A Study on the Changing of Children's Outdoor Play over Three Generations
in the case of an urbanizing agricultural district
1992 Volume 12 Issue 2 Pages 123-136
Details
1992 Volume 12 Issue 2 Pages 123-136
The purpose of this study is to clarify the relation between children's outdoor play and regional urbanization. We investigated three distinct generations in relation to their years in elementary school, in an urbanizing agricultural district of Niigata pre., by mainly using questionnaires.
The results are as follows:
1) The acquired data was analyzed under three play categories (traditional play, nature play, modern sports). In general children of today, boys in particular, showed a strong tendency for an increasing preference for modern sports at an expense of traditional play.
2) Some kinds of traditional play that involve labor in the production of equipment such as stilts and kites and also those that require soft ground, Bi-dama, Jin-tori are disappearing. However other kinds that are easy to understand and are possible to do anywhere (e.g. tag, hide and seek) have survived.
In all three generations the boys enjoyed playing in nature more than the girls. Recently however the variety of nature play are decreasing.
The boys of today like to play ball-games, usually playing them at school, and to ride bicycles.
3) It is considered that the changing of play-space, play-groups and the transmittion of knowledge in connection with the regional culuture and society (e. g. industrial change; people who were engaged in agriculture have been likely to be working in industries) have influenced children's outdoor play.
