I enjoyed the very disparate approaches towards childhood development taken by The Talking Cure and by the documentary The Land. I hadn't heard of adventure playgrounds before (and I'm curious how the few that exist in the US deal with liability issues) but it agrees with some of the sentiments we've talked about in class (referencing The Gift of a Scraped Knee and "What Happened to American Childhood"), which point to overprotecting children sometimes doing more harm than good from a mental health perspective. When I was a teacher there was always a push/pull with administration about giving students more autonomy in school, with (some) teachers arguing that it is impossible to prepare young people to operate in the real world without gradually exposing them to greater levels of responsibility and decision-making power. In education at large, there's an even more heated argument about the balance of standardization at all levels from national curriculum to expectations for the pedagogy of individual teachers. The documentary didn't go into detail about whether there was any academic element of the program (and for the age range, it wouldn't be awful it there wasn't), but educational philosophers and progressive models (including Montessori) increasingly recognize how much children absorb via osmosis from the environment their in and through engagement with it, with richer environments leading to richer processes of engagement. It makes me think idea behind the Please Touch Museum in Philly.
On the other hand, The Talking Cure had its feet a little closer to the ground, with all of the messiness of implementing any policy anywhere on full view. I appreciated that the article made clear that poverty made any attempts at enriching the lives of young children much more difficult, while still touting the vision of the Providence Talks program to bring contemporary scientific best practices to those who want them. I've heard the numbers angle before, and it was helpful that the article went more deeply into the details of what represents higher quality, developmentally appropriate conversation. I can't tell whether it's a way to push back somewhat against the anxious parenting that was the focus of What Happened to American Childhood by offering a simple, supported way to improve educational outcomes for children of overburdened parents, or if it adds another thing to the plates of parents already immersed in information overload.