The central theme of this chapter will be places specially designed and equipped by adults for children’s free time.
In any object-spatial environment artificially created for children, adults always materialize their own system of ideas about what is useful and good for the child. A psychological analysis of how group spaces in a kindergarten are equipped, what a school class looks like, a psychotherapeutic playroom or a playground will show us how the expectations and even requirements of adults regarding the behavior of children in these places are fixed in the choice, nature and way of placing those present there. items.
For example, in the classrooms of old schools, students’ tables are firmly screwed to the floor: they stand in rows in three columns, and opposite the massive teacher’s table stands on a raised platform. A person entering the classroom immediately feels that such an arrangement of furniture captures the traditional opposition of social positions for a school of the XNUMXth century: the dominant teacher and subordinate students. Tightly attached tables indicate that everything in this space is unshakable — the balance of power cannot be changed at will or for the sake of the current situation.
And vice versa, a modern classroom is equipped with easily moving furniture: tables and chairs can be placed in rows opposite each other, or in a circle or semicircle — it all depends on what kind of socio-psychological atmosphere the teacher is going to create and what tasks the group of people gathered there will solve of people. There are also special cases when furniture is not needed at all, and people sit down or even fit right on the carpeted floor or on special pillows. In such a class, a completely different pedagogical ideology is already imprinted: democratic principles of teaching and taking into account the socio-psychological factor, depending on which the organization of the educational space is dynamically transformed.
Also, the set of objects that are present in the space created by adults for children is not accidental. Any professional teacher who selects toys for a group room in a kindergarten knows that there must be dolls for girls and cars for boys, that some children love small toys, while others love to cuddle with huge furry animals, that items are needed for group games , and for individual, etc.
The equipment for the game psychotherapy room will be selected even more carefully. There, each object exists so that, playing with it, the child can symbolically play out certain life situations associated with traumatic experiences for him. Since children’s problems can relate to any age, an infant horn and a set of soldiers are on the shelves, on the floor there is both a sandbox and a tub with wet clay for modeling. In addition, the nature of the selection of toys and objects in the children’s psychotherapeutic room always expresses the ideology of a certain scientific psychological school to which the specialist working there belongs.
The well-known complex of familiar play structures on the playground also has its own history and has undergone a long natural selection. Who does not remember these swings of different varieties, climbing walls, carousels, sandboxes, slides, mushrooms, houses!
Contact with each of these objects allows the child to feel and experience something important for his development. Moreover, the themes of these experiences are universal — they are significant for all children over long periods of age.
Take, for example, the sandbox. One could write a large book about the events taking place here, which would be of interest not only to parents of small children — any adult would learn a lot of useful things about himself. (And this is despite the fact that several books on the use of sand in psychodiagnostic and psychotherapeutic practice have already been written, though not in Russian.) In Chapter 6, we already said that sand belongs to the group of so-called unstructured materials — it’s just loose mass of matter. Digging and pouring it, a very small child discovers that the sand is easily affected and you can leave traces of your presence in it in the form of pits, heaps, grooves. Then it turns out that of all the types of matter in the surrounding world, it is wet sand that is malleable and obedient to the child so much that he can easily subordinate it to his creative will — the era of Easter cakes is coming. At the age of two or three, it is extremely important for a child to feel for the first time that he is the master of the sand kingdom, where he can create something or, conversely, destroy it. After all, this is precisely the age when the formation of future volitional qualities of the personality begins — playing in the sandbox, the child empirically discovers the creative power of his intention. Along the way, he solves many other problems of personal development there, and this will continue for many more years.
Although it is believed that digging in the sandbox and making Easter cakes is an activity for the smallest, the interest in playing with sand does not fade away among older children. Only they are ashamed to sit in the sandbox — after all, this is a place for kids, and the scale of their activities is different. Younger students need a big pile of sand: to be like a mountain, so that they can jump from it, dig big caves, build castles or entire cities. Older children will not find such a pile on the playground, where there is usually a shallow sandbox. It is very rare to find so much sand in the city — when a street is dug up for a long time for repairs. It was such a happy moment for children that the famous St. Petersburg photographer A. Kitaev caught in the picture placed at the beginning of this chapter — here you can clearly see how different the age of the children’s community, which gathered like flies on honey, on a huge pile of sand at the intersection of two closed to traffic transport of the streets, and how concentrated everyone is busy with their own business.
Now let’s move on to the swings — this is another must-have element from the «small gentleman’s set» of any more or less decent playground. Swings differ in their device, which is determined by where the fulcrum is located. They can be hanging: most often there are such swings for the smallest ones in the form of a seat with a back, armrests and a footrest, which is movably attached to a U-shaped low support with two metal rods. Since there are usually no other options for hanging swings, big children stand on the seat with their feet and try to compensate for the short length of the swing arm with an unrestrained swing swing, so that they almost make a «sun» around the horizontal support.
Unfortunately, only outside the city — in the country or in the village — an older child can swing on a high swing so beloved by children, where the seat hangs on long ropes. The ropes will allow not only swinging strongly, but also changing the trajectory of movement: children love to experiment, twisting around their axis or swinging obliquely — they like to master complex, sweeping, performed with great acceleration of the movement of the whole body in three-dimensional space. This is not only a good training of the vestibular apparatus, but also getting a breathtaking sensation of flying above the ground and covering a large area. By the way, in popular culture, swinging on a swing above the ground was also considered an activity related to obtaining energy and therefore important for the growth of a child. Now the city child of school age is practically deprived of this pleasure. The exception is those rare cases when one of the parents manages to get a long old fire hose. Then they tie it to a thick branch of a tall tree, make a large knot at the end, on which you can sit down and swing in different directions in the form of a free pendulum, experiencing the thrill of the abundance of degrees of freedom and knowing the multidimensionality of the surrounding space through the movements of your body. These impromptu swings turn out to be attractive not only for older children and adolescents, but also for adult men. I have seen more than once how late in the evening, when no one sees, they come to such a tree under the pretext of walking with a dog and secretly try to get pleasure that is inaccessible in daylight due to their considerable age.
In general, the problem with a good hanging swing for seniors can be solved quite simply in the way used in Western countries. An old tire is taken, laid flat. Four through holes are symmetrically made in it, into which metal loops are inserted, fixed on the reverse side. For these loops, the tire is suspended on chains or on cables to a high support. Convenience lies both in the ease of manufacture and in the versatility of such a swing. You can swing on them while sitting, standing, lying down, alone, together, in threes — there are opportunities for experiments with the posture, with the speed and trajectory of swinging, and, which is very important, collective actions are not excluded. Indeed, almost all hanging swings familiar to our children are designed for one person, while back in the first third of this century, one of the types of old swings was preserved in everyday life, not with a seat, but with a platform on which stood several children or adults. Large wooden swings, where guys and girls swung while standing, were also a traditional element of folk spring holidays.
The mutually coordinated group actions that such swings involve are one of the important moments of social learning of interpersonal interaction: the desperate one wants to swing with all his might, the coward squeals in fear, the prudent one tries to slow down a little, the withdrawn one slowly combines his efforts with the prudent one, but they all stand on the same swing platform, holding on to the legs on which they hang, and springing with their legs, so the swing amplitude is always the result of their joint actions. This is a human microcosm, like a pendulum swinging above the earth.
The dependence of one’s own swings on the partner’s actions is explicitly present only in modern swings of a different type — with a fulcrum at the bottom. They can also be found in the playground. It can be a semicircular rocking chair with two seats opposite each other. Or is it a swinging board with seats arranged at its ends and a support post in the middle. With each swing, one of the partners is at the bottom and the other is at the top, and this is experienced by older children not only as an alternating spatial movement along the vertical, which is fascinating in itself, but also as a change in a strong and weak social position — that is, a dynamic confrontation between two people. In children, the lower position is considered strong, giving support and the opportunity to influence the one at the top. Therefore, being at the bottom, the child often tries to show his power over the upper partner and keep him there longer. The one who remained at the top — with dangling legs, without support, forced to rest with his hands so as not to slide down the swing board, as if from a hill — should feel his dependent position and the strength of the bottom. And the strength of its impact is determined both by the length of the swing arm, and by the weight and dexterity of the child. Greater weight (or the creation of the illusion of their heaviness due to good body control) is used by children to assert their significance and seniority. Therefore, where the little ones in the simplicity of their souls enjoy the very process of joint rocking, children of six or seven years old already begin social competition and a demonstration of the power of their influence on a partner.
Much of what has been said about swings applies equally to rotating structures such as carousels: here is an even more intense load on the vestibular apparatus, sometimes leading to dizziness, and the need to interact with other children, on which the speed of rotation also depends, and searching for ways to hold on at high speed, how to stop in time and not fall.
In general, such carousels are useful in many ways. It is a pity that in our country they quickly fail, like other structures, the technical condition of which must be regularly monitored.
Now let’s move on to the ladders — in some form they are always present on the playground. These can be short or long vertical ladders like wall bars, or they can be arched, with both ends resting on the ground, etc. sides with branches — also a kind of staircase to heaven.
It is very useful for young children to learn to alternately move their arms and legs, climbing up the rungs: this is where they discover how many limbs they have and how important it is that they work in harmony in the process of ascending or descending. But already an older preschooler has nothing to do on simple children’s ladders — climbing as a motor skill is generally mastered, then it becomes boring. The main thing is that these ladders do not lead anywhere. Now, if they were much higher, there would be different distances between the steps, at the top there would be a platform where you could climb, then the goal would immediately appear. And if complex transitions from this platform led to another platform, from which one would have to go down a ladder with steps fixed between two chains that sway with each step, this design would be interesting to any child up to adolescence.
For a child of senior preschool — junior school age, it is important to have the opportunity to set and solve interesting motor tasks of varying complexity, to get new sensations, to test oneself, to demonstrate one’s prowess to peers. This is what determines the play potential of the design on the playground. It is usually very small in traditional ladders, as well as in some other items that decorate the playground, more for the satisfaction of adults than for the benefit of children.
Let’s now see how the playground lives when children come there. Since we already walked in the winter in chapter 13, now we will choose a warm May evening somewhere between five and seven o’clock, when the children have already come from school, have lunch, some have done their homework, and are now released for a walk. In St. Petersburg at this time it is quite light, the white nights have come, and nothing prevents us from sitting on a bench in a good square in the city center and watching the events on the local playground.
First, let’s look around: where are we, what is there?
The square is large, green — it has many tall shady trees. It is located inside a quiet old quarter. Nearby is a school where children living in the area study. It is in this square that they all walk after class. Green lawns border a vast central playground designed for children. There are a couple of small huts for house games, low vertical ladders with frequent rungs, a fungus and a gazebo. There are two low iron swings, a sandbox. The area is decorated with two carved wooden idols depicting fairy-tale heroes — Baba Yaga and Leshy. There are benches around the playground, where mothers of small children playing in the sandbox and old women mostly sit. There are also side alleys in the square, where there are also benches. The square is surrounded by a cast-iron fence with gates. A volleyball court adjoins it, surrounded by a solid fence with a high net on top so that the balls do not fly away. The big guys are playing volleyball on the court with a loud shout.
Let’s sit on a bench with a good view and watch a flock of three girls of nine or ten years old who have just entered the gates of the square. They are attracted by the noise of life on the playground, and they immediately head there. They pass by a sandbox, which does not interest them at all, and stop enviously at an iron swing, on which mothers take turns seating very young children to shake. Two or three five-year-olds are spinning around and waiting in the wings. The big girls feel that there is no place for them here, and move on — past the ladders and the mushroom to the empty gazebo. It is a round structure with a cone-shaped roof supported by several columns. Below, between these supports, benches are arranged. In many places they are strewn with sand so that you can’t sit down — the little one made Easter cakes here too. The girls stand thoughtfully near the gazebo, not knowing what to do.
Here one of them spread her arms and, holding on to two adjacent posts, began to sway, standing still. The other climbed up on the gazebo bench and, as if from a pedestal, began to look around. The third also climbed onto the bench and, holding on to the post, began to look at how the roof of the gazebo was arranged inside. It turned out that there are rafters and transverse beams, which crosswise connect the supporting pillars at the top. Then the girl grabbed onto such a beam and, hanging on her hands, began to move from one edge of the arbor to the other, dangling her legs in the air. Two other girls liked this very much, and they immediately followed the example of their friend. Everyone turned out differently. The first, deftly fingering, famously reached the opposite end of the beam. The other hung down and began to sway with her whole body, trying to reach out with her foot to some bench. The third clasped the beam with her arms, but was afraid to hang and lose support under her feet, so she simply began to sway, stretching and bending her whole body.
However, their classes were suddenly interrupted by the sharp cry of a woman passing by with a small child: “What are you doing here hooligans?! Do you have nothing else to do? The gazebo was not set up for you to hang here. Come on, let’s get out of here.» The girls jumped in fright and, wiping their hands, moved away from the arbor in displeasure. For a couple of minutes they experienced a slight shock, huddled together and moving to the edge of the side lawn. And then they consoled themselves, because their attention was attracted by a lawn fence made of thin metal tu.e. One by one, the girls began to balance on them, competing in how many quick steps they could take before they lost their balance and fell to the ground. And although the girls mostly jumped onto the path, and not onto the lawn — they tried, this fun was also interrupted by the annoyed cry of an adult passing by: “Why are you trampling lawns here ?! Found where to play! Only everything spoils all the time!” Not knowing what to do, the girls hastily retreated into a side alley and soon began to gallop along it, as if they were riding on horseback. At the same time, they almost ran into two old women who exclaimed: “Well, you’re jumping like crazy! They don’t have enough room!»
Now let’s listen to a woman’s conversation that three people are having among themselves — a young mother with a baby in a stroller and two old women sitting together on a bench. They watched the scene in the gazebo, and then the events at the edge of the lawn, and now speak out about the behavior of the girls. “They are completely brazen, there is no justice for them! If only to spoil everything and spoil it!” says one old woman. “It’s true that they go around here, only they interfere with everyone, they don’t let the little ones go for a walk. They would go and do their homework or do something in a circle, ”the baby’s mother nods in agreement. “Or they would help mothers with the housework, it’s more useful than hanging around,” a third woman supports them.
Let us now try to analyze and generalize our observations. Let’s ask ourselves a traditional educational question that adults usually put before a child when they teach him to understand images in books:
«What do you see in this picture?» In this illustration from the book of modern Russian life, we saw three children of primary school age who wandered restlessly around the playground of their native square, trying to find where to stumble. Just to stumble, because there was no legal place that would be intended and equipped specifically for children of this age, despite the fact that the square is located directly opposite the school and is the only place for the local children where they are allowed to go for a walk from home without parents.
Why is the playground, despite the abundance of space, equipped only for the smallest, especially since there was money even for lacquered log huts and lacquered carved idols? Several assumptions may come to mind at once.
We list them:
1. Adults do not consider children of primary school age to exist.
2. Children of primary school age no longer fall into the category of children for adults.
3. It does not occur to adults to understand the motor and play needs of children of primary school age and satisfy them by creating special structures on the playground.
4. Adults believe that children of this age should spend their time not on a walk in the park, but in other places (at school? in a circle? in a sports section? doing useful things at home?) — that is, they should study, not play .
5. Adults psychologically do not value the play activities of primary school children highly enough to be attentive to their needs. Therefore, they limited themselves to the standard minimum set of gaming benefits for the smallest — namely, for those children whose playing interests are still actively protected by their parents, which cannot be said about younger schoolchildren, and even more so about adolescents (footnote: I think that this is facilitated by common pedagogical ideas due to many factors.One of them is the textbooks of psychology and pedagogy, where the commonplace has become the assertion that the game is the leading activity for preschoolers, and for younger students, learning activity acts as such.A literal understanding of this statement in practice leads to the fact that educators of younger schoolchildren, their desire to «rush» and play is often considered to be «from the evil one», a manifestation of childishness that must be overcome. For adults, this is more of a cost of age than a legitimate manifestation of a natural need associated with the urgent tasks of development.)
6. Adults hope that these children will find something for themselves and do not have to worry about them.
7. Adults do not understand the importance of a full life of this age period and the need to solve its inherent tasks in the context of the further development of a person.
Here are at least seven different versions of why the interests of three girls, as representatives of their age group, were not taken into account by the planners of the playground in the park and remained unprotected by their parents and teachers. Everyday observations confirm that in each of these versions, no matter how wild it may seem at first, there is an element of truth. In particular, the truth of some versions is clearly confirmed by the remarks of adults passing by the children and the statements of women who were talking on the bench.
In the reactions of these people, the interested observer is primarily struck by two points. Firstly, this is blatant disrespect for the child. It is the deep basis of the reluctance of adults to take the place of the child, at least for a moment to identify with him in order to understand his needs and motives for his actions and actions.
Secondly, this is an extremely aggressive desire to stop behavior that does not fit into the normative framework of adults’ ideas about how children should behave.
What was the «fault» of these girls in the gazebo? That they were not using it for its intended purpose. Instead of decorously standing in the gazebo or sitting inside on a bench, they dared to find the crossbars under the roof and used them as a horizontal bar. They did not break anything and, in principle, could not break these thick wooden bars. The fact that the girls stood with their feet on the bench between the supporting pillars of the gazebo was also not a crime, since these benches were already strewn with sand. Why did adults qualify their actions as hooliganism? Because they were unexpected and «not according to the rules» of the adult world. In addition, children tried to satisfy their need for active bodily self-knowledge, which often annoys adults. The girls solved the problem of boredom in an incompetently made by adults playground in a typically childish way, which we discussed in chapter 12: they found new properties in an initially unattractive object and used them to their advantage and without harming the gazebo, which, however, brought on themselves attacks adults.
The reaction of adults is always important for children. The words and actions of adults as superior people usually make an impression: positively or negatively, internally or externally, but the child will definitely react to them and remember them.
If adults sharply limit the actions of children and do not take into account their needs, if adults often condemn and negatively evaluate the independence of the child’s behavior, then this can lead to two outwardly opposite results.
One variant of the consequences is the blocking of independent research and creative actions of the child. It is caused by the fear of doing something wrong and incurring the wrath of adults. Such fear usually provokes inaction and dependence. The child, out of harm’s way, gives the adult the initiative and, of course, responsibility for the actions performed: “Ma-a, what should I play at? No, I want to draw. Tell me what should I draw? No-o-t, I don’t know how, I can’t semi-study!!! Draw you-s-s!
Since it is unpleasant for any person when he is not allowed to fulfill himself, the child often sabotages the proposals of an adult and thus unconsciously expresses an inner protest. However, the parasitic attitude of the child formed by the adult can then be extended to various types of activity, in particular, to behavior on a walk or a playground. Then the child will demand from an adult that he constantly entertains him, leads him to new places and organizes his relationship with surrounding objects: «I’m bored … I don’t know how … I’m afraid … I’ll fall …»
If a child has been deprived of the freedom to independently explore the space and the objects in it for a long enough time, then he really begins to lack the necessary skills that he could not develop in time. This results in timidity in relations with the object-spatial environment, a misunderstanding that a person can not only adapt to the current state of things, but also show creative activity, in particular, transform the environment in accordance with his needs.
Interestingly, adults working in child care often suffer from similar problems. The reason is that the authoritarian style of relations in the teaching staff itself is typical for many kindergartens and schools. Leaders often behave with subordinates like strict adults with naughty children, who need an eye and an eye. In addition, the pedagogical system is always one of the most conservative social structures, where the inviolability of the rules is observed and their implementation is strictly required. Therefore, many teachers have the idea that an unauthorized restructuring of the object-spatial environment or a change in the usual way of using objects is tantamount to an attack on social foundations. You can not sit on the table, but you can only at the table. You can’t move furniture in the classroom if it was originally arranged in a certain way (footnote: — Here is a typical example. In the mid-80s, groups of socio-psychological training were still a novelty for us, as well as the way of seating participants typical for such classes – on chairs in a circle At the beginning of the training, we usually discussed the importance of the circular organization of the group space as a way of expressing the democratic principles of the relationship of people in the group: equality, openness towards each other, etc. When group members agreed that the circular seating arrangement is optimal for To achieve the goals of our lesson, we began to transform the space of the training room: we moved the tables to the walls, and in the center we put chairs for the participants in a circle.This has never been a problem in groups of engineers, managers, psychologists, etc. Only in groups in which teachers were participants, there were specific difficulties Many of them were afraid to movefurniture from the seats: “It is, of course, correct that it is better in a circle, but there are tables here — how can you move them! What if someone comes in here and says: what are you doing here?! What kind of self-rule is this?! It’s a university!
Once I had to briefly leave the classroom just at the moment when the teachers — members of the group were engaged in arranging chairs in a circle. When I returned, I found that in my absence the problem had been solved in a compromise way. Still, no one dared to take responsibility and did not dare to move the tables from their places — they solemnly continued to stand in their usual columns. Only the teacher’s table was moved to the window. In the resulting narrow space between the first row of tables and the board, chairs for all participants were squeezed in an oval: the usual order of things again turned out to be more important than the needs of the people present).
So, the limiting behavior of adults, indifferent to the needs of children, makes the latter passively adaptable and not inclined to creative transformation of the world. But sometimes you can observe another outcome, when the internal tension of the victim of restrictions grows, accumulates, and then breaks out in the form of aggressive behavior directed at the outside world, which does not give satisfaction to the person living in it: here you are for everything you have done to me!
We can also see examples of such behavior on the familiar playground in the park. Here a boy of eight years old came up to a wooden idol depicting a goblin. He is not at all interested in what kind of figure it is. He sees her here every day and has not considered it for a long time. The boy was attracted by the fact that this idol is a high carved trunk of a once sawn down tree, on which the boy really wanted to climb — good, and there are notches convenient for clinging with his hands and resting with his feet. As soon as he crawled to half the height, the adults who noticed the disorder drove him away: you can’t climb, it’s not set up for that. Since the boy is still relatively small, he obeyed, tears, but remained standing near the idol. When the adults moved away, the boy began to touch and pick its carved surface with his finger, then he took out a penknife and began stealthily picking and whittling the back of the idol with it.
Two things are important in the boy’s behavior. Firstly, he chose this pillar for himself and stubbornly directs his actions precisely at it: they didn’t let him climb in — I won’t leave him anyway, but I will master it, even though I’ll poke with a knife, since I can’t think of anything else. Secondly, despite his desire to be in contact with the chosen object, the boy is irritated and, as a result, will vent his anger on the idol. It turns out that adults, wanting to keep the idol intact, provoked much more destructive actions towards him. And what should have been done? Take into account the interests of children of primary school age and provide them with a climbing structure on the playground that meets their motor and play needs. The absence of such a construction is not so much due to material difficulties as to the psychological insensitivity of adults to the most important needs of children who are already in school.
When adults consistently ignore the motor needs of children, children still try to satisfy them in any way, no longer paying attention to the consequences of their actions — just to seize the moment to break the ban. This is clearly seen in schools during recess. Having jumped out of the classroom, children (primarily the younger ones) want to warm up after forty-five minutes of controlled sitting. But usually recreation is not at all prepared for active pastime. On a slippery floor you will not scatter, and it is forbidden. It is also impossible to roll and somersault. Motor games such as leapfrog are not encouraged. Adults want the resting children to walk slowly and sedately, like the audience in the theater during the intermission. In the old days (and this is preserved in some places) at recess, children were forced to walk in a circle, like prisoners in a prison yard, and even join hands — in pairs. In reality, of course, it doesn’t turn out that way: the children still run, and when they notice that the teacher on duty has gaped or turned away, they rush headlong, already completely ignoring the slippery floor, the fact that they knock down other children, that they themselves fall . The main thing for them is to make the most of the moment of freedom for themselves. The forces of teachers and high school students on duty are aimed at keeping this bacchanalia within some limits. Sometimes this is done in an unscrupulous way. For the sake of maintaining order, teachers allow high school assistants to beat the younger ones for running around, while they themselves turn away, as if they do not see what is happening — that is, they stimulate “hazing”, as in the army. Children know about it.
There are, on the contrary, caring teachers who, on their own, try to organize outdoor games to the best of their ability so that children can discharge themselves. But this initiative is perceived by the authorities as a personal matter of the teacher.
More often there is a passive non-interference of teachers in the behavior of students during the break, limited by the framework accepted at school. It is surprising that, despite the enormous expenditure of energy required for a day of restoring a minimum order, adults do not try to spend it on organizing the very space where children rest, in accordance with their needs, for example, motor needs. Although the children would become calmer, and their teachers — more humane. It is worth putting mats in a convenient place or making a soft covering, allowing you to wallow there, and in this way the innermost aspirations of many children who have sat through the lessons will be satisfied. And if you hang a couple of ropes over these mats, then just those who rushed like crazy will climb on them. For those who are older, you can arrange a room for dancing. If the weather permits, it is useful to spend a break outside. Here, teachers will face the task of balance: what games to stimulate so that children move, and how to make sure that they do not get overexcited. All this can be provided for in the correct arrangement of certain shells on the school grounds, as well as by distributing game items. For example, it can be jump ropes, and even better, thick long ropes: two twist — one jumps, then — change places. After all, the heads of the children were loaded with work at the lesson, so it’s time to work with your feet during the break. You can come up with a lot for children — as experience shows, the practical implementation of these innovations is not difficult. The most difficult and difficult thing is to change the psychological and pedagogical concept of adults. The main thing is that adults perceive children’s outdoor activities and walks as a serious matter, during which a whole range of tasks of the child’s motor, emotional, social, and moral development is solved.
If, in situations that are organized and controlled by adults, children cannot legitimately satisfy their needs, then they will do it in barbaric ways — just to get their own, and will also be prone to aggressive and destructive actions in relation to the environment, with which it was not possible to establish (because the contribution of adults is important here) respectful and creative relations.
So, younger students who ran out of school, who want to swing, but there is no swing, can, without hesitation, hang on the thin branches of a young tree that break under their weight (see Fig. 14.7).
A kindergarten with the surrounding territory, a school with a school grounds, a playground — these are original reservations for the children’s tribe, created by adults. Many children are gathered in the kindergarten and school at the behest of adults. Parents also take the little ones to the playground, and older children come by themselves. What these places have in common is that the object-spatial and social environment artificially created for children. The positive side here is the ability to take into account in advance the tastes, preferences and needs of children gathered in these places for certain purposes (education, pastime, recreation). However, if fundamental mistakes were made when creating such an environment, the essential needs of young users were not taken into account, then they will be experienced more acutely and painfully, and it will be more difficult to compensate for them than in the natural environment. Such errors are tantamount to an incorrectly selected size of a bird cage, the absence of perches there, or a drinking bowl without water.
Having set out to make a good playground that would meet the needs of children of different ages, adults should be clearly aware of the functions of such a playground. This is necessary if its builders do not just fulfill their formal duty, trying to build something for children, but really want to make sure that the site “works” as much as possible for those who come there to play.
The playground performs two fundamental functions. Firstly, in a world where adults reign, such a playground turns out to be the only legitimate place where children can reign, where everything is for them, from where the child will not be chased, since he is on his own territory. It is a microcosm specially designed to meet the play needs of children. It is important for a child to know that such a place exists, since children very often face the fact that adults drive them out of the space of their situations: “Do not get in the way! Get out of here! You don’t belong here! Mind your own business somewhere! Well, why are you wandering around here! etc.
Secondly, the world in which the child lives is often far from perfect. For example, the urbanized landscape familiar to an urban child can be frankly miserable: small asphalt spaces with boxes of stone houses, where there is nothing to swing on, nowhere to climb, nowhere to play. In this case, the playground can be a place where you can compensate for all the «shortcomings» associated with the poverty of the environment and limited motor abilities at school and at home.
In theory, the playground should be a territory where the most attractive object-spatial environment for children is constructed, to which the child has special rights and in which the usual prohibitions of adults on motor behavior do not apply.
First of all, the playground can provide children of all ages with opportunities for a variety of motor activities that correspond to the age-related tasks of their psychomotor development. At ordinary playgrounds, younger schoolchildren are the least provided with such opportunities. Moreover, they do not always use even those game shells that seem to be intended specifically for this age. This behavior of schoolchildren is due to the fact that the structures on playgrounds do not take into account the psychological characteristics and preferences of these children.
From the point of view of motor development, primary school age is interesting because at this time the child begins to feel his body as an integral, but multi-component dynamic system that moves in three-dimensional space. Observing the motor behavior of a child of this age, one can see how he literally explores by experience the articulation of his body, especially the flexibility of the spine, the transmission of a motor impulse along kinematic chains (bones-joints-muscles) and the stretching of skeletal and smooth muscles (recall the girls in the gazebo). During this period, the child discovers the presence of a torso, the continuation of which are the arms and legs (previously they were thought of on their own), which can bend, fold, stretch, pass through itself a wave of movement from the toe of the foot to the tips of the fingers of the hands. Naturally, the child himself is not aware of these discoveries — they are intuitive. For some reason, he just likes to hang and swing on his hands or upside down, hooking his knees on the crossbar and trying to reach the ground with his fingers, he wants to make a bridge, somersault back and forth on a swinging trapezoid or rings, he is attracted by unsteady supports and staying on height. The child is also pleased with large sweeping movements, accelerations, complexly coordinated actions performed at high speed. This is a period of experimentation while riding a bicycle, from an ice slide, swinging on a high swing, diving and swimming under water, etc. All these are quite difficult motor tasks that require active joint work of at least three analyzers: kinesthetics (muscle sensations), vestibular apparatus and vision.
Interestingly, such experimental work with one’s own bodily sensations is accompanied by the emergence of new ideas that exist in the form of children’s «body concepts» already at the intellectual level. My student T. E. Belotelova in an experimental study found out how children of different ages imagine the internal structure of the human body (footnote: Belotelova T. E. Experimental study of ideas and knowledge about their own body in children 3-7 years old. Diploma work. Scientific. supervisor M. V. Osorina, St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of Psychology, 6). It turned out that for small children of four or five years old, the body is primarily a «bag of blood.» Five-six-year-olds note as the most important thing that there are hard bones in the body and the heart beats. But at the age of seven, most children first of all emphasize that the bones are connected to each other and are needed in order “to hold a person”, that is, they discover the presence and significance of the skeleton (“a skull is needed so that the head does not wrinkle”). And no wonder — after all, this knowledge was obtained independently, came through the study of oneself and continues to be refined further.
From all of the above, it is clear how important a good playground is for children of primary school age (especially urban children), where one could indulge in a variety of physical activities. However, if adults want to give such opportunities to children of this age, then they will stumble upon psychological obstacles that are rooted in these same children. The first dramatic contradiction is that younger students tend to be much less supervised by adults than toddlers. For them, the freedom to choose the place and method of action is important, the intimacy of the situation of motor self-test, when it is not known whether this or that movement will work or not, when the evaluative views of elders interfere. And playgrounds are usually built in accordance with the principles of toddler behavior: they are in the center, and around there are benches where adult observers sit. So that for a younger student the playground is not associated with a place for the little ones and he would not be embarrassed to be there, you need to take the area intended for older children to the side, at least partially hide it from prying eyes, create the illusion of conservation and at the same time — a positive status , the special value of this place.
Another contradiction lies in the fact that the design of the playground and its equipment were made by adults with a certain calculation and thereby imposes on the child what he is offered to do there: he needs to swing on it, climb up there, etc. And children of this age like to invent their own own, sometimes completely unexpected ways of interacting with the game object: swings are supposed to swing, and I, on the contrary, will climb on the support to which they are attached. There is a way out: you can make each object multifunctional so that the same design can be used in many different ways. Ideally, some game features are clearly visible, while others need to be discovered. It is also important that the design be «for growth», namely, it would allow the child to set himself motor tasks of varying degrees of complexity. Then she will attract children of different ages, each of whom will find something to do according to their strength. This is easiest to achieve by creating multi-tiered structures of a sufficiently large height (3-4 meters), with platforms located at different levels, and complex transitions between them (ladders at different angles — from vertical to horizontal, swinging bridges on chains, etc. .). In play structures, statics should be combined with dynamics: we emphasize once again that children love soft suspensions (swings on ropes, ropes), which allow diversifying the trajectories of pendulum movements. All this can be attached to the same supports that children climb on.
If we try to summarize everything that we have already discussed, and imagine what a playground for younger students should look like, then the most appropriate comparison would be with the device of a good monkey house in a zoo. It looks unrespectable, but the children will be interested and fun. However, it must be borne in mind that children of this age differ both from monkeys and from small children in that they quickly get bored with movement for the sake of movement. It is important for kids to master motor skills as such — for example, climbing and descending stairs. Older children need a game goal, in relation to which skills are only a means. They want achievements in which an interest in exploring the world and testing oneself materializes: what is there? and: Can I? This must be taken into account in the design of game objects — ladders should lead somewhere: to the captain’s bridge, to the turret, etc. It is desirable that there are further ways of moving from there, if possible different.
Small semantic accents, which can be slightly outlined with the help of expressive details, will push the associative thinking of children and open the way for fantasies, themed games with chases and adventures, etc. “Aerobatics” in this regard was demonstrated by the creators of a playground in one of the English towns, which allowed the children to realize their desire to build houses and «headquarters». One of the construction companies helped to firmly dig in high support poles connected at different heights by platforms. A booth was placed nearby, where tools (saws, hammers, nails, brushes and paints) and building materials (boards, plywood, etc.) were stored. All this was given to the children by a young man who was hired specifically for this by the local municipality. He came to the playground several times a week for several hours, kept order, helped with technical advice if any of the children needed it, and supplied them with everything necessary for the construction of «watchtowers», «observation posts» and other architectural structures. , which they, uniting in groups and competing with each other, created with inspiration. The children were interested, they learned a lot in the process of this creative activity and were in business for a very long time, because there are no limits to perfection.
And if there is nothing to build from, and only a bare asphalt area can be at the disposal of children — for example, near a school? Need for inventions is cunning. Children will find something to their liking here too, if a reasonable adult encourages their creative thought, providing them with a minimum of materials, in particular crayons, which allow them to create any worlds they want in the form of drawings. However, children will be able to move to these worlds for a while with complete psychological certainty.
Let’s use eyewitness testimony:
“My childhood passed in the 60s in Leningrad. We built shelters («headquarters») only in the summer and outside the city. And in the city we had a favorite pastime — to draw with chalk on the pavement for ourselves «apartments». The large rectangles were «rooms». We filled them with furniture and other things. All this was also drawn with chalk. And it was like our houses. But in reality, we all lived then in communal apartments, where each family had only one room.
Indeed, it is worth stimulating children by giving them chalk, balls, ropes, and a bare asphalt patch can become a completely acceptable and lively children’s playground. Some draw, others jump “hopscotch”, others jump over a rope, others play “ball school”, hitting the ball against the wall and jumping over it in various intricate ways, the fifth just chase the ball. The main thing is that adults appreciate these game activities and see their developmental and recreational meaning. The approval, and even more so the encouragement of adults, will immediately inspire children and fill the empty space of the asphalt patch with life.
In all these games, the valuable thing is that they make the legs actively move and work — this extremely important, but neglected and increasingly weakening part of the body in modern people. The load on the legs, especially jumping, is all the more useful for children if the head was heavily loaded before (for example, after school). Another important point is the opportunity for children to be in dynamic interactions with each other and with objects moving in space: a ball bouncing off the wall or a spinning rope that you need to jump over.
Observations of modern children’s street games show that they tend to reduce the dynamics and emasculate the most significant psychological component — the need to adapt in one’s actions to the movements of a peer partner interacting with the child. To some adults, two different types of jumping seem completely similar: through a rope that is twisted by two children, and through an elastic band stretched between the legs of two standing ones. Although they differ greatly in the composition of motor tasks, despite the common component — jumps. Jumping through an elastic band entered children’s practice relatively recently, about 20-25 years ago — in the West it appeared much earlier. In this case, the jumping child is dealing with a fundamentally static situation: the other two children stand motionless — they are turned off as capable persons. With equal success, one could stretch an elastic band between two fixed chairs. Here there is no motor interaction between children and each other, or jumping with a moving obstacle, as in the case of a spinning rope.
In this regard, the first situation is much simpler than the second, and more individualistic — the result depends only on the prudent dexterity of the main character. Rope jumping is dynamically more difficult. Firstly, there is a well-coordinated interaction of two twisters: they can arbitrarily change the speed and pace of rotation of the rope, from slow, when the rope sags, to a quick “fire”, they can “pull” so that the third one stumbles, etc. For To do this, children must be able to feel well the movements and even intentions of each other through the rope connecting them in order to act in time. Equally, the jumper must continuously monitor and adapt to the slightest changes in the movement of the rope. That is, the whole trinity plus the rope is a complexly organized system, the participants of which are in dynamic interaction, requiring mandatory adjustment to each other. All this develops the empathy we already know, which is practically not needed in bungee jumping. A psychologically oriented educator who cares about the contact and sociability of the children under his care, of course, will encourage jumping over the rope more, realizing that this is also a kind of communicative training.
Of the many such seemingly insignificant trifles, the developing effect of street games and children’s fun is formed. In cases where they occur on the playground, adults have the opportunity to imperceptibly influence them in the right direction through the organization of the subject space, the supply of game materials, and sometimes open encouragement of certain games that are especially important for the versatile development of children.
It is impossible not to say that sometimes there are wonderful courtyards, which in themselves are an excellent play space for children — they are a kind of natural playgrounds. This happens due to a combination of the successful location of the yard, the presence of objects attractive for children and a small contribution of adults. Here is one of the typical courtyards built in the early 50s on Bolshaya Okhta in St. Petersburg. It is located inside a rectangle of three-story houses with gates. The main attraction, which makes the courtyard attractive to all the surrounding children in winter, is a huge flat hill, under which there is an abandoned bomb shelter. The doors leading there on both sides are always locked, and the large tin canopies above these entrances serve as springboards from which the boys like to jump into the snow. They use the inclined supports of these visors as horizontal bars. In winter, from the high snow-covered slopes of the bomb shelter, it is good to sled and ski. There are always several long icy slopes filled with adults. For local children, a walk in this yard is called — go «to the bomb». In good winter weather, there are one and a half to two dozen children there at the same time. Behind the bomb shelter is a two-story empty building of a kindergarten with broken windows. It stands in an open area inside the yard, visible from all sides, and the homeless do not live there. But this building serves as an ideal place for children’s companies to explore excursions, test courage and play «adventure».
The inner space of the yard with children rolling and playing there is something like the central platform of a kind of amphitheater: parents, looking out of the windows of the houses surrounding the yard, can, if they wish, see their children without bothering them with annoying attention. Convenient for everyone. Children are happy that they can play here in a varied and interesting way, and parents are happy that everything happens before their eyes. The yard is so popular that kids from nearby neighborhoods trick their parents into riding «the bomb» under the pretense of going to school for club classes. Parents willingly let go to the circle, but not for a long walk, because they consider it a waste of time.
This courtyard, which is completely nondescript from the point of view of an adult visitor, is, however, an example of an “ecologically friendly” urban landscape for the children’s subculture. «Eikos», from which the word «ecology» is derived, means «house» in Greek. Indeed, in such a yard, children feel at home comfortably. The walls of houses and the presence of potential observers who look out of the windows protect the courtyard from dangerous intrusions from the outside world. This is an internal «domesticated» space. At the same time, it is diverse enough to satisfy the play needs of children of different ages walking there on their own.
In general, the ecology of the children’s subculture, that is, the question of how the children’s world lives in the space of the adult world, is becoming an urgent problem in our time. If the environment in which the child grows up is not able to satisfy his desire to move, play, explore the surrounding space, actively express himself, communicate with peers, etc., then he will become more and more angry, aggressive, emotionally and physically undeveloped, incapable enter into an intimate relationship with the environment. If children have nowhere and no time to walk, play and communicate, then there will be no normal socialization among peers, just as there will be no healthy children’s subculture. And this can cause serious socio-psychological problems in adolescence and youth.
For the normal existence of the children’s subculture, time and place are required. If this is not the case, then it begins to degenerate and collapse. Which, in turn, leads to small, but multiple failures in the process of becoming a child as a social personality, which must be able to «fit» into the surrounding object-spatial and social world and be in constructive interaction with it. The world of children is always a part of the «big» world, where adults are undoubtedly the stewards. Therefore, it is especially important that they understand the enormous responsibility of their master’s role in a common home, where all its inhabitants should be comfortable.