succeed in advanced courses helps their children develop “grit.” But “grit is often misunderstood as perseverance without passion, and that’s tragic,” psychology professor Angela Duckworth, author of the book Grit, told us. “Perseverance without passion is mere drudgery.” She wants young people to “devote themselves to pursuits that are intrinsically fulfilling.”40
426
-
J. Lythcott-Haims (personal communication, May 26, 2017). As Lenore Skenazy put it, these parents “are stalked by the twin fears that their children will be kidnapped … or not get into Harvard.” L. Skenazy (personal communication, January 23, 2018).
-
Morrison, P. (2015, October 28). How “helicopter parenting” is ruining America’s children. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-morrison-lythcott-haims-20151028-column.html
-
A. Duckworth (personal communication, March 19, 2018).
244
The college admissions process nowadays makes it harder for high school students to enjoy school and pursue intrinsic fulfillment. The process “warps the values of students drawn into a competitive frenzy” and “jeopardizes their mental health,”41 says Frank Bruni, a New York Times columnist and author of Where You Go Is Not Who You Will Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania. Nowhere is that more apparent than in suicide clusters at highly competitive high schools, such as those in Palo Alto, California, and the suburbs of Boston, which have been profiled in The Atlantic42 and The New York Times.43 In a 2015 survey, 95% of students at Lexington High School in Massachusetts reported “a lot of stress” or “extreme stress” about their classes, and in a 2016 study, the Centers for Disease Control reported that the teen suicide rate in Palo Alto, California, was more than four times the national average.44
426
-
Bruni, F. (2016, January 19). Rethinking college admissions. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/opinion/rethinking-college-admissions.html
-
Rosin, H. (2015, November 20). The Silicon Valley suicides. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140
-
Spencer, K. (2017, April 5). It takes a suburb: A town struggles to ease student stress. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/education/edlife/overachievers-student-stress-in-high-school-.html?_r=0
-
Farrell, A., McDevitt, J., & Austin, R. (2015). Youth risk behavior survey Lexington High School—2015 results: Executive summary. Retrieved from https://lps.lexingtonma.org/cms/lib2/MA01001631/Centricity/Domain/547/YRBSLHSExecSummary08Mar16.pdf. See also: Luthar & Latendresse (2005). See also: Chawla, I., & Njoo, L. (2016, July 21). CDC releases preliminary findings on Palo Alto suicide clusters. The Stanford Daily. Retrieved from https://www.stanforddaily.com/2016/07/21/cdc-releases-preliminary-findings-on-palo-alto-suicide-clusters
244
And it is precisely these elite, wealthy, and hypercompetitive school districts that provide the largest share of students at the top universities in the United States.45 “Students are prepared academically, but they’re not prepared to deal with day-to-day life,” says Gray, “which comes from a lack of opportunity to deal with ordinary problems.”46 One paradox of upper-middle-class American life is that some of the things parents and schools do to help kids get admitted to college may make them less able to thrive once they’re there.
427
-
Chetty, Friedman, Saez, Turner, & Yagen (2017). See a summary of that paper in this infographic: Some colleges have more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60. Find yours. (2017, January 18). The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html
-
Quoted in Brody, J. E. (2015, January 19). Parenting advice from “America’s worst mom.” The New York Times. Retrieved from https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/advice-from-americas-worst-mom
245
The effects of play deprivation and oversupervision may extend far beyond college. Steven Horwitz, an economist at Ball State University in Indiana, took the same research on play that we have reviewed in this chapter and worked out some possible consequences for the future of liberal democracies.47 He drew on the work of political scientists Elinor Ostrom48 and Vincent Ostrom,49 both of whom studied how self-governing communities resolve conflicts peacefully. Successful democracies do this by developing a variety of institutions and norms that enable people with different goals and conflicting desires to resolve their problems while rarely appealing to the police or the state to coerce their fellow citizens. This is the “art of association” that so impressed Alexis de Tocqueville when he traveled through the United States in 1835.
427
-
Horwitz (2015).
-
Ostrom, E. (1990).
-
Ostrom, V. (1997).
245
Citizens of a democracy don’t suddenly develop this art on their eighteenth birthday. It takes many years to cultivate these skills, which overlap with the ones that Peter Gray maintains are learned during free play. Of greatest importance in free play is that it is always voluntary; anyone can quit at any time and disrupt the activity, so children must pay close attention to the needs and concerns of others if they want to keep the game going. They must work out conflicts over fairness on their own; no adult can be called upon to side with one child against another.
245
Horwitz points out that when adult-supervised activities crowd out free play, children are less likely to develop the art of association:
Denying children the freedom to explore on their own takes away important learning opportunities that help them to develop not just independence and responsibility, but a whole variety of social skills that are central to living with others in a free society. If this argument is correct, parenting strategies and laws that make it harder for kids to play on their own pose a serious threat to liberal societies by flipping our default setting from “figure out how to solve this conflict on your own” to “invoke force and/or third parties whenever conflict arises.” This is one of the “vulnerabilities of democracies” noted by Vincent Ostrom.50
Note: leftists asking social media companies to censor information
427
- Horwitz (2015), p. 10.
246
The consequences for democracies could be dire, particularly for a democracy such as the United States, which is already suffering from ever-rising cross-party hostility51 and declining trust in institutions.52 Here is what Horwitz fears could be in store:
A society that weakens children’s ability to learn these skills denies them what they need to smooth social interaction. The coarsening of social interaction that will result will create a world of more conflict and violence, and one in which people’s first instinct will be increasingly to invoke coercion by other parties to solve problems they ought to be able to solve themselves.53
427
-
Iyengar & Krupenkin (2018).
-
Ortiz-Ospina, E., & Roser, M. (2017). Trust. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/trust
-
Horwitz (2015), p. 3.
246
This is what Greg began to see around 2013: increasing calls from students for administrators and professors to regulate who can say what, who gets to speak on campus, and how students should interact with one another, even in private settings. The calls for more regulation and the bureaucratic impulse to provide that regulation are the subject of our next chapter.