Early this year I linked to Gever Tulley of Tinkering School talk about 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do.
Tom Hanson of Open Education explores the topic in greater depth - Risk Taking - Part of Growing Up, Part of the Learning Process. His opening paragraph:
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A paper released at the thirty-eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Science in 2005 challenges some of the conventional thoughts about the level of risk acceptable in our society today. The paper, Understanding the Effect of Risk Aversion on Risk, suggests that “the attempt to eliminate all thinkable risks in our society may be setting us up for even larger risks.”
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Tom makes several good points.
I remember reading a decade or two ago that the United States and the United Kingdom handled risk in different ways with their people stationed in Antarctica.
The UK had a class to teach people how to handle the ice, watch for the storms, avoid crevasses, and so on. Once the people took the class they could go out and explore on their own.
The US didn't allow people to explore on their own.
I like the UK approach better. It treats people like adults, capable of making their own decisions.
By allowing our children to take some risks now, they will be able to make better decisions as adults when faces with possible risks.
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