Time to start taking danger tape off campuses
Like playgrounds for the young, universities foster important interactions, Shauna Van Praagh says.
Playgrounds are open again in Montreal. The danger tape has been ripped off climbing structures, slides and swings. Since early June, children have been explicitly allowed, and enthusiastically invited, to return to play. The risks and dangers have not disappeared. But playgrounds have always been places characterized by risk-taking. Opening them up now offers a lesson for society in general and for universities in particular.
As experts on play remind us, it is through play that children learn to interact with each other. They experiment, they fall, and they pick themselves up. They figure out how to assert themselves, take turns, acknowledge mistakes, say sorry, and ask for help. Spaces for play are serious spaces for learning and development. While they don’t need specially designed play structures, the reopening of playgrounds sends a strong message about play’s essential nature.
Playgrounds provide powerful metaphors for university campuses. Since March, university campuses throughout Quebec have been closed to the young and not-so-young people for whom activity in that space is as central as play. As we look ahead to September, universities are preparing intensely for safe, remote teaching and learning. There is a real chance that we fail to remember how precious, even if risky, shared campus space is. It is a good moment to underscore the essential nature of campus-based postsecondary education and start taking off the danger tape.
The insights from “adventure playgrounds” are particularly apt in comparing serious play to higher education. Imagined by early 20th century British architect Lady Allen of Hurtwood, adventure playgrounds are filled with wooden planks, tires, hammers and nails, mattresses, and even fire-making materials. Users manipulate rough materials and work out conflicts without parental intervention; they are encouraged to be creative with their ideas and to experiment with consequences. Adventure playgrounds are anything but fully safe or risk-free.
A university campus, at its best, is this kind of playground. Its classrooms are places to climb high, fall hard, pick yourself up, try new things, practice empathy and build confidence. Its libraries offer space to study at desks surrounded by books, something that many students — particularly those first in their families to go to university — cannot do at home. Its laboratories offer room for daring experimentation, teamwork and discovery. Like an adventure playground, a campus is a dedicated space for the re-creation and risk-taking necessary for personal development and, importantly, societal change. Committed to exploration, the exchange of ideas, tough face-to-face conversations and the fundamental importance of creativity, universities offer essential services to society.
Learning at a distance doesn’t permit the proximity and physical presence that make the university experience both challenging and exciting. Just as virtual play on a screen lacks the human closeness of a playground, remote teaching and learning cannot replicate the literal coming together of professors and students. Without claiming and exploring their space, students will miss out on the ways in which learning happens not only in classrooms but in corridors, cafeterias and coffee houses. They may be digital natives, but they want to “go to university” in real life.
It is time for universities to communicate in a loud and confident voice that the campus is crucial, and that the greatest degree possible of meaningful use of classroom, library and laboratory space will be supported. In any playground, it is always the case that we need appropriate precautions and protocols. Of course, the constraints of the pandemic demand particular responsiveness, patience and innovation. We may not be able to take off all the tape around the play structures quite yet. But as we make plans for university teaching, research, and learning this fall, let’s repeat, over and over, how important it is to reopen the campus “playground.” It’s not just kids who need to play.
Shauna Van Praagh is a professor of law at Mcgill University.