David's listing of 6 kinds of risk (20th February) brought some
welcome clarification. But No. 6 raised new kinds of issues. In
No. 6 David referred to Libby Purves' article about the risk to
society of becoming too 'safe'. But who wants society to be more
'dangerous'? An average of 15 children a day are killed or
seriously injured on British roads. What should the target be?
What should the target for outdoor education casualties be?
I am not a statistician and I think I need a much better
understanding of statistics before I can make sense of these
issues. I'm a little more comfortable with 'comfort zones' than
with statistics. Encouraging people to step outside 'comfort
zones' seems to be based on a belief that they are really in
'atrophy zones'. For example, Elliot Eisner in 'The Art of
Educational Evaluation' writes that:
"humans are not immune to atrophic processes. The lack of
opportunity to use certain capacities increases the likelihood
that those capacities will decline."
It is possible that people get 'stuck' (and perhaps even atrophy)
not because of a reluctance to take risks, but due to the lack of
opportunity. My experience and my research tell me that people
(youths and adults) are extremely willing to explore new 'zones'
when they attend outdoor courses and are generally keen to make
things even more intense and adventurous than their
instructors/trainers will.
Who's wrapping who in cotton wool?
There seems to be a broad assumption that the outdoors is
about risk and that outdoor educators and trainers are
specialists in the psychology of risk. In my view, the basic
psychology of overcoming challenges (outdoors) boils down to
grandmotherly common sense - that the more you overcome
challenges the better you get at overcoming challenges (in other,
though not all, aspects of your life).
Then it starts getting complicated. Seeing 'life' or 'the
outdoors' as a sequence of challenges to overcome is just one of
many perspectives that we can choose to take. And how much we
want to 'frame' or 'frontload' things before they happen is
another choice we have. We can also choose to be more
adventurous, take the road less travelled, to be more open to
experience, open our eyes, hearts and minds - and resist jumping
to conclusions or making the frame before we've created the
picture.
I still remain inspired by Carl Rogers 'Freedom to Learn'. The
outdoors can help us to provide freedom from everyday influences
that can make learning so difficult. If outdoor experiences
become closely managed risks, tightly structured, carefully
designed and artfully frontloaded then where is that freedom?
The amazing educational opportunities in outdoor environments are
themselves at risk if the outdoors is simply represented as an
arena for hazardous sports or as a playground of artificial
challenges with ready-made scripts.
In 'Why Adventure?' Jon Barrett and I proposed a comprehensive
approach to outdoor research that looks at the many different
ingredients of experiences in the outdoors - and not just the
activity experiences. In 'More Than Activities' I wrote about the
ways in which stories are generated during outdoor experiences.
Instructors should certainly be monitoring risk, but participants
should have the freedom to generate many other kinds of stories
about their experiences - and should not be driven through
ill-fitting, thought-restricting, ready-made metaphors that
simply reflect what is preoccupying the instructor or written in
the script.
Freedom may not be an easy subject to research, but I am sure
that it is fundamental to the appeal and effectiveness of the
outdoors in education.
Chris Loynes (22nd Feb) suggests that ''outdoor leaders are the
storytellers of our time''. I like the idea of leaders
stimulating young people's imaginations, but I think it is more
important that young people themselves are the storytellers of
their time. And that we listen.
They get told plenty when they are indoors.
Roger Greenaway
Reviewing Skills Training
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http://reviewing.co.uk
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