Maximize Learning through Play

By Denise Chasin
The Freedom School

One of the most important activities our children engage in, and the one that truly amplifies their chances of learning, is play. And yet for some reason, play is getting bad press these days. Growing numbers of youngsters are herded into organized sports and other structured activities, leaving less and less time for unstructured interaction. Even parents of preschoolers tend to scoff if a preschool program consists “only” of free play. Play’s reputation is so diminished that traditional schools have reduced recess to the bare minimum, and children have limited opportunities to even converse with one another in the classroom, let alone have fun. This is unfortunate, because play serves a number of functions that no amount of classroom instruction or other structured activity can replace.

First and foremost, in play, children prepare themselves for life. Recently, an 11-year-old I know created an elaborate party, complete with invitations, food, decorations, and activities for her friends. As one mother dropped her daughter off at the party, she surveyed all of the preparations and commented that the hostess must have way too much time on her hands. The woman had no appreciation for the energy and creativity that went into the event. While deeply involved in party creation, the girl practiced many skills: writing, budgeting, planning, organizing, marketing, and time management. This was a very expansive and creative undertaking by a child who was given the freedom to create.

Play is what creative people do; it is where their imaginations grow. Our educational system was created during the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when the goal was to limit creativity so that people could and would act machine-like, moving in lock-step. Those days are long gone. Today, our future depends on creative people. We are moving from the Information Age, which was dominated by linear, analytical thinking, to the Conceptual Age, which will require “…a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers,” writes Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind (Riverhead, 2005). “These people – artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers – will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys,” he says.

If the Conceptual Age is what’s coming, then children who play freely will be well prepared because children at play are conceptual thinkers. When devising a game, for example, children will find endless ways to create, revise, re-create, test, elaborate or expand, and try again. They take nothing for granted, and they experiment wildly, giving themselves constant feedback. Most educational systems do not value this type of learning, yet it is invaluable preparation for life in the 21st century.

Play is an activity in which children learn an essential skill: how to fail. In most schools, failing is seen as a disgrace, and this view leaves no room for risk taking. As adults, we know that mistakes and failure come with life, but that doesn’t mean we are comfortable with them. Our discomfort may have to do with the fact that we had little opportunity to practice failing while growing up. When children are able to play freely and almost endlessly, they try something over and over until they get it right—or until they realize it isn’t going to work. At that point, they move on, without attaching negative meaning to the result. This builds a resiliency that serves them well at every stage of life.

Another skill play develops is problem solving. In a traditional school, problem solving is taught by giving children word problems or artificial situations and asking them to work to reach a predetermined solution. These problems have no meaning to the students. As a result, the students mechanically apply whatever formula they have been told to use. This is not real problem solving. Conversely, in play, anything can go wrong, forcing participants to figure out appropriate solutions, or the game is over. In the process, they may go through rounds of trial and error. This is problem solving in the real world.

Intense focus and concentration are also intrinsic to play. This is particularly worthy of note considering that more and more children being diagnosed with some form of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). And yet, when these same children play, most of them have no trouble focusing. Many won’t focus at school because they are bored; the curriculum is meaningless to them. Rarely, if ever, do traditional schools allow children the opportunity to focus intently on something and follow that fascination through to its end. Instead, children learn to listen with one ear, keep one eye on the clock, and get by with the bare minimum.

Play is intense. It requires total focus, and if we allow children this focus, they can transfer that skill to anything in life. They naturally stay in the moment, an ability that adults often must work to regain later in life. “Psychologists believe that play cajoles people toward their human potential because it preserves all of the possibilities nervous systems tend to otherwise prune away,” writes Hara Estroff Marano in her article “Education: Class Dissmissed” in Psychology Today, [month?] 2006. “It is no accident,” she continues, “that all of the predicaments of play—the challenges, the dares, the races and chases—model the struggle for survival.” In short, when children play, what they are really doing is practicing life by adapting to realities that we cannot begin to emulate in a classroom. Or, as Marano writes so eloquently, “Think of play as the future with sneakers on.”