“Where do the children play?” (Cat Stevens)

I started my day by baking Christmas cookies and listening to Cat Stevens. When this song played, it gave me a vivid reminder of something that has been troubling me for some time and given that I recently spent a week substitute teaching in my local elementary schools, it was probably still fresh in my mind. For those of you who are too young to remember this song, here are the lyrics…

Well I think it’s fine
Building jumbo planes
Or taking a ride on a cosmic train
Switch on summer from a slot machine
Yes, get what you want to if you want
‘Cause you can get anything

I know we’ve come a long way
We’re changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well, you roll on roads
Over fresh green grass
For your lorry loads
Pumping petrol gas
And you make them long
And you make them tough
But they just go on and on
And it seems that you can’t get off

Oh, I know we’ve come a long way
We’re changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well you’ve cracked the sky
Scrapers fill the air
But will you keep on building higher
’til there’s no more room up there?
Will you make us laugh
Will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live
Will you tell us when to die?

I know we’ve come a long way
We’re changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

I think this song is as close to a prophesy as anything I have heard in the last fifty years. And now more than ever we need to ask ourselves this question, “Tell me, where do the children play?”That week I was put in charge of kids from kindergarten to fifth grade and they were anything but playful. I feel a sense of deepest sympathy for their teachers and the staff who support them. I can’t think of a tougher job than being a teacher right now because kids don’t play enough anymore and their behavior in the classroom is the obvious result of what Cat Stevens was asking in 1970.

The only time the kids were remotely well-mannered was when they all got on their tablets and did the lesson online. Now granted, they were doing something educational but I worry about what happens when they don’t have a tablet available to nurture their curiosity and pacify their behavior. This is when playing is so important. Play time is critical to social skills, problem solving, communication, teamwork, and most of all fun.

Childhood should be about having fun as often as possible and not worrying about things they have no control over but once they get their first smartphone, that fun-loving nature is going to be overtaken by a very harsh reality of technological trauma brought on by a lot of people who operate under the motto of “Anything for a buck.” Every time a kid plugs into the ether world they are being taught to be good customers first and foremost. The providers of content and their terms of service are a one-way street to nowhere for the individual consumer. They either agree to their terms or they don’t get to play at all.

Listen to what Cat Stevens says.. “Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry, will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?” This verse sums up the world we live in today better than anything I’ve ever heard. We are teaching our children to be addicted to technology and the negativity bias it creates, which I just wrote about in my last blog. No child should ever be exposed to so much disinformation and misinformation that is only intended to push them towards a predisposed response that is in the best interests of the content purveyors, not the children.

Unfortunately, I’m probably the only person left who thinks this is a real problem. The allure of smartphones, social media and now artificial intelligence is going so well for the corporations and the shareholders who cash their quarterly checks that I doubt we will ever be able to put that genie back in the bottle. Money and power are the most addictive substances of all time and those few people who have the most money and power hardly ever give it back once they acquire it. This is the one time they need to rethink that imperative.

Children are the future of the world. They are more precious than any bank statement we will ever get. If we, as adults, can’t understand the necessity of raising children with an ability to see the world as a wonderful place to live and one where they can aspire to do great things for the benefit of that world then we should all be ashamed to call ourselves adults. We have to forego our insatiable desire for more stuff so that our children can have a future worth living. If we get to the point where we all have to live in gated communities with armed guards and 24 hour surveillance because the rest of the world is in chaos, then Cat Stevens’ prophesy will have come true.

I know we’ve come a long way. We’re changing day to day. But tell me, where do the children play?

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