For almost a half-century, kids at the farm-based Moorestown Children’s School in New Jersey have spent a lot of their time stomping in the mud, running through the meadow and visiting the barn, blissfully oblivious to the danger in their midst.
Trees.
Oh, the child care inspectors don’t use that term. They call it “overgrown vegetation” — the tree branches that dip down to the ground, weeping willow-style. These must be chopped off — every last branch, until inspectors can see 7 feet of bare trunk on every tree — or the school will be cited for safety violations.
“But they play with the trees!” school director Sue Maloney recalls telling the inspection crew. The children “touch the trees! They shake the leaves. It’s what they do.”
Not anymore. Not if she wants to keep her license. This is the story of what happens when two different ideas of childhood collide.
And that’s only the start of the ludicrous requirements put on them.
Click pic to visit the school
There was an old apple tree in a hedgerow behind my house when I was a kid. The branches of the tree formed a kind of “house” that was our “Fort.” That’s where my friends and I played, at “great risk” of course. Funny thing, nobody ever got hurt.
#19 lynn
“I’ll just ask: any other moldy oldies like myself ever read Summerhill (about the experimental school founded by Neil in England)?”
I did lynn. What a book! I was going through a “hippie” phase then and it really made an impression on me. Not sure how I feel about it now I guess I should read it again.
#22 Mextli: I had to read it in college, 1976 I guess, and never forgot it – “Neil, Neil, orange peel!”. I think I heard recently that it’s going to be reissued, or updated perhaps.
See? This is what happens when children who were never spanked grow up into.