Where have all Huck Finns gone?

SCHOOL holidays are here and the sense of freedom was palpable on the cheery young faces I saw emerging from classrooms last week.

It also evoked memories of different times when the holidays brought not just joy but, even more importantly, a sense of freedom when children could do as much as they pleased for two months. Kicking off your shoes and going barefoot, while on holidays symbolised that freedom.

Some of us who were school children in mid-20th century Ireland like to believe we had a better time (and, of course, the weather was also better!) than today’s growing generation.

Children nowadays tend to remain indoors and their outdoor play is organised, structured and often supervised by adults, whereas we preferred to be unfettered and outdoors almost from dawn to dusk.

The countryside was there to be explored, with new woods to be discovered, rivers to be fished and football to be played.

A recent re-reading of a yellowed copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, offered comparisons to the life of a curious youth roaming around a stretch of countryside along the Cork/Kerry border.

Twain’s classic book is based on the story of a boy running wild and free on the banks of the Mississippi, in the middle of the 19th century, but anyone that grew up in rural Ireland before ‘modernisation’ would identify with it. We also had our Huck Finns and plenty of them.

By the time I was 10 I knew every field, tree, and bush within a one-mile radius of my own home. Not alone that, I knew every family farming those fields, knew the pet names of many of their cows and was on first name terms with every dog in the area.

Children were free spirits who could go where they wished, without fear, and they learned about nature, the birds and bees and their local environment without even realising it.

In those times, children also worked during the summer. It might be in the bog, or meadow, and many is the day we were pressganged into the service of a local farmer to make wynds of hay, as rain clouds moved in from the west.

It was not unusual to find six people, or more, of all ages working against the weather clock in a hayfield. As the day wore on, we would get tired and bored, and there was nothing to lift the spirits more than the sight of a good man jumping over the ditch with a pike in his hand, coming to help.

It had the same kind of impact on the jaded haymakers as Aisake O hAilpín, or Paul Galvin, coming on as an impact sub in the late stages of a game for Cork, or Kerry. Children took part in all farm chores and the derogatory term, ‘child labour’, was unheard of.

In fact, the feeling was that working was very much to their benefit.

The above musings were prompted by the insightful views of Carol Duffy, a childhood specialist with the Irish Preschool Play Association (IPPA).

Who could disagree with her when she says there is something fundamentally natural and heart-warming to see a child ‘mucked up to the eyeballs’, flushed with excitement, exhausted and happy after time spent outdoors working hard at play?

Yet, this sight is not as commonplace as it was. The challenge in today’s world, she says, is to provide children with opportunities for play and to experience the outdoors, while protecting them from harm.

Writing in the summer edition of Heritage Ireland, she says outdoor play and connection to nature are very important for children’s physical development. However, sedentary lifestyles, bad diets and less time playing outdoors are having adverse effects on their health. Children’s mental health is another issue, she emphasises. To be mentally strong, children need to build self-confidence and to be able to assess and manage risk.

“How many of us adults use nature and the outdoors to de-stress and, indeed, to play?” she asks.

“Likewise, children need outdoor spaces to move, to roar and, indeed, just be. Think back to your childhood and just remember the freedom, the camaraderie and the countless opportunities for fun, playing outdoors gave.”

Life was much simpler then. Twenty-four-hour television, computer games, regulated childcare and supervised activities were unheard of.

And, while all such are taken for granted now, they keep children from outdoor play and from using their own imagination and creativity. Finding the elusive balance is the key.

Children could begin exploring their own immediate locality for, as Ms Duffy points out, while they often know a great deal about the Amazonian rain forest, they cannot identify the plants, or wildlife, in their own garden, or street.