Critique: “5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do”

In March of 2007, Gever Tulley took the stage at TED’s annual West Coast Conference.  TED is a gathering designed for the sharing and developing outstanding ideas and Tulley’s intent was to open the minds of his audience to the value of risk for children and adults alike.  His presentation, “5 dangerous things you should let your kids do”, represents Tulley’s passion for helping develop the creativity and problem solving abilities of children.  The software engineer is a co-founder of the Tinkering School, a one-week camp that provides all kinds of interesting learning and discovery opportunities for kids.  His presentation about the way kids are protected from danger now versus his method of how they should be taught safety is provocative, but he personally lacks authority and he fails to present hard evidence supporting his claims.

It must be acknowledged that Tulley makes no false claims about his own credibility.  He admits first thing that he has no kids of his own but suggests that his friends trust him with their kids.  His profession has nothing to do with psychology or child-rearing in America, but his real-world experiences with the Tinkering School somewhat offset his lack of professional credentials.  The most compelling part of Tulley’s speech follows his personal introduction and nearly overwhelms any weakness from that first part.  Using easily recognized visual aids he argues that the safety measures in the modern world have gone beyond common sense and actually cripple those protected by them.  However, while this is a frustration that many can relate to, his willingness to return children “bruised, scraped, and bloodied” from his camp cannot be forgotten.

After he identifies the problem, Tulley actually reverses the preconception of his speech and argues that safety is his primary concern.  He then goes on to describe the five things he considers essential to every properly developed child and the metaphorical significance of those things.  Playing with fire, knives, and spears as well as violating the DMCA and driving a car are presented as all the lessons needed to reach adulthood a fully formed, highly capable, and safety-conscious human being.  It is, unfortunately, in this part of the speech that Tulley seems to become flustered and somewhat lost amid his own presentation.  His already feeble authority wanes as he repeatedly falters and checks his notes.  While it might be understandable for a software engineer to be uncomfortable with public speaking, it is difficult to take a person seriously when he is arguing for putting children at risk but keeps losing his train of thought.

Despite these powerful weaknesses, Tulley is a likable speaker.  He makes jokes and is never shy or unsure of his position, only the particulars of the defense of his position.  He uses many visual aids to keep the presentation engaging, though most of them are fluff, either humorous or cute with no real added significance.  The linear style of his presentation is easy to follow and his intention is never unclear.  He does effectively argue that safety labels are often patronizing and excessive, but he does not effectively argue that subjecting children to clear and unnecessary hazards are going to make them any safer in the future.  While it is logical that some children will benefit from this exposure, it seems just as likely that not all children will learn quickly or well and will be injured for no good reason.  Improving the way children are raised will always be one of the most important ambitions humanity could have, but this particular concept would be much stronger with academic support.  It may also just need more time in experimentation, at least at the time of the presentation, to provide results for academic analysis.

While Tulley does effectively and enjoyably convince the audience that children are being raised in an excessively safety-conscious world (under the guidance of tiger moms), he fails to provide a convincing alternative.  While his methods might work, he is not qualified to make that determination nor does he possess or at least offer, any scientific results that support his theory.  There are too many unanswered questions left by his claims and not enough hard evidence to justify putting children in unnecessary danger.

Work Cited

Tulley, Gever. "5 dangerous things you should let your kids do | Video on TED.com." TED: Ideas worth spreading. Dec 2007, http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html. Accessed 25 Feb 2013.