Children left alone

Text 1: On the Games of the Court, by Edwin Marchbank

An original essay written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

There is a court behind my lodgings, no wider than a good-sized parlour, into which the sun descends for perhaps an hour at noon and from which it departs with evident relief. It has one pump, one gutter, and, at any hour between breakfast and dusk, some thirty children. I have watched them for a season from my window, and I declare that I have learned more of human contentment there than in any drawing-room in the town.

They possess nothing. Their toys are a length of rope, a broken hoop, a handful of chipped marbles and the chalk they have begged or borrowed from the cobbler. With these they conduct a whole commonwealth. There are laws for hopscotch more intricate than any statute, and they are enforced, I assure you, with a severity that would astonish a magistrate. A girl of eight governs the rope-skipping with the authority of a duchess. Quarrels flare and are settled in a minute, without appeal to any grown person, and the loser is skipping again before her tears are dry.

It is when the grown persons arrive that the trouble begins. A beadle came on Tuesday and drove them out, saying the court was not a playground, which is perfectly true, since nobody has ever thought fit to give them one. A mother leaned from a window to call her boy to an errand, and the game fell to pieces like a dropped plate. I do not say the children are angels; they are filthy, loud and frequently unjust. But they are happy in a manner I have rarely seen in children who are watched. I wonder whether we, who are so eager to improve them, might first try the experiment of letting them be.

Text 2: Our Road on a Sunday, by Sophie Dalgarno

An original contemporary article.

On the first Sunday of every month, from two until five, our road stops being a road. Two neighbours in high-visibility vests drag metal barriers across each end, a hand-painted sign goes up, and the cars that usually own the tarmac are politely sent round the block. Then, slowly at first, the children come out.

I say slowly because the first time we tried it, eighteen months ago, almost nothing happened. Children stood on their doorsteps holding scooters they did not ride. A few looked back at the parents behind them, as if waiting for instructions. These were children who had grown up being driven to clubs, supervised at parties and timed on screens, and an empty street with no rules seemed to frighten them. One boy asked me, quite seriously, what the game was supposed to be.

It took about three sessions. By the fourth, a chalk racetrack ran the length of the road and a complicated game involving a tennis ball, two bins and a great deal of shouting had emerged that no adult understood or was invited to join. The parents learned to retreat to garden walls with their coffee. I have watched my own daughter negotiate, sulk, forgive and lead, all in a single afternoon, and I could not have taught her any of it. Yet I am wary of the romantic idea that children simply need to be left alone. Our children were not left alone. Somebody had to fill in a council form, buy the barriers and stand at the end of the road in a ridiculous vest. Freedom, it turns out, has to be organised by somebody, and that somebody is usually a grown-up.

‘Both writers believe that children are happiest when adults leave them alone.’

How far do you agree with this statement?

In your answer you should:

• discuss what we learn about the children’s play in each text
• explain how far you agree that both writers think children are happiest without adults
• compare the ways the writers present children and adults.

Support your response with quotations from Text 1 and Text 2.