The Future of Creativity

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Hart’s findings, published in 1978 as part of his dissertation project, revealed that children’s experience of “place” in the 1970s involved time they spent alone, or with peers, exploring their outdoor environment.

Recently, Hart initiated a new series of observations in the same rural village and found stark differences from his original data. “Thirty-three years ago, a 9-year-old boy could run anywhere he wanted. Now, that freedom is withheld until at least adolescence. And even then, the kid has to tell the parent where he’s going. Today, most children in town don’t ever play outside alone,” he says. “[It’s] interesting to ask what it means when children spend less time with other children, or when they no longer direct their own play. They rely on adult direction or the implicit direction in manufactured activity. You tell the kid to go out and play, and the kid says, ‘Play what?’ ”

In Where Do the Children Play?, a public television documentary that premiered earlier this year, pediatrician Kenneth Ginsburg says that through free, child-driven play, kids determine their own strengths and weaknesses; they also learn peer negotiation and become familiar with taking chances and forging ahead in the face of mistakes and failures—all traits that employers fear are waning in young new workers.

In a September 2007 report, “Under-Equipped and Unprepared: America’s Emerging Workforce and the Soft Skills Gap,” the youth-advocacy nonprofit America’s Promise Alliance declared that “a large percentage of the children and youth who will enter the workforce . . . are lacking enough of the ‘soft’ or applied skills—such as teamwork, decision making, and communication—that will help them become effective employees and managers.”

“If free play is essential for kids to become free agents with autonomy, who know they deserve a voice in public decision making, then we may be in serious trouble,” Ed Miller argues, pointing to “a new kind of tyranny where people are more and more willing to let authorities make decisions for them.” The public reaction—or lack thereof—to government wiretapping and surveillance is, he believes, an early warning sign of this increasing apathy and compliance. “People are willing to let the government spy on them because they can’t think of any other way to stay safe,” he says. “Fundamental issues of privacy and individual rights are really changing. Maybe that’s inevitable. But I hope not.”

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