Children need to be taught how to overcome boredom themselves - Sarah Todd
A story highlighting British museums that average fewer than one visitor a day caught this correspondent’s eye. Each year Visit England’s annual statistics reveal the millions who flock to the nation’s best-known attractions such as Stonehenge, the Tower of London and the Natural History Museum.
However, it was the 20 or so at the bottom end of the list – attracting fewer than 300 visitors a year – that gave food for thought.
Some days, not a single visitor makes it through the door of The Bay Museum on Canvey Island in Essex. To be fair, the photographs reveal it looks more like a toilet block than a treasure trove of military items. Once a Cold War naval magnetic monitoring station, the white-washed building is packed to the rafters with weapons, medals, uniforms and models from both world wars.
Come rain or shine, a team of volunteers operate a rota system to make sure the 18th least-visited attraction opens every Sunday throughout the year. Some days, not a single person makes it through the door while on others there is a mini flurry, more often than not with people expecting to stay for ten minutes finding themselves – three hours later – suddenly worrying about getting a car parking ticket.
Other attractions spoke about how the odd coach full of history or architecture students can make an enormous difference to those end-of-year visitor figures.
Reading about these little-known attractions coincided with a trip to a local cinema, where only four of the 12 seats were occupied. This writer had got the tickets and in return her friend bought a couple of glasses of wine. The whole experience made us ashamed not to have been to ‘the pictures’ for ages. Once these special places are gone - it is also possible to have a mug of tea - they will never come back.
Some will say so what? Does it matter when so many movies are available with the flick of a switch through television streaming services such as Netflix? But our experience the other night was more about making the effort and meeting up than the actual film itself. Although, having said that, there is something about the lights lowering and the opening credits rolling that makes a film so much more enjoyable than sitting at home on the sofa. Afterwards, we agreed we should have met up earlier in the evening and had something to eat. Now that would have been two more covers for a local market town restaurant mid-week. All something of a wake-up call. To finish, thinking about these quirky little museums and empty cinemas brought back memories of how time was filled when we were younger. More specifically, the importance of being bored.
It is interesting to wonder whether the modern child is ever bored. Proper mind-numbingly bored out of their brains. Talking to today’s parents they seem to have an activity or outing organised every day of the weekends and school holidays then spend Monday to Friday moaning about the cost of living. Oblivious of the irony of counting expensive theme parks, takeaways and extra activities as life’s essentials rather than treats.
Admitting to being bored as a child growing up in the 1970s was an act of almost treason. For one thing, this carrot-haired little girl and her brother would be set on weeding the gravel if we were daft enough to declare we had nothing to do.
The prospect of picking weeds soon got us coming up with ways to fill our time. Looking back, there was an awful lot of washing and servicing our bikes, collecting caterpillars, making go-carts and endless business ideas such as car washing.
Time to take the rose-tinted spectacles off, but properly qualified people agree. Take Sandi Mann, author of The Science of Boredom and Senior Psychology Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire.
She has been researching boredom for around 20 years and no, before you ask, she says she is not bored of it. “If I had one message for a parent it would be this: don’t be scared of boredom,” she says, adding that creativity is the main benefit. Daydreaming leads to coming up with ideas, trying new things out, taking the initiative and solving problems.
In fact, learning how to “unbore themselves” gives youngsters the tools for when they are older, helping them handle periods of quiet time. Now, this is probably adding two plus two and making six, but maybe interesting to finish by pondering whether our modern world would have quite so many mental health problems if people had been brought up with a little boredom in their lives…