Editorial: Resilient children still need safety

As the education debate rages, perhaps one of the best ways parents can prepare children for the world is to teach them resilience.

Children learn this through play and adventure. Where better training ground than the iconic Kiwi school camp?

I have never been camping - I would rather navigate Bayfair than the bush. But for kids it is a highlight of school life with a myriad of learning opportunities. They discover independence, bond with mates and teachers, and experience challenges.

Children learn by taking risks. You can't micro manage their every move and cushion their every fall. But you also want to know that if you send them off to school camp, they will be safe, warm and supervised.

An investigation has begun into how 10 lightly clothed schoolgirls from Tauranga Intermediate School got lost a week ago in the Kaimai Range for eight hours in plummeting temperatures. Why were they not properly equipped with clothing and food? How were they separated from adults supposed to be supervising them? Were the emergency services alerted early enough?

Although school principal Brian Diver told the Bay of Plenty Times that they returned "hale and hearty", I am not the only parent who started to fret about children's safety during outdoor education pursuits - tragically highlighted with the drowning of six students and their teacher in the 2008 Elim College canyoning disaster.

Our anxiety about risk should not limit children's development. In this world more than ever, you cannot survive if you are timid.

Nature is unpredictable. There will always be freak cold and flash floods. Camp teaches kids tools that they can transfer into real life. If we want kids to be resilient we have got to let them discover this scary world.

But I do not subscribe to the view often put forward by the older generation that children now are too tightly managed. Yes, you wandered by the river and rode without a car seat in your day, but there were also more childhood deaths and accidents back then. Yes, in our zero-risk culture there are more regulations when your child goes on a school trip than when you document their birth, but there are excellent reasons why these rules exist. Parents should feel confident that rules are going to be adhered to. The review into the circumstances in which the girls became lost should be made public, so we can prevent it happening again.