Risk vs. Recklessness

We live in a safety-obsessed culture.  Playgrounds no longer have most of the features that were my childhood favorites.  I spent many happy hours spinning in circles on tire swings and roundabouts that can no longer be found on today's playgrounds.  Seesaws are a thing of the past.  Most schools have removed their swingsets, so we will see if my mom was right when she told us you can't grow right if you don't swing on swingsets.  Every time I find out a beloved piece of playground equipment is now banned, I wonder how long it will be before we wrap the kids in bubble wrap and roll them around the playground.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not against safety.  But, the point of playgrounds is to teach children how to take risks.  Why, you may ask, should kids learn to take risks?  I'm so glad you asked.  Risk is how we grow as a culture.  Risk is how the human race has progressed.  We made fire, explored the west, crossed Antarctica, invented electricity, and flew in space - all risky activities.  All of those things have been possible because human beings were willing find something more valuable than safety.

I'm concerned that the generation in front of us has been raised with such safety-conscious decisions that they have not learned the difference between risk-taking and recklessness.  Because they aren't learning it in other ways, I have this conversation with my 8th-graders when we learn about space travel and with my physics students when discussing the Manhattan Project.  When I ask my 8th-graders to evaluate the wisdom of a manned mission to Mars, about one-third of my students object to it on the basis of safety.  They say things like, "We should not go unless it can be guaranteed to be completely safe" and, "No one should risk their lives" and "We should only go when it can be 100% risk-free."  This is an unreasonable level of expectation for anything.  I remind them that sports are not 100% safe (There's a running ambulance at every game for a reason).  Driving a car isn't completely without risk, but we drive anyway.  Some of my physics students say that the scientists of the Manhattan project were not reckless because they were just doing what they had been told to do.  It seems my students have some conflicting thoughts about safety, risk, and recklessness; so I think these are important discussions to have with them.

Reckless, according to the Miriam Webster Dictionary, is "a lack of proper caution, careless of consequences, and irresponsible."  It defines risk as "a chance of loss and the possibility of loss or injury."  In short, it seems the recklessness is just risk without care or preparation for consequences.

Sports, as I mentioned before, involves risk.  That does not make those who play it reckless because they have conditioning, training, and procedures for the possible consequences.  Driving is the daily use of a 3000-pound piece of metal with combustible fluids firing up through the entire trip.  Is it reckless?  No.  You have been trained in safety techniques, and the car has been equipped with seat belts and airbags.  We, as a society, have decided that these mitigate the risk enough to make quick transportation worth handling a moving machine.  These are things we do every day that involve risk but are not necessarily reckless.

We should not be reckless, but we cannot move forward without risk.  It's important that we teach students the difference so that progress doesn't stop in the name of safety.