“Without Play – without the child that still lives in all of us, we will always be incomplete. And not only physically, but creatively, intellectually, and spiritually as well.” -George Sheehan
Lately I’ve heard a lot of talk about global warming – an eminent “crisis.” I’m more concerned about another crisis – the withering of imagination and creativity, and the entrance of adult-like stress into the world of childhood learning. I am more worried about the loss of childhood than the loss of the ozone layer. Robert Fulgrum wrote a famous book entitled, “Everything I Ever Needed to Know about Life I Learned in Kindergarten.” Robert might have learned life’s lessons in kindergarten, but not so for the kindergarteners of today. Kindergarteners today learn what Robert might have learned in first or second grade. Life skills are not on the tests, so they are eliminated because they are not essential. With children, we are beginning to do things earlier and earlier that we shouldn’t even be doing later. The elimination of physical education, art, and music; the elimination of project based learning in favor of push-down curriculum, standardized teaching, high-stakes testing and the counter-productive focus on “academic achievement” over LEARNING is a threat to our future of our planet. Playful, social, interactive learning is threatened with extinction. Life skills and social skills can help to solve most of the problems we have on our planet. In the environment of learning, if play goes extinct – we can kiss life skills and social skills goodbye. That’s the “inconvenient truth.”
There are people who believe that play is a slothful waste of time – “Idle hands are the Devil’s playground.” I grew up with one - my next door neighbor. He seemed to be lying in wait for a kids to play, so that he could put an end to it. If a ball went into his yard, we would draw straws to decide who had to go into his yard to retrieve it. At best he would just yell at us to get off his lawn, “You’re crushing my GRASS!” A worst he would take the ball away and destroy it.
Play is not the opposite of work. Together, work and play are pleasurable. Play without work is merely entertainment. Work without play is painful. Play is the essence of childhood learning. Playful learning assists children to develop to their maximum potential. Through play children become bigger than themselves – larger than life. They become kings of their own hills, athletes, heroes, magicians, or fairy princesses – beyond their own limits toward maximum potential.
Recently, I was at the beach with my family. My daughter built a sand castle and was playing by herself when a boy approached and asked if he could play too. She agreed and for a while they both played by her rules. Then the plot changed when the boy announced that the castle was on fire and poured a bucket of water on it – firefighter to the rescue. My daughter was not happy about this turn of events, and the partial destruction of the castle, but she played along. She rebuilt part of the castle and then decided to introduce a person to this situation and took out a Barbie-type doll – the princess. A few minutes later the boy poured water on her doll and announced, “She’s drowning” – once again the plot thickens! My daughter snatched her princess up and clutched her close. At this the boy begged and pleaded her to let the princess drown, promising “this time I’ll save her!” As their play continued I thought about how many things they were potentially learning about in this situation – conflict, pleasure, heroism, love, drama, destruction, construction, and making the best of whatever the tide brings in!
When children are playing at being a fire fighter, they are not learning to fight fires; rather, they are learning how to relate to people in diverse situations, how to adapt, how to think, how to make decisions, how to form relationships, how to generate possibilities, and how to guide their own behavior. They learn how to make decisions and plans – in fact they often spend more time planning the roles of the imaginary situation than actually playing the game. Through play, children become wonderful learners. Through play, children learn how to learn.
Lev Vygotsky's concept of a zone of proximal development (зона ближайшего развития) or ZPD is the gap - the distance between their actual developmental level (what children can do on their own) and their level of POTENTIAL development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers (what children can do with help). It is the level of actual development that a standardized test measures. Two children might have the same level of actual development, in the sense of being able to solve the same number of problems on some standardized test. But, given appropriate help from an adult or another child, one child might be able to solve an additional dozen problems while the other child might be able to solve only three more.
Vygotsky states “… play creates the zone of proximal development of the child. In play a child is always above his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form; in play it is as though the child were trying to jump above the level of his normal behavior.”
Speaking of being a head taller…I was at Disneyland a while ago. At the entrance to many rides was a sign that said, “You must be this tall to ride this ride.” I watched as children stood as straight and tall as they could; they poofed up their hair, they put on a hat, they stood on their tippy toes; they tried to be bigger than they are in order to have fun and play. In schools, we do not say you must be this tall – be at this developmental level to start school. We say you must be five years old by September 1st to enter Kindergarten. Imagine two children at the same actual level of development. Johnny turns five on August 31 and Amanda turns five on September1. Amanda starts first grade while Johnny has another year to play and develop. Within a few weeks, Amanda is being tested for dyslexia, developmentally delayed syndrome and a special education program. Johnny starts kindergarten the following year in within a few weeks he is labeled as gifted!
The theory of a ZPD argues that children develop best, not through unaccompanied passive learning (on their own), but through social interaction and collaborative problem-solving (with help). Full development of the ZPD depends upon full social interaction. The range of skill that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone. Playful and interactive learning drives children beyond their actual level of development. Through play children develop MORE - towards a greater POTENTIAL.
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