英語検定ライティング準１級（第104回）

恐怖感「遊具の難度が低いと公園が楽しくない話」

There are not a few parks in our neighborhood.
It has various kinds of equipments for children.

こどもたちが公園で遊ぶ時に以前なら危険だと思う遊具はあった。当然だがこどもたちには怪我をしてほしくないと親なら願う。それで公園の状況が変わっていった。
There used to be many kinds of playground equipments for children, several of which seemed to be extremely dangerous even for their parents.
It is natural for such parents to hope that their children avoid being injured during their playtime, which finally made the parks’ situation changed.

鉄棒は位置が下がった。そして地面も柔らかくなった。その結果、怪我をするこどもの数は激減した。しかしそれはいいことではないと考える者も当然ながら現れる。
The height of climbing bars were lowered, the ground was softened and so on, so that the number of children’s injuries became smaller and smaller dramatically.
However, not a few adults found these changes useless or helpless because they could prevent children from growing up appropriately, and because the equipments’ difficulty level was too low.

遊び場は彼らの成長を促す。彼らは高いところに登ろうとする。しかし怖い。怖いけど登ろうとする。何度もやってみると怖くなくなる。経験による学習である。
Playgrounds’ equipments have caused children to grow up properly : they tried to climb to the high place, but they felt afraid of it, which failed to stop them from doing it because they found it less scary while they tried it again and again : we call it “learning from experiences.”

そこにある遊具の難度が下がると、難題に取り組む機会が奪われる。そして親の側にも物足りない。こどもには難しいことに取り組んでほしいからである。
Lowered equipments could deprive children of their opportunities to work on several challenges, at the same time, their parents feel it unsatisfactory for them to play with too easy a tool, the reason of which is that they want children to work on something more difficult or challenging.

新しいことも積極的に取り組んでほしいと思いながらも、怪我をさせたくはない。両方を満たす改善方法はあるのか。プロジェクトチームが形成されたのだ。
Parents want children to do something new or novel in the positive way without them injured, which formed a special project team in order to find the idea to meet both requirements, which was extremely challenging.

興奮する難度の高い遊具を擁しながらも、怪我をしにくい安全な環境を実現したのである。思い起こすと、ほんとうに危険な遊具はそこらじゅうにあったと思う。
Finally, the team realized the safer environment where children could enjoy various kinds of exciting and challenging equipments, at the same time, they should get injured less frequently.
Only now, we remember that we had numerous dangerous equipments for children here and there.

There are only a few children playing in the streets.
They play indoors because it is too hot outside home.