Play in the City

New York City has a lot of playgrounds. The NY Times takes a look.

Heading uptown we hit Adventure Playground on 67th Street and Central Park West, a relic from the adventure-playground movement that emerged here in the 1960s. The concept, which swept the country, grew out of World War II Europe, where children joyfully played atop mountains of junk and rubble. Led by the American landscape designer M. Paul Friedberg, the new philosophy in playground architecture called for more challenging, sometimes dangerous environments: concrete climbing walls and hiding spots that made it hard for parents to find their children.

Check them out here.

Schools, Playgrounds, and Budgets

So, the studies have said things like this for years now.

And this is how some school systems react.

Of course, I'm not telling the whole story.

Playgrounds that are allowed to deteriorate do pose a safety hazard. Administrators must act.

But why not consider playground infrastructure for kids as important as other curricular budget lines? Often times the answer to that is budget. So communities try to come together, like the one in the article, to raise funds so their children can play.

Tick this issue off as one more that illustrates the crisis our public schools face today. We need to invest in the future they tell us. Our kids are our future, right?