The Lessons of Salem
19th May 2007
As a child I was taught not to tell lies: “a lie will always catch you out,” my parents told me. I taught the same message to my children.
Lies, of course, do not always catch you out. Some lies remain watertight. Some even become enshrined as truths.
Fifty years ago Arthur Miller wrote about lies in his play The Crucible, which was brilliantly staged at Trott’s Garden this week by Ashburton College drama students. Miller explored how a lie can take root within a community and spread its branches to ensnare the good, the bad and the indifferent.
The Crucible tells the story of the witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, three hundred years ago. A group of young girls, caught dancing in the forest in breach of the puritanical strictures of their community, lie to protect themselves by laying accusations of witch-craft. At first the accused are the powerless and outcast in the community. As the lie gathers strength, nurtured by religious hysteria, it is used to settle old scores and remove rivals.
As the community devours itself confession becomes the only lifeline. If you confess to being in thrall to the devil, declare the priests and judges, you are on the path to redemption. Your salvation will be assured if you help identify the perpetrators of evil.
Eventually hundreds of Salem’s citizens were accused of witch-craft and demonology. Seventy-two were sentenced to death and half of these were hanged.
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible not simply to retell an old tale. He wrote it at the height of the Cold War, when America was swept by a wave of anti-communist hysteria. Senator Joe McCarthy conducted an inquisition to uproot communist infiltration of American society and business. ‘McCarthyism’ became a synonym for witch-hunt.
The Crucible reminds us that however civilised we may believe ourselves to be we remain vulnerable to our imaginations. When imagined fears are manipulated into collective hysteria we are no more civilised than the puritans of Salem.
Recent history is thick with witch-hunts. Technology and the instruments of power have enabled many of these to be enacted on a scale unimaginable in seventeenth century Salem.
In the most successful cases an entire nation can be subdued through a regime of terror and lies, where the only safety is to become an informant. Stalin did it brilliantly in the Soviet Union. Hitler, Mussolini and Mao Tse Tung were masters of the craft. The catalogue unfolds - apartheid South Africa, North Korea, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and poor Zimbabwe today.
Even in New Zealand – a relatively level-headed society - we are not immune to witch-hunts. At moments we are as vulnerable as any other community to evil portent, bubbling conspiracy, cloak-and-dagger intrigue and the ever-present threats of our neighbours.
For evidence we need look no further than this week’s press. Sandwiched between David Bain and the budget was yet another story about sexual deviancy and corruption in the police. This time it centred on the viewing of a pornographic video 25 years ago.
At one level the story seems a scurrilous attempt to malign the police commissioner, Howard Broad, who was present at the event. Broad took his cue from Salem, owned up to his part in the incident and re-directed the media’s attention to the real culprits.
The story then focussed on two former Dunedin police officers trading accusations to settle old scores. Then, like all witch-hunts, it grew rapidly into a story of widespread corruption among Dunedin police in the 1980s and 1990s, with harassment and violation of women police officers, stand-over tactics at local brothels and a culture of machismo and bullying.
By day two it was drawing in the Exclusive Brethren, David Bain and suggestions of a cover-up in the recently completed enquiry into police conduct.
Watching this story unfold I was reminded of the atmosphere in Christchurch during the trial of Peter Ellis in the early 1990s. The city was enthralled by the story of sexual abuse of children at the Civic Creche. There were allegations of satanic cults, of secret rooms in the Cranmer Centre where children were detained and abused by leading members of the community. It was rubbish but it poisoned life for a group of innocent people and made many others edgy for years.
The media often plays a mischievous role in these stories. Once a story gathers momentum few journalists pull their punches or stop to consider the veracity of what they are about to print or broadcast.
In Salem it took extraordinary courage to restore sanity. A few leading citizens, accused of witch-craft, refused to lie in order to save themselves. Their executions, patently unjust, jolted the community to its senses.
When faced with a witch-hunt of any sort we must refuse to buy into it. We must not blindly believe the last thing we heard on the news. And we must not tell lies – even to ourselves.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Maori Kids Are Dumb, Mr V.
Saturday 21st April 2007
The message on the answerphone was brief. “Ollie won’t be back at school this term. Child, Youth and Family pulled the plug and sent him up north.”
Ollie came to our school in February; six years old, Maori, bursting out of his skin.
Ollie was a handful. He was one of those kids that you brace yourself for when you see him coming. His story is sad - and sadly common. His life veers between neglect and abuse, in which he is both victim and perpetrator. He has learned to mistrust the adults who move in and out of his life, and who demonstrate only infrequent and volatile love. His vocabulary is peppered with gang slogans, matched with a swagger masking deep insecurities.
His departure after only one term continues the ongoing disaster of his life. With a child like Ollie it takes at least a term just to calm him down. Now he has to begin that process all over again in a new town, a new home and a new school.
After a few more of these transitions – and there will be more – Ollie will be pretty much lost to education. Even the natural optimism of youth is no protection against constant disappointment and there will come a time when Ollie is no longer prepared to suspend his disbelief in a world that promises so much yet delivers so little.
Earlier this week, in a hotel in Mangere, South Auckland, I sat with 200 other primary and secondary school principals and listened to a speech from Apryll Parata, the Ministry of Education’s deputy secretary for Maori. She painted the familiar picture of Maori failure in education and chastised us for turning our backs on Maori students. The image was poignant. The streets around us teemed with young Maori and Pacific Islanders but the hotel’s windows faced inward to a courtyard garden and swimming pool.
Mrs Parata did not mince her words. Maori, she said, want the same things as pakeha. They want to live in the confidence of their culture, to actively participate as citizens of the world, to enjoy good health and a high standard of living. Why then, she asked, after 130 years of state-funded education, do we fail to provide young Maori with the means of achieving these goals?
Our failure is all the more regrettable for having one of the best education systems in the world. On average New Zealand students outperform almost all others. But our education system is also one of the most inequitable, with large numbers of students who fail to achieve, many of them Maori.
We sat in that conference room and squirmed under Mrs Parata’s words. There were murmurs of outrage: ‘it’s not our fault, we do our best, we need more resources.’
Mrs Parata was relentless. Maori achievement doesn’t need more resources, she said. It needs a shift of attitude. Maori students fail to achieve because they feel they don’t belong.
Actually, a student’s achievement or failure is determined by a whole lot of things. Schools often let themselves off the hook by blaming poor home life and lack of parenting skills. Parents blame schools for poor teaching and discriminatory practises. Everybody blames the government for poor funding and misguided policy.
In reality a heap of research shows that 50 percent of the variance in achievement among students is simply due to individual ability. If you are a bright kid you are much more likely to succeed regardless of all other factors.
The remaining 50 percent - the achievement factors over which parents, school and society might have some influence – are interesting.
Teachers who blame poor home life for poor achievement should think again. The home accounts for only 6 percent of variance in student achievement.
Parents who think sending their child to a ‘good school’ makes a big difference should think again. The school accounts for only 8 percent of variance in achievement.
The influence of a child’s peers accounts for a further 6 percent, as does the work of school principals. The remaining 25 percent is down to the teacher. A good teacher, it seems, is second only to a child’s natural ability in determining whether that child succeeds or fails in education.
These are generalised numbers and for some children the numbers must vary. Ollie’s chances of success in education are hugely influenced by his home life. It will be difficult for teachers to exert a positive influence on Ollie’s achievement if he continues to bounce from school to school.
Likewise, individual success relies on attitude as well as intellect. Apryll Parata told us that Maori students expect to fail at school, their families expect them to fail and pakeha expect them to fail.
Ollie confirmed that. A few days before the end of term I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“I want to ride horses – race them. I prob’ly won’t though.”
“Why not?”
“Cos I’m dumb.”
“Why do you think you’re dumb, Ollie?”
Ollie looked at me.
“Cos Maori kids are dumb, Mr V.”
Saturday 21st April 2007
The message on the answerphone was brief. “Ollie won’t be back at school this term. Child, Youth and Family pulled the plug and sent him up north.”
Ollie came to our school in February; six years old, Maori, bursting out of his skin.
Ollie was a handful. He was one of those kids that you brace yourself for when you see him coming. His story is sad - and sadly common. His life veers between neglect and abuse, in which he is both victim and perpetrator. He has learned to mistrust the adults who move in and out of his life, and who demonstrate only infrequent and volatile love. His vocabulary is peppered with gang slogans, matched with a swagger masking deep insecurities.
His departure after only one term continues the ongoing disaster of his life. With a child like Ollie it takes at least a term just to calm him down. Now he has to begin that process all over again in a new town, a new home and a new school.
After a few more of these transitions – and there will be more – Ollie will be pretty much lost to education. Even the natural optimism of youth is no protection against constant disappointment and there will come a time when Ollie is no longer prepared to suspend his disbelief in a world that promises so much yet delivers so little.
Earlier this week, in a hotel in Mangere, South Auckland, I sat with 200 other primary and secondary school principals and listened to a speech from Apryll Parata, the Ministry of Education’s deputy secretary for Maori. She painted the familiar picture of Maori failure in education and chastised us for turning our backs on Maori students. The image was poignant. The streets around us teemed with young Maori and Pacific Islanders but the hotel’s windows faced inward to a courtyard garden and swimming pool.
Mrs Parata did not mince her words. Maori, she said, want the same things as pakeha. They want to live in the confidence of their culture, to actively participate as citizens of the world, to enjoy good health and a high standard of living. Why then, she asked, after 130 years of state-funded education, do we fail to provide young Maori with the means of achieving these goals?
Our failure is all the more regrettable for having one of the best education systems in the world. On average New Zealand students outperform almost all others. But our education system is also one of the most inequitable, with large numbers of students who fail to achieve, many of them Maori.
We sat in that conference room and squirmed under Mrs Parata’s words. There were murmurs of outrage: ‘it’s not our fault, we do our best, we need more resources.’
Mrs Parata was relentless. Maori achievement doesn’t need more resources, she said. It needs a shift of attitude. Maori students fail to achieve because they feel they don’t belong.
Actually, a student’s achievement or failure is determined by a whole lot of things. Schools often let themselves off the hook by blaming poor home life and lack of parenting skills. Parents blame schools for poor teaching and discriminatory practises. Everybody blames the government for poor funding and misguided policy.
In reality a heap of research shows that 50 percent of the variance in achievement among students is simply due to individual ability. If you are a bright kid you are much more likely to succeed regardless of all other factors.
The remaining 50 percent - the achievement factors over which parents, school and society might have some influence – are interesting.
Teachers who blame poor home life for poor achievement should think again. The home accounts for only 6 percent of variance in student achievement.
Parents who think sending their child to a ‘good school’ makes a big difference should think again. The school accounts for only 8 percent of variance in achievement.
The influence of a child’s peers accounts for a further 6 percent, as does the work of school principals. The remaining 25 percent is down to the teacher. A good teacher, it seems, is second only to a child’s natural ability in determining whether that child succeeds or fails in education.
These are generalised numbers and for some children the numbers must vary. Ollie’s chances of success in education are hugely influenced by his home life. It will be difficult for teachers to exert a positive influence on Ollie’s achievement if he continues to bounce from school to school.
Likewise, individual success relies on attitude as well as intellect. Apryll Parata told us that Maori students expect to fail at school, their families expect them to fail and pakeha expect them to fail.
Ollie confirmed that. A few days before the end of term I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“I want to ride horses – race them. I prob’ly won’t though.”
“Why not?”
“Cos I’m dumb.”
“Why do you think you’re dumb, Ollie?”
Ollie looked at me.
“Cos Maori kids are dumb, Mr V.”
The Eels of Ellesmere
Saturday 7th April 2007
Clem Smith pulled 74 tonnes of eels from Lake Ellesmere between early February and mid March. Today however he has just ten, in a small sack he retrieves from tea-coloured water by the boat ramp at Fisherman’s Point.
He drops the sack on the gravel and the children crowd around the writhing slick of eels, delighted and disgusted. The eels are handed around – large eels, small eels, green and silver and purple as deep as aubergine. The big ones are females, Clem explains, filled with eggs and ready to swim to Samoa where, with their smaller mates, they spawn and die.
A hand from the back of the group – how big is the biggest eel you’ve ever caught? Clem is thoughtful. He has a photo, he says, taken in 1959 of himself with an eel twice his size. “Of course, I was smaller then myself,” he grins shyly.
The eels are returned to the water where they quickly vanish. Children drift off to skip stones across the water or fossick among the debris at the lake’s edge. Their beach combing is purposeful – a teacher-inspired scavenger hunt that could win them valuable group points. One boy drags an ancient neoprene diving boot from the mud and holds it aloft. “That’s not what I need” – he consults his list – “what I need is a sock.”
Since January I have travelled daily to my new job at Southbridge School. I am enjoying the experience, although it is a little unnerving to cross the Rakaia and leave behind the familiar networks of Mid-Canterbury. I have discovered there is a membrane, permeable but nevertheless real, that separates our side of the river from the wider world.
I am also discovering another corner of Canterbury that I have never before explored. This school camp at the corner of Lake Ellesmere opens my eyes to new perspectives that are all the more startling because they lie within the scope of familiar landmarks. There is Banks Peninsula, the Torlesse Range, Mount Hutt and, far off, Mount Peel – all familiar but slightly different from this new angle.
The daily experience of driving a few kilometres from the main highway brings me to understand a poverty of experience.
The journey of my life has been traced, by and large, along the narrow strip of State Highway 1. From a Southland childhood I ventured up the road to spend my student years and early working life in Dunedin, followed by a decade each in Christchurch and Mid-Canterbury.
Some of my earliest memories were formed along this route. I recall the Kilmog as a rain-drenched gravel road viewed from the back seat of the family Volkswagen in the early 60s. I bought my first twin-cone ice cream at Ashburton’s Snowdrop dairy in a breath-taking sprint from the railway station while the Southerner paused, southbound, about 1974.
And in all these journeys I have hardly strayed from the narrow path. I have explored no more than half a dozen of the countless side roads along a hundred kilometres of main highway north or south of here. I have not the faintest idea what lies behind the main streets of Dunsandel or Temuka. I presume not much, but I am poorer for that conceit.
If it were not for my new job I would probably never have visited Southbridge or spent these few days at the corner of Lake Ellesmere. I am glad I did – it is country that needs a few days to appreciate.
Like much of the Canterbury coastline it is not pretty. The land is laid bare, its ribs of gravel and sand exposed by low, knife-edged winds that fillet the best of the soil and vegetation, leaving a hard scrub of box thorn, lupin and gorse.
The lake itself is slumped and flaccid, sprawled like a victim. The settlement at Fisherman’s Point seems, at first glance, to echo the mood of the lake. Its fifteen or twenty houses appear to have long since lost their battle with the elements. Damsel flies swarm thickly around the water’s edge and the scrubby farmland is home to half-wild pigs and a scatter of malnourished cattle.
But a closer look reveals small treasures. Ngati Moki marae, where we stayed, lies in the elbow of a spring-fed stream that is as fresh and clear as mountain water. The gullies are moist and fruitful, filled with raupo and flax and a rustling busy-ness of waterfowl.
There is a muted but tenacious narrative in the broken dinghies and tumbledown shacks, and a more ancient story in the earth ramparts of the old pa.
If all this is to be discovered on one side road I begin to imagine what I may find if I explored others. What mysteries and pleasures lie behind Waikouaiti, Clinton and St Andrews? What undiscovered hinterlands lie within this strip of island I call home?
Perhaps it is time I found out.
Saturday 7th April 2007
Clem Smith pulled 74 tonnes of eels from Lake Ellesmere between early February and mid March. Today however he has just ten, in a small sack he retrieves from tea-coloured water by the boat ramp at Fisherman’s Point.
He drops the sack on the gravel and the children crowd around the writhing slick of eels, delighted and disgusted. The eels are handed around – large eels, small eels, green and silver and purple as deep as aubergine. The big ones are females, Clem explains, filled with eggs and ready to swim to Samoa where, with their smaller mates, they spawn and die.
A hand from the back of the group – how big is the biggest eel you’ve ever caught? Clem is thoughtful. He has a photo, he says, taken in 1959 of himself with an eel twice his size. “Of course, I was smaller then myself,” he grins shyly.
The eels are returned to the water where they quickly vanish. Children drift off to skip stones across the water or fossick among the debris at the lake’s edge. Their beach combing is purposeful – a teacher-inspired scavenger hunt that could win them valuable group points. One boy drags an ancient neoprene diving boot from the mud and holds it aloft. “That’s not what I need” – he consults his list – “what I need is a sock.”
Since January I have travelled daily to my new job at Southbridge School. I am enjoying the experience, although it is a little unnerving to cross the Rakaia and leave behind the familiar networks of Mid-Canterbury. I have discovered there is a membrane, permeable but nevertheless real, that separates our side of the river from the wider world.
I am also discovering another corner of Canterbury that I have never before explored. This school camp at the corner of Lake Ellesmere opens my eyes to new perspectives that are all the more startling because they lie within the scope of familiar landmarks. There is Banks Peninsula, the Torlesse Range, Mount Hutt and, far off, Mount Peel – all familiar but slightly different from this new angle.
The daily experience of driving a few kilometres from the main highway brings me to understand a poverty of experience.
The journey of my life has been traced, by and large, along the narrow strip of State Highway 1. From a Southland childhood I ventured up the road to spend my student years and early working life in Dunedin, followed by a decade each in Christchurch and Mid-Canterbury.
Some of my earliest memories were formed along this route. I recall the Kilmog as a rain-drenched gravel road viewed from the back seat of the family Volkswagen in the early 60s. I bought my first twin-cone ice cream at Ashburton’s Snowdrop dairy in a breath-taking sprint from the railway station while the Southerner paused, southbound, about 1974.
And in all these journeys I have hardly strayed from the narrow path. I have explored no more than half a dozen of the countless side roads along a hundred kilometres of main highway north or south of here. I have not the faintest idea what lies behind the main streets of Dunsandel or Temuka. I presume not much, but I am poorer for that conceit.
If it were not for my new job I would probably never have visited Southbridge or spent these few days at the corner of Lake Ellesmere. I am glad I did – it is country that needs a few days to appreciate.
Like much of the Canterbury coastline it is not pretty. The land is laid bare, its ribs of gravel and sand exposed by low, knife-edged winds that fillet the best of the soil and vegetation, leaving a hard scrub of box thorn, lupin and gorse.
The lake itself is slumped and flaccid, sprawled like a victim. The settlement at Fisherman’s Point seems, at first glance, to echo the mood of the lake. Its fifteen or twenty houses appear to have long since lost their battle with the elements. Damsel flies swarm thickly around the water’s edge and the scrubby farmland is home to half-wild pigs and a scatter of malnourished cattle.
But a closer look reveals small treasures. Ngati Moki marae, where we stayed, lies in the elbow of a spring-fed stream that is as fresh and clear as mountain water. The gullies are moist and fruitful, filled with raupo and flax and a rustling busy-ness of waterfowl.
There is a muted but tenacious narrative in the broken dinghies and tumbledown shacks, and a more ancient story in the earth ramparts of the old pa.
If all this is to be discovered on one side road I begin to imagine what I may find if I explored others. What mysteries and pleasures lie behind Waikouaiti, Clinton and St Andrews? What undiscovered hinterlands lie within this strip of island I call home?
Perhaps it is time I found out.
The Modest Air Symposium
Saturday 10th March 2007
A small group of children gathers around the pile of wooden blocks and planks that forms a ramp on the footpath. One stoops to adjust the arrangement of timber.
Thirty metres along the footpath Hazel circles lazily on her bicycle, like an aircraft in a holding pattern. She is a blaze of red on the suburban street: red bicycle, red helmet, red school uniform.
There is a brief command from the group – a signal. Hazel turns, purposeful now, aims her bike at the heap of wood and pumps her legs on the pedals. The bike wobbles and straightens, accelerating. The children stand back, eyes fixed on the ramp.
Hazel hits the ramp hard, the bicycle lifts, clears the top of the pile and, for a perhaps a metre, is airborne, with Hazel standing tall and angled like a ski jumper, hands gripping the handlebars, eyes fixed on the end of the street.
The bicycle lands hard on its front wheel. Hazel pulls up in a skid, turns and pedals calmly back to the group which has gathered around the ramp again. There is a brief, subdued conversation and another child peels out of the group towards the take-off point.
This is the Modest Air Symposium, a small society of neighbourhood children whose wooden ramp has become a fixture on the footpath outside my house.
The game originates from the summer holidays when Nick, our 8 year old neighbour, found some off-cuts of timber and piled them up to make a small ramp for his bike. He tinkered with the size and shape of the ramp and gradually accumulated more pieces of timber to expand it.
For the first couple of weeks Nick played alone, as he usually does.
One evening Nick was away and the kids from across the road, who moved into the neighbourhood a few months ago, brought their bikes over to play on the ramp.
A few days later I noticed Nick and the neighbours were playing together on the ramp. By the following week they had been joined by two more children who live around the corner.
The group has remained constant. Every evening when I come home they are playing on the ramp with their bikes. Sometimes the ramp relocates to the other side of the street.
On the face of it the purpose of their game is to ‘get some air’. Snowboarders at Mt Hutt and skateboarders on the local half-pipe aspire to ‘big air’ – high, sustained periods of flight. Hazel’s work off the small wooden ramp qualifies as only ‘modest air,’ although I am sure it is no less exhilarating for all that.
But I notice the game has many more dimensions than the simple thrill of defying gravity for a second or two. Its main purpose seems to be a fascination with the technology of the ramp; moving and changing the wooden blocks for new effect.
Within this purpose there is a metaphysical dimension expressed in the demeanour of gravity and deep discourse among the children as they rearrange the blocks of wood.
This is a game without obvious excitement. It is conducted in solemn reverence – a symposium, in fact. Dress these kids in togas and they could be classical Greek philosophers, dress them in overalls and they could be engineers testing a new structure or vehicle. They could be farmers at a fielday: kicking tyres, stroking chins, moving slowly but inexorably towards decision.
This pile of planks and off-cuts possesses an astonishing power. It has captivated the group for weeks and broken down barriers of shyness and isolation. The children have become a small society, exploring relationships, experimenting with control over their physical and social world.
As far as I am aware there are never any arguments or falling-outs. There are few rules and no winners or losers. The purpose of the game lies in the deep satisfaction of imaginative play.
As an adult and parent the Modest Air Symposium reinforces some simple but vital lessons about childhood. The best games are sometimes the most simple and least structured. The most improbable material can become a toy.
Above all, the Modest Air Symposium affirms childhood as an adult-free zone.
As parents we are guilty of over-organising our children’s lives. We drive them from one activity to another. We manage their recreation and friendships.
Perhaps we are spurred by media reports of children whose lives are blighted by parental neglect. But in wanting the best for our children we risk neglecting a vital part of their development – the time and space to explore the world through the society of children.
You may observe how positive that society can be by visiting my street for a few minutes on any evening and watching the Modest Air Symposium.
Saturday 10th March 2007
A small group of children gathers around the pile of wooden blocks and planks that forms a ramp on the footpath. One stoops to adjust the arrangement of timber.
Thirty metres along the footpath Hazel circles lazily on her bicycle, like an aircraft in a holding pattern. She is a blaze of red on the suburban street: red bicycle, red helmet, red school uniform.
There is a brief command from the group – a signal. Hazel turns, purposeful now, aims her bike at the heap of wood and pumps her legs on the pedals. The bike wobbles and straightens, accelerating. The children stand back, eyes fixed on the ramp.
Hazel hits the ramp hard, the bicycle lifts, clears the top of the pile and, for a perhaps a metre, is airborne, with Hazel standing tall and angled like a ski jumper, hands gripping the handlebars, eyes fixed on the end of the street.
The bicycle lands hard on its front wheel. Hazel pulls up in a skid, turns and pedals calmly back to the group which has gathered around the ramp again. There is a brief, subdued conversation and another child peels out of the group towards the take-off point.
This is the Modest Air Symposium, a small society of neighbourhood children whose wooden ramp has become a fixture on the footpath outside my house.
The game originates from the summer holidays when Nick, our 8 year old neighbour, found some off-cuts of timber and piled them up to make a small ramp for his bike. He tinkered with the size and shape of the ramp and gradually accumulated more pieces of timber to expand it.
For the first couple of weeks Nick played alone, as he usually does.
One evening Nick was away and the kids from across the road, who moved into the neighbourhood a few months ago, brought their bikes over to play on the ramp.
A few days later I noticed Nick and the neighbours were playing together on the ramp. By the following week they had been joined by two more children who live around the corner.
The group has remained constant. Every evening when I come home they are playing on the ramp with their bikes. Sometimes the ramp relocates to the other side of the street.
On the face of it the purpose of their game is to ‘get some air’. Snowboarders at Mt Hutt and skateboarders on the local half-pipe aspire to ‘big air’ – high, sustained periods of flight. Hazel’s work off the small wooden ramp qualifies as only ‘modest air,’ although I am sure it is no less exhilarating for all that.
But I notice the game has many more dimensions than the simple thrill of defying gravity for a second or two. Its main purpose seems to be a fascination with the technology of the ramp; moving and changing the wooden blocks for new effect.
Within this purpose there is a metaphysical dimension expressed in the demeanour of gravity and deep discourse among the children as they rearrange the blocks of wood.
This is a game without obvious excitement. It is conducted in solemn reverence – a symposium, in fact. Dress these kids in togas and they could be classical Greek philosophers, dress them in overalls and they could be engineers testing a new structure or vehicle. They could be farmers at a fielday: kicking tyres, stroking chins, moving slowly but inexorably towards decision.
This pile of planks and off-cuts possesses an astonishing power. It has captivated the group for weeks and broken down barriers of shyness and isolation. The children have become a small society, exploring relationships, experimenting with control over their physical and social world.
As far as I am aware there are never any arguments or falling-outs. There are few rules and no winners or losers. The purpose of the game lies in the deep satisfaction of imaginative play.
As an adult and parent the Modest Air Symposium reinforces some simple but vital lessons about childhood. The best games are sometimes the most simple and least structured. The most improbable material can become a toy.
Above all, the Modest Air Symposium affirms childhood as an adult-free zone.
As parents we are guilty of over-organising our children’s lives. We drive them from one activity to another. We manage their recreation and friendships.
Perhaps we are spurred by media reports of children whose lives are blighted by parental neglect. But in wanting the best for our children we risk neglecting a vital part of their development – the time and space to explore the world through the society of children.
You may observe how positive that society can be by visiting my street for a few minutes on any evening and watching the Modest Air Symposium.
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