In an era of parental paranoia, lawsuit mania and testing frenzy

“In an era of parental paranoia, lawsuit mania and testing frenzy, we are failing to inspire our children's curiosity, creativity, and imagination. We are denying them opportunities to tinker, discover, and explore — in short, to play.” Thus spoke Darell Hammond, the builder of playgrounds and dreams, whose life’s mission was to restore the sacred art of play to the children of the modern age. His words ring like a warning bell to a world that has forgotten how to breathe — a world that measures knowledge but not wonder, safety but not joy. In this lament, Hammond calls upon us to remember what the ancients knew well: that the imagination of a child is the most fertile soil in which the future of humanity is sown.

In the age of stone and fire, before books and schools, the young learned not through confinement, but through exploration. They learned by touching, by building, by falling and rising again. The forest was their classroom, the sky their ceiling, and the earth their teacher. Yet in this modern era, as Hammond observes, fear has replaced freedom. We guard our children not as gardens to be nurtured, but as glass to be protected from breaking. Parental paranoia builds invisible walls, lawsuit mania binds the hands of teachers and creators, and the testing frenzy weighs their worth in numbers, not in dreams. The result is a generation of minds that can recite facts but cannot imagine worlds — children who are safe, yet stifled.

Play, Hammond reminds us, is not a luxury of childhood — it is its heartbeat. To tinker, to discover, to explore is to engage the soul with the act of creation itself. The ancient philosophers understood this truth: Plato once said that “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” For in play, the mind is free, the heart is alive, and the spirit learns without fear. Through play, children test the boundaries of reality and of themselves. They learn courage, empathy, invention, and joy. To deny them this is not protection — it is impoverishment.

Consider the life of Leonardo da Vinci, whose boundless curiosity and imagination made him both artist and scientist, dreamer and engineer. As a child, he wandered the hills of Tuscany, building bridges from sticks and studying the flight of birds. No one told him what to learn; he discovered it himself. His genius was not born from tests or lectures, but from play, from the freedom to imagine without boundaries. Had he been raised in our age of constant supervision and measurement, would he have become the same man? Hammond’s words echo through this question — a quiet challenge to the modern soul.

The playground, in Hammond’s vision, is not merely a place of laughter, but a symbol of human possibility. It is where community, imagination, and resilience are forged. It is where a child learns that the world can be climbed, that a fall is not an end, that the wind in one’s face is worth the risk of the height. Through KaBOOM!, the organization Hammond founded, thousands of playgrounds rose like temples of renewal across the nation — sanctuaries where children could once again explore, create, and dream. His mission was not only to build spaces of play, but to rebuild the very idea that play is sacred — a divine act of learning through joy.

We must ask ourselves, as Hammond did: What becomes of a world that fears its own children’s curiosity? What becomes of a people who value grades over wonder, and control over creation? When we strip imagination from our youth, we do not make them safer; we make them smaller. The mind, like a muscle, atrophies when unused — and the imagination, deprived of play, forgets how to grow. We must guard not only their bodies, but their spirits. The risk of a scraped knee is nothing compared to the loss of a dreaming heart.

The lesson, then, is this: return to play. Let children climb, build, question, and fail. Encourage curiosity rather than conformity, creativity rather than compliance. Let the classroom expand beyond walls, into fields, forests, and neighborhoods. Teach not only knowledge, but wonder — not only caution, but courage. For in play, the mind learns to invent; in imagination, it learns to transcend.

So hear the call of Darell Hammond as a voice for all ages: loosen the chains of fear and let joy return to learning. The future does not need more perfect scores — it needs more imperfect dreamers, those who dare to create what does not yet exist. For when a child plays freely, the world itself plays through them — and in their laughter, the divine spark of imagination is reborn.