Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/01/kids-in-1900-enjoy-dangerous-p.html
…
7 Likes
29 Likes
Kids in 1910 enjoy being productive at a coal mine.
This kid looks like he’s learning a trade.
Here’s what happened when safety was taken into consideration - jail-like environments disguised as education:
45 Likes
I’m playing dangerously right now.
12 Likes
This post needs a trigger warning for helicopter parents.
26 Likes
Why wouldn’t the playground be dangerous? It was training the survivors for bridge, ship and high-rise construction jobs with similar or worse safety levels.
30 Likes
That’s AWESOME. I’d love to play in that
20 Likes
Exactly. It also serves as a fort! I would have loved to have one of those in my playground.
8 Likes
I would encourage my kids to play on all of that, including the robot jail.
9 Likes
I would’ve LOVED to climb all over that when I was a sprout. This is where I played:
That contraption would be JAM-PACKED with kids on the weekends. And yeah, that’s concrete below, though I think ours had sand.
(Ed: who knew these structures were all over the place? I thought our local one was special!)
19 Likes
Robot Jail looks super safe.
See - I am the furthest thing from a helicopter parent. I encourage my kid to do stuff like this. But I have to admit, that first first pic and a few things she has climbed on gave me the willies. I was like - hey - kids know their limits. They generally know if they can’t climb higher or what ever. They got this. But the other part see a slip and cracking arm…
8 Likes
Looks like that top picture (center left edge) captured some kid in mid-fall. Oh I’m sure they’ll be fine.
6 Likes
Good gravy. I’m trying to find some trick of perspective that would make this less ghoulish than it appears, but I’m not seeing it.
I guess at least the ground looks soft? (My elementary school playground was largely gravel, which I guess makes sense in some ways, but not so much in others.)
ETA: The most enticing playground I’ve seen depicted in a while is the Tom Otterness scuplture that was on Google’s homepage for a brief time. I was not previously aware its New York location was so accessible; I’ll have to take a look if I ever find myself there again.
ETA2: Oh, we need the obligatory XKCD.
Alt text: “Or maybe the slide is like Aslan, and gets taller as I do (except without the feeling of discomfort when I reach my teens and suddenly get the Christ stuff.”
21 Likes
Pretty sure the kid is on a swing.
4 Likes
My elementary school had a merry-go-round in the center of a concrete pad. It turned “play” in to “play Russian roulette”.
And yet I have good memories about it. Childhood’s weird.
16 Likes
I’m all for a little danger, although tan bark (the preferred padding in California) is better than flat concrete, to be sure.
We had something like this – it was the 1970s, damnit! – and even though there were several broken arms, parents seemed more inclined then to blame their kids, and gravity, and bad luck, than the school district or the manufacturer.
21 Likes
I think they’re on a swing–although they do appear to be about half a second from falling out of it.
2 Likes
This was the highlight (for me) of our 1970 family vacation. I look at the other pix from that trip and don’t remember anything, but this - this I remember vividly.
17 Likes
Somewhat ironically, I was googling Giganta to learn more about this playground robot and came across this blog posting:
The amusing thing is that it is similar to this posting but is using the robot as an example of dangerous playground equipment that wouldn’t be allowed today.
3 Likes
This basically looks like my 1990 playground. We had a large (12-15ft tall) welded steel beam jungle gyms over asphalt, and I don’t even remember a single injury. A lot of kids were too scared to climb it though.
I checked my old elementary school on Google earth and they got rid of that equipment and added on to the building. It looks like everything is over sand now. Looks like the other elementary got rid of theirs too, but that one was always on grass.
Now I’m checking my old haunts as a child. No wonder I gained a bunch of weight when we moved, I was biking or walking 3-4 miles a day as a 9 year old and playing or whatever else on top of that. I can’t believe my parents even let me do that.
2 Likes
