Anarchy in Action by Colin Ward

Author:Colin Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2018-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

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Play as an Anarchist Parable

The boy who swings from rope to horse, leaping back again to the swinging rope, is learning by his eyes, muscles, joints and by every sense organ he has, to judge, to estimate, to know. The other twenty-nine boys and girls in the gymnasium are all as active as he, some of them in his immediate vicinity. But as he swings he does not avoid. He swings where there is space—a very important distinction—and in doing so he threads his way among the twenty-nine fellows. Using all his facilities, he is aware of the total situation in that gymnasium—of his own swinging and of his fellows’ actions. He does not shout to the others to stop, to wait or move from him—not that there is silence, for running conversations across the hall are kept up as he speeds through the air.

But this ‘education’ in the live use of all his senses can only come if his twenty-nine fellows are also free and active. If the room were cleared and twenty-nine boys sat at the side silent while he swung, we should in effect be saying to him—to his legs, body, eyes—“You give all your attention to swinging, we’ll keep the rest of the world away”—in fact—“Be as egotistical as you like.” By so reducing the diversity in the environment we should be preventing his learning to apprehend and to move in a complex situation. We should in effect be saying “Only this and this do; you can’t be expected to do more.” Is it any wonder that he comes to behave as though it is all he can do? By the existing methods of teaching we are in fact inducing the child’s incoordination in society.

—Innes Pearse and Lucy Crocker, The Peckham Experiment

All the problems of social life present a choice between libertarian and authoritarian solutions, and the ultimate claim we can make for the libertarian approach is that it fulfils its function better. The adventure playground is an arresting example of this living anarchy; one that is valuable both in itself and as an experimental verification of a whole social approach. The need to provide children’s playgrounds as such is a result of high-density urban living and fast-moving traffic. The authoritarian response to this need is to provide an area of tarmac and some pieces of expensive ironmongery in the form of swings, see-saws and roundabouts which provide a certain amount of fun (though because of their inflexibility children soon tire of them) but which call for no imaginative or constructive effort on the child’s part, and cannot be incorporated in any self-chosen or reciprocal activity. Swings and roundabouts can only be used in one way, they cater for no fantasies, for no developing skills, for no emulation of adult activities, they call for no mental effort and very little physical effort, and are giving way to simpler and freer apparatus like climbing frames, log piles, ‘jungle gyms,’ commando nets, or to play-sculptures—abstract shapes to clamber through and over, or large constructions in the form of boats, traction engines, lorries or trains.

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