Over-protection

Hey

Happy Thursday. What a time to be alive, let’s make it great…

Big idea 🍉

In 1971, 86% of English primary pupils were allowed to travel home from school on their own. By 2010, it was 25% (and likely even less today). Our instinct to protect children is admirable... BUT it's backfiring.

Our instincts evolved in a world full of genuine danger: infection, predators, hunger. Most of these dangers have disappeared, but our urge to protect hasn't.

If anything, it has grown (as our threat-dar has recalibrated to modern micro-threats)... enveloping the very experiences that make our children stronger, braver, and more skilful.

Despite our best intentions, in school we find ourselves drifting towards shielding students from stress, removing playground kit, and doing the work for them. At home, it's increasingly hard to leave kids to be bored, to roam freely on their own, or to do lots of ugly chores. And across society, risk-averse rules pile up, while teenage drinking, partying and sex are in decline (though it's not yet clear whether this is a good or bad thing).

This instinct to over-protect is rife partly because scare stories now reach us at scale, partly because over-protection can be wielded to virtue signal, and partly because its costs are delayed and invisible.

The problem with all this is that stress, risk and minor harm are vital growth catalysts. Uncomfortable experiences are anti-phobic: facing a fear, again and again, shrinks it (while avoiding it keeps it alive). Taking small risks makes us better judges of bigger ones. And every time we come through something hard, we learn that YES we can f*&king do it.

When we make life a little harder for kids now, we make it easier for them in the future.

Now, none of this means we should stop protecting kids. We just need to be careful not to OVER-protect them. Because in the end, it really doesn’t help.

🎓 For more, check out this review of risky play and children's health.

Summary

• Our instinct to protect children evolved for a far more dangerous world, and it has kept growing even as real dangers have fallen.

• At school, at home and across society, it strips out the stress, risk and minor harm that make children stronger, braver and more skilful.

• Facing fears and risks in small doses is how we learn to cope, so making life a little harder for kids now makes it easier for them later.

Little updates 🥕

• Paper on low-dosage maths tutoring → finds small-group tutoring gains faded over 4 years, with no statistically significant long-term effects.

• Paper on digital vs. paper preferences → highlights no statistically significant differences in performance by students’ preferred medium.

• Article on generative learning strategies → argues no overall benefits of drawing or explaining, but effects vary with students’ prior knowledge.

• Sold a Story, season 2 is out → an investigation into how the profession has responded to evidence informed practices.

• Upgrade your evidence edge → Get Snacks PRO