From the article I linked below, this also struck me.

I used to puzzle over a particular statistic that routinely comes up in articles about time use: even though women work vastly more hours now than they did in the 1970s, mothers—and fathers—of all income levels spend much more time with their children than they used to. This seemed impossible to me until recently, when I began to think about my own life. My mother didn’t work all that much when I was younger, but she didn’t spend vast amounts of time with me, either. She didn’t arrange my playdates or drive me to swimming lessons or introduce me to cool music she liked. On weekdays after school she just expected me to show up for dinner; on weekends I barely saw her at all. I, on the other hand, might easily spend every waking Saturday hour with one if not all three of my children, taking one to a soccer game, the second to a theater program, the third to a friend’s house, or just hanging out with them at home. When my daughter was about 10, my husband suddenly realized that in her whole life, she had probably not spent more than 10 minutes unsupervised by an adult. Not 10 minutes in 10 years.

The same was true for me as a kid. Then, I might have seen my parents when they forced me to come inside for dinner. On the weekend, there was a good chance I might not see them at all, not even for a minute.

How do modern kids live as they do?

Sylvia tells him she bought this house because she wanted to give her own children the kinds of childhood experiences she’d had, and when she saw the little wooded area out back, her “heart leapt.” But “there’s no way they’d be out in the woods,” she adds. “My hometown is now so diverse, with people coming in and out and lots of transients.” Hart reminds her how she used to spend most of her time across the river, playing. “There’s no river here,” she tells him, then whispers, “and I’m really glad about that.” There will soon be a fence around the yard—she mentions the fence several times—“so they’ll be contained,” and she’ll always be able to see her kids from the kitchen window. As Sylvia is being interviewed, her son makes some halfhearted attempts to cut the hedges with a pair of scissors, but he doesn’t really seem to know how to do it, and he never strays more than a few inches from his father.

What the FUCK? I’d have gone absolutely mad if I’d had to live in a prison camp environment like that. When I was less than 10 years old I sometimes wandered 10-12 miles away from my house on my bike, all by myself or sometimes with a friend or two.

Because I grew up essentially feral and in a very rural area, my childhood play was essentially like this.

Though I never played on a formal playground, even an “adventure” one as there weren’t any playgrounds of any sort where I lived. Not within 10 miles, anyway. (Like I said, rural.)

I do remember asking my mother if I could allow some water to flow into the front yard, put some gasoline on top of it and light it up. That I even asked was a bit of a miracle, but I figured gasoline was very expensive to us so someone would notice if it went missing and then I would get into trouble.

She said yes, as long as I didn’t use too much.

So I constructed a makeshift dam, let the garden hose run until the water nearly overtopped my weak weir, and then poured a bunch of gasoline in. Then I made a little trail of gasoline away from the water so I didn’t set myself on fire, and lit it up.

It was quite impressive.

I was either seven or eight years old when this occurred.

As I said, I was nearly feral and the world was my adventure playground.

So fucking glad I am not in school right now.

I’ve read the feedback that teachers across New York have offered these past two days of the Common Core aligned ELA exam. I have the same sympathy for them, and their students, as I do for our school’s own. Their experiences, combined with today’s mistreatment of students that children are suffering at the hands of misguided test makers, have moved me to speak out. I would be negligent if I didn’t.

Imagine a Little League coach putting a team of third-graders in a game against the local Varsity team. Surely, someone would take issue with that. How, then, can I not take issue with third-graders being tasked to read and respond to text about technical instruments with which most adults are unfamiliar?

Though I did well on them, I always despised standardized tests. That sounds like a whole new level of torture there, though.