There’s a guy called Rafe Kelley on youtube who has a fairly good answer to this, which I’m going to attempt to summarize from memory because I can’t point you toward any reasonable sources (I heard him talking about it in a 1h+ conversation with everyone’s favourite boogeyman, Jordan Peterson).
His reasoning goes thus: 1.) We need play in order to develop: play teaches us how to navigate Agent—Arena relationships
This speaks to the result of playground injuries increasing despite increased supervision—kids aren’t actually getting to spend enough time playing in the physical Arena, their capability to navigate it is underdeveloped because of excess indoor time and excess supervision.
2.) We need rough play (e.g. play fighting), specifically, to teach us a whole bunch of capabilities around Agent—Agent—Arena relationships; conflict, boundaries, emotional regulation are all, Rafe argues, rooted in rough play.
Through rough and tumble play, we learn the physical boundaries between agents. We learn that it hurts them, or us, when boundaries are crossed. We learn where those boundaries are. We learn to regulate our emotions with respect to those boundaries.
These are highly transferable, core skills, without which human development is significantly stunted.
It concerns me that the best thing the education system ever did to teach negotiative social skills was leaving kids to their own devices. I think if we ackowledge the importance of conflict play, we can build play environments that would foster presently exceedingly rare levels of social robustness: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bF353RHmuzFQcsokF/peacewagers-so-far
“This speaks to the result of playground injuries increasing despite increased supervision—kids aren’t actually getting to spend enough time playing in the physical Arena, their capability to navigate it is underdeveloped because of excess indoor time and excess supervision.”
Anecdotal evidence from yoga and movement teachers would offer tangential support for this. They describe in children (and adults!) a trend to reduced somatic intelligence, core strength, proprioceptive awareness, and ability to assess risk.
There’s a guy called Rafe Kelley on youtube who has a fairly good answer to this, which I’m going to attempt to summarize from memory because I can’t point you toward any reasonable sources (I heard him talking about it in a 1h+ conversation with everyone’s favourite boogeyman, Jordan Peterson).
His reasoning goes thus:
1.) We need play in order to develop: play teaches us how to navigate Agent—Arena relationships
This speaks to the result of playground injuries increasing despite increased supervision—kids aren’t actually getting to spend enough time playing in the physical Arena, their capability to navigate it is underdeveloped because of excess indoor time and excess supervision.
2.) We need rough play (e.g. play fighting), specifically, to teach us a whole bunch of capabilities around Agent—Agent—Arena relationships; conflict, boundaries, emotional regulation are all, Rafe argues, rooted in rough play.
Through rough and tumble play, we learn the physical boundaries between agents. We learn that it hurts them, or us, when boundaries are crossed. We learn where those boundaries are. We learn to regulate our emotions with respect to those boundaries.
These are highly transferable, core skills, without which human development is significantly stunted.
It concerns me that the best thing the education system ever did to teach negotiative social skills was leaving kids to their own devices. I think if we ackowledge the importance of conflict play, we can build play environments that would foster presently exceedingly rare levels of social robustness: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bF353RHmuzFQcsokF/peacewagers-so-far
“This speaks to the result of playground injuries increasing despite increased supervision—kids aren’t actually getting to spend enough time playing in the physical Arena, their capability to navigate it is underdeveloped because of excess indoor time and excess supervision.”
Anecdotal evidence from yoga and movement teachers would offer tangential support for this. They describe in children (and adults!) a trend to reduced somatic intelligence, core strength, proprioceptive awareness, and ability to assess risk.