The Big Fresh June 9, 2018 Free Range

The more risks you allow children, the better they learn to take care of themselves.

                                                                                       Roald Dahl

When I was a kid, most sunny summer days when I was 10 to 12 years old were spent on my bike. I would pack a lunch, get out of the house by about 9 in the morning, and ride two miles to my best friend’s house. We would roam all over the countryside, looking for big hills to fly down and creeks to explore. The only rule from our moms was that we had to be home by 6 for dinner. No one thought our parents were doing a lousy job supervising us, even though on any given day in July they would have no clue where we were or what we were up to. Somehow we survived.

During the school year, I was a free-range reader. There weren’t any books available in the classrooms beyond fat and dreary textbooks, but it was open season in the junior high school library.  It was one of those imposing and ancient boxy schools with huge windows and creaky floors that smelled of mold and old varnish, and it was definitely a firetrap filled with asbestos. But I loved the access to hundreds and hundreds of old books. I would stop before or after school and roam the library stacks, many of them dusty with almost no names on the borrowing cards.

Unsupervised, you take your chances. A few times over those summers I lost control of my bike and wiped out, lucky to end up with only a few scrapes and bruises. And during the school year, once in a while I read a book I wish I hadn’t because it was disturbing. I remember one in particular, with a main character who ended up in a flophouse covered with bugs. I have no idea how this book came to rest on a shelf browsed by 11-year-olds. For a week afterward, I could feel imaginary critters crawling over my skin whenever I laid down to sleep.

We weigh the risks and rewards of free-range living and learning for children, and in the end may limit choices greatly. I worry that children miss out on many explorations, physical and intellectual, because we magnify small risks and discount the value of opening up minds, hearts, and perspectives.

My friend and I could have encountered some terrible strangers on one of those country roads or hit a car head-on, but we never did. The odds were infinitesimally small that we would become some sad statistic, and we didn’t. The odds for me as a young reader were far greater that free-range reading would lead me to some disturbing encounters — not just bugs in a flophouse, but of a child my age being flogged as a slave, or a family nearly starving to death in the Dust Bowl. But in the end, I’m grateful for the continual disruption of my comfortable life through books. Experiencing the trials of others softened and hardened me in all the right ways — and still does.

Teachers and parents often ponder how freely they will allow children to roam. In reading, what are the boundaries for exploring war, strife, and belonging? That’s this week’s topic — dealing with books that challenge students and families. Enjoy!

Brenda Power
Founder, Choice Literacy

Free for All