London - The former SAS soldier, who is also Britain’s Chief Scout, wants youngsters to embrace danger in order to boost their survival skills.
Grylls, 39, said his young son learned a valuable lesson after cutting himself with a penknife he had given him.
“The thing is, sometimes in life we get cut. My six-year-old recently cut himself on a knife, and came in with blood pouring everywhere, but you know what? He’s not cut himself again.
“He has learnt how to handle a knife; they do that at Beaver Scouts. I had my first penknife at six.”
Grylls was appointed Britain’s youngest Chief Scout in 2009 at the age of 35, a position he still holds.
Warming to his theme in this week’s Radio Times, Grylls explains why risk is so important in the lives of children.
He said: “There is risk everywhere, even when you go out on the street.
“So if you teach kids to dodge risk, you totally disempower them.
“You empower kids by teaching them how to do something dangerous, but how to do it safely.
“That’s what I say to Scouts all the time: ‘We’re going to climb this, it’s going to be scary and dangerous, but we’re going to do it together and look after each other to stay safe!’”
And if he was in charge of the curriculum it would not be Latin and Maths that would take priority for Grylls: “I was lucky enough to go to Eton College -– an incredible school where you learn amazing things.
“But if I had to write the education curriculum for every kid in this country, it wouldn’t be Latin and maths, it would be the following: how to light a fire, tie a knot, use a penknife, build a raft, get on with people, eat healthily, keep fit, be part of a team and learn effective leadership. And that’s it. Subjects that I have had to learn the hard way.”
Grylls, who takes 13 men out to a desert island to fend for themselves in his new Channel 4 show, said that it was “part of being a dad” to teach his three sons how to make a catapult, tie a knot and improvise a kite, and that the children set up “search and rescue” scenarios at home.
Sadly the men tasked with fending for themselves in the reality TV show The Island reflected the decline of valuable survival skills in our society today, said Grylls.
‘”hey didn’t have many practical skills so I gave them a day of training and then they had to think smart and figure out how to survive.
“Nobody told them their priority was water until they became thirsty and thought, ‘Hold on, I can’t drink that water because it’s stagnant, so now I need a fire to boil it. S***, now fire’s a priority. But how do the hell do I light a fire? I’ve never lit a fire, even with a match! So how do I do it?’
“And how did they learn to do it? The only way they could survive was by failing, and failing, and failing, and failing – until finally, woof, they got fire. Bingo!”
In the past Grylls revealed he risked his life at Eton, aged 13, climbing its ancient buildings. He once said: “One night, I finally reached the bell tower, some 90ft high, at the top of the school library dome, at 3am, and engraved a big BG beside the RF of Ranulph Fiennes, the last person to manage the climb.’”- Daily Mail