JUST last month, Theresa May’s education secretary, Damian Hinds, spoke of the need to encourage children to explore the world around them during the summer holidays, rather than staying indoors and playing with their phones, watching boxsets and using social media.
This urge to get children playing in the fresh air, discovering their creative talents, is one that crops up frequently.
Often, fears are expressed that this is a dying tradition: three years ago, a National Trust survey found that today’s children spent half the time their parents did on playing outside - four hours a week on average as opposed to 8.2 hours a week when the parents were themselves young.
In the summer of 1976 the Fair Play for Children Campaign highlighted the ‘desperate need’ for creative play provision. Children, it was reported, led a more restricted home life than ever before. New houses tended not to have large gardens. Fewer families lived closer together.
Loneliness, the campaign found, was a major problem, especially in the summer, when schools were closed and pupils lived a long way from each other. No-one benefited from having a generation of “stultified, bored kids.”
There were lots of play schemes running in Glasgow, but it emerged that those that were based in schools could only operate in them until 3pm, thanks to new cleaning regulations. Some groups also faced having to pay for janitors.
The two children pictured here were part of one group that operated from a local school. If it shut at 3pm, this paper reported, their summer evenings might have to be spent either at home or on a demolition site near their home in Seamore Street, Maryhill.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here