By Reilly Bergin Wilson
Based on close observations of four young children, I have garnered some conclusions on the allure of dirt.
Dirt is a living substance through which young children not only explore, but actively shape the world they inhabit. There are hidden treasures to be uncovered, such as a worms and the roots of plants. And like worms, in the course of dirt play children create moments in space and time that are ephemeral and secondary to their aim, which is mainly to move through the dirt, with fingers or shovels or sticks, but which serve a vibrant role in the larger ecosystem. By traversing through dirt, worms aerate and fertilize the soil as a byproduct of tunneling, children similarly engender positive social interaction through the seemingly natural inclination to join forces in an effort to build ever more complex, more meaningful space.
In urban areas, children are often denied the opportunity to shape their physical environment. Although post-industrialized cities frequently feature child-centric infrastructure, particularly accessible to the progeny of the socioeconomically privileged, such manufactured environments are often entirely predetermined by adults, whose influence is cemented through the physical stasis of their elements. Frequently, the only method a child has for physically influencing an urban child-centric environment is through seemingly destructive acts: to exercise one's creative voice in the parameters of designed permanence in effect requires acts of vandalism.
Dirt, uninhibited by the defining influence of manicured plantings, enables the rare opportunity in the urban child's existence to actively participate in the creation of their physical space, if only momentarily. Dirt play provides agency for young children–the choice to build a hill and destroy it lies temporarily within their empowered domain. Through the experience of inhabiting physically autonomous space, dirt play aids children in the conceptualization of the inherent limitations of power by demonstrating that existence as the controlling authority does not translate into total control of a situation.
Unlike toys manufactured for sturdiness, creations engineered in dirt are fragile and often unpredictable. Children primarily experience the world as an arena that adults control, and as a result often conceptualize adult authority as absolute. Through inhabiting the role of the autonomous being, playing with dirt enables an understanding that the authoritarian power structures that dominate children's daily existence are specious, necessarily propped up by unrevealed support.
An urban child armed with a shovel is empowered to interact with the world on his or her own terms, if only provided the opportunity of dirt.
