Mutually Exclusive? Health and Safety

The Wall Street Journal reinforces an earlier post of mine that discussed the cultivation of ever more unhealthy children in the Western world. As test preparation retards their brains, our children have fewer and fewer opportunities to play, socialize and perform all the life experiences that make childhood a hardening experience for the body, mind, and spirit.

Phillip K. Howard in Why Safe Kids Are Becoming Fat Kids reports:

The harmful effects of our national safety obsession ripple outward into society. One in six children in America is obese, and many of them will face a lifetime of chronic illness. According to the Center for Disease Control, this problem would basically cure itself if children engaged in the informal outdoor activities that used to be normal. But how do we lure children off the sofa? One key attraction is risk.

Risk is fun, at least the moderate risks that were common in prior generations. An informal survey of children by the University of Toronto's Institute of Child Studies found that "merry-go-rounds . . . anecdotally the most hated piece of playground equipment in hospital emergency rooms -- topped the list of most desired bits of playground equipment." Those of us of a certain age can remember sprinting to get the contraption really moving. That was fun. And a lot of exercise.

America unfortunately is going in the opposite direction. There is nothing left in playgrounds that would attract the interest of a child over the age of four. Exercise in schools is carefully programmed, when it exists at all. Some schools have banned tag. Broward County, Fla., banned running at recess. (How else can we guard against a child falling down?) Little Leagues forbid sliding into base. Some towns ban sledding. High diving boards are history, and it's only a matter of time before all diving boards disappear.

Safety is meaningful only in the context of other benefits and risks. Safety always involves trade-offs -- of opportunities, of scarce resources and, especially in the case of children's play, of learning to manage risk. The question is whether the trade-off makes sense. Soft rubber matting will cushion any fall. This is probably a good thing, at least in situations where children may fall on their heads. But rubber matting also gets hot.

There's only one solution. Someone on behalf of society must be authorized to make these choices. Courts must honor those decisions. Otherwise, the pious accusations of safety fanatics, empowered by the nearly universal fear of being sued, will guarantee a cultural spiral downwards toward the lowest common denominator.

For America's children today, that means spending more than six hours per day staring at a screen. Is that the way we want our children to grow up?

Corraling School Crises

I am an ardent advocate of adding technology to our schools and I spend countless hours on a soapbox saying so at every opportunity.

I happen to love the stuff that Google has done with email, the embedded Writely program, shared calendars and spreadsheets and the branding they make available. Of course, getting our school up to speed is one of the most frustrating exercises in Ludditism you can imagine.

Nonetheless, months ago I tried to partner EO Smith up with Google repeatedly to no avail.

During that period I sent Google a number of, what I believed were patentable, ideas that I hoped would whet their appetite. I never heard a word back.

Given the Virginia Tech tragedy let me explain something I proposed then that still needs formalization. When I look at Malls and bars and see the inexpensive deployment of flat video screens I imagined that schools could be outfitted with a similar deployment that conformed to potential lock-down perimeters.

During normal school days these could become video presentation centers akin to digital bulletin boards allowing teachers to experiment with flash class group learning techniques. However, during a crisis they could become interactive status monitors dispensing critical information to individuals trapped within perimeters.

The devices need to be smart enough to offer two-way commandeering with a centralized entitlement policy service that could grant exclusive use to certain agents. In a classroom, the teacher. In an emergency the teacher, students, and authorities in wireless fashion and assuming discretionary target destinations.

On a campus of 100 buildings, those not under siege in situations like Virginia Tech's would be able to establish safety corridors that applied police to the correct locations and identified safe haven to those who were unsure.

If Google isn't interested maybe someone else is. It's still a good idea.